Chorlton marches against cuts this Saturday
Article published: Friday, June 10th 2011
Chorlton residents are preparing to march against privatisation and cuts to health, education and local services this Saturday 11 June.
The march will cover local health centres and Primary schools in the South Manchester suburb before culminating with a “banker’s aid” collection to demonstrate opposition to what organiser Mark Krantz dubbed a government only concerned with “the richest people in society”.
Highlighting threats to the city’s health service, which was already instructed to cut £1 billion prior to the last election, the protest will start at 1pm with a rally outside the headquarters of Manchester’s Mental Health and Social Care Unit on 70 Manchester Road, Chorlton. Whalley Range’s ‘Open Voice’ choir will perform outside the centre while representatives of patients’ groups and health unions will speak out against the government’s planned market reforms to the NHS.
From there, campaigners will demonstrate outside Oswald Road Primary School to protest against cuts to services for the young people of Manchester, the effects of which Krantz condemned as “a recipe for ignorance”. Under current plans library-based homework clubs for schoolchildren will end and Sure Start children’s centres face outsourcing, while the city’s youth service wing has been slashed.
The route of the march passes local branches of the Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS and Lloyds TSB, which received £37 billion in taxpayers funds as a consequence of the financial crisis of 2008. The Bank of England has estimated that the UK’s financial sector as a whole received a £100 billion subsidy from the government in 2009 alone, and demonstrators will hold a mock collection in aid of bankers to satirise what they claim is a government-backed redistribution from the poor to the rich.
After the march, demonstrators will return to Chorlton library for a public meeting to establish a network for the local area to resist cuts to Sure Start, libraries, Manchester Advice and the city’s youth service and build support for a wave of co-ordinated strike actions by teachers’ and civil servants’ trade unions proposed for 30 June.
Comments
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I have to say I find the figures hard to grasp, if Manchester health service was trying to cut £1 billion from its budget, how much is its budget ?
Comment by fascias manchester on June 22, 2011 at 12:17 am
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