London: Nearly 300 people on Saturday rallied in
London's financial heart amid a heavy police presence as part
of world protests against corporate greed and budget cutbacks.
The demonstrators, some of them masked, were pushed back
by police as they tried to march from Saint Paul's Cathedral
to the London Stock Exchange, and minor scuffles broke out.
The marchers, bearing banners reading "Strike Back", "No
Cuts" and "Goldman Sachs Is the Work of the Devil", were
ringed by three police cordons while mounted officers also
stood by.
Organisers in a group calling itself OccupyLSX were
hoping for thousands of participants after some 15,000 people
expressed support on Facebook and Twitter.
Ben Walker, 33, a teacher from Norwich, eastern England,
was carrying a rolled-up sleeping bag and said he planned to
spend one or two nights in the area.
"I'm here today mainly as a sense of solidarity with the
movements that are going on around the world," he said.
"We're hoping for a kind of justice in the global
financial system."
Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United
States and Spain's "Indignants", people began taking to the
streets across the world today, targeting 951 cities in 82
countries.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, October 15, 2011, 20:47