The TUC launches bottom-up grass-roots campaign

Across Europe, public demonstrations against the cuts have been huge, putting Britain to shame, as usual. The effect, however, in Greece and Spain, in France and Ireland, has been negligible, on governments of both Left and Right. If public opposition is to have any effect in Britain, it will depend not on how well it is organised, but how well Labour and trade union leaders harness public anger. Student protests have not suffered from their leaders self-confessed “spineless dithering“; anti-tax avoidance activists have been just as effective in targetting Vodaphone (and now Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia group) without any apparent leaders. So congratulations then to the TUC for its initiative in launching False Economy, an anti-cuts website that:

has no pretensions about being a new organisation or providing leadership to the campaign against the cuts. Instead it recognises that the campaign is developing as a bottom-up grass-roots campaign.

The site is a collaboration between the TUC, Liberal Conspiracy and Clifford Singer – of MyDavidCameron and Other TaxPayers’ Alliance, with funds from trade unions and Captain Ska. The tasks it set itself were:

gathering information about the cuts – both nationally and locally;

giving people the opportunity to provide testimony on the effects of cuts on them or their community;

providing the arguments and evidence that show that the coalition are wrong when they say there is no alternative;

giving campaign groups the opportunity to post details of their events and to link up and share tips on effective campaigning;

allowing people to sign up to support the site, participate in online action and find out about campaign events.

The site looks great, we think it offers the right approach and we wish it well.