Protesters target banks in NHS demos
Activists angry about proposed cuts to the NHS protest outside high street banks across the country, occupying some and transforming them into pretend hospitals.
Members of protest group UK Uncut, which was behind the occupation of London department store Fortnum & Mason in March, led the demonstrations.
In Camden, London, where Channel 4 News Producer Marcus Edwards took this picture, one activist dressed as Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was put in the stocks and pelted with tomatoes.
In other areas, protesters against NHS cuts donned scrubs and brandished bandages and fake blood in branches of Natwest, Barclays and HSBC.
Banks in Brighton, Glasgow, Cambridge and Bristol were among those occupied in the so-called “Emergency Operation” to highlight the demonstrators’ concerns that the Government was “making people, not the broken banking system, pay for the economic crisis”.
NHS job cuts
Singer Billy Bragg appeared at an NHS branch in Newcastle dressed as a doctor and comedian Josie Long protested outside a hospital in Hackney, East London, UK Uncut said.
Health worker and UK Uncut supporter Rosie Beech, 29, said: “David Cameron said he wasn’t going to cut the NHS. He lied. 50,000 NHS staff will lose their jobs while the taxpayer continues to subsidise the banks.
“Why is the Government cutting the NHS and privatising what’s left rather than forcing our broken banking system to pay up?”
The activists weren’t the only group out demonstrating – trade union the Public and Commercial Services Union also encouraged its members to attend.
A statement on the PCS website said: “The idea is to highlight the billions of pounds’ worth of tax breaks given to the banking sector – money which could and should be invested in the NHS.”
The banks said they were aware of the protests, and their priority was the safety of their customers.
Read more on the NHS in an era of reform and cuts in the Channel 4 News and Dispatches Special Report.