Agencies, London :Activists and trade union leaders have called for a general strike and a mass campaign of civil disobedience to bring down the country’s new right-wing government as hundreds of thousands took to the streets of London and other cities to protest against austerity and public service cuts.Organisers said a quarter of a million people had joined Saturday’s march from the Bank of England to the Houses of Parliament, with smaller protests also taking place in Glasgow, Liverpool, and Bristol, and pledged the event was only a beginning.”We’ve got to get rid of this government quicker than five years. This government cannot last the full term,” Sam Fairbairn, national secretary of the People’s Assembly, the anti-austerity campaign group that organised the march, told a rally in Parliament Square.”Today is just the start of a campaign of protests, of strikes, of direct action and civil disobedience up and down the country. We are going to organise the biggest mass movement this country has ever seen, and it is that mass movement that is going to kick David Cameron out of office.”Cameron, the British prime minister, was re-elected last month after his right-wing Conservative Party gained a small parliamentary majority despite winning just 37 percent of votes cast, and claiming the support of less than a quarter of eligible voters.The Conservatives say extensive cuts are needed to bring the UK’s welfare budget and national deficit under control.In an article on Sunday in the Sunday Times newspaper, George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith, the government’s finance and work and pensions ministers, said they would announce measures next month to reduce the UK’s welfare expenditure by 12 billion pounds ($19bn) a year. “It took many years for welfare spending to spiral so far out of control and it’s a project of a decade or more to return the system to sanity,” they wrote.But critics say the government lacks a mandate for widely unpopular and controversial plans that include reforming the UK’s publicly funded National Health Service and imposing deep cuts on already squeezed public services.Marchers carried banners and placards reading: “They cut, we bleed” and “Homes not Trident”, a reference to the UK’s nuclear deterrent which is due for renewal next year at an expected cost of tens of billions of dollars.Other campaign groups called for the reform of the UK’s asylum and immigration system, measures to tackle the UK’s social housing crisis, and an overhaul of surveillance and privacy laws.”They are letting down the poorest people in society,” Lee, an IT worker from London, told Al Jazeera. “This is about making our voices heard and letting them know that half the country is still really disappointed about what [the Conservatives] are doing.”Afham Ismail, an asylum seeker originally from Sri Lanka who has been living in the UK for 11 years, told Al Jazeera he was attending the march to show solidarity with housing activists who had helped his family when they were evicted from their home in East London.Ismail said he and his wife had worked as teachers but had lost their jobs and their home when their circumstances changed and their work permits were rescinded by the Home Office. He said his family was now homeless and staying with friends.”It is just an excuse to exploit ordinary people and to ensure that the people in power continue to prosper at the expense of everybody else,” said Susan Ryan, carrying a placard reading “Austerity is a con!”Estella Moreno, an 18-year-old from Luton in southern England, told Al Jazeera many young people had lost faith in a political system that no longer offered them any hope for the future.”People are angry. The cuts are hurting a lot of people, and our democracy system is a joke,” she said. “I have not been able to find a job that is not zero hours contract or minimum wage, and that is the same for thousands and thousands of young people in this country.”
