Brighton campaigners rally against spending cuts

Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition is due to start its campaign to defend public services in the area tomorrow evening.

The campaign group, set up by Brighton and Hove Trade Council, will hold a rally at the Friends’ Meeting House in Meeting House Lane, Brighton, at 7.45pm.

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, is among the speakers.

The others are

• Chris Baugh, assistant general secretary of the PCS union
• Economics lecturer Andy Kilmister
• Alex Knutsen, secretary of the Brighton and Hove branch of Unison
• Umit Ozturk from the Mediterranean Resources Network.

The coalition is made up of unions, campaign groups, voluntary sector organisations and political parties.

It describes itself as “open to all who recognise that in Britain today our public services are under threat as never before”.

It said: “The Government is pushing through the biggest cuts in the public sector ever seen.

“This will affect millions of people and nothing is safe.

“In fact health, education, welfare and above all the worst off in our society will be hardest hit.

“In Brighton it is workers who support some of our most vulnerable children and frontline health care staff who are first in the firing line.

“We are told these cuts have to be made and we are ‘all in it together’ but this is not true.

“The Government is using the financial crisis, caused by banks and speculators, to push through its political programme, breaking up the welfare state and privatising the public sector.”

Trades council general secretary Bill North said: “It is vital to bring service users together with workers to defend jobs and protect all public services against government plans to dismantle the welfare state.

“This is what we hope this meeting will begin to achieve.”