Anti-Cuts Protests in the UK: Are We Really All in This Together?

A high number and wide variety of protests have been organized in the UK since the implementation of austerity measures following the 2008 financial crisis. The UK government’s response to protests against austerity has been to suggest that “we are all in this together.” This sentiment has been widely publicly ridiculed because of the polarity of cutting welfare benefits whilst preserving tax havens. Anti-austerity protesters have picked up on this tide of public ridicule and emphasized the sharp contrast between the minority rich and the majority of British citizens whose conditions have dramatically worsened as a consequence of austerity measures. This master frame is best exemplified by the slogan of the Occupy protests: “We are the 99 percent.” Whilst no-one would ever suggest that a protest, or set of protests, is able to unite 100 percent of the population, we expect anti-austerity protests to share the ability to mobilize broadly given that they have similar broadly conceived goals. While the cross-class and cross-issue dimensions of anti-austerity protest have been well documented in the Global South, much less has been written about the constituencies of anti-austerity protests in the richer Global North. A systematic exploration of different street demonstration responses to austerity would shed some light on the possible reasons for and dynamics of separate yet likely overlapping actions. This chapter aims to tackle this issue by focusing on similarities and differences across three major austerity protests in London: the student demonstration Fund Our Future (FoF); Occupy London; and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) March for the Alternative. In particular, the chapter asks: To what extent, and why, do the constituencies of demonstrations mobilized through similarly framed anti-austerity calls for action differ? This comparison also facilitates assessment of the potential of anti-austerity coalitions as synergetic and inclusive collective action. Thus the purpose of this chapter is two-fold. First, we seek to assess the heterogeneity of anti-austerity protests thus demonstrating the coalitions’ potential to mobilize cross-class and cross-issue coalitions. Second, we explore similarities and differences especially in terms of embeddedness and individual factors such