The Tour• In June 2013, the TUC travelled across the country letting people tell their own story about life in Britain today.

• We made videos, took case studies, collected people’s message to government. We did photo stunts, we blogged what we found, and brought local and regional journalists to report life on the front line of austerity Britain.

• The aim was to gather evidence to convict government austerity policies. They are hurting, but they are not working.

The Bus• 17 locations in 13 days in every English Region

• Tour organised and turned around with huge effort from the whole organisation in 5 weeks

The route

Five separate buses hit the road in June

• STUC (Green dots)

• Wales TUC (blue dots)

• Austerity Uncovered (red dots)

• Unite’s ‘People United’ buses (yellow dots)

What we did• We heard about the cruelty of the bedroom tax, unemployment, youth opportunity, the DLA changes and ATOS, and NHS hospital closures.

• We saw boarded-up high streets, visited food banks and viewed closed services

• We had a film maker on board to record testimonies which will we turn into a video

What we did• We gathered people’s messages to government through ‘speech bubbles’

• We took detailed case studies for use in future TUC campaigning work

• We built new alliances and relationships with organisations on the ground in several locations

What we heard and saw

• Heartbreaking stories particularly regarding the bedroom tax

• A sense of helplessness and hopelessness

• Communities rallying around where they can

• Unions organising

• Decimated high streets

• Closed services

• Desperation, resignation but also some resilience

What we learnt• Value of getting out and talking to people

• People were desperate to tell their stories and grateful for someone to listen to them

• People on the whole didn’t think politics could change their situation

• Value of building and growing links with community organisations

• Austerity is really hurting – a lot of people we met are at breaking point and simply can’t take any more.

• Communities are being divided – ‘strivers and scroungers’ narrative and immigration issues are key to this

Next...

• Produce a video for Congress• Produce a longer mini-film • Promote both widely to decision makers

and union audiences• These can be made available to regions

and unions to show• Go through, type up and follow up case

studies for use in TUC work• Evaluation with regions and volunteers

The last word

Goes to the people of Dudley....