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All out in Birmingham 18 Sept + Manchester 2 Oct

John Smith | 14.09.2011 00:05 | Culture | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements

Even the mainstream right are admitting the Coalition have betrayed democracy. The next 2 major protests will lobby the Lib-Dem conference, 18 Sept, Birmingham, and the Tory conference, 2 Oct, Manchester. We're defending our right to receive services we've ALREADY PAID FOR through decades of Income Tax and National Insurance payments and VAT...

It's perhaps not surprising that Colin Leys wrote in The Guardian on Sept 8, that, in relation to the Coalition government's continued insistence on pushing through stealth privatisation of the NHS, "what Wednesday's vote on the Health and Social Care Bill shows more clearly than anything is that many, if not most, of the political elite no longer care whether they are carrying out the wishes of the electorate, and barely pretend that we are any longer a democracy".

What's more surprising is that senior Daily Telegraph correspondent Charles Moore admitted on July 22 that "the rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything".

Even more dramatically, as long ago as April 2010, The Daily Mail admitted that in our capital city - London - the gap between rich and poor is widest than at any time since the abolition of SLAVERY, and in Nov 2010 The Daily Mail admitted that more than a third of UK land is still owned by "a tiny group of aristocrats". These are not headlines in (what's left of) Britain's radical press, these are lead articles appearing in Britain's mainstream hard-line right-wing newspapers!

As we all know, the Lib Dems and Tories campaigned for votes by promising they would not make the cuts they're now forcing through, and although these parties abused democracy to get their MPs elected, because the government those MPs formed is (as a Coalition of minorities) even less democratic, they're rushing through cuts and privatisations whose purpose is to serve even less accountable tax-dodging multinationals and to wreck basic social infrastructure forever.

The government is dominated by a political class who exploit the goodwill of the British public, by observing the letter of democratic procedures while deliberately abusing the spirit of that democracy, and NO-ONE who (for instance) defends the NHS is really arguing for "free" healthcare, what we're defending is our right to receive services we've already paid for through decades of Income Tax and National Insurance payments and VAT.

Corrupt MPs will fight long and hard for the billions their sponsors stand to make from privatising services and abusing democracy, so it is vital we step-up and maintain the pressure, actively supporting as many resistance campaigns as possible. The next 2 major protests are against the Lib-Dem conference, this Sunday 18 Sept in Birmingham (11am, Granville St, B1 1JW), and against the Tory conference on 2 Oct in Manchester (12 noon, Liverpool Rd, M3 4JR). Please e-mail / ask EVERYONE you know to join us on these protests.

No disrespect to anyone with strong ideological convictions, but please DO NOT bring flags and banners which advertise radical ideologies. We need to divide our former opponents, engaging disaffected Daily Mail and Telegraph readers etc by exposing the Coalition as the real extremists (we do not need to discredit protest movements by resorting to the perceived extremism that State agents constantly troll Indymedia to try to encourage).

ACTION...