Above Photo: People in Parliament Square, London, take part in the People’s Assembly nationwide protest about cost of living crisis, in February 2022.
Thousands of protesters will take to the streets today to vent their anger at the soaring cost of living and the brutal sacking of 800 P&O workers.
The protests come as the Insolvency Service launches criminal and civil investigations into P&O’s behavior.
The People’s Assembly, a national forum campaigning against austerity since 2013, has organized demonstrations across Britain in protest at the spiraling cost-of-living crisis.
In London, protesters will gather outside Downing Street from 2pm.
Demonstrations will also be held in Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Cambridge, Coventry, Derby, Doncaster, Glasgow, Hanley, Hull, Ipswich, Lancaster, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Peterborough, Portsmouth, Preston, Redcar, Sheffield and Southampton.
The protesters will also highlight the sacking of 800 P&O workers last month and will demand their reinstatement and strengthened employment rights to stop other employers from emulating the ferry firm’s actions.
The Insolvency Service wrote to Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng confirming it had launched criminal and civil investigations into the circumstances around the redundancies, which P&O chief executive Pete Hebblethwaite has admitted intentionally broke the law.
Seafarers’ union RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said there were “clear grounds to detain P&O’s ships” while the investigations took place.
Saturday’s demonstrations will be the third in a series organized by the People’s Assembly and supported by trade union, community and campaign groups.
The first two, in February and last month, saw thousands of people protest at the lack of government action in support of those suffering real hardship from the perfect storm of rising fuel and food prices, inflation, increased council tax and endemic low pay.
Peace and Justice Project founder Jeremy Corbyn, who will speak at the London rally, said: “With rising fuel, food and energy bills, the soaring cost of living is pushing millions into poverty and the disgusting treatment of the sacked P&O workers needs urgent action from the government.”
People’s Assembly national secretary Laura Pidcock, who will speak at the Liverpool demonstration, said: “What people are experiencing is intolerable.
“No matter how patiently we explain that government inaction over soaring energy and fuel costs and sharply rising food prices is deepening poverty, misery and hunger, it is met with, at best, indifference and, at worst, more of the same.
“The truth is they are so wedded to the economic system we have, comfortable with a hands-off approach, that even when markets are obviously failing us, they continue with business as usual.
“We tell them about children going hungry and the government shrug, politically speaking.”
A demonstration in George Square, Glasgow, from 1pm will protest at the estimated 211,000 Scottish households at risk of being plunged into fuel poverty by rising costs.
STUC general secretary Roz Foyer, who will be taking part in the protest, said: “Workers across Scotland are at the cutting edge of the most sustained threat to their incomes seen for generations.
“This crisis wasn’t made by those at the bottom. They shouldn’t be paying for the inactions of those at the top.”
In Cardiff, protesters will gather next to the Aneurin Bevan statue in Queen Street from 12.30pm, after experts predicted that the average household in Wales will be at least £600 worse off this year.
Marianne Owens, a member of the PCS union’s national executive in Wales, said that there was a national crisis.
“Inflation is at a 30-year high, household bills and the price of food are skyrocketing, wage growth over the last 10 years has been at its lowest since the Napoleonic period,” she pointed out.