Activists on the streets outside Tory party conference on Sunday (Picture: Twitter/People’s Assembly)
Over 2,000 people rallied in Birmingham, where the Tory party conference is being held, to give the delegates the welcome they deserved on Sunday.
Protesters marched from Victoria Square, through the city centre to Centenary Square. Boos and chants of “Tories out” and “Tory scum, get out of Brum,” echoed throughout the city.
Tories had to endure a gauntlet of derision as they crossed the square to register their attendance. Trade union leaders and campaigners addressed the rally organised by the People’s Assembly anti-austerity campaign.
“What struck me is how angry people are,” socialist Hope Ryan Hughes told Socialist Worker. “People stuck around for hours after the protest ended because they wants to shout at Tories as they went in the conference.
“Jacob Rees-Mogg walked through the crowd and half the demo went out to heckle him. It was furious—you really felt people were angry at how brazen the Tories are.” Delegates and government staffers landed in Birmingham on the same day that local press reported an “explosion in vermin complaints”.
The Birmingham Mail reports that it makes “grim reading” for local residents. Socialist Worker understands the two events to be unrelated.
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