The Enough is Enough campaign will be formally launched in Piccadilly Gardens this weekend as Manchester joins fifty other UK towns and cities in protesting the economic crisis.
Coronation Street stars will be joining trade unionists, community leaders and ordinary workers on the platform to address the crowds, with over 500,000 people having signed up to the campaign’s five demands so far, say organisers.
They claim the campaign will put working class people back at the heart of British politics – promising not just to protest but to directly support those struggling this winter.
“We will bring together food and clothes banks, trade unions and groups supporting those in debt or the threat of eviction, providing direct support and assistance to working people on the breadline,” they say.
Members of Aslef, TSSA, the RMT and CWU will be out on strike as Britain braces itself for the biggest day of industrial action in decades.
Julie Hesmondhalgh and Lamin Touray are the big names from the popular soap set to appear as the movement seeks to consolidate support from across the spectrum of British society. “I saw the Enough is Enough campaign and just thought, that’s exactly what everyone is feeling,” says Touray. “I don’t think anyone remembers when times have been this hard. Government needs to sit up and listen to the people…it can’t go on like this!”
His words were matched by Stretfordian Clare Kelly – one of the numerous self-employed tradespeople Enough Is Enough is promising will speak up in support of its aims.
“Government aren’t going to help us. When you’re self employed like me all your bills are shooting through the roof. I have friends that run pubs who just don’t know how they’re going to pay the bills. And all the while they’re cutting taxes for the super rich and lifting pay caps on bankers pay.”
With Liz Truss’s government reeling from the run on the pound and collapse in popular support in the opinion polls the group says it is focused on five key demands: fair pay for British workers, solving the energy crisis, ending food poverty, decent homes for all and proper taxation for the rich.
“The demands are one thing,” said a member of community campaign group 0161. “But we’re going to have to look after each other too, making sure that the people who can’t put on the gas this winter, who can’t afford the bills or groceries, or who have the bailiffs knocking on the door, are getting direct support from their communities.
“If working class people don’t help themselves, it’s clear no-one else will.”
Last week an insider revealed to About Manchester reporter Danny Moran how the organisation intends to compete for the popular vote by refusing old definitions of right and left and acknowledging the working class grievance against the ‘liberal left’.
With forecasts predicting the worst recession in generations Manchester is braced, like other towns and cities, for economic harship on a grand scale.
“You really don’t understand how bad it could get in Europe this year,” the business journal Fortune told its readers this week.
Danny Moran: recession incoming, the dark side of the modem, seeking knowledge in Vurt [CLICK THE LINK]
