'People are unstoppable'

Pictures and additional reporting: Angie Sammons

A YEAR ago a flock of 2,000 gathered at Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel to hear the man who would be chosen to shepherd Labour after Ed Milliband.

For the multitudes, feeling abandoned by a Westminster elite, Jeremy Corbyn was a beacon of hope and they would go on to anoint him leader of the party with an overwhelming mandate for change.

A bus heading along Lime Street to Queens Square paused. A lone woman on the upper deck  stood up, and applauded

In 12 tumultuous months since that famous Adelphi Hotel address, the man treated as a Messiah by many of the ordinary and the disenfranchised, has been knifed at every turn by the majority of his Parliamentary colleagues, aided and abetted by a powerful media machine. 

But, as last night showed, the people, the ordinary people, do not share the same thirst for Corbyn’s blood.

On the exact anniversary of that Adelphi appearance, Corbyn returned to the city. This time the flock had grown to between 7,000-9,000. 

Whichever estimate you believe, it was enough to close Lime Street as the man now fighting to remain Labour leader took to the roof of a fire engine. Fittingly, he began with a Roger McGough poem: Survivor.

“Everyday,

I think about dying.

About disease, starvation,

violence, terrorism, war,

the end of the world.

It helps

keep my mind off things.”

St George’s Plateau has witnessed some great political gatherings over the years, but in a generation there has been nothing to match the turn out for this survivor.

There was laughter, there was singing, there were tears. Above all there was passion.

Corbyn declared it was the biggest city showing so far in his leadership battle with Owen Smith, who had set out his stall in the city on Saturday, addressing a crowd of, let’s be kind and say 200.
 

Jeremy Corbyn looking relaxed as he prepares to address his leadership rally

Those who dismiss Corbyn’s support, saying his rallies are crammed with only political activists, need to open their eyes, and their ears. 

Like a year earlier, the vast majority who braved last night’s rain were everyday Merseysiders, the very young to the very old. 

If they are a “type”, they are the type that expected to be abandoned by the Conservatives, but not by their own party, Labour. 

There were few revolutionaries and WRP-types on the cobbles of the plateau. Yes they were flogging the Socialist Weekly, but why wouldn’t they? 

Instead of putting their hands to their ears to drown out the noise from the streets, those lurking in the Westminster corridors of power should study the Liverpool happening. They need to ask why, and how, a man like Corbyn - who they claim is unpopular and unelectable – can assemble such a dedicated following. 

Many of the so-called great unwashed felt New Labour had left them behind when it sacrificed its core socialist values on the altar of power.

And then a man arrives from the political wilderness of the back benches and demonstrates that he WILL fight for a better life for them – a better NHS, hope for the education of their kids, better social care for those in need, for the frail and the elderly.

Jeremy Corbyn is introduced onto the platform by Walton MP Steve Rotheram

Time will tell whether Corbyn can pull the Labour Party back from the cliff edge its MPs dragged it to when they staged their failed coup in the hours after Brexit. Let alone be Prime Minister.

Is a Labour government - with or without him - in the next five years even a possibility?  Or is Corbyn playing the long game, rebuilding a movement, repositioning the party to hand to a younger generation of Labour disciples with the power and energy to blindside the Tories for good? And is that such a bad thing? 

In the year since the Adelphi, he has increased the party membership to more than half a million for the first time since records began. That’s a lot of lost sheep back in the fold.

It would be hard to come away from Corbyn’s rally feeling anything but spellbound.  Everyone was caught up in the excitement. A double decker bus heading along Lime Street to Queens Square paused, a lone woman on the upper deck with a grandstand view of the rally stood up, and applauded.

The applause from the rapturous ensemble and the cheers and the chants of “Corbyn, Corbyn Corbyn" were, at times, deafening. The man himself got out his mobile phone to record it.

There was no quick getaway either. Corbyn posed for selfies as he made his way from the platform, signing autographs and chatting to well-wishers for a good half hour.

If the Liverpool event is an indication of things to come, Owen Smith may be advised to throw in the towel and organise a surrender of the front-bench dissidents. As one speaker commented, imagine how powerful Labour would be now if it was united.

But divided it remains, as a feature on Newsnight revealed later, with talk of anti-Corbynites planning to “hijack” Labour and form an alternative “official opposition”.

Corbyn has been disowned by 172 of his own MPs, abandoned by the majority of his front bench, ridiculed by Theresa May in her maiden speech as Prime Minister. Yet put him among the people, and he is a shining light.

He tells the crowd: “I don’t see this leadership contest as a distraction, I see it as a massive opportunity, to reach out to people all across this country and have the strength and confidence to say that nothing we are trying to do is possible.

“There has never been a more exciting time in British politics that I can remember. We learned from the bitterness of the miner’s strike, we learned from the bitterness of the attacks on industrial workers in the 80s, we are strengthened by that, by our resolve  and determination, but above all strengthened by our collective hope.”

Corbyn earlier told Liverpool Confidential: “People want something different in our society. They want justice and fairness at work and a more equal society and this has caught on politically.”  

Can he finish what he started?

"People," said Corbyn, "are unstoppable.”