No cuts
No sackings
Workers, students and anti-cuts campaigners in Wales will give a clear message to the Tories and the Welsh Lib Dems, both holding their conferences in Cardiff on 5 March, that their policies are not welcome in Wales. And that we are building a serious fightback to stop the cuts.
Katrine Williams PCS Wales chair
Services in our communities have already been cut to the bone and the working class in Wales is still reeling from the impact of the recession on jobs. So we have no alternative but to fight to defend services and for a serious campaign to get the full funding that Wales needs. We demand that politicians fight as hard as we do to defend services and oppose cuts.
One in three children in Wales lives in poverty already. This is before the introduction of the ‘universal credit’ benefit scheme, which will make 1.7 million people worse off across Britain.
Disgracefully two Labour councils in Wales have torn up their workforces’ contracts and are expecting workers to sign up to worse terms and conditions.
Other councils are making swingeing cuts. Assembly members and candidates in the forthcoming elections need to understand that we are opposed to all cuts in Wales regardless of the party making them.
This is an opportunity to show the strength of feeling of the working class in Wales. Cardiff Against the Cuts’ initiative to organise the demo as soon as the date of the conferences was announced is to be welcomed. This was then taken up by Cardiff trades council. Other anti-cuts campaigns, trades councils, Wales Shop Stewards Network and a good number of trade unions rushed to show their support. Unbelievably the Wales TUC initially did all they could to oppose the demo. But they are now welcomed on board.
This demonstration against the Con-Dems will show the strength of the movement and bring everyone together in advance of the TUC demonstration in London on 26 March.
The Wales Shop Stewards Network is organising an anti-cuts conference on 16 April in the Temple of Peace, Cathays Park, Cardiff. All trade unionists and community campaigners are welcome to attend. This will provide an opportunity to discuss how to build up the movement in Wales, linking up with workers and anti-cuts campaigns across Britain. The voice of workers, students and campaigners must be clearly heard in the Welsh Assembly elections.
Cuts are neither inevitable nor necessary. There is a real alternative. Working class people will not accept that we have to pay for the bankers’ crisis – especially as they are back to business as usual awarding themselves huge bonuses. We will fight for the resources to get jobs and services back into our communities and to stop the cuts.
Assemble 11am, City Hall, Cathays Park, Cardiff. The march goes past the Liberal Democrat conference in the Angel Hotel and the Tory conference in the SWALEC stadium. It finishes at the Wales TUC rally in Sophia Gardens.
