London shops attacked as 250,000 protest spending cuts

Published 49 minutes ago

Masked demonstrators break windows of the Ritz Hotel, during a protest organized by the Trades Union Congress.

DYLAN MARTINEZ/REUTERS

LONDON—Protesters clashed with police in London as hundreds of thousands of people, including public- sector workers and students, demonstrated against Britain’s deepest public spending cuts since World War II.

Demonstrators in the Oxford Street shopping area threw paint and light bulbs filled with ammonia, said a Metropolitan Police Service spokesman.

Windows were smashed and nine people were arrested, according to the police.

Footage broadcast by Sky News showed a branch of HSBC Holdings, Europe’s largest bank, splashed with paint as protesters broke in.

The Oxford Street rally coincided with a march to Hyde Park organized by the Trades Union Congress. The TUC said more than 250,000 people took part in the demonstrations, which “way exceeded” its expectations.

The police spokesman declined to give an estimate of size of the crowd. The majority of demonstrators acted in a peaceful manner, he said.

The U.K. coalition government plans to tackle a £146 billion ($235 billion) budget deficit with cuts that will cost more than 300,000 public sector jobs over four years.

The opposition Labour Party says the pace of spending cuts on everything from education to the health system threatens to throttle the economic recovery.

“No part of our public realm is to be protected,” TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said in a statement on the union’s website before the rally. “The thousands coming to London from across the country will be speaking for their communities when they call for a plan B that saves vital services, gets the jobless back to work and tackles the deficit through growth and fair tax.”

The British public is divided over the planned cuts, according to a Guardian/ICM poll of 1,014 people published Saturday.

Of those surveyed, 35 per cent said the cuts go too far compared with 28 per cent who said they strike the right balance and 29 per cent who believe they do not go far enough.

Bloomberg

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