[Conference 'representatives' pass through the police checkpoint A…]
Socialist Press1980 1980-10-15Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
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Conference 'representatives' pass through the police checkpoint A section of the massive demonstration that assembled outside the Brighton conference ing.
For six months or so before the conference would-be viewers are advised to prepare by listening to bits of Radio 4's Any Questions, starting with five or ten minutes at a time and slowly building up to the point where they can not only take Any Questions but Any Answers as well.
If this produces strange sideeffects, smash your radio, see your doctor and cancel your order at the newsagents.
As Tory leaders stand firm not only against the demands of the working class but also against the increasingly anguished pleas for relief from bankrupt businessmen and anxious industrialists in their own ranks, their annual conference reverberated to the sound of cliches of patriotism, anti-communism and exploitation.
It was a case of "us" (no, not the Tories-they really mean us!) getting our noses to the grindstone, shoulders to the wheel, getting our fingers out and our chins up, putting our backs into it, grasping the nettle and standing on our own two feet-an uncomfortable gymnastic exercise at the best of times!
Vandals
Meanwhile the prosperous middle class and aristocratic vandals who are demanding Thatcher press ahead with her destruction of social services and nationalised industries, and "Cruise On" with the lethal new weaponry of nuclear war will grin and bear it, even if their professionally stiff upper lips could be seen to droop slightly each time a speaker was impolite enough to refer to the problems of small businesses under Thatcher.
It was only in such smaller trifles that even a ripple of the real world emerged to ruffle the placid surface of a conference so bureaucratically stage-managed it made Brezhnev's Politbureau look like a model of free speech and democracy.
Every "chap" knew that his speech had to contribute to the greater, good, rather than expressing personal anxiety at the chaos and devastation unleashed on all sides by Thatcher's team of monetarist maniacs.
That's why it was such bad form of that fellow Milburn to come to the rostrum-dressed in overalls!-and whine about JONL JOUS Morning
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POLICE DESTROY PEACE
FREEDON SMASH