Supporting the national strike against cuts today in London

Having spent Monday at the Coalition of Resistance office calling up volunteers to help distribute placards today at the SERTUC (South East Region TUC) rally at Lincoln's Inn Fields in central London, I will be down there today distributing those same placards. The Green Party is affiliated to COR and several prominent Greens, including me, are on COR's national steering committee. The rally is timed for 12 noon and then there will be a march down to Embankment. I will also be marching with 'Queers Against the Cuts' the LGBT group, which is campaigning against the cuts agenda. The Green Party Trade Union Group will also have a stall positioned beside COR's and we will be working together.

I went to the very well attended 'Eurozone in Meltdown' meeting on Monday night, organised by COR, where we heard some very good speakers, including the Assistant General Secretary of the NUT, and speakers from both Italy and Greece, giving accounts of what is really happening there on the ground. One of the contributions from the floor was from a woman teacher in Camden, who described how the children in her class spontaneously started producing banners and materials for today's demonstration because they recognise that those marching today to protect our public services and against cuts are also marching for their future. As Kevin Courtney, the NUT Asst General Secretary, said at the meeting: "They wonder why there is so much youth unemployment, yet they are calling on older workers to work for many more years."

The news yesterday from Osborne's Autumn Statement is effectively that the Tories and their Lib Dem allies have declared class war on all those working in the public sector, pensioners and the unemployed. The statement that there will be years of cuts and austerity ahead, with no sign of real government intervention to create jobs or build a green economy means, in effect, as many journalists have stated, a lost decade. Some even speculate that it could mean two lost decades. The real impact of this on the lives of those plunged into poverty and unemployment is incalculable. And as Will Hutton said last night on BBC News, this could be worse that the 30s.

I am not on strike today, as I work in the voluntary sector, where we do not even get a pension of any kind, but this strike is far wider than protecting public sector pensions - important enough as that is - but is also the struggle to protect public services against the cuts. That is the reason why I have taken a day off work to march alongside all of those who are fighting for the real "big society". As Thoreau said: "Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant." And harsh and discordant sounds are what we are hearing from this government of the bankers, by the bnakers and for the bankers.