Deep and devastating cuts are being demanded from Westminster and Stormont which will destroy thousands of jobs and vital services which working class communities rely on. These cuts will hit the poorest in society. Despite the mantra from the Tories and the parties in Stormont that ‘we’re all in this together’, the reality is the super-rich and the bankers who caused the economic crisis are being rewarded with massive bailouts while working class people are made suffer.
Ordinary people didn’t cause this crisis and they shouldn’t pay for it. Thursday’s protest, part of a European-wide week of action, can be the start of a campaign to defend jobs and services. The week of action, initiated by Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins, will bring workers from Greece to Spain and across Europe onto the streets in opposition to these austerity measures. I am calling on workers in Belfast to show their opposition and join the protest this Thursday.
Thursday protest is supported by Fire Brigades Union, PCS, I.N.T.O. (Northern Region), Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Socialist Party, Workers Party, Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Organise, Cliftonville Regeneration Community Forum, Lower Castlereagh Community Group, Save Mid-Ulster Hospital, We Won’t Pay Campaign, Youth Against Racism, plus many individual trade union activists.
After sixteen weeks struggle and numerous ups and downs, Belfast’s sacked traffic attendants have finally reached an end to what has been a hugely important dispute for both the workers involved and the wider trade union movement. 
With harsher spending cuts in the pipeline, the Assembly’s current batch of cutbacks are already hitting schools and other educational facilities hard in East Belfast. In July, with construction set to begin, the Education Minister Caitriona Ruane announced that Strandtown Primary School would not be getting the new school building it was promised years ago.
Government of “people’s confidence” declares it has taken power
The world is a mess. War, poverty, and oppression are now part of the daily lives of billions round the globe. Even during the last boom 80% of the world’s population – 5.4 billion people – lived on less than $10 a day. Now that the world is in the midst of this crisis even the head of the World Bank has said it will result in “a human and developmental calamity… the number of chronically hungry people is expected to climb over 1 billion this year”. The wars in the middle east, enviromental destruction and worsening economic turmoil are only the most recent striking examples of the crises facing humanity.