Rally for Jeremy Corbyn

Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool
1st August 2015

Report by John Owen
Photographs by Marty Selah

Approximately 2000 people turned up for the biggest socialist gathering in 50 years. as someone pointed out at the meeting inside. I arrived and saw people being turned away from the outside door but then realised the event was inaccessible. Some had gone to the bar, others hung around squeezing into the door frames just to experience some of the excitement. It was huge.

I saw people I had not seen in ten or twenty years, old and young gathering, not as someone put it like a socialist evangelical revival meeting, but genuine militant angry people ready for a change, a fight with the Tory enemy, and very concerned to push forward Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour leadership party candidate, who has the chance to make a difference within the party and in the country as a whole.

Hopes are high that in an electoral battle with the Tories, where the other three contenders are Andy Burnham (token scouser) yet, he like the other two, voted for cuts, with Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendal, who have all abandoned socialist politics and embraced conservative austerity cuts agenda wholesale.

The mood of the hall was nothing if not revolutionary zeal and ardour, with people up for the fight with the Tory government. Bring it on and we can win, was the chants of some in the audience, a frightening factor for the miserable remnants of the Labour leadership corralled under Harriet Harman, a temporary leader, to abstain on the welfare bill and keep the braying Tory politics going on immigration and welfare scroungers.

With no attractive alternative, with the working class not yet ready with its own party or an alternative created by the unions, is forcing its voice to be heard inside the Labour party. This is in a city with no Labour leaders being in opposition to cuts, councillors or MPs, all strangely silent. The fifty odd who stood with Corbyn against the welfare bill will be the focus in the future struggle.

But the other two rafts of legislation, the anti-union strike legislation and the EU, were highlighted by Corbyn in his replies. He dealt with as this being a sort of ad hoc manifesto of any incoming Labour opposition.

Determined to fight on behalf of the NHS, the libraries repeal and cancellation of student loans and debts, all to be fought for the scrapping of the ridiculous sums on arms and the future wars that are about to be unleashed by the Conservatives, kowtowing to US policies in the Middle East.

Despite the heaving mass of people, time was put aside for Corbyn to answer the questions from the floor. All these topics were dealt with in open discussion, democratically a far cry from the internal regimes in most Labour party branches, if and when they meet.

This event at the Adelphi was just a start.

A similar rally in Birkenhead attracted 800 people. What will happen until the end of September, when voting ends, nobody knows. But it certainly looks promising for a movement to grow and get stronger. Those who wish can join as an affiliate to the Labour party and give the movement a push, a little bit forward.

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