Anti-austerity pressure group to stage rally

Lancaster and Morecambe Against The Cuts will hold a rally in Market Square this Saturday, June 20, between 12pm and 2pm in support of a larger demonstration in London.

The group has been in existence for five years, with many members part of the Occupy Lancaster movement, which saw Dalton Square in the city become a centre for peaceful anti-cuts protests in 2012.

A spokesman for the group said: “A functioning democracy requires more than the act of placing a cross in a box once every five years.

“This is especially true in a system that has just given total control of the government to a party that received the support of just 24 per cent of those registered to vote.

“For that reason we are reconvening Lancaster and Morecambe Against the Cuts.

“The new government has been the leading voice over the best part of a decade in telling a story about our economy and society that is based on a lie.”

The group also has the support of recently elected Lancaster MP Cat Smith.

“Wherever austerity has been introduced it has inflicted harm in proportion to its severity,” the spokesman said. “While the UK cut and suffered, the US and China implemented deficit spending, the opposite of austerity, and in the process quickly revived their own and the world’s economy.

“Only in parts of the British media and the British political class does the austerity story still survive. We must now redouble our efforts to kill it here, too. We must do this to protect the lives and the principles that are at stake. We must draw attention to the real reason they seek to implement austerity – to advance a system that is increasingly redistributing wealth away from the majority and into the pockets of the wealthiest one per cent.”