When British Prime Minister, David Cameron, introduced the biggest spending cuts in decades last year, seeking to slash a massive budget deficit, he said, "We didn't just do the right thing. We did it the right way." But try telling that to the tens of thousands of demonstrators who have marched in protest - everyone from students to pensioners. The British Treasury says hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost. Our video journalist, Evan Williams, hit the streets of Central London, which have become a battleground for the economic future of the country.
REPORTER: Evan Williams
They came from every corner of Britain, students and teachers angry at changes that will triple university fees and slash spending on education.
KAREN DOYLE, PROTEST ORGANISER: The huge deficit is not the fault of the people who are now being decimated by the cuts.
Protest organiser Karen Doyle told me the students fear they'll be saddled with a debt they cannot hope to repay.
KAREN DOYLE: It is going to be generations, whole generations of young school students who are going to be cut out of education and the kind of benefits that have been won over decades.
Adam is the first in his family to reach university. The cuts won't affect him, but he's worried they'll prevent the rest of his family from even reaching college.
ADAM: What I want to see is my younger siblings going to university without a ridiculous amount of debt. Now they're increasing that 300%.
PROTESTER: They can't pin their recession on us. Yeah!
REPORTER: What do you mean?
PROTESTER: Because it's the rich bankers that caused this. They caused everyone to be poor. They can't get the money back that they gave to the bankers to sort themselves out from us.
Protests like this have so far failed to stop the Government's cuts but these protests, these students are hoping might turn into something bigger - a revolt against the government itself. And so the protests have begun on, day and night around the capital. The rapid politicisation of these students has taken the establishment by surprise. Many like protest organiser Sean Rillo Raczka are from the middle class.
SEAN RILLO RACZKA, NATIONAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST CUTS AND FEES: Workers now are going to feel the lash of these cuts and people up and down the country, their kids aren't going to get the MA any more. They're going to be losing their jobs. They're going to be losing their pensions. So what we're going to see, I hope, is an explosion of militancy and activism amongst... Amongst the trade unionists and amongst workers, amongst the unemployed, amongst the disabled, amongst the people who are really in the front line of this and the whole of civil society saying, "No. We're not going to accept this, what this government's doing."
BOB BROADHURST, PUBLIC ORDER COMMANDER: I think it would be fair to say that we were taken by surprise and that's largely because we hadn't had unrest or disorder on that scale for a long time in London.
At police headquarters, senior officers are trying to work out how they can best handle this upsurge in public anger. Bob Broadhurst is the Public Order Commander for London's Metropolitan Police.
BOB BROADHURST: What you'll see at the moment in the student movement in the UK, is various factions. Those who want to be, if you like, mature about it and have a sensible political debate, make their point, versus those who think students should be spiky, that they should leave a trail of devastation behind them and go back to their anarchic ways back at their squats or whatever.
SEAN RILLO RACZKA: We're going to be marching down to Westminster, so let's redouble our efforts.
Today, students are preparing for yet another rally in Central London, some of the previous protests have been violent - property was damaged and police made several arrests. So before today's march, Sean is trying to make sure they have more control.
SEAN RILLO RACZKA: This is Kirsty with the Metropolitan Police's leaflet. We'll go down Mallet Street and turn left into Russell Square, go down Russell Square…..
All the police are smiling, which is good. No helmets any more.
SEAN RILLO RACZKA: It's a relief. There's no intimidation today.
It's going to be a good day. But the students are adopting new methods to stay ahead of the police. The social networking being used in revolutions across the Middle East has a key role inLondon as well.
ADAM: It enables us to know where the police are, where a lot of police are, and it gives us, like, a compass and the red signs show in what direction the police are and to avoid that direction. And greens show possible escape methods, so you can go in that direction or that direction. Just to let you know how to avoid the kettle.
BOB BROADHURST: They can communicate messages to each other with no great IT infrastructure - just an iPhone and an iPad and a commonsense application of Google Maps and other stuff. They'd be sending Twitter messages to everybody saying, "10 minutes' time, Trafalgar Square," and off they'd all run and we'd be left thinking, "Where have they all gone?"
Armed with their new technology and speed, today's protest led the students right throughCentral London.
BOB BROADHURST: So we've had to adapt to that. We now use Twitter - we bring in some of our younger staff that understand this networking - just to try and put our point across and also to try and keep up with what they're doing.
Today, the rage is kept under control, but crowds will only get bigger and angrier as the cuts continue. Every government department is losing about one-fifth of its budget. 500,000 public sector jobs will go over the next four years. The impact will be felt well outside the capital.
I'm heading north, where the cuts are already being felt. Newcastle was once a thriving steel and ship-building town in the north-east, a region which now has the highest unemployment rate inBritain. In the central suburb of Gateshead, volunteers and workers from the Citizens Advice Bureau have called an urgent public advice day.
WOMAN: We're just keen to find out whether we'll be entitled to any help towards our rent and poll tax.
MAN: Your rent?
WOMAN: Yes, because we're on pensions and we're just wanting to know whether we qualify or not.
Many people here rely on some form of unemployment, health or housing benefits to survive. And those benefits are now being slashed. CAB manager Alison Dunn explained the changes.
ALISON DUNN, CAB MANAGER: They're changing the local housing allowance, which means a reduction in income of between £6 and £47 for some claimants.
REPORTER: Which is a lot of money for those people?
ALISON DUNN: It's a great deal of money. In some cases it could be as much as 20%, 25% of their income. What this means is they'll have to go back to their landlords and renegotiate rents and, when they can't do that, they'll be forced to look for alternative accommodation, often in low-demand areas. And with that comes all sorts of additional problems. They may be separated from family, friends, from their support network. They may have to travel further to take their children to school, which will have additional costs. So it really is a very big deal.
PAMELA ANDERSON, GATESHEAD CITY COUNCIL: We're actually looking at some quite significant cuts.
Pamela Anderson is the local council official in charge of the housing benefits. I expected her to defend the cuts.
PAMELA ANDERSON: In terms of housing benefit, there are other ways that they could do it. It's quite a severe impact on some households. They could have lessened that impact by doing it a stage at a time, looking at it in a more rounded way, looking at different things that they could have done. But the cuts they're bringing in are very, very severe.
REPORTER: You don't agree with it, then?
PAMELA ANDERSON: I agree that there have to be cuts. I'm not disagreeing with that. But it's just the actual amount and the impact on some of the lower-income families. It's just too much.
The government says it can no longer afford the UK's current Welfare Bill. One of the ways it's hoping to save money is by imposing stricter health checks on people like Martin Lewis.
MARTIN LEWIS: I'm disabled. I'm on benefits and I want to know how it's going to affect me.
REPORTER: What do you think? What does it say?
MARTIN LEWIS: It says, "Work-shy to lose benefits." Well, one, I'm not work-shy. I used to work, but I can't work because I'm disabled.
The new checks mean if people like Martin are deemed fit for work, they could lose their benefits.
ADVISER: Blind people are now going to be found fit for work, because they're exempt at the moment. And unbelievably, if you can propel yourself 50 yards in a wheelchair they're going to find you fit for work.
MARTIN LEWIS: Well, I have a mental health problem which I've told you about.
ADVISER: But then you've got physical problems as well so that makes you doubly in need if you see what I mean. You've got the two sets. But you've still got a right of appeal. We're doing a lot of appeals at the moment and we've still got an 86% success rate of turning over those decisions at the tribunal service.
Government cuts are also spreading up the social ladder. Not far from Newcastle is the North Yorkshire village of Great Ayton. It's prime Conservative-voting country, as well as being the boy hood home of Captain James Cook.
JENNIFER ROBERTS: He went round the world long before there were any sort of computer things to direct him.
REPORTER: What do you think he'd think about closing libraries?
JENNIFER ROBERTS: He wouldn't be happy. Definitely wouldn't be happy.
REPORTER: He wouldn't be, would he?
JENNIFER ROBERTS: He'd be very militant.
Retiree Jennifer Roberts is leading her own rebellion against the local council. It's planning to close more than half the 42 libraries in the area, blaming central government funding cuts.
JENNIFER ROBERTS: Well, it is the heart. If you cut out the heart, the body dies, doesn't it?
The cause has found support here, with 600 people from this village alone rallying to save their local library.
JENNIFER ROBERTS: North Yorkshire County Council say they're being forced to make what these huge savings instantly because the government are saying it's got to be done. But they - we don't think they're choosing to do it in the right way. It shouldn't be the bottom staff. It shouldn't be the libraries which people depend on in a community like this village. They should be more rigorous in making cuts to the... Well, maybe at the top there - but certainly in the middle, not at the bottom.
Back in Newcastle, more people arrive seeking help from the Citizens Advice Bureau. Susan Musciacchia is here to see debt adviser Andy McGill.
SUSAN MUSCIACCHIA: The issue is that I'm going to be losing my home due to the government cuts.
Susan suffers from medically verified depression that prevents her from working, that meant she was able to receive a benefit that paid most of the interest on her house, in October, that benefit was halved without warning, leaving her with growing arrears.
SUSAN MUSCIACCHIA: So, um, what happens, Andy, if they sell the property for £90,000 and there's a shortfall? Would I have to go bankrupt?
ANDY MCGILL, DEBT ADVISER: Um, well, you don't have to. It will leave - you'll probably be talking about £35,000, £40,000 worth of what will then be classed as an unsecured debt, so the official receiver who takes control of your affairs once you are bankrupt will decide whether or not to sell your car, but if it's worth as much money as you say it is worth, that is likely to happen I'm afraid.
For Andy, this is just one of many personal debt crises emerging as a result of the cuts.
ANDY MCGILL: Since the recession in general, so you're talking probably since 2008 it's been a steady increase in the number of people coming through the door for advice about debt problems because of redundancy, companies going under, you know, people being laid off.
And crucial as it is, even Andy's job is now threatened.
ANDY MCGILL: The government at the moment are looking at reforming Legal Aid and reviewing what exactly areas and what criteria of law they are going to continue to fund. Debt advice, unfortunately, is one area that they are saying won't be funded.
I arranged to meet Susan at her home. She says she tried to sell it to clear the debt, but a stagnant property market means there are simply no buyers. She's now been served a repossession order and has less than two weeks to leave.
SUSAN MUSCIACCHIA: Sorry.
REPORTER: Oh, I'm sorry.
SUSAN MUSCIACCHIA: Just how sad it all is and how it shouldn't have happened. But people say, "Oh, it's only bricks and mortar, you know, Susan," and you think, "It's not. It's my home. I've had it for 10 years. I've done a lot to it. I've loved living here. I've loved it more than me family home. And it's not just bricks and mortar to people. It's their homes."
REPORTER: So what, socially, is going to be the impact this?
ALISON DUNN: Well, inevitably, homelessness will increase. Illegal money-lending will inevitably increase. Potentially crime levels will go up. Evictions will rise. People - families, potentially, could be on the street.
In London, the anger at the cuts is building. Once again, the student protesters are heading to the site of some of the worst clashes so far, the Conservative Party headquarters.
REPORTER: We're now approaching Millbank, where the last protests turned very violent. The police are trying to say to them they should hold the crowd back.
Suddenly the crowd tries to push through the police lines. For a moment, the police appear caught off guard.
CROWD: Tory scum! Tory scum! Tory scum! Tory scum!
KAREN DOYLE: Trouble is what's happening, is what the government is doing. If they weren't doing what they were doing, there wouldn't be any trouble.
With youth unemployment now at a record high of 20%, these protests have no end of recruits and protest organisers have no intention of giving up.
KAREN DOYLE: We're going to keep moving. We're going to keep marching and we're going to keep making sure that it's not business as usual in the capital.
And the force that's meant to keep the lid on this trouble is itself in for thousands of job losses.
BOB BROADHURST: We're going to go through some pain ourselves and we're going to go through that pain in the same time as we have to manage people's protests on the streets.
The next mass rally is planned for three weeks' time, when organisers hope a union-backed crowd of 100,000 people will bring London to a halt. As the cuts bite deeper, Britain's winter of discontent is in danger of becoming a summer of rage.
YALDA HAKIM: Evan Williams reporting there, Evan says he's learned that the pensioner about to lose her house has been given a last-minute and conditional reprieve. The mortgage company has reduced her interest bill, but she still has to come up with $3,000 to cover the debt on her house or risk losing it. By the way, Evan lives inLondon and he's written a blog about the mood there at the moment. You can also find out more about the budget cuts and the government's reasons for them. That's at sbs.com.au/dateline.
Reporter/Camera
EVAN WILLIAMS
Producer
AARON THOMAS
Field Producer/Additional Camera
EVE LUCAS
Editors
WAYNE LOVE
NICK O’BRIEN
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
6th March 2011