Thousands took to the streets of Edinburgh on Saturday 25 October for the Scotland Demands Better campaign.
The march began at the Scottish Parliament and ended in the Meadows. The stated aim was “to come together and demand that politicians make the changes we need for a society where every household can thrive and prosper.”
Looking out onto George IV Bridge, the caretaker at Augustine United Church described what he saw:
“I heard them before I saw them and it sounded like there was a lot of music, people singing, people with megaphones … It was very touching to see so many communities coming together.”
On the Meadows, several organisations and food vendors flanked a large stage, where the event was introduced as “the largest anti-poverty demonstration that Scotland has seen in decades.”
Suzanne Dance, an actor and community worker from Active Inquiry, described her motivations for attending to The Student:
“I feel so strongly that we need to improve conditions of life. There is a lot of blame, for example, on immigrants, for things that are actually to do with structural inequality.”
Asked about people being blamed for their own poverty, she said:
“There’s a kind of Victorian attitude of the deserving poor and the undeserving poor … I think that everybody should have a basic, decent income, so that children are not going hungry and there’s not a choice between fuel or food and so on.”
Scotland Demands Better are demanding that the government, to reduce child poverty, increase the Scottish Child Payment to £40 per week and commit to a further increase of £55 by 2030.
Continuing, Dance reflected on the amount of people at the rally:
“It’s such a broad campaign – we need all the grassroots organisations to come together and resist!”
She continued: “There’s so much more now to struggle against, so the grassroots have to put their roots down even deeper, and keep going, because the far-right is getting a grip.”
Dance’s call for structural change was echoed by Annie, who works at a women’s organisation:
“It’s a systemic issue, but … if we create community then that can make a small difference.
“There’s this narrative being created that people who aren’t working are in poverty, which is not true.”
The Scottish government published data that shows 410,000 adults and 180,000 children to live in working poverty.
Annie continued: “There’s a stigma around why people aren’t working and then it’s immediately shame based [but] what are the barriers to them not working … how are they being let down and not supported?”
Citizens Advice Scotland reported that over 40,000 households with a disabled member have sacrificed heating a meal for the sake of running/charging medical devices. They also face a higher rate of poverty than the average population.
Scotland Demands Better ask that the government increase disability benefits to address these issues.
In her own life, Annie said that she “definitely noticed [a change in affordability] … energy and food prices, massively, and transport as well.”
Although Scotland already provides concessions for travel, Scotland Demands Better is calling for the government to further improve the affordability of these services to enable greater equality in access.
A student at the University of Edinburgh and member of the Socialist Worker’s Party said:
“The government makes political decisions about where it spends its money and the people that they blame for the crisis – we have to call the government out.
“The Scottish government could do a lot more.”
He described the student population as “a lot of times a bit unaware about what’s going on” but that “students campaigning for political issues can have a big impact on the rest of society,” creating “a much bigger buzz on campus, but also in Edinburgh in general.”
The campaign of Scotland Demands Better includes a policy to make student support equivalent to the living wage, and for that to be available to all higher education and further education students.
Poverty Alliance took to social media platform Instagram to reflect on the protest:
“It was a showcase to our political decision makers at all levels that we are tired of waiting for change on the injustice of poverty, and we are standing together to demand action.
“This isn’t the end. It is the start of a movement, together in hope and solidarity, for a better Scotland for all of us.”
Image by Zoe Jones for The Student