Government spending cuts brought some tens of thousands of people onto the streets of London and other British cities on Saturday in protest, with union leaders expected to call for a general strike.

Marchers carried signs reading “No cuts” and “Tax justice not tax havens”, condemning the austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government in a bid to reduce Britain’s huge deficit.

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“Austerity isn’t working. It is hitting our jobs, our services, our living standards,” Mr Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) umbrella body, was to tell a rally at the end of the march in Hyde Park. “Ministers told us that if we only accept the pain, recovery would come. Instead we have been mired in a double dip recession.”

Britain climbed out of a deep economic downturn in late 2009 but fell back into recession at the end of 2011.