As Simon Fuller wrote in his introduction to The Poetry of Protest in 1991: ‘In some situations the art of writing is itself a protest’. In the situation we find ourselves now, in which inequality has risen inexorably after decades of neoliberalism and years of austerity, we need to protest through all the means we can muster.

In April 2017, a group of social workers protested against the politically-driven austerity measures of the last two Governments, and the social and human devastation they are leaving in their wake, by walking 100 miles from the head office of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) in Birmingham to the venue of its 2017 conference in Liverpool. The idea for this walk emerged from reading other pages that first documented and then inspired protest, namely an article by Psychologists Against Austerity published late in 2016 by the Critical and Radical Social Work journal. The social actions described in this article included ‘Walk The Talk’, in which a group of psychologists walked from the offices of the British Psychological Society in Leicester to offices in London to raise awareness of social policies that were leading to psychological distress.

Almost as soon as I had finished reading this article and put the journal to one side, I checked my 2017 calendar and the distance from Birmingham to Liverpool. I shared the beginnings of my idea with BASW colleagues and their positive responses led to the birth of Boot Out Austerity. We would walk an average of 15 miles a day for seven days, holding rallies and meetings each morning and evening, and visit social care organisations affected by austerity along the route.

We gathered at the yet-to-be-opened new BASW head office on Waterloo Street in Birmingham on Wednesday 19th April 2017, the day after Theresa May had called a snap General Election. She said she wanted a mandate to take into the soon-to-begin Brexit negotiations, whereas the Boot Out Austerity walkers were not alone in believing the key electoral battles would be fought on the fields of austerity, poverty and inequality.

One of the most egregious effects of austerity has been the huge increase in rough sleeping, with a quadrupling of the number of rough sleepers in Birmingham over a six year period, and some had been bedding down for the night outside the empty building BASW was to move into.