May 2011 16

The silent majority20

It is fair to say the Rally Against Debt was a great success. What we didn’t have were hundred of trade union activists organising the rally at taxpayers’ expense! We can honestly say not a penny of taxpayers’ money was spent organising the rally. We left Old Palace Yard as we found it; there wasn’t any trouble, and there were no arrests.

IEA Director General Mark Littlewood addresses the crowd

It was not a rally of self-interest. It was a rally for those who understand that unless we bring down government debt, we are leaving a legacy for future generations that will mean higher taxes, and a weaker economy.

I can be accused of many things, but no-one can say I am not a grassroots activist. I got involved with the TPA because it was (and is) an organisation that stands up for the silent majority. My aim as National Grassroots Coordinator is to get the silent majority to become the vocal majority. Many people want to do something, but as they have never been involved in political campaigning, they feel unable to help and don’t know where to start.

Last Saturday, there were many people at the rally who had never demonstrated before. They felt it was something they could practically do to register their voice. I know from e-mails I have received that there were many more people who would have liked to come to London, but couldn’t afford to; particularly pensioners who are struggling to make ends meet.

We live in an age where communication is very easy. When I’m finished writing this article, it will be published at the touch of a button for the world to read. The Rally Against Debt started as an idea broadcast through new media websites, like Facebook and Twitter. If you want information about the work of government, and how much your council spends over £500 (unless you live in Nottingham) you can find out with a few clicks of a mouse; not to mention how much information can be found and communicated when you use your mobile phone.

If you are part of the silent majority and want to become part of the vocal majority, here’s what you can do:

  • Contact me and I will put you in contact with one of our grassroots coordinators around the country. They are ordinary people who want to make a difference – just like you, and will love to hear from you. All help in our campaigns is sincerely and gratefully received.
  • Write a letter to your local newspaper about last Saturday’s rally, and how important it is government debt is reduced.
  • Write to your MP. They have to respond to you and the more letters they receive, the more pressure we can put on them.
  • Write to your councillor(s) about the high salaries and waste in your council. The more pressure they receive, the more they will have to act.

They are just four examples, and there are many more things we can do together. We can organise local rallies, so people don’t have to travel hundreds of miles to London. We can organise petitions in town and city centres around the country. All of these things can be done, however, it needs your help. It needs people power. It needs the silent majority to become the vocal majority. Come and join us.

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  • Dan

    300-odd people is not a success…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Atherton/608711922 David Atherton

     This was a terrific day and I am so glad we got the media coverage and well done to those who had arranged it. it seems a majority do,

    ICM poll published in the Guardian and I quote: “Despite Saturday’s protest march in London, public tolerance of cuts seems to be sustained. Only 35% think the plans go too far – a 10-point drop since ICM asked the question in November. Meanwhile 28% think the government has found the right balance and 29% say the cuts are not severe enough. That amounts to 57% support for current cuts or more.”So the 350 odd people do represent 57% of the population and indeed are a silent majority.http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/25/voters-cuts-coalition-poll

    • Steve Collins

      When you attend a rally where people are outnumbered by placards, then please just have the good grace to admit that it was a failure. 

    • Felix Hemsted

      May I just point out, that data is from March, and therefore it is wrong. If this data was from late april / may, than it would be much more accurate, but I cannot accept these findings now.

  • Paul Cooper

    if the silent majority becomes the vocal majority what happens to the vocal minority? do they become the silent minority? When is the next chance for Nigel to transform?

  • Paul Cooper

    if the silent majority becomes the vocal majority what happens to the vocal minority? do they become the silent minority? When is the next chance for Nigel to transform?

  • Steve Collins

    Oh come on!

    The Rally Against Debt was an abject failure, nothing more and nothing less. I’ve read some great excuses both here and on the RAD website about people not being able to afford it, too close to the Royal Wedding, too late to book trains, can’t take time off work (on a Saturday!) exams for young people etc etc. It’s all rubbish.

    The Rally received positive coverage weeks before the event itself in the Telegraph, Express, Times, Sun and Mail. One of its organisers, Annabelle Fuller, works in PR. It had the TPA, with your alleged ’60 thousand’ supporters, backing it. Even on the Rally’s Facebook event page approx 1,800 people said that they would attend.

    On the day barely 350 people turned up, including the organisers and speakers. So, with all the PR and the TPA’s exhortations, less people turned up to the Rally than attended a demostration against a Tesco Express opening in Bristol a couple of months ago. Hopeless.

    More than anything, this finally nails the myth that the TPA represents the ‘silent majority’. The TPA is not and never has been a ‘grassroots’ organisation. It is a right-wing pressure group representing the narrow interests of a cabal of economists and assorted ex-Tory malcontents, run by some professional campaigners and a handful of local activists.

    Andrew Allison may well be the TPA’s ‘National Grassroots Coordinator’ but unfortunately for him he has precious little grassroots to coordinate. For example, ever wondered why we hear so little from the Islington ’branch’ of the TPA? It’s because that ‘branch’, aka Tim Newark, has moved to Bath to become the Bath ‘branch’ of the organisation. 

    The TPA is entirely dishonest when it continues to claim that it represents taxpayers, the ‘silent majority’ or anyone else for that matter. It doesn’t and Saturday’s failure amply proves this.

    The genuine majority of people understand that, through no fault of their own, they are now having to pay the price for the activities of a small group of very wealthy and very greedy people in the City of London and Wall Street. They are angry that local facilities are closing, jobs are being lost, our Armed Forces are weaker, their incomes are going down. They want this unpleasant period of cuts to be over as soon as possible – there is absolutely no appetite for further cuts at all.

    For the TPA and the other organisers of the Rally to somehow paint their hopeless embarassment of an event as a success just demonstrates how desperately deluded they are. 

    • Rafterman

      When do ordinary taxpayers get to choose their representatives for the TPA? I am not aware of any election ever being held. for the TPA? I am not aware of any election ever being held.

    • Dave

      My congratulations to Steve Collins for articulating the simple truth with such great eloquence.

      Sometimes I agree with TPA, but usually I don’t. And I see remarkably little evidence of any widespread grassroots support for their views.

  • Mucky Mary

    Come off it.

    I’ve seen more life in a tramps vest.

  • Chas Winfield

    The UK has Spent More Bailing Out Other Countries Than it has Saved Through Austerity. It is far more important to get out of the EU.

  • Mick

    300 odd? You don’t represent Taxpayers so bin the name.

  • Andy Richards

    Hilarious….just hilarious.

    “Great success”?…..hliarious.

    “Taxpayers’ expense”?  I could have organised a rally against DUST on Facebook at no expense to anyone and got more than this! 

  • http://twitter.com/fredacowell Frederick Cowell

    Who paid for those police officers and the barriers 

  • http://twitter.com/fredacowell Frederick Cowell

    Who paid for those police officers and the barriers 

  • Sam

     I can see a lot of negative comments above. Let me set a few things straight.

    I’m 17. I have exams starting on Monday. There are plenty of people who were struggling to find the time to go for that reason alone. As well as that, I live near to Wakefield in West Yorkshire. It cost me well over £50 to go down to London to protest last week, in direct contrast with the March for the so-called Alternative in March. Every student in my college was offered a place on a trade union subsidised bus (that means taxpayer-funded) for the comparatively minute price of £5. On top of that, half the people I know who went on the March were only going because some friends were going, it was so cheap etc. Let me remind you that we don’t actually have that sort of funding trade unions have. We have what’s in our back pockets. Let me also point out the fact that it was a grassroots movement rather than something in the pipeline for months. Finally, let me say that the poll is the only one of its kind around at the moment and I don’t particularly think that 2 months is a long time to then suggest that the poll becomes invalid.

    Please, if you weren’t there at the rally, do us all a favour and read the facts. These cuts won’t get us out of our deficit and it will take a long time to pay off the debt at the rate we’re going at, which will simply increase the interest we’re paying on it. Are you incapable of understanding that whatever the government does, taxpayers will be footing the bill?! It’s pretty obvious you’ve got your facts from the lefties writing columns for the BBC or the Guardian. They do tend to show this sort of thing in a negative light.

    • Steve Collins

      This country, like most others, has been in debt for decades. I’m in debt too – it’s called a mortgage. I’m not bothered about it because my assets such as my house outweigh the money owed.

      But of course we need to cut our debt, it’s too big and needs to come down. However, more cuts will exacerbate what the current ones are doing – hit the least well off and the vulnerable the hardest, making their lives a misery. Do you think that’s fair?

      You may be happy seeing schools for deaf children closing, elderly day centres shutting, workshops that help the severely disabled to earn a living threatened etc etc but there are many, many people who are not. It’s strange how individuals like yourself seem to want the people who caused the financial crisis which triggered the current recession to get off scot-free, whilst those who are in no way responsible for it have to pay the price for their greed and incompetence.

      And before you refer to the right-winger’s favourite mantra of waste and ‘fat cats’ in the public sector negating the need for cuts to frontline services, you need to understand that this is a relative drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the debt reduction required. Services have to be cut.

      I fully understand that it is difficult for students such as yourself from across the UK to have attended the event but if, as you claim, the RAD was truly a grassroots movement then surely they could muster more than 350 attendees from the 8 million people who live in London alone? 

      • Sam

        I know the country has been in debt for decades. And it’s an attitude that has got to stop. It inevitably leads to higher taxation as the state struggles to repay back the debt along with the interest accumulated. Yes, you might be in a mortgage but that’s because you choose to be based on a risk-assessment- that risk being the possibility you may not be able to pay the required money back at some point in the future. The debt HAS to be paid off, otherwise you don’t get the money back in the future. There is also a case suggesting that taking on debt is immoral, because it basically takes money away from future generations, namely myself and (if I’m lucky enough) my children.

        I’m not happy with making people worse off and hitting the vulnerable hardest, on the contrary. I just believe that there are better ways of doing things than the government pouring money into the unproductive sector of society. Making government funding go further is all well and good, but when it makes people worse off there is something wrong. In many cases, yes, the public sector “fat cats” can have salaries cut etc. but you’re right in saying that more needs to be done. There is a great case for ending the state monopoly in areas like health and education, to make competition provide a much better service, and to free up a great deal of taxpayers money. It would also dispel the ludicrous belief that people somehow have right to another’s services in the form of healthcare or education.

      • Sam

        I would also add that I don’t want to see the bankers get away without a scratch. It would serve our interests better to take all the money back from the banks. Nationalisation skews the idea that if a private company fails it should be left to fail. The same idea applies to banks.

        Let me approach your criticism of the turnout from another angle- if 350 people turned up at a council rather than at Westminster, would we consider that as a poor turnout? No. The rally consisted of the more dedicated people from across the country who would go much further to see smaller government. It did not include people just along for the ride, like a vast majority of those on the anti-cuts march. Also, the media did a very good job of portraying it as a pro-cuts rally, both before and after. It wasn’t. Nobody likes seeing cuts. All the rally attendees believed in was seeing sustainable government spending, regardless of whether that meant cuts. It’s something this country hasn’t had for a long time and I think that it’s a view that everyone can subscribe to.

  • Punchmr

    the tpa need to learn some new shtick. Astroturf lobbies are just appear plain slimy to anyone who’s taken the time to look over seas 

    http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tea_Party_movement_funding