More than 100,000 people marched in central London on Saturday to protest against austerity measures put in place by the Conservative and coalition governments.
The march was organised by a coalition of left-wing activist groups and unions, including Unite, Unison, and the People's Assembly.
It was also attended by a number of well-known celebrities, including comedian Russell Brand and singer Charlotte Church.
Protesters wore shirts and held banners expressing support for individual causes, including protecting the National Health Service or campaigning to stop cuts to education and social services.
BuzzFeed News spoke to some of those who attended the march, asking why they fear austerity and how it has affected them.
1. Molly Hare – Highbury and Islington Teachers
"We work in a sixth-form college. They've been really badly hit. The government hasn't protected the 16-18 education fund, so it's affecting people at exam level, at the times when they're looking to the future.
"And it's affecting those who are less advantaged to begin with, because they are the ones most likely to go to the sixth-form college or pursue education later in life."
"Also, job redundancies. We've been lucky not to have so many, but they are happening. I've been teaching for five years. Changes were already taking place: EMA [Education Maintenance Allowance] went away, rise of tuition fees. There is a higher workload for a lower pay. "
2. Ian De Ath – Equal Lives, Norfolk
"Austerity is terrifying for the disabled; people have died as the result of cuts. I applied for reassessment so I could claim my PIP [personal independence pay] allowance. They still haven't got back to me, so I'm without the money. This is a direct result of the cuts.
"They've affected bureaucracy, slowed down the system, and made it impossible for disabled people to cope."
3. Ann Channel – campaigner for Woodside Lodge Residential Home
"My stepfather is 92 and a World War II veteran. They can't afford to run his home any more so it's threatened with closure.
"He pays for it himself. He's spent ₤50,000 to live there, and if it's closed he'll have to move to another home at ₤1,000 a month."
4. Kev Game – Fire Brigade Union, Norfolk
"We've come down here to educate the public about cuts to the private services. Since the Tories have come in, we've had our pensions ripped up and thrown away. The biggest issue are the cuts the fire service are now facing.
"Members of the public who've paid their council tax are waiting longer for fire engines to attend incidents, sometimes we haven't even got enough firefighters to crew them.
"The brigade I'm from is in a rural area. We've seen a 25% cut over the last eight to ten years, and a lot of metropolitan brigades, like London, have had 10 fire stations shut in the last year."
5. Harjinder Sandhu – Indian Workers' Association, London
"My wife, she worked for a company for 26 years – she had surgery on her back and after one year the company terminated her employment. Since then they paid her benefits for one year. Now they've stopped all benefits.
"She can't work because of her back, but they won't pay her anything. She's waiting for an assessment. We sent off her details last August and they have not even given us an interview. They haven't acknowledged the letters."
6. Karen Pollard Rylance – teacher, Ramsbottom
"Each school now is being run as a business. I'm a dyslexia tutor, and dyslexia [treatment] across these colleges is dying, so the provision won't be there much longer."
"I've been in this sector for 17 years. We used to find it really hard to spend the funding. Now we just don't get that. We have to be penny-pinching. Where there used to be a mass of money, it's just being cut all the time."
7. Jane Street – psychologist, southwest London
"I'm a psychologist, I work in the health service and I see the effects of it every day in the clients we see. People are depressed, anxious, very often because of practical problems -- and if they haven't got a house to live in and they haven't got food and they haven't got money to pay for the basics, then asking them to undertake therapy is a waste of time and a waste of money as well.
"It's bad for society, it's going to cost us more. We wouldn't need to spend money on therapy if it was going to the right place originally.
"One of the things that brought it home to me was when one of our staff came to me and said, 'Can we be signed up so we can authorise food vouchers for the food bank?' I never in my career expected us to need to do that – that we'd have a country where people needed to use food banks."
8. Sara Calloway and Selma James – Global Women's Strike
Sara (right): "The increase in racism. Cuts and austerity have been used to divide people. Cameron is just blaming Muslim communities. I find this frightening. It sets people against each other, and women pay the highest price. It's mothers, daughters, and sisters on the frontline looking after our loved ones affected by these cuts.
"For my family, everyone's poor, people are working two or three jobs, no home repairs, everyone is quite fearful. If you lose your job you don't know where you'll go next.
"Benefit cuts, poverty, every family is suffering the same."
Selma (left): "I've been told that if young people fail exams they have to pay to re-sit them. That's awful, that they're growing up with the mentality that if they fail society won't be there to support them. "
9. Neil McAllister – Mental health support worker
"After the '80s there was a change where the number of young male suicides actually dropped and dropped year on year. For the first time that's started to rise again, so that's one result.
"My actual job has now disappeared. I've been a support worker for 26 years, but the money has now been cut. The money ran out on the 31st of March and I'm now in the process of being made redundant."