The Unite-organised rally, coordinated by the union's assistant general secretary Tony Burke, raised a number of issues including calls for short-time working subsidies and greater protection for workers from redundancy.

Print and paper employees joined workers from the car manufacturing industry, including those from Jaguar, Land Rover and Vauxhall, to improve awareness of the jobs plight facing the manufacturing sector.

Speakers at the event included Jim Sheridan, MP for Paisley & Renfrewshire North, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber and Unite joint general secretaries Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson.

Woodley said the government should be doing more to help UK workers, as he claimed there is "no sector of our economy in the country that is not losing jobs".

He added: "The government has used £900bn of our money to bail out the banks, but the money is not rolling out of the banks into small and medium businesses and jobs."

Also at the rally was former trade minister and CBI boss Lord Digby Jones, who said the government needed to turn its focus to more serious issues, in light of the recent MPs expenses scandal.

"The skilled jobs in my home town of Birmingham and manufacturing is more important than government moats or flatscreen TVs," he said.

The weekend march took place under the shadow of the latest unemployment figures, which revealed the numbers of unemployed rose to 2.2m in the first three months of 2009. According to Unite, the print industry has suffered a loss of 3,600 jobs since Christmas.

Burke said Saturday's rally sent out a very clear message to the government: "The rally highlighted a range of issues and it is the beginning of the campaign, not the end."