Done! Now... BUILD THE MOVEMENT!

It's over! We crossed the M25 late in the afternoon on Wednesday before entering the London borough of Barnet. Mark the van driver, or Bullet as we like to call him, welcomed us at the border with a bottle of bubbly and a very moving speech. From there on in, the time flew by until Saturday when we had our grand demonstration in the centre of London with around 3,000 people attending. The delay of this blog entry is due to me taking a few days to recover from it all. I think I was one of several marchers to come down with a post-Jarrow cold!

The demonstration in London was fantastic. It was brilliant to see people from all over the country that we had met on our way down. It was like one big reunion. The atmosphere was great and one of the marchers, Alex, set us off from Embankment with a fiery speech that inspired us all to chant until our voices died completely. There were banners from a huge variety of unions which was brilliant to see, and we had a delegation sent to support us from the occupy stock exchange group which was great as well. I was part of a group of 6 marchers that left the march to go hand our petition in at Downing Street. Our reception there was appalling. I didn't have enough time to focus my camera before they closed the doors on us!

But we knew this would happen. We were under no delusions that Cameron would welcome us into London open-armed, read through the demands of our petition and say "you know what? You're right! I'll get on it first thing in the morning." The brief, discourteous welcome clearly shows how little they care about the issues we're fighting for and how little they intend to do about it. The whole system is rotten, and it's time for us to change it.

This march was never seen to be an end in itself. As with the occupations around the world it has helped to voice the anger of ordinary people. It has put the issues that young people are facing today on the table and inspired many to take action. One of the central aims of the march was to create links between trade unions all across the country, to speak to ordinary people, and make them realise that if this, or any other, government cannot afford to invest in the future of young people, to invest in pensions, to invest in jobs, then we can't afford this government. We need to keep working now to make more and more people get involved and to join their unions. We need to dispel the myths that the capitalist media is feeding us every day and make people realise that they have the power and right to create a more just society.

The 30th November is going to be extremely important in that respect. Around 20 public sector unions will be taking strike action to protest against cuts to their pensions. But it is also about much more than that. The country will be drawn to a standstill and everywhere workers will be demonstrating the power that an organised mass workers' movement can have. We need to build for this, but also to build for future coordinated strike action. To create a mass movement and eventually a mass workers' party out of the unions that really represents ordinary people. A party that refuses to make any cuts to our services and instead invests in them. A party that can organise the millions of this country to fight back against the millionaires.