On Saturday 11 June in Angel, north London, Robin Hood and his merry men joined a Speak Out Against the Cuts event, targeting the Angel branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland, recipient of £45 billion of public money in the 2008 bail out.

The event was called by FRFI and publicised via the UK Uncut website. Protestors highlighted the role of RBS and other banks in precipitating the capitalist crisis, and the fact that saving the banks is a priority for the British government, at the expense of the public services that millions of ordinary people depend on.

Read more: Robin Hood and his merry men fight the cuts - 11 June 2011

New FRFI pamphlet:

No cuts – full stop! Capitalist crisis and the public sector debt

The ConDem coalition has declared class war, utilising the deepest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s to continue the class offensive that began in the 1980s. State welfare is facing massive cuts; benefits are being slashed; thousands of public sector workers are set to lose their jobs. As the coalition’s executioners, Labour councillors across Britain have shed crocodile tears as they implement the most savage reductions in services in a generation. This pamphlet draws on positions developed in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! explaining why the attacks are taking place and how we can build a fighting anti-cuts movement.

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After a two day trial, 28 – 29 March 2011, two of the HSBC 3, Mark and Patrick, were found guilty and heavy fines totaling £760 were imposed. The charges against Toby, the third defendant, were dropped before the case began - a significant victory for the campaign.

The HSBC 3 were arrested on 18 December 2010 outside a branch of HSBC in Newcastle. They were taking part in a demonstration against cuts to education and other public services as part of a UK Uncut national day of action. See: http://defencecampaign.wordpress.com/

In the trial five police witnesses provided the judge with all the evidence he wanted to hear, while the strong defence was ignored.

Mark was found guilty of breaking the conditions imposed upon a demonstration, despite the fact he was using a megaphone at the time the conditions were supposedly given. The judge ruled it was within Mark’s power to have heard the conditions.

Patrick was found guilty of obstructing a police officer in the arrest of Mark – despite the arresting officer not mentioning any obstruction in his report!

The clear  injustice of these convictions is a huge blow to the anti-cuts movement in Newcastle, and elsewhere, as it sets a precedent which will now make the police more confident to further reduce democratic rights, and the definition of what is considered ‘legitimate protest’.

Read more: HSBC 3 update - setback for anti-cuts movement as Mark and Patrick found guilty on police evidence

Photos by Phil Hunton This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

On Thursday 24^th March Tyneside Community Action Against Racism led a march against cuts to English lessons for speakers of other languages (ESOL). Around 200 people marched through the city centre to Grey’s Monument for a rally, where people who depend on ESOL fearlessly got up to speak to defend their right to education. It was a lively action, lots of banners, placards and chanting “They say integration! We say education!” Newcastle College and the Angelou Centre helped to mobilise ESOL students and lecturers and people generally against the cuts to come out to defend ESOL provision. The message was clear: we need to fight against all cuts and cuts to ESOL represent institutional racism aimed at dividing the fight back.

Read more: No cuts to ESOL! – 24 March 2011

On Monday 28 Feb FRFI supporters joined the protest outside Camden Town Hall as the Labour controlled council inside passed cuts to local services.

Gradually the march built up with a sizable contingent of local people, young people and people whose services are directly facing cuts, City Farm, Day Care Centres and Youth Clubs. On the march a good chant got going, ‘ConDem Labour all the same – they all play the banker’s game etc. SWP supporters and others refused to join in, opposing the position that Councillors who vote for the cuts are enemies of the working class.

Read more: Camden Against the Cuts, Monday 28 Feb 2011

The proposal to cut free ESOL, English lessons provided in colleges and by charities across the country, is a direct attack on the future of asylum seekers and refugees in Britain.

ESOL will no longer be free for those who need it, but only for ‘priority groups’ – those unemployed and those on income support. The majority of those on low wages will have to pay at least 50% for lessons – many of whom will not be able to afford this alongside basic living expenses. Asylum seekers will be some of the hardest hit; they will have to pay at least 50% of the cost, and yet aren’t allowed to work or claim Jobseeker’s Allowance whilst waiting for a decision.  The voucher support many receive cannot be exchanged for lessons, meaning access to lessons is impossible. The only hope for those who can’t afford is to try and get a space with a charity, but with lessons already heavily subscribed, the provision for all simply won’t be possible.

Read more: English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) – target of the cuts! - 26 Feb 2011

FRFI 219 February / March 2011

FRFI supporters around Britain have been participating in demonstrations against tuition fees, the cutting of EMA and the creeping privatisation of education. On 29 January FRFI joined the national anti-cuts march in London and the student and trade union march in Manchester, where sell-out NUS leader Aaron Porter needed a police escort to protect him from angry students.

Since the third national day of action against fees and cuts on 9 December, hundreds of people have continued to take to the streets to protest. Newcastle FRFI has been active with Students Against Cuts, whose members have been among the most militant and consistent activists, occupying shops that support the cuts such as Marks & Spencer, protesting against high-street chains including BHS and Topshop that are owned by Philip Green, millionaire tax evader and government adviser on the cuts, and targeting the Local Government Offices and Newcastle Civic Centre. This resistance has been met with political policing: the HSBC 3 – Mark Pearson, Patrick Reay and Toby Hobbs – were arrested following protests on 18 December. On 30 December over 30 people picketed Market Street Police station in protest at this criminalisation, before moving on to shut down a local branch of HSBC. HSBC has dodged an estimated £2 billion of tax since 1993, and is among the real criminals of the capitalist crisis. On 14 January, Prime Minister David Cameron was caught out in Newcastle as protesters learned of his ‘secret’ meeting with local primary school children at Newcastle’s Centre for Life. Protests quickly grew, leading to one arrest.

In Glasgow two FRFI supporters were arrested on 9 December during student protests. The Glasgow Defence Campaign has organised meetings calling for support, held street protests and built resistance to political policing (see page 4). On 22 January FRFI joined a picket in support of Irish Republican POWs in the East End of Glasgow, with a banner saying ‘NO to political policing!’ The next day, supporters joined the annual Bloody Sunday march. A speaker at the rally, who himself was shot in Derry on Bloody Sunday, was threatened by police for ‘swearing’ and at the end of the rally they detained and questioned him and another speaker.

In London FRFI is bringing the ideological battle against the cuts to the streets of Holloway, Stratford, Brick Lane, Wood Green and Brixton, with street stalls every weekend. We attended the National Shop Stewards Network conference, which voted in favour of an anti-cuts campaign prepared to hold Labour councils to account for the cuts they implement.

On 8 December David Yaffe, editor of FRFI, spoke at a meeting of the London School of Economics FRFI society about the cuts and the crisis, highlighting the parasitism of British capitalism, and the reasons for the latest attacks on education and welfare. Go to http:// tinyurl.com/4heyzrv to watch a video of the talk. Juan Carlos Piedra, from the London Living Wage Campaign and Movement of Ecuadorians in the UK, spoke about the impact of the cuts on low-paid migrant workers. David also spoke on 2 December to a meeting of students in the occupation of University College London.

Fight imperialism! Freedom for Palestine!

In Manchester, on 4 December supporters held a successful rolling picket, starting outside Lloyds Bank, which refused Palestine support charity InterPal an account; moving on to M&S; Schuh, one of the biggest stockists of Caterpillar footwear in Britain (Caterpillar also makes bulldozers that Israel uses to destroy Palestinian homes); Tesco, which consistently sells produce from the West Bank and finishing outside H&M which is in the process of opening new stores in Israel.

In Newcastle FRFI works alongside other activists in the Palestine Action Group (PAG), an open and democratic campaign which opposes all British support for Israel and stands in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. On 8 January PAG held a successful ‘Israel off your trolley’ event, targeting companies that support Israel, following an international call for action after Palestinian activist Jawaher Abu Rahmeh was killed in Bilin on 1 January.

In Newcastle and London FRFI supporters continue to demonstrate every Thursday outside Marks & Spencer, Britain’s biggest retail sponsor of Israel. There have also been regular pickets of M&S branches in Glasgow city centre. We have joined demonstrations outside the Israeli Ahava beauty products store in Covent Garden, London and against the sale of Dead Sea Products in Dundee. We welcome the news that, in response to campaign pressure, John Lewis has stopped selling Ahava Dead Sea beauty products, produced in illegal Israeli settlements, and that Premier Dead Sea Products has been forced out of Dundee after a militant and public campaign by the local branch of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.

Fight racism! Together we are stronger!

On New Year’s Eve FRFI activists in London supported a demonstration outside Holloway women’s prison, in support of asylum seekers being held without charge in criminal prisons following a hunger strike and protest at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre in February 2010. One of the women has now finally been released on bail but the struggle against her deportation and for freedom for the others continues. For more information email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

In Newcastle FRFI continues to play a leading role in Tyneside Community Action Against Racism (TCAR), bringing an anti-racist message to the streets of Newcastle with regular ‘speak outs against racism’ and meetings, presenting the argument that to beat the cuts we need to be united along class lines internationally and oppose all attempts to divide and weaken the working class.

Viva socialist Cuba!

The example of socialist Cuba is increasingly important to the anti-cuts movement in Britain as it demonstrates what can be achieved through a system which values human life instead of bankers’ profits. Rock Around the Blockade holds regular events, meetings and film shows. Recent screenings in London include Mission against terror – about the incarceration of the Cuban 5, political prisoners in the US. In Newcastle RATB held a packed out showing of Salud!, which explores the Cuban health care system and the role of Cuba’s legendary international medical brigades abroad. Salud! will be shown in London on 13 February, at a meeting which will look at the incredible contribution made by Cuban doctors in Haiti following the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2011. A representative from FRFI also spoke about the Cuban medics in Haiti at the London demonstration called by Haiti First! Haiti Now! on the anniversary of the earthquake.

FRFI 219 February / March 2011

Students across the country have continued to mobilise to defend the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA – the grant of up to £30 a week that enables many sixth-formers to stay in education) and the right to university education for all.

In doing so they have had to challenge the abject failure of the National Union of Students (NUS) to support their direct action (see FRFI 218), forming student councils in many universities to democratically guide the new movement, outside the control of the NUS. Labour apparatchik Aaron Porter, President of the NUS, who originally condemned students who occupied Millbank in November as ‘despicable’, was forced to apologise for his comments. However, students are clearly not fooled by this opportunist: at a demonstration against university fees called by the TUC in Manchester on 29 January he was jeered and heckled, eventually having to be escorted away by police ‘for his own protection’!

Earlier, the NUS had argued that the student-led National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts should not sponsor the 29 January demonstration in London because it would clash with the TUC march in Manchester and hence ‘split the movement’! It is clear that the opportunists are desperate to control the growing militancy of the student movement which shook cities around the country in December 2010.

On 9 December, over 30,000 students occupied Parliament Square in London as MPs voted to raise university tuition fees to up to £9,000. They were confronted by riot police batons and sustained charges by police on horseback. Angry students resisted police attempts to pen them in, pushing back police lines with shields improvised from metal fencing and wooden placards. Some students invaded the Treasury building and attacked the Supreme Court. Later in Oxford Street the windows of tax-dodging Topshop were smashed, and the royal car containing the parasites Prince Charles and Camilla was attacked.

On 11 January 2011 thousands of college students walked out of classes as MPs voted to scrap EMA. A second national school walkout on 26 January resulted in a violent police attack in Leeds after protesters targeted Lloyds TSB. Many were beaten and a student was violently arrested.

Many students were arrested on the demonstrations, and many more in the following weeks as police trawled through video footage. The courts are using political sentencing to deter future protests; 18-year-old Edward Woollard was sentenced to 32 months for throwing a fire extinguisher off the top of Millbank Tower – compare that with PC Simon Har­wood who was not even charged with assault after killing Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in 2009. FRFI will support all defence campaigns in whatever way we can.

Today’s youth face an unemployment rate of 20.3% for those aged between 16 and 24; the rate for recent graduates is 20% compared to a national average of 7.9%. The economic and political exclusion of British youth has fuelled the militancy of the protests. We should take inspiration from the insurrections in Tunisia and Egypt as an example of what is possible.

Rob Barrie

On 17 February, around 200 demonstrators, including supporters of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!, marched on Islington town hall in north London to demonstrate against the council's 2011/12 cuts budget. The budget will contain £52 million in cuts to jobs and local services, including 350 job losses and swingeing cuts to youth services, day centres, transport services and rises in tenant charges. Demonstrators made their presence felt on the steps of the town hall, before entering the public gallery to make their feelings felt.

In an Equality Impact Assessment delivered to the meeting, the council declared that its priority was to ‘make Islington a fairer place’. The blatant untruthfulness of this was demonstrated only a few paragraphs later, where it noted that the cuts would have ‘a direct impact on residents who receive services from the Council and this will mainly be younger, older, disabled and poorer residents’. With cuts that mean slashing essential services to these very people, the Labour council has shown just whose side it stands on.

Read more: Islington Labour Council sets police on anti-cuts protesters - 17 Feb 2011

Photo: Islington Labour Party joined the IHOOPS march, 5th Feb 2011, despite the fact that it is the Labour Council implementing the cuts.

Thousands of Islington residents took to the streets on Saturday 5 February, marching against proposed cuts in the borough. FRFI supporters joined the demonstration, organised by Islington Hands of Our Public Services (IHOOPS), which marched from Holloway to Angel.

The budget drawn up by the Labour Party council is brutal, with £52 million being cut this year alone. Up for the chop are services for the most vulnerable, including Sotheby Mews day centre. Sotheby Mews provides day services for elderly residents, and is a lifeline to its users – however, the Labour-run council has declared users are ‘not heavily reliant on it for their well being’. Users of the centre who joined the march disagreed. Speaking to FRFI, one user of the centre, Elizebeth Clare, said that  ‘so many people depend on it, and it's a lifeline, especially to those who have the first stages of alzheimers’. Refuting the other council claim that the centre is underused, Ms Clare said that ‘We've counted up the amount of people who come there. It's well up to full capacity. They are using this to close it down’.

Read more: Islington marches against the cuts - 05 Feb 2011