The March for the Alternative.

In light of recent events I probably should have posted this earlier.

Months ago the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) which is a body that represents all of Britain's trade unions called a march against the ConDem coalition government's policy of savage spending cuts and steep tax increases calling the march "The March For The Alternative." http://marchforthealternative.org.uk

The original plan was to gather people on Victoria Embankment in London and take them on a long, dull walk to Hyde Park where they would be forced to listen to speeches telling them why they should vote for the Labour Party instead.

However so great is public opposition to the government's policies that plan has grown and been added too. Now on March 26th (this Saturday) the TUC march will assemble at Blackfriars Bridge on the Victoria Embankment at 11AM before marching off towards Hyde Park at 12PM. There will also be four feeder marches;

• The Student March. While all are welcome this is mainly for students and will assemble outside the University of London Union (ULU) in Malet street at 11AM before moving off to join the TUC march.

• The South London March. This is simply to allow protesters who live in South London to march to join the TUC march without having to pay to use the trains or underground where police spotters are expected to be operating. It will assemble in Kennington Park at 11AM.

• The Pink & Black March. This is mainly for gay and gay friendly protesters. However it will also be a fluffy, fun and family friendly march. While there is a great risk of cutting sarcasm there is no risk of any violence. It will assemble in Soho Square at 11AM before moving off to join the TUC march.

• The Anti-Racist March. Mainly for anti-racists, anti-fascists and anarchists this march will be viewed by the police as "the Black Bloc" and heavily policed. It will assemble at the historically important ant-fascist battle ground of Cable Street in east London at 11AM. Assuming that the police don't just automatically start beating people up it will move off to join the TUC march.

Once all the marches have joined up, marched to Hyde Park and the rally has ended a group called Resist26 http://www.resist26.org are calling for people to set up a 24 hour Tahrir square style protest camp in Hyde Park.

Obviously with students, anarchists and the police all meeting each other in central London there will be at least one group who will be going intent on violence. They may though be in for a surprise. The TUC are hoping that 500,000 people will attend this march and based on the number of coaches that have been booked across the UK the police are estimating that at least 100,000 people with attend. With the exception of the anti-Iraq war march a big demonstration in London is normally considered to be made up of around 20,000 people and anything over 50,000 people is rarely heard of. So if only 100,000 people attend on Saturday the police and the protesters may find that any violence will be impossible because the sheer volume of people ends up containing the march in a sort of self-kettling effect. That said it's probably a good idea to leave any planned shopping trips to Oxford Street to next weekend.

In light of recent events though I should add that for most people in Britain the moment when they got to choose whether they wanted to be free citizens of a prosperous democracy or just David Cameron's bitch was when the first reports of a war in Libya started to emerge. If they chose wrong then they shouldn't use this march to take out their frustrations. Also I should point out that throughout his world tour in support of military action against Libya David Cameron repeatedly used variations of the phrase; "Can we allow a tyrant on the fringes of Europe to continue to attack his own people long after he has lost his legitimacy to govern?" The hypocrisy of that statement is purely intentional because the British state is trying to gauge how it is viewed by the international community.