HUNDREDS of thousands of protesters from across the UK staged a mass demonstration in London against cuts in public spending yesterday.
TUC sources estimated up to half a million activists had taken to the streets in the biggest protest for years.
Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said the turnout was “absolutely enormous and showed the anger of ordinary working people at the Government’s cuts”.
The protest was largely peaceful but a breakaway group of hundreds of protesters attacked shops and banks in the Oxford Street area.
Topshop and HSBC had their windows smashed, while paint and glass bottles were thrown at a Royal Bank of Scotland branch. Fireworks and flares were set off and a handful of activists scuffled with police.
Scotland Yard said light bulbs filled with ammonia were thrown at officers. One man was arrested on suspicion of going equipped to commit criminal damage.
Many of the protesters covered their faces with scarves and carried black and red flags. They shouted “whose streets, our streets” and held placards which read “No cuts!”.
But the main group of the marchers demonstrated peacefully and walked along the pre-planned route from Embankment to Hyde Park.
Steel bands, choirs, performers and dancers performed while the mass of people, many with their children in tow, blew horns and whistles as they passed alongside Parliament.
The Conservative-led coalition is pushing ahead with a tough debt reduction programme to virtually eliminate a budget deficit, currently running at about 10 percent of GDP, by 2015 to protect Britain’s triple-A credit rating.
Labour leader Ed Miliband told protesters at the TUC rally in Hyde Park that the Government was wrong to make such deep cuts in public services. He was heckled by a small number of protesters when he said “some cuts” were needed, but most people applauded his speech. He did not join the march through London but did address the rally.
Miliband said: “Our struggle is to fight to preserve, protect and defend the best of the services we cherish because they represent the best of the country we love. We know what the Government will say: that this is a march of the minority. They are so wrong. David Cameron: you wanted to create the big society – this is the big society.
“The big society united against what your Government is doing to our country. We stand today not as the minority, but as the voice of the mainstream majority in this country.”
Many European countries have seen mass protests in recent months as governments slash public spending to try to help their economies to recover from the global financial crisis.
