On the March

Yesterday was an important day, a day to stand up and be counted. For weeks I've tried to encourage people to come to London and protest against public sector cuts. Yes it meant sacrificing a home game (don't snigger, I know there have been times when I wouldn't have done that), but football may be important but it doesn't compare to libraries, schools and day care centres.

The TUC advance figure of 200,000 was ridiculously low, at different times of the day widely differing figures for the number of marchers were quoted. There really must be an accurate way of estimating numbers, yet throughout my life this has been a bone of contention. Of course it benefits government to underestimate the numbers.

What was good about yesterday was the vast array of public sector workers, big union groups, Unison,Unite, and NUT, but also the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists, the Royal College of Nursing and the Prison Officers Association. All marched together, along the way the omnipresent bewildering array of marxist groups. Of course this made me think of a time when I knew what separate one from another, and who begat whom. This really is a complaint that bedevils the political left in the Uk and I assume elsewhere.

The march snaked its way round Parliament Square, down Whitehall, round Trafalgar Square into Piccadilly towards Hyde Park Corner. The only political leader invited to speak was Ed Miliband and he addressed a small fraction of the marchers. I estimate he spoke while I was still in Whitehall. Not good planning.

In truth we didn't stay for much of the rally, trade union leaders are rarely inspiring public speakers, invariably repeating what the previous speaker has already said. What was lacking was political leadership,marchers must have gone away thinking "What's the next step ?" If this was the March for the Alternative then that alternative wasn't explained. It desperately needs to be.

The protesters of UK Uncut and the anarchists may not use tactics that I necessarily approve of, but there are identifying the root cause of the financial problems that the country faces. We are paying for the bankers bail-out, and the refusal to have a tax system where those with the broadest shoulders carry their fair share of the burden.

Savings can be made any public sector worker knows that, but those should be coupled with the scrapping of Trident, and a genuine attempt to tackle tax evasion. Last weeks budget showed that the country is not "nearly bankrupt" if it had been Osborne would not have been able to cut fuel duty or reduce corporation tax. Meanwhile I'm left with the thought that the cost of one missile fired through the night at an unknown target in Libya cost the equivalent as keeping my local library open for a year.