Freedom-March-26-Action-Map. Anti-cuts campaigners plan 'carnival of civil disobedience' Anti-cuts protesters in Birmingham last year.
Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Anti-cuts campaigners are planning a wave of sit-ins, occupations and "people's assemblies" to coincide with this month's TUC demonstration, in a "carnival of civil disobedience" designed to highlight opposition to the government's programme of cuts. Student activists, tax avoidance campaigners and anti-capitalist groups say they plan to occupy some of the capital's "great buildings", close down scores of high street stores and stage a 24-hour occupation of Hyde Park. "This is going to be a really important day," said Anna Walker of the campaign group UK Uncut. "We had the student protests and we have seen the growth of UK Uncut, but this is the first time we are going to have people from all over the UK together whose lives are being turned upside down by these cuts.
"The plan is that we will start the march together on a UK Uncut bloc and aim for the individual occupations to happen across Oxford Street.
We know what to march against on 26 March; here's what to protest for. We are yet again stepping into the ring with one hand tied behind our backs.
The great rally that is planned for 26 March will bring together the most impressive oppositional groups in Britain. It will show that we have the numbers and the will required to fight this government. But there's a problem. We know what we don't want. The people co-ordinating this protest have provided compelling explanations of why the government's programme for tackling the deficit is unnecessary, unfair and likely to make the problem worse. Nowhere have I been able to find a statement of aims that is short enough to put on a flier but specific enough to be useful. Without clear aims we remain trapped by our opponents, responding to their agenda rather than forcing them to respond to ours.
This is a rough first draft of what such a statement might look like. So here goes. We must close the tax gap. I can't speak for anyone else, though I've borrowed plenty of ideas in compiling this list. TUC: phoney war against government is over, says Brendan Barber. Brendan Barber: ‘Some of our opponents would like to dismiss our campaign as self-interest.’
Photograph: Eamonn McCabe The head of Britain's trade union movement tomorrow declares the "phoney war over", promising a barrage of protest against the government's cuts, ranging from industrial strikes and "peaceful civil disobedience" to petitions by Tory voters in the shires. Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, setting out plans for the first national demonstration against the cuts on 26 March, said the days of protests being solely about unions going on strike are over.
Unions were now part of a broad church of opposition spanning a range of supporters from student activists to middle-class protesters who defeated the coalition's forestry plans, to families feeling the effect of the welfare reforms to direct activists who have occupied banks, he said. "Back in the autumn last year this was a largely theoretical debate. The Guardian has learned: