Kent Feminista March Against the Cuts

We may not have been the biggest group there but last Saturday three of us were really proud to go and represent for those of you who weren't able to make the march but whose sentiments we know were completely with us. We dressed in the suffragette colours, picked up our placards and joined the other hundreds of thousands of marchers who wanted to send a clear message to the government that they are not acting in our name.


I'm totally with Polly Toynbee, every pair of feet counted, even if the BBC and police were reluctant to 'fess up to the true magnitude of the event, preferring to focus on the vocal minority they were relying on to give them the headlines and story that they really want to be heard. But it's too late - we were all there, we know we're not alone in believing that this government are morally bankrupt, self interested and without a genuine popular mandate for their draconian and ideologically driven cuts. The cat is out of the bag and this is just the beginning.


I've already ranted on this blog about what the cuts will mean for women and the Fawcett society are doing a brilliant job at getting the story out there, even though George Osborne is doing a splendid job at ignoring their claims. As the weeks and months go on and the effects of the cuts on women, not just in our fairly well insulated corner of the country but further afield as well, becomes evident, I hope that we will be able to play our part in monitoring where the axe is falling and standing with and for those people who will be worst affected. Just as women came together in the suffragette movement because they saw the rights and needs of women being trampled on, so it is time for us to come together and say that we will not stand for what the government are trying to do to us.


Although I want all comment on the march to be overwhelmingly positive, I just want to take a moment to say how maddened and infuriated I've been by the amount of lazy journalism there has been around the March and the serious arguments being put forward by its organisers. Of course, the media machine's determination to focus on the anarchist action and the wonderfully inventive UK Uncut's non-violent direct action campaigns has been maddening but what I have found more poisonous and lazy has been the repeated claim that no alternatives have been offered. I have heard countless arguments over the last few months about the potential alternatives to the government's program of cuts and while, predictably, my favourite have been around increasing and tightening up taxation in order to pay for services or even the implementation of the Tobin tax, I think the argument that Osborne could have done something much more creative with the money raised from the North sea oil companies is the argument that makes it most apparent that there are alternatives, simply not ones that the government wishes to consider.


Since the march, Vince Cable has confirmed that the fifty pence tax rate on incomes over a hundred and fifty thousand is to be abolished. With Cable saying that it was necessary in an emergency to create a sense of solidarity. Clearly for the government we are at the end rather than the beginning of an emergency, after all, how many of them are really going to be feeling the pain over the next five years and beyond? If this is their response to the march it only confirms why we were right to be there.