Saturday October 1st. was probably the wettest day for some considerable time, the morning started with torrential rain and slowly modified to monsoon type downpour before turning to heavy rain for the rest of the afternoon. In spite of this, thousands felt angry enough to march the couple of miles from the Glasgow Green, through the city to Kelvingrove Park. A long slow colourful snake of people slithered their way through Glasgow's wet, semi-flooded streets in cheerful and noisy fashion. The march, against cuts to public services and the attack on public sector workers, was the first of many planned for the coming months.
What we have to realise is that what this government is embarking on is the biggest and most savage attack in living memory, on the living standards of the people of this country. Under such circumstances there is no alternative but to defend ourselves and fight back with the same savageness and determination as this cabal of corporate fascists. There is no law against self defence, when you are attacked you have the right to defend yourself. This millionaire government and its corporate bed-fellows are well organised and will be ruthless in their endeavour to privatise everything and to transfer all public assets to their millionaire friends in the corporate world. We must be better organised and even more ruthless than our attacker, if we wish to defeat this unbridled onslaught.
We are not alone in this growing self defence, across Europe there have been mass demonstrations and occupations, from Greece to France, from Spain to Italy, Portugal and Ireland, it has now spread across the Atlantic. Today is the seventh day of continual occupation of Wall St. in New York with 5,000 filling the area on Friday, and for the last three days the central square in Los Angelos has been occupied. We are one.
We are governed by consent, we can and have the right to withdraw that consent, the system is corrupt, unjust and cannot work for the benefit of the majority of the people, so the majority of the people have the right to destroy it, and in its place create a system that sees to the needs of all our people, a system based on co-operation, mutual aid and sustainability, free from the greed of the profit motive. We have the right and the responsibility to start that creation process now. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren. We start now or we leave a heritage of repression and deprivation to those who follow.
