TODAY we are marching because this government has left us, working people, students and pensioners, facing the sharpest fall in our living standards in peace time.

Yet this does not feel like peace time to me. We are a community under attack from a Tory ideological offensive, an attack which uses austerity as its weapon to achieve one historic goal — the destruction of all that our movement has fought for over generations. 

Cold, callous and cruel, the Tories measure their progress in Whitehall budgets and distorted charts crowing anaemic growth. 

Yet we know the true success of their attack is measured in the decimated lives we will all see when we return home today.

The Tories brag that big business is enjoying a recovery, profits are soaring. How hollow such a recovery must be when one in five of us struggle to afford the mere essentials. Food on our tables. Heating in our homes. School shoes for our kids. These are becoming luxury items in austerity-blitzed Britain.

Those in work now experience the gut-wrenching uncertainty of casualised labour. Four-and-a-half million of us are now “self-employed.” 

Millions more exist on zero-hours contracts, never knowing from day to day if we can earn enough just to get by. For the first time in over a generation the majority of people living in poverty are in work. 

And what hope do they offer that things will improve? 

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that that the number of children in absolute poverty will increase by 800,000 between 2011 and 2015. These are our casualties. Suffering from the Tories’ ideological offensive on our people.

This attack is not going unanswered by our movement. I am proud to stand in solidarity with Unite members in the NHS and with members of the PCS who have never flinched in their fight to defend our public services. This is the front line and these workers need our support.

When we stand united our movement is like nothing else in society. Together we can not only turn the tide against the Tories, but by boldly standing for a clear vision we can be the tide that raises all boats. 

We know what five more years of Tory misrule would mean. At their party conference they set out their plan of attack. They will go after the most vulnerable, axing £12 billion from the welfare budget. That’s an end to jobseeker’s allowance, to tax credits, universal credit, child benefit, income support and housing benefit. It’s an attack on 10 million households across Britain.

It is no surprise that the Tories target those most in need of our welfare state. This is a government whose welfare minister believes that people with disabilities are “not worth” the paltry national minimum wage. 

Young people are once again in the firing line. They will lose their entitlement to housing benefit altogether, while unemployment support would end after six months. Not that any new jobs will be created for them. If the Tories hold Downing Street until 2020, the legacy of their decade of destruction will be a lost generation.

The Tories have drawn the line. How will we respond? We will not stand aside as they gleefully dismantle every gain that working people have fought for over 60 years — every step away from the slums and poverty of our past.

Neither will we wait patiently until May. We will not dutifully cast our vote and hope for something better from a political class grown distant and lazy, more interested in focus groups than foodbanks.

Our allies in the Labour Party must take heed. We are not merely passive supporters. Labour is our party and if it is to remain so it must stand clearly for the millions not the millionaires. 

Austerity lite is not an option. Billions in cuts would be no more bearable if the knife is held by an apologetic Ed Balls rather than a delighted George Osborne.

We are clear what we stand for — our NHS back in public hands. The abolition of zero-hours contracts. A welfare system that protects us. A social housing programme that gives us security. Jobs that promise us prosperity. 

We not only hold the hope for better lives, we have a battle plan for a better society.

Len McCluskey is general secretary of Unite.