“The society which has abolished every kind of adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure.” Paris, May 1968


Thursday 12 April 2012

When I read stuff like this I know that we are still in with a chance.

UK Uncut's Great British Street Party...because the future's not what it used to be!

Let’s go on a journey back in time to the year 1948…

Britain was emerging from a World War and had a huge national debt. Much bigger than the one we face today. Did we see painful cut backs and austerity measures?

No, quite the opposite. We saw the birth of our National Health Service and the Welfare State. The UK was the first country to make health care, social care and financial security accessible to all.

1948 saw the launch of ground-breaking new laws designed to protect and care for everybody in our society, including universal unemployment benefits, universal child benefits, disability benefits, rights to housing and the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1948 – a year when the Olympics were last in town and – at last – the people of Britain were looking forward to the future.

Britain back then really was ‘all in this together’. The future looked better than the past. So, we partied in the streets and dreamt of what we could achieve as people and as a country.

Fast forward to 2012 and things feel rather different. The government is not playing fair: its spending cuts are the deepest for decades and it's cheating ordinary people by forcing them to suffer for an economic crisis they didn’t cause.

The government is also lying: it actively enables big business to dodge tax and slashes tax rates for the wealthy. Right now, for us, for ordinary people in this country, the future’s not what it used to be.

So now is the time to party like it was 1948. Street parties are going to be all the rage for the Queen’s Jubilee. But let’s make ours have a twist.

On Saturday 26th May join UK Uncut’s Great British Street Party to demand that we keep our public services, our rights and our welfare system and to celebrate a new future that isn’t dictated to us by a handful of millionaires but decided by us all – together.

Hold a street party where you live to celebrate the services that are under attack and resist their closure. Hold it in the road, the high street or on a roundabout and reclaim your future.

Over the next few weeks, a group of volunteers will be touring the country to help deliver skill shares on direct action, communications and legal rights that will help to prepare you and your friends/family/neighbours to pull off a massive street party that inspires everyone in your region to resist the cuts and celebrate our future.

Get in touch if you want to help organise a UK Uncut skill share in your region and/or if you will hold a street party locally. Contact us on ukuncut@gmail.com and list your action on the website.

The future’s not what it used to be – let’s get it back.

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