Rapture for Jeremy Corbyn was not exactly uncontained when he wandered into the TUC’s conference in Brighton yesterday.
I had expected the comrades to whoop it up a lot more when they spotted the Labour leader.
Though they were cordial – most eventually clambered to their feet for him and a few chanted his name at the end – the welcome was closer to respectful than adoring.
Perhaps they preferred him when he had fewer friends. It can be annoying when a leader you feel you created becomes bigger than you.
Rapture for Jeremy Corbyn was not exactly uncontained when he wandered into the TUC’s conference in Brighton yesterday
For all the talk of a general strike and a looming ‘winter of discontent’, this congress did not much feel like a revolutionary gathering.
The closest we got to sans-culotte class war yesterday was a motion calling for better health and safety on, er, superyachts. A torpedo at Sir Philip Green!
The stage set and hall decorations were neat and subdued. A video presentation featured union members with professional voices and peaceful smiles.
Surging fury was no more evident here than it was outside in the sunshine on the sea front, where the public seemed placid and content. If John McDonnell’s union friends are really going to bring the country to a standstill in a few weeks’ time with ‘insurrection’, they are keeping well below the parapets at present.
I have heard railway announcements with a greater sense of drama
Few of those who spoke yesterday conveyed explosive anger. Steve Turner of Unite gave it a modicum of welly with a Fred Kite speech attacking ‘the wealth hoarded by the few’ but more typical was a snoozer of a speech given by one Garry McKenney of the rail union Aslef. I have heard railway announcements with a greater sense of drama.
Another delegate had so little command of her speech that she kept stopping and taking multiple goes at words of more than two syllables. Proceedings were overlooked by a woman called Mary. When Mr Corbyn arrived, flashing a thumbs-up and his front teeth glinting, we learned that Mary had been Lady (Shami) Chakrabarti’s English teacher at school.
Mr Corbyn’s speech, half-hearted at best, opened with some stuff about a Colombian trade union activist, Huber Ballesteros. Mr Corbyn spoke of the importance of ‘international solidarity action’. A woman near me, during this passage, sank her teeth deep into a sticky bun and leafed through a magazine, later absent-mindedly licking the tips of each finger on her right hand.
I had expected the comrades to whoop it up a lot more when they spotted the Labour leader
The atmosphere in the hall was distinctly mid-afternoonish. The delegates used to become a lot more lively when Tony Blair came down to speak to them. They loved working themselves into a lather about Blair. Agreeing with a Labour leader is less fun. Like some other delegates, Mr Corbyn claimed that working nurses were having to resort to food-banks. Actually, he went further, saying that foodbanks were being used by ‘the workers who provide the public services we all rely on’.
What is the evidence of this? Anecdotal or firmer than that?
Mr Corbyn also referred to one university study which ‘recently found that poor-quality jobs are actually worse for mental-health than unemployment’.
His delivery may have been laid-back but the words of the speech were quite extreme. He accused Theresa May’s Conservatives of consorting with ‘an ever more ruthless form of capitalism’.
Britain was ‘one of the most unequal’ countries in the world. We were being dragged back to both ’19th century employment practices’ and ‘a 1980s time warp of neoliberal dogma’. And Mrs May was plotting to turn us into ‘a Shangri La for bosses and bankers’ with ‘nothing for everybody else’.
Mr Corbyn barely lifted his voice as he trundled through this. It won mild applause. Maybe we are seeing the effects of catastrophe-inflation, whereby even political activists no longer really believe the shroud-waving from their political leaders.
‘Infamy… unscrupulous employers… xenophobic intimidation and scapegoating… slashing of rights.’
But is the average worker not more likely to say: ‘Hey ho, mustn’t grumble!’