Magnum Photos Blog

Anti-Austerity Protest in London 

June 22, 2015 
by Stuart Franklin 
London. June 20th 2015. Anti-Austerity March. Between 70,000 and 150,000 marched from the city’s financial district to Parliament Square. In the financial district the crowd were addressed by Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigade’s Union and Owen Jones, a Guardian newspaper columnist. Wrack railed against cuts in public services. Jones saw the march as “not an end but a beginning.” He emphasized: “We are not here to talk to ourselves ... This is not a therapy session … Everything that we have ever won in our history was not given to us by the goodwill and the generosity of the powerful. It was won by the struggle and sacrifice of people from below.” The march ended in a mass rally where the crowd heard speeches by British politicians and celebrities committed to ending the deep austerity cuts that are likely to worsen in the coming months.