Thousands Protest on Conservative Conference in Manchester（在线收听）

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Manchester, protesting amid the Conservative Party's Autumn conference.

As CRI's UK Correspondent Tu Yun reports, the demonstration in Manchester is said to be a pre-cursor of a much larger nation-wide strike being planned for November.

 
"All workers, united! We'll never be defeated! Tory! Tory! Tory! Out! Out! Out!"

Around 35 thousand protesters, consisting of mainstream public sector unions and workers, including fire fighters and teachers, are on the streets.

Among them is Mike Killian.

"We want an end to the vicious cuts and austerity measures being pushed through here in Britain and the rest of Europe. And in particular we want a government that would put up taxes on the rich and put up corporation taxes on big business rather than hit low wage workers and the benefits that go towards maintaining the social fabric."

Since taking power in May of last year, Britain's Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has been cutting some 80 billion pounds in public spending to try to reduce its deficit.

The austerity measures include pension cuts and consumption tax hikes, which have affected thousands of families.

Prime Minister David Cameron is now promising up to 200-thousand extra affordable homes and 400-thousand new jobs.

Despite this new promise, the demonstrators say they won't retreat until the government backs off on the cuts.

Otherwise, Killian says, they plan to stage another, larger strike at the end of next month.

"We'll probably have 3 or 3 and half million people on strike that day, the biggest strike in Britain since 1926. We'll continue with rolling programs on strikes in order to stop the government to tax. The coalition government is very weak and fragile. They argue amongst themselves. With a mass strike movement, we can probably cause the coalition government agreement to fall apart."

The Conservative conference lasts until Wednesday.

For CRI, I'm Tu Yun reporting from Manchester.