Conservative delegates were egged and spat at by protesters during an anti-austerity march in Manchester.
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Boris Johnson was pelted with balls as he made his way into the Conservative Party’s conference in Manchester on Monday afternoon.
There’s no mention of the European Union on the formal agenda of the British Conservative Party’s annual conference, but it’s the topic that overshadows everything else. The protest, organizers said, was a march against the government’s “damaging [program] of austerity and [its] attacks on the rights of working people and their unions,” AFP reported.
Police say about 60 thousand people joined in Sunday’s protest outside the conference venue.
“The fact that only four arrests have been made throughout the day so far was particularly pleasing”.
Singer Billy Bragg warmed up the growing crowd with a set on stage, changing the lyrics to his best-known songs to add topical references such as “take the money from Trident and spend it on the NHS” and “these Tory cuts will get me the sack”.
Three journalists were spat at by those on the march, leading TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady to condemn the behaviour as “Inexcusable”.
Most banners and placards were generally pro-union and anti-austerity.
The abuse came despite Labour leader and pacifist Jeremy Corbyn’s call for “kinder” politics and his appeal for activists to “focus on policy and take no part in personal attacks”.
The crowd meanwhile seemed preoccupied with mocking Prime Minister David Cameron with pig jokes and banners telling him not to bomb Syria, cut welfare or slash funding for the National Healthcare System.
Lord Ashcroft’s book alleges that in his student days Mr Cameron performed a lewd act with a dead pig – claims the PM vehemently denies.
“There will be hundreds of thousands of people hounding them, snapping at them and resisting them”.
“We’re here to bring a message of hope to the people of Britain,” he said.
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We live in a country in which too many young people must postpone buying a home until their mid-30s, if they can ever afford to buy at all; in which an entrenched lack of opportunity – driven by broken families and bad schools – locks people out of work, and in which it has become nearly impossible to exercise the prudence without which sustainable growth becomes impossible: namely, to save.
