Star date: 30th September 2013

PART TWO: TORIES BADGERED FROM EVERY ANGLE

Over 50,000 people marched around Manchester covering every possible campaign and every possible idiotic policy the ConDem Government dreams up, from the Bedroom Tax, to the privatisation of the NHS, to wage cuts, job losses, social service cuts and shooting badgers.

The Conservative Party Conference welcome in Manchester? In their dreams!

Full demo report and zillions of photos click here…

First read Part One: The Salford Feeder March – click here

After over 50,000 people had marched around Manchester, the rallies had finished and the police riot vans were pulling away, delegates to the Conservative Party Conference thought it was safe to come out and skulk into the Tory showpiece at the Manchester Central Convention Complex (GMex). How wrong they were…

…To get into the complex, delegates had to run the gauntlet of badger protesters and an ace woman with pink hair holding up a sign reading `We Will Not Be Silenced' as she ushered them up to the guarded entrance…

`Badger killers this way please…do you like killing badgers madam?'… `Excuse me sir, are you into torturing disabled people? Kicking young mums out of their houses? Closing down hospitals? This is the place for you, sir, step right inside…'

The men, with their silk-lined jackets, cringed. The women, in immaculate designer suits, squirmed. While over 50,000 people had been kept well away with steel cordons and riot vans down every side street, here Conservative Party delegates came face to face with Manchester and the human and animal fall-out of their policies.

Every now and then the small group of protesters would break into chants … `Tory scum, off our streets'… `Tory scum off our streets…' and passers by would actually join in. Yes. Welcome to Manchester.

About an hour earlier, in a packed room at Jabez Clegg, an audience trying to Unite The Resistance had heard NHS worker, Karen Reissmann, echo that message from the stage…

"Today we've seen people from all over the country marching together against the scum who are up there in the centre of Manchester; people who were born millionaires and will die millionaires on the back of the work we do, which they want to pay us peanuts for" she dissed "We don't have a single Tory councillor in Manchester and they think they've got the right to come to our city and have their conference here. Our Council Leader said they were bringing £24million into the city, and therefore we should welcome them, but that £24million is spent on their posh hotels and their posh meals served by people on minimum wage, zero hours contracts.

"We're taking cuts in our living standards year after year, and they are in that conference hall now planning how to rip us off even more, to make things even worse" she added "It's not going to end and it's not going to stop. That's why the demonstration was so big, because it's not going to get any better unless you get up and fight. There isn't another solution."

She explained how Ed Miliband had to, eventually, come out and say he will abolish the Bedroom Tax… "only because people have mobilised up and down the country and marched and organised to stop it"…

"People watch the telly and think `I'm on my own, there's nothing I can do' but you cannot come out of that march thinking you're on your own any more" she concluded "You are not on your own. Those Tories are behind barriers because they are on their own. They cannot walk around this city because they know they will be mobbed if they do."

It was a stronger message than that put out from the stage of the official TUC Rally at Whitworth Park, where TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady said "We won't let this Government destroy what has taken generations to build", and, kind of, ended there.

The mood of the 50,000 marchers wasn't angry. A brass band marched, a jazz band jammed ironically outside the Wicked signs at The Palace Theatre; zombies danced to Thriller; street theatre `Tories' offered policemen £10 notes outside RBS; there was a cardboard Bedroom Tax house, a Legal Aid coffin being paraded, and campaigners dressed as fluffy badgers on every corner carrying blood soaked photos of the current Government led cull.

There were banners and placards covering every example of Government cruelty, cover-ups and cuts – from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, to Disabled People's Black Triangle Campaign, to the ongoing fight to save Lewisham Hospital and the NHS. Huge trade union balloons lit up the eyeline; trade union branded whistles and rattles pierced the Manchester air. And the Tories polluted GMex.

This was a cabaret of opposition to the ConDem Government. It might soon turn to anger and action if that Government continues on its current path…