Special Protest Report: The Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, Sheffield

Yesterday, EoP attended an anti-cuts, anti-coalition protest in Sheffield city centre along with around 4000-5000 other people. The march began on Devonshire Green – a stone’s throw from the City Hall – did a circuit around some of the main streets, and ended at the heavily-fortified City Hall where the Lib Dems were hiding away to hold their spring conference. The protest was, in general, a very peaceful affair with a real mixture of people in attendance, from families to students (college and university) to older people. Placards and banners sporting a wide variety of slogans and messages were on display, ranging from Socialist Worker Party ‘Stop all the cuts, fight for every job’ messages, others demanding 'no more lies', to my personal favourite ‘Go away naughty baddies that lie’. Once at the line of steel and police blocking our approach to the conference, chants of ‘Nick Clegg, shame on you for turning blue’ and ‘Barrrrnsleyyyy’ began in earnest (the latter of which was of course a reference to the Lib Dem’s terrible result in the recent by-election where they were forced into sixth place behind even prize fools UKIP).

One thing that did surprise (but probably shouldn’t have) was the reaction of many of the Lib Dem delegates. For around 2 hours several of them stood atop the stairs of the City Hall watching and, in some cases, taunting the protesters as they pushed and swayed against the barriers. One elderly delegate even had the arrogance and general disrespect to hold aloft a picture of Nick Clegg to the crowd while laughing and smiling in a rather pitiful attempt to incite further anger. Later, another delegate who was walking to the conference outside the protective bosom of fencing, police dogs and police officers, told a protestor who was simply standing with his sign outside Barleys Bank and who couldn’t have been more than 16 to ‘try doing a hard day’s work’. This kind of attitude - which seemed to be quite pervasive – arguably shows the true nature of the Liberal Democrat Party. Not only did their leader break almost all of his pre-election promises for a chance at some form of power, but his party’s rank and file seem to have grown to resent many the people their party was actually elected by. One honourable exception to this was a delegate who responded to calls from one group of protesters using a loud-hailer to come and explain why they were supporting a government that was cutting services and giving tax-breaks to the rich.

There were, of course, several speeches at the height of the rally. Union leaders calling for a general strike were the predominant theme but Labour MP Paul Blomfield also gave a fairly well-received speech where he highlighted the narrow margin with which he scraped victory at the General Election in May – the Lib Dem candidate lost by under 200 votes. Following this there was some general rowdiness as a determined group of demonstrators hammered the fencing with placards and fists and an anti-Gadaffi protest also formed a short distance away. Some blogs have reported around 50 anti-capitalist protesters rampaging through the retail district and successfully shutting down several tax-dodging businesses but EoP did not witness anything of this kind so we can’t confirm or refute the details of this. We witnessed only one arrest and this was near the beginning of the rally outside the City Hall when a demonstrator leapt the fence holding a flare and was quickly subdued by around 5 officers.

Overall the protest seemed very successful and a turnout of 5000 people is nothing to be sniffed at, even if the media and police were floating ill-founded claims of 10,000 during the run-up to the event. What has been disappointing is the media’s reporting of yesterday’s events. While it is understandable that the media’s gaze has been firmly fixed on the tragic events in Japan and Libya, the coverage of this important protest – during one of our governing party’s conferences - has been, quite frankly, dismal. The most in-depth report of the event seems to have been a piece in the Guardian which manages to be both patronising to the thousands of protestors who turned out to exercise their democratic rights, and almost entirely misleading. Perhaps the Guardian doesn’t want to rock the boat after its pledge of allegiance to the Liberal Democrats shortly before the General Election? Or maybe the media intelligentsia (with the exception of some coverage in the Daily Mail with vastly under-reported numbers, and some in local papers) – along with the BBC, who have been equally lax in their coverage - just feel that reporting properly on such events is beneath them or even irrelevant? This may seem like a minor inconvenience – after all, we turned out and sent a message to the Lib Dems – but information, as they say, is power. If other like-minded people around the country don’t get to hear that there are large numbers of citizens protesting about the very same things that they are angry about – cuts to jobs and public services and the favouritism this government is showing to big business over average people – then they may not feel they have any chance at resisting. Or perhaps because there was very little juicy violence for them to get their teeth into the media felt it was too boring to fill air-time or column inches? Whatever the reason, we now have a task for the protest in London on 26^th March: make sure we make it so big and so loud that there’s no way anyone can ignore us.

Welfare state under attack

George Osborne’s announcement that child benefit will be cut for high earners is a blatant and cynical example of political prestidigitation and policy misdirection. Osborne’s contention that “it’s very difficult to justify taxing people on low income to pay for the child benefit of those earning so much more” threatens to end welfare state universalism and reduce it to a safety net. The move erodes the legitimacy of a welfare system which relies on universal benefits to give mandate to redistributive state spending. If middle and high earners no longer receive universal benefits then it fundamentally undermines the intellectual premise of our welfare state and questions other overarching benefits such as the state pension and the NHS.

But the curbing of child benefit is not just about challenging universalism, it also acts to mask more punitive welfare cuts. The vocal middle-classes affected by the cuts will distract media attention from other austerity measures and, as Deputy Political Editor of the BBC James Landale states, the move gives Osborne “political cover for other cuts that will affect the less well off”. It gives credence to the dictum “we’re all in this together” and attempts to justify Draconian benefit cuts for the most vulnerable. After all, if those horribly oppressed middle-class parents are paying the price of recession, why shouldn’t an impoverished pensioner in Middlesbrough?

The subsequent proposal to cap state benefit at £26,000 further demonstrates the government’s desire to attack not just the welfare state, but the most unprotected and defenceless in society. The planned cap will apply to combined household income from benefits including Jobseekers’ Allowance, housing benefit, council tax benefit and child benefit but without variations to correct for regional differences in the cost of living, it will serve to further ghettoise the country. With housing benefit to be reduced year on year, it will not be long before London and the whole South East is purged of all those reliant on benefits.

The Conservative cuts are not simply about tackling the deficit. At best they are aimed at reducing the welfare state to an unrecognisable husk and, at worst, they are aimed at cleansing the South of undesirables. The government may advocate a small state – but when the state determines where citizens can and can’t live through social engineering – it seriously challenges positive and maximalist conceptions of liberty, freedom and equality of opportunity.

Marxism 2010: A Revolutionary Reminiscence

Seven years ago I attended the Socialist Workers Party’s educational conference Marxism with fellow Eyes on Power contributor Tom. Neither Tom nor I were members of the SWP, but we had worked closely with them as part of the Stop the War Coalition in Hull. We attended their meetings because we enjoyed the debate and were both students of Marxism and socialism – but we were wary of their “text book” politics and tendency to jump on bandwagons.

I remember feeling consumed with youthful optimism on my journey down to Marxism - thinking it would be full of like-minded individuals engaged in frank, open and constructive debate. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case and I remember being overwhelmed on arrival by the multifarious groups of Marxists, neo-Marxists and other leftists peddling their party papers – the SWP, The Spartacists, The Socialist Party, The Socialist Labour Party, The Communist Party of Great Britain, The New Communist Party of Great Britain, The Workers’ Revolutionary Party. It was like a Monty Python sketch – I was just waiting to receive a leaflet from the People’s Front of Judea. As I wrote in my diary at the time, it was “a physical manifestation of the division and infighting which has dominated and ultimately undermined the history of socialist politics in Britain”. All parties equally passionate, but all claiming to have the correct interpretation of Marx.

Inside, I learnt a lot from the seminars I attended – on the Paris Commune, the Vietnam War and the united front (oh the irony) – but I do recall the sectarian ways of the left spilling out into discussions too. All points which reflected the SWP party line would be met with cheering, but any alternative explanation or less radical suggestion would be met with stony silence. It wasn’t really the debate I had anticipated but, then again, I was a naive seventeen year-old. A seventeen year-old who was even accused of being a Stalinist for suggesting the Bolshevik Revolution wasn’t a mass movement! Incidentally, this makes most historians who’ve ever written about the Russian Revolution Stalinists too, so I'm not in bad company. . . apart from Stalin, that is.

But it wasn’t all frustration and infuriation. The last person we saw speak was the wonderful and inspirational Tony Benn. He spoke about parliamentary socialism, about solidarity, and about forgetting differences to pursue common calls for the greater good. Tom and I loved it – but the majority of the crowd preached “one solution revolution”. It was about that time that I realised Marxism was a glorified recruitment event. It worked. The only problem is I joined Tony Benn in the Labour Party instead.

When I left Marxism 2003, I vowed to return one day. Now, seven years later, Tom, Pete and I return for Marxism 2010. Let’s see if anything’s changed . . .