Politicians take note: it’s time for a decorum lesson from protesters
The protesters’ banners and placards could not be clearer: Tories would not be welcome in Manchester. So hostile was the environment that one particularly offensive sign – featuring hanging effigies – had to be removed from a Salford bridge before the conference opened on Sunday.
Even Momentum, which had posted an image of the slogan, “130,000 killed under Tory rule, time to level the playing field” was forced to delete the post after it was condemned by Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, as “completely unacceptable”.
Yet with reports of protesters having spat at Tory delegates during protests that have characterised conferences in the lifelong Labour city, has Boris Johnson’s presence only served to fuel the flames?
In posting what some have argued amounts to a death threat on Twitter, the pro-corbyn wing of the Labour Party broke rank with what has largely passed off as peaceful protests at Tories and their eponymous “cuts”.
According to one witness, Sunday’s march – which included representatives from the People’s Assembly Against Austerity and the Reject Brexit, Defend Our Democracy campaign, as well as union members and Extinction Rebellion activists – did feature spitting in an echo of the 2015 conference. The observer told The Daily Telegraph: “One lad spat down at his feet and in the direction of delegates coming into the conference. It was pretty disgusting.”
Yet the scenes outside the Central Library – the site of the Peterloo massacre of 1819 – were much calmer than four years ago when an attendee brandishing a picture of Margaret Thatcher was “egged” by the crowd. David Lammy, the Labour MP, yesterday deleted a post showing footage of Mr Johnson being escorted through that braying throng in 2015 with the words “Boris Johnson as popular as ever” after he was accused of spreading fake news and appearing to suggest it was a new video.
One uniformed officer, remarked that after the events of last week, the police had expected Mr Johnson’s first conference as Prime Minister “to cause a lot more trouble than it has”.
Greater Manchester Police said just three arrests were made on Sunday with only one related to an offence of affray. Seven dispersal orders were issued, arguably not bad going considering that an estimated 13,000 people took part in the marches – which featured a Boris Johnson baby blimp dressed in blue shorts with red hearts and the word “Nigel” on, and a T-shirt showing a £350million bus.
While “Stop Brexit man” Steve Bray could be heard instructing the Prime Minister to keep his “Johnson” out of our democracy via his loud hailer on Sunday, when The Telegraph visited the “protest zone” before lunchtime yesterday, there was one solitary Remain-supporter holding an EU flag aloft. The demonstrator, Barry Emmett, 71, from Bolton, admitted: “I thought more people would be here – whether they are coming down later I don’t know.” Other protesters joined in dribs and drabs throughout the day.
Iain Dale, the LBC presenter, said that while he had encountered a small amount of hostility on arrival, “it’s been pretty quiet.” He added: “My first encounter with a Mancunian was when I was walking past someone who said: ‘Please leave my town’. I pointed out that I wasn’t a member of the Government but a broadcaster.” He put the lack of Boris-inspired rabblerousing down to the Prime Minister being more popular in the North than his detractors care to admit.
“I get a lot of people outside London phoning my radio show saying they back Boris. People who live outside the M25 have got a very different view generally of what’s going on than inside. He’s very popular – but the Tories have never been popular in Manchester so this is the sort of reception they have come to accept.”
While Mancunians have largely been on their best behaviour, the same cannot be said of Labour MPS, who last week condemned Mr Johnson for using inflammatory language.
Seemingly undeterred by a growing exasperation at political point scoring, Mr Lammy could not resist reposting a photo of a Tory “Get Brexit Done” poster with the words: “This is all that is left of the @Conservatives. A rump of a party with no answers to the huge challenges of the 21st century except false nostalgia and petty nationalism. UKIP with an Etonian accent.”
As hypocritical politicians preach a “gentler, kinder politics”, scenes here suggest the public continues to behave with a lot more decorum than their elected representatives – despite being most affected by the increasingly incendiary Brexit impasse.