Youth March For Jobs: Looking this morning for what to submit I got here throughout a bit I had written on the time concerning the Youth March for Jobs in London on Saturday twenty eighth November 2009 and had forgotten about – and thought it price sharing with you once more.
This march was a nationwide demonstration referred to as by’Youth Combat For Jobs‘, an organisation based earlier in that yr “backed by 7 nationwide British commerce unions, the PCS, RMT, the CWU, Unite, UCU, TSSA and BECTU, in addition to particular person commerce union branches, scholar unions and labour motion figures” to lift consciousness and marketing campaign for motion over youth unemployment. I reproduce the textual content right here (with only a few spelling corrections) together with a number of of the numerous photos I took on the occasion – you could find extra on My London Diary.
Youth March For Jobs
Central London. Saturday November 28, 2009
I walked away from the Youth March for Jobs with a Polish man of round my age who had been watching the march because it came visiting Lambeth Bridge. “These folks“, he instructed me, “don’t perceive what they’re asking for.” I disagreed and we walked alongside the street speaking. “I grew up beneath socialism, and there was no freedom. I couldn’t journey, couldn’t say what I assumed…” he continued. We talked some extra. He instructed me: “You weren’t allowed to not work; if a policeman noticed you on the road not working he would order you high go to the job centre the next morning, and they might ship you to a job.” We agreed that though we had been towards such compulsion, not less than there was work for everybody, in contrast to right here.
We talked extra. About how horrible it was that there have been so many younger those who wished to work, that had been leaving faculty and college with {qualifications} however couldn’t discover a job. That the system right here was all decided by cash with no considered the social penalties. That beneath socialism, tradition had flourished, with arts centres and music supported by the state at a neighborhood degree in a method that has by no means occurred right here, the place Arts Council funding is directed at elites.
We went our other ways earlier than I had an opportunity to inform him that the free training that these younger folks had been demanding was one thing that my technology, born after the conflict, had taken as a right – together with the remainder of the then new welfare state that our governments over the past 30 or extra years have been slicing again on. Coming from a background that was economically scraping the barrel in a method maybe laborious to think about in the present day (however wealthy in another respects) I might by no means have been capable of attend college until the state had paid for my charges and dwelling bills.
What we wanted, we agreed earlier than parting, was a system that mixed each the liberty of thought and motion we get pleasure from with full employment and a state that exhibits an actual duty to help everybody, specific its poorest members. Really one thing that most of the slogans chanted on the march had been calling for.
Somewhat beneath a thousand got here to the beginning of the march exterior the College of London Union in Malet St. Some had been from round London, however there have been additionally banners from Hull, Huddersfield, Birmingham and elsewhere. Many had been college students and most however not all had been younger. Lots of the slogans chanted as they made their method by way of the crowded streets of Central London represented a disillusion with each the Authorities and politics usually:
Labour Cronies
Tory Snobs
Combat their cuts
Combat for jobshowever others had been aimed particularly at Labour
Mandelson's a Tory
He wears a Tory Hat
And when he noticed our high up charges
He stated I am going to double that!
Some contrasted the billions made accessible to rescue the failed bankers with the stringencies being imposed on college students and the poor:
Gordon Brown, cease the rot
Give us what the bankers received,
Bail out the employees
Not the bankers!
The billions wasted on ill-conceived and doubtless unlawful wars – at present the topic of yet one more enquiry anticipated to state the clearly apparent – additionally got here in for noisy and enthusIastic criticism.
What the marchers need is the proper to training quite than it turning into a privilege for the rich, and for first rate jobs. They oppose privatisation, which has so typically led to decrease requirements, changing a pleasure in work and a social duty by cost-cutting, minimal requirements (typically not achieved) and a lack of safety for the employees with part-time working, brief time period employment and lack of rights and pensions.
The march halted for a couple of minutes exterior Downing St, the place, after a speech that only some may hear as restrictive legal guidelines prohibit the usage of megaphones within the space, a small delegation went to take a big petition to the Prime Minister, earlier than persevering with previous the Homes of Parliament. I left the marchers as they crossed over the Thames on Lambeth Bridge on their solution to their closing rally.
Extra photos at Youth March For Jobs.
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Tags: bankers, BECTU, tradition, CWU, fats cats, freedom, grasping bankers, unlawful wars, London, lack of safety, march, part-time working, PCS, peter Marshall, Polish man, privatisation, protest, RMT, brief time period, social duty, socialism, tssa, UCU, Unite, welfare state, Youth March For Jobs, zero hour contracts
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