It’s time to ‘Take Back Manchester’ from the Tories. Here’s how.
It’s that time of year again. September/October usually marks the Tory Party conference, and every other year it’s in Manchester. It is also an opportunity to protest against our right-wing overlords.
The People’s Assembly is back
The People’s Assembly first launched in 2013. Its initial mandate was clear: an end to the coalition government’s austerity programme and a reversal of its cuts. Its remit has since broadened. From protests on the rise in foodbank use to demanding a different kind of post-pandemic ‘new normal’, People’s Assembly has often been at the front of the UK’s political protest movement. And now, it’s once more got the Tory Party conference in its sights.
#UnitedAgainstTheTories
The group is holding a “Festival of Resistance” from 2-5 October in Manchester. Its main protest on Sunday 3 October starts at 12pm on Oxford Road (near Whitworth Park) M14 4PW:
People’s Assembly said the demo would be:
where all different groups and movements are invited to come together to march in solidarity.
Groups supporting the action include CND, Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, various trade unions, and more. People’s Assembly has a set of 12 demands of the Tories:
Read on...
- Kill the PCSC [Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts] Bill
- Renationalise key services
- Decent housing for all
- Sack corrupt politicians
- Properly funded, fully public owned NHS
- End the marketisation of education
- Act now! Tackle the climate emergency
- Safe workplaces, save jobs
- End fire and rehire
- Support international justice
- Fully funded social care
- End institutional racism
You can get involved online by posting on social media during the march using #UnitedAgainstTheTories. There are graphics you can use which are available here.
Resisting via a festival
The protest comes on top of a host of other events. Across the four days, talks and workshops will be held, along with live music and other performances. People’s Assembly will be running these in a marquee at Piccadilly Gardens. These include:
- “Drive to Survive” – members of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community in conversation with Shami Chakrabarti over the Tories’ police bill.
- “Where next” for the NHS and social care?
- A “wall of sound” noise protest outside the Tory conference on 4 October.
- Corbyn in conversation with Guardian journalist Gary Younge.
- The group Women Will Not Be Silenced talking about ‘rebel women and the importance of protest’:
“What option do we have”?
People’s Assembly national secretary (and former Labour MP) Laura Pidcock said in a press release:
This is such an important moment for so many reasons. We are emerging from an intense public health crisis which we are still trying to navigate, and the effects of which are still being felt. Furlough is ending, Universal Credit is being cut, National Insurance is increasing. The NHS and social care sectors are under significant strain because of privatisation and funding cuts.
Meanwhile, the Government has set in motion seriously worrying legislation that will impact all working class people in the form of the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill, the Elections Bill and the Nationality and Borders Bill.
They have an 80 seat majority, so what option do we have other than to oppose them and everything they stand for, in our communities and on the streets? We urge you to come to the National Demonstration at the Tory Party conference, to let them know they will be held to account, that opposition to them is growing – and that, while they hope and work for a divided working class, we will be uniting against them in our thousands.
The past 18 months have been terrible for many people. They’ve also come on top of an already diabolical decade for the poorest people in UK society. All this has been, for the most part, thanks to the Tories. So, it really is time to fight back. And in Manchester, People’s Assembly is leading the charge.
Featured image and additional images via People’s Assembly
We know everyone is suffering under the Tories - but the Canary is a vital weapon in our fight back, and we need your support
The Canary Workers’ Co-op knows life is hard. The Tories are waging a class war against us we’re all having to fight. But like trade unions and community organising, truly independent working-class media is a vital weapon in our armoury.
The Canary doesn’t have the budget of the corporate media. In fact, our income is over 1,000 times less than the Guardian’s. What we do have is a radical agenda that disrupts power and amplifies marginalised communities. But we can only do this with our readers’ support.
So please, help us continue to spread messages of resistance and hope. Even the smallest donation would mean the world to us.
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We can’t expect change by replacing The Conservative Party TORIES with The Far Worse Neo-New-Labour Party TORIES!
We have the enemy behind friendly lines! They are inside our Castle, nevermind the walls! If we should do anything, it would be to get The Thatcherite Neoliberal TORIES OUT of OUR Democratic Socialist UK Labour Party! Then we tackle Manchester and the rest. 2015 to 2020 proved that their Sabotage, Undermining, Smearing, Lying, Conniving and direct access to The MSM and The ELITES/ESTABLISHMENT is too Powerful for the Democratic Socialists to break through and be heard!
Events like this one Proves time and time again that we are the many and they are the few! We just need to get Thatcher’s Neo-New-Labour Party PARASITE TORIES OUT of our Democratic Socialist Party! The Neo-New-Labour Party TORIES are by far our biggest problem should we wish to see the change so many of us so desperately need!
#VoteALLUKLabourPartyCandidatesIN!
#VoteALLNeoNewLabourPartyToriesOUT!
Hey, not taking back Manchester, Steve. We’re socialists here. Ask people at random on Cross St if they’d be in favour of workers’ control and you’d get a hearty endorsement. Andy Burnham is middle of the road to Manchester folk. Here and in Liverpool, and other places in the north-west there’s a majority for radical change. What stops it is voters in Surrey. Now who comes from there? And of course, carpetbaggers in places like Wigan.
Mancunians are socialists? What percentage?
If socialist Mancunians believe AB to be “middle of the road” then why is he so popular?
Because he represents Labour and who else can socialists vote for? If Corbyn had stood for GM Mayor he’d’ve won by a street, a long Manchester street.
JC as GM Mayor. Northerners would never have voted for a limp middle class veggie Southern shandy drinker. Come on.
Take a look at the election results. People voted overwhelmingly for Corbyn’s Labour in local elections and in the 2017 and 2019 GEs.
Thats because he represented Labour, who else could the non hard left vote for?
“Thats because he represented Labour, who else could the non hard left vote for?”
The non hard left!? WTF!
Jeremy Corbyn represented the UK Labour Party
1. Democratic Socialism
2. Democratic Socialism is Centre Left, with it’s own Left Wing and Right Wing!
3. The Hard Left shite was part of the MSM and Neo-New-Labour relentless onslaught of smear and lies on his character!
4. His ‘non’-hard left Policies, 2017 & 2019 Manifestos and Campaign Recordings reveals that much.
The “non hard left” are The Neoliberal Neo-New-Labour Party PARASITE TORIES who infest and colonise The HOST PARTY The UK Labour Party!
Neoliberalism in its current form is Reagan & Thatcher’s bastard child made up of Classic Neoliberalism and Neoconservativism!
Why else would it appeal to the likes of trigger happy, bomb dropping Blair et al!? And the Anti-Freedom of Speech, Anti-ThePEOPLE, Anti-Socialist, Pro-Racism, Pro-Apartheid, Anti-Disabled, Anti-Poor, Anti-Traveler, etc, etc Uber Furher Knut Starmer?
Neoliberalism is NOT Liberal, it’s NOT Centrist, if anything was “hard’ then it is Blair/Starmer & Co, who are Hard Right TORIES! Nothing More! Nothing Less!
Hard Left in Labour!? That’s just Fucking Nuts! There is nothing hard left about Democratic Socialism!
For hard left look towards the Socialist Party, Communist Party, Antifa, etc!
Labour is only hard left to The PEOPLE of The SUN, The People of The SUN in Lamb’s Clothing aka Guardian and Their fellow Zombified MSM Sheeple.
Maybe we should talk about taking Manchester back from the Labour Party now that Starmer uses Nazi slogans in his sickening bid for power at all costs: Schonheit der Arbeit. He believed the phrase was coined by Auden, which shows he knows about as much about literature as he does about politics. Stunning that someone who wants to be PM can recycle Hitler’s lunatic praise of employment and its implied eternalization of the relation between employer and employee. Work may be beautiful, but employment isn’t. It’s a moral outrage. Free people work together voluntarily not under the cosh of submission to an employer or starvation. Think of your job interviews. The employer shoves a contract in front of you and says: “Sign that or you don’t work.” Well, why can’t the employee produce a contract and say: “Sign that or you don’t get me to work for you?” The rule is all power to the employer and that is normalised. Imagine we declared: “All power to men over women.” Wouldn’t that be morally disgusting? Well, why isn’t it morally disgusting that employers have power over employees? The beauty of work? We should be taking about the ugliness of employment. Of course, a movement which believed in freedom would. All Starmer is interested in is power. Hence his incompetent slippage into Nazi language.
“Employment is a moral outrage” did he really say that. And Sir Kier is a Nazi. Blimey.