The Real Britain fringe event, “Real Britain: Putting People Back into Politics”, was standing room only and the stuff of proper politics. Passionate, angry and ideological. On the panel, chaired by the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire, were Len McClusky general secretary of Unite, veteran Harry Leslie Smith, sanctions campaigner Gill Thompson, Tom Watson MP, and ‘Real Britain’ Mirror columnist Ros Wynne-Jones.
Harry and Gill have in common the preventable death of a sibling. Harry’s eldest sister died from TB in a workhouse before the formation of the welfare state and Gill’s brother died from his Type 1 diabetes after his benefits were sanctioned. He had £3.44 to his name, 6 teabags and a tin of soup in the cupboard.
Harry is 91. He is small, white haired and frail but otherwise undiminished. Born in 1923 he has seen the great depression, the second world war, post-war reconstruction, the winter of discontent, Margaret Thatcher, New Labour and the Age of Austerity. His working class, working poor, family were pushed into destitution by the debt they accumulated as they fought desperately to save the life of his sister. Their fight was “noble but futile”. Before the welfare state, Harry said, it was luck and guile that kept you alive.
Harry’s tale was shocking and moving. Grown men cried openly as Harry broke down in the telling of a tale that still causes him pain. Austerity politics, he said, were as cruel and as criminal as in his youth. The room gave him a standing ovation with a strength of emotion that visibly moved him.
Len McClusky stopped (just) short of jumping on the table as he railed against “phoney growth” based on unsustainable personal debt. He poured scorn on the Tories’ claims of 1m extra jobs, and the 4.5m “self-employed” were reframed as desperate individuals “scrambling from day to day to make a future for their family”. Even in the pages of the Times, he bellowed, one hears that the workers need a pay rise: Those with a privileged role in society realise their position is under threat, dependent as it is on workers getting some crumbs off the table.
His finale (“When we stir the working classes there will be no stopping them, solidarity courses through our veins.”) was received with joyous cheers by all, with the exception of Tim Montgomerie who had been hiding (badly) on the front row and was loudly outed.
The evidence was laid out by each speaker that the in the face of a dismantled and diminished welfare state, luck and guile are still the things that keep you alive.
Alison Smith
