As the Labour Party comes to Liverpool, activists look to crash it

Dear readers — welcome to your Monday briefing, on a crisp, sunny autumn morning. Laurence here: Abi is on holiday, but don’t worry, we’ll muddle along together. This state of affairs means some sacrifices, so we’ve got a slightly leaner, meaner edition than usual. But with the Labour party conference in town there’s still plenty to get through, so without further ado, here’s your Post briefing.

Catch up and coming up

• Over the weekend, we published this brilliant piece by journalist and author David Barnett. It’s about Merseyside’s own Rae McGrath and his lifelong mission to rid the world of landmines. Eye-opening and maybe just a tad bit inspiring to boot. “Great article about an ordinary man doing extraordinary work and founding a great and important organisation,” says subscriber Jack Stopforth. “This is a fascinating article,” agrees reader Layla. 
• Coming up this week, I’ll be looking at the government’s new Pride in Place funding scheme. Over a dozen areas in Merseyside are to receive £20 million over the next ten years, including places we’ve recently covered like central Birkenhead and the Woodchurch. But what, if any, is the catch? Keep eyes peeled on inboxes to find out.
• And this weekend, we have a potentially explosive investigation by Matt O’Donoghue that will strike right to the heart of the city’s developmental past and future. I wish I could tell you more about it, but at this stage you’ll just have to trust me. If you’re a fan of long-form investigative journalism — and I know you are, because why else would you be here? — you won’t want to miss this.

The big story: Labour party conference returns to Liverpool

Top line: Plummeting in the polls but still in power, the annual Labour Party conference has arrived in Liverpool for the fourth year running. Pressure groups and protesters see an opportunity.

Context: Last summer, the Labour Party was riding high. A landslide election victory had put them back into power for the first time in 14 years. Since this included a shut-out across Merseyside, with even recalcitrant Southport ditching a blue rosette for a red one, Labour delegates could’ve been forgiven for looking forward to future party conferences in Liverpool. Just over a year ago, valued Post contributor Jon Egan asked in these very pages whether Labour could ever lose here.

But a lot changes in a year. On Friday, a YouGov poll projected Labour to just 144 seats in a theoretical general election, with Nigel Farage’s Reform only 15 short of the 326 needed for an overall majority. The government’s flagship digital ID card policy, which Labour advisors apparently thought would be massively popular, has been subject to a huge backlash. And over the weekend, the ACC — where Labour’s conference is being held — was targeted by protests that apparently required a police presence and even arrests. 

How did we get here?

Even a year ago, cracks could be seen in Labour’s apparently impenetrable electoral facade, on Merseyside and elsewhere. For a start, Reform actually finished second in a majority of Merseyside constituencies, suggesting the new party of power would need to pivot away from their old Conservative adversaries to a new populist opposition that prime minister Keir Starmer seemed particularly unsuited to withstand. Then riots rocked the country after the Southport stabbings, and the government’s crackdown only engendered further discontent. 

This perception of Starmer’s premiership as illiberal is not confined to the populist right. The proscription of pressure group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act after activists from the group allegedly caused an estimated £7 million of damage to jets at RAF Brize Norton in June, has proved highly controversial with both advocates for Palestine and free-speech defenders. It made membership of or support of the group a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Liverpool Friends of Palestine (LFoP) have organised regular peaceful marches across the city to protest Israeli action in Gaza since the 7 October attacks. The consequence of Palestine Action being censured has included the arrest of local protesters for allegedly showing support for the banned group.

This came to a head over the weekend. On Saturday, LFoP hosted the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s demonstration at St George's plateau.

Then on Sunday, Defend Our Juries — a nonprofit organisation seeking to stand up for the right of jurors to acquit defendants according to their conscience — organised a demonstration near the Wheel of Liverpool, the ferris wheel beside the convention centre hosting the Labour Party conference. The purpose of the demo, according to Defend Our Juries, was to call upon the Labour government to lift the ban on Palestine Action. A group of about fifty people sat holding placards reading messages that included "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action".

Yesterday afternoon, Merseyside Police confirmed their officers “are in the process of making arrests on suspicion of Wearing/carrying an article supporting a proscribed organisation.”

Several of these arrests were recorded and can be seen across social media. Local activist Jean the Poet posted to Instagram a video of Tayo Aluko from LFoP being arrested, describing in the caption how he “sang us a song [and] we all joined in as he got carried away.” Aluko told the BBC: "This is a time for bravery, as was shown by people who went before us, so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have today, which are now under threat." 

This morning, Merseyside Police have confirmed as many as 66 demonstrators were arrested. One of these was Helen Marks, a Jewish former member of the Liverpool Riverside constituency Labour Party, who fought accusations of antisemitism after a BBC Panorama programme broadcast in July 2019. 

Marks and Aluko are due to speak at a press conference at the CASA on Hope Street tomorrow, alongside author of the Forde report into racism in the Labour Party, Martin Forde KC, comedian and activist Alexei Sayle, and former co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour Jenny Manson, who resigned from the Labour Party after 60 years as a member last Thursday in light of the government’s failure “to recognise the genocide in Gaza or to take any action against the full scale of all the Israeli government’s war crimes.”

Meanwhile, a group of about two hundred demonstrators, waving the Union Jack and St George's cross flags, had to be separated from the pro-Palestinian crowd by police. This group were carrying placards opposing the government's digital ID plans. Attendees included controversial YouTuber Charlie Veitch, who posted an hour-long video of himself walking around the dockland area teasing the “lefties and the communists” from behind his unofficial security detail. Veitch boasted that these “Liverpool lads who came out to keep me safe today” were organised by ex-boxer Billy Moore, Liverpudlian author of A Prayer Before Dawn and a persistent presence at anti-migrant demonstrations over the past few months.

Bottom line: Amidst attacks from both the left and the right, Labour Party delegates will be hard pressed to enjoy their time in Liverpool this week. Some optimists might be tempted to take solace from the facts that a) YouGov’s poll puts the Conservatives on an even more disastrous 45 seats nationally and b) most Merseyside constituencies are projected to remain loyal to Labour — only Southport and St Helens North and St Helens South and Whiston are predicted to flip to Reform. 

However, the governing party’s invincibility does not look so self assured as a year ago. And if there are more scenes like home secretary Shabana Mahmoud choosing to tell The S*n that her political hero is Margaret Thatcher, it will not inspire confidence that the Labour leadership understand this region at all anymore.

Photo of the week:

In collaboration with Choose Love, Oxfam, and Anti-Slavery International, NGO Save the Children projected a poignant recital of “Don't Mention the Children” on the side of the Liver Building in Liverpool on Sunday night along with other political messaging regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict. Whatever your perspective, we thought this made a particularly potent image. If you’d like to hear the poem by former children’s laureate Michael Rosen recited in full, click here. 

Have a photo you want to submit to The Post? Email it to editor@livpost.co.uk for a chance to be featured in our Monday briefings.

Your post briefing:

The Musical Box, Liverpool’s oldest record shop, is to receive a blue plaque commemorating its longevity. The shop on West Derby Road has counted among its punters Bill Shankly, who popped by in 1972 to buy ‘Amazing Grace’ by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, and John Lennon, whom fellow Beatles founder Pete Best has said was a regular customer. Owners Tony and Paula Quinn, one of four generations that have run the vinyl store, said their family was "deeply honoured" by the tribute, which will be unveiled by Antiques Roadshow expert, Wayne Colqhoun. 

Merseyside Police have appealed for any information pertaining to a historic murder and mutilation. On the 24th September 1955, Alice Barton, was strangled to death and left in a wartime pillbox near a stream in the Fender Valley on the Woodchurch. Reports from the time suggested that more than 40,000 people were questioned in relation to the 48-year-old’s murder, but despite the police’s best efforts, the killer was never apprehended. "No murder investigation is ever closed," a Merseyside Police spokesperson said. "We are still appealing for information to assist our investigation so we can get answers.”

And the chancellor Rachel Reeves has pledged £20 million of public funding to save Southport Pier. The Grade II-listed Victorian tourist attraction has been closed since December 2022 due to safety concerns, and last month suffered further damage after an electrical fault. Reeves, visiting the town on Saturday, told the BBC: "We know how important this pier is to the local community and to the local economy." The chancellor went on to say that it’s part of Labour’s ‘Growth Mission Fund’“to invest in town centres, into local communities to reinvigorate them, to bring renewal to our local areas."

Recommended reading: 

We very much enjoyed this piece about Andy Burnham’s threat to Keir Starmer in Unherd. OK, so it’s about Burnham’s “Manchesterism”, but let’s not forget the current mayor is in fact a Liverpudlian and an Evertonian. As is the article’s writer Jonny Ball, who formerly published under the pseudonym Despotic Inroad. Perhaps the best line: “A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a bar. ‘Hello, Mr Burnham,’ the bartender says.”