Just in case anyone had any lingering doubts about how much a figure of the Establishment Labour’s notional leader Keir Starmer is, Starmer had armed anti-terror police positioned at the end of rows in the much-reduced conference hall during his speech, to intimidate delegates and visitors out of protesting – and if necessary to take out any who did mount a protest, in unprecedented scenes for a Labour conference, at least one without a serving Prime Minister:
Worse, those police had behaved in a blatantly intimidatory fashion before the speech, too, to ensure no one missed their presence or intent, as Socialist Telly’s Bonnie Craven, who was in the hall, tweeted:
The officers were wearing the black baseball caps typical of the Met’s SCO-19 armed unit and wear at the least armed with pepper sprays and potentially with firearms.
Starmer’s speech was entirely of the Establishment, too, with countless references to the working hard, playing by the rules and being ‘patriotic’, with the clear implication that changing the status quo isn’t. One wag summed it up accurately as:
Spend your first 17 years getting ready to work and learn to play by the rules.Spend the rest of your life working and following the rules.
If Starmer is like this as a (non-)opposition ‘leader’, the prospect of a country run by this creature of the powers-that-be is terrifying.
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Well, he used to prosecuteterrorists
What are the plod gonna do if a heckler refuses to leave? Plenty of witnesses around. Plenty of mobile footage…
And who’s paying for all these armed bastards? Must’ve cost either the local council or the party itself a few bob…
Easy they just remove them, but having police at the end of rows is not good but it is the way the country is going. We are sliding into an authoritarian system. Both the Tories and labour are using it, meanwhile people are getting more and more angry about not having enough food or wages to live on. That is why the police are being used more and more by bot political parties, they do not want the protesters they want good sound bites. Both the two parties have said no beliefs are necessary but getting power is more important. That says it all. The media fawning over Stamer’s speech is one of the signs the establishment will get fed up of the Tories. So going off the last election cycle, the Tories were in power from 1979 to 1997. I remember people were so fed up of them by then they would vote in a pink elephant in power. So people will give Johnson another go and after that it is labour’s turn to be the same and in power, meanwhile nothing changes.
they just remove them,
What’s the job of the hired security then? The plod’s job is to uphold the law; NOT be party to any political argument. Last time I checked political activism isn’t against the law – no matter how much keef’d love that to change.
On a related note, Ken Livingston plays a blinder here…
https://youtu.be/5vtnEA7pWYw?t=32
In full agreement with you The Toffee (597).
Thanks for the link, loved it. “Go catch some real criminals.”
“Both the Tories and Labour…”
Just the Tories then.
Toffee (597) thanks for that. Wow, evidence of the corporate state we now live in. Well done Ken.
I watched the whole speech on TV. Cameras shots of the conference hall and attending delegates were numerous ( from all angles ). I didn’t see any armed police standing at the end of each aisle
That’s because you have self-censoring to eyes and even when faced with photos and video evidence at the top of this article, you can’t bring yourself to accept it.
Peter Berry Do you think the photos and video Skwawkbox has published are fake or do you think perhaps the MSM are being selective in their footage?
The video shows a bunch of police officers in a hallway/reception area.
I’d expect police presence at any large public gathering.
The photos show police standing in random area, at what stage of the conference speech ?
They weren’t there during the speech.
It would be ridiculous if they weren’t prepared for every contingency.
O! Pray tell us, genius – WHAT is the purpose of waltzing up & down a few rows of occupied seats? Are they looking for suicide bombers? Drug dealers? Tv licence evaders? An arch-criminal that scrawled‘I hate keef’ on the lavatory wall? Someone late paying their subs?
Every eventuality indeed, clown.
🙄
The worst part is the old bill couldn’t find their own arses with both hands and a map, nevermind find a REAL criminal.
Absolutely 🥺, I hope they had battleships in the sea and anti aircraft missiles on the roof and tanks outside. God save Starmer.💩🇬🇧💩
🤭
nuclear war? earthquakes? spontaneous combustion? What you suggest is ridiculous. Its a bunch of political nerds in a room, the only threat there was the right wing fascists giving headline speeches.
Unsurprising, but nevertheless shocking.
Paramilitary Britain WTF
Big Brother! More Orwellian tactics of intimidation ensuring Conference conforms. Little or no direct real time coverage on MSM. Orwellian tactics of suspension & expulsion followed by physical intimidation, When will Socialists realise that we are an endangered species & the Labour Party is becoming an unsafe environment as supported by MSM.
This article must be from Hysterical Skwawky having not taken the right medication. ‘Take Out’? Are you implying ‘shoot dead’? I don’t think so. Plenty of occasions when police firearms activities warrant concern but no sign of it here. ‘Potentially with a firearm’? Bit weak on the evidence aren’t we. There will usually be an armed plain clothes police officers in the first few rows during the speech which Agent Bonny failed to spot. Mind you if the armed Chinese PLA marched through the building she would probably jump for joy.
Plain citizen did it not ever cross your mind that he might actually need armed police after his support for the permanent partition of Ireland because I certainly did.A lot of money has been spent on getting him the keys to drowning street and I think he just might do it.Be very afraid in supporting the knight hes a very dangerous man.
Another load of complete bollocks from plain citizen.
Well hes the man to go to for bent coppers and now I hear from posters on here its spooks as well as Assange fit up.The mans in deep and the armed police should be for him especially now hes signalled a commitment for a permanent partition of Ireland.Who let the dogs out?
https://novaramedia.com/2021/03/02/keir-starmer-is-a-long-time-servant-of-the-british-security-state/
Nemtona on another thread I commented that it is all coming out now and whilst I realised before the elections that he was the man to go to for bent coppers I later picked up bucket loads of info from posters on here.of his involment with spooks and also from friends in the know in Ireland that hed worked closely with loyalist militias attatched to the hated RUC and British forces in Ireland…?keep posting the info and thanks off to bed now comrades.
Not at all like the old days when all you needed was a couple of fat lads to roughly, man-handle an 80-year-old man out of the hall, for expressing an opinion.
fat lad with a penchant for ‘very nice cake’ IIRC.
Seems to have a big security detail too compared to Corbyn – remember the way journalists used to camp on Corbyn’s front door and get right in his face? The way Starmer fled from that road accident and just cleared it up later is typical to certain ahem agency protocols.
Establishment not taking any risk in terms of harm to their golden boy. Who is Sir Keir Starmer?
Posted this above in reply to Joseph Okeef. If you want to know about Starmer.
https://novaramedia.com/2021/03/02/keir-starmer-is-a-long-time-servant-of-the-british-security-state/
Thank you. Even worse than I thought.
Indeed. I think we’re at the point where if the Guardian found out he was working directly with the spooks they’d just cover it up.
Starmer being a good friend of former MI5 chief Jonathan Evans, and having worked closely with these agencies, as he highlighted in his speech, it wouldn’t be all that surprising. It’s no great secret that MI6 were mightily angry with Ed Miliband when he U-turned on bombing Syria in 2013. Pure conjecture , but maybe that’s when the Starmer Labour leadership bid plan was hatched?
@Andy
The Guardian works with the security services. Around the time they smashed up the hard drives instead of handing them over. Deputy editor sits on the liaison board between spooks and the media (can’t remember the name, sorry).
Nemtona. Yes read that and is brilliant, makes you feel sick in the stomach.
We need to get it out everywhere!
It should be read by every voter.
Let’s have this new Socialist Party.
At least Walter Wolfgang was only thrown out of conference by Stewards in today’s Labour conference he might have been shot or at least a truncheon to his head, have you noticed whenever starmer goes on walkabout there are always plenty of goons following him. I hope he does not them one day, the arsehole.
Why are we surprised? This is the way Fascists behave, glad I have left Conference before Starmer’s speech. I wasn’t going to legitimise him with my presence.
In 1941 on his way back from his talk to Hitler at Hendaya, Franco made a stop to visit the main Basque cities. The street were deserted, nobody was on the streets either to greet him or to heckle him.
Result: in the next 34 years that he was still in power he never visited the Basque Country again. The humiliation was to much for him to face.
Franco too, used to ships visitors from villages to the cities so they could applaud for him, while giving speeches in Spanish cities.
Basically, every fascist major will round up enough residents to fill at least one bus (small village) or 10 buses (bigger villages) and drive villagers to the nearest city to applaud Franco under the watchful eye of their respective mayors.
This is reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson’s use of the FBI at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
I was just thinking along those lines meself, having watched The trial of the Chicago 7 a few weeks back.
(Not a bad film – I’ve never been a fan of that sacha baron-cohen but he does well in this)
Is this what Mandelson means when he says to be a leader you have to tough. There’s nothing more tough than having a squadron of armed police ensuring there’s no opposition.
No doubt if asked why such a armed police presence a spokesperson from LOTO will blame the ‘hard left’ for it.
At least security thugs were not armed when 82-year-old member Walter Wolfgang was thrown out for heckling war criminal Jack Straw. https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/brighton-int-walter-wolfgang-removed-from-seat-by-news-footage/679783178
Security obsessed Starmer will just intensify the already Zod-like all powerful security state apparatus in the UK.
His hiring of an Israeli intelligence expert and trawling of social media to purge the party’s left shows his trajectory. He voted through SpyCops without pause and he’s very much a ‘saving lives’ comes before citizens’ civil liberties type fella.
There’s nothing wrong with being a right-wing reactionary mind, but the UK has too many of them in the HoC. How many MPs genuinely argue for socially liberal positions?
I don’t know who has stitch-up parliament like this for it to be so authoritarian & so unrepresentative, but wish they’d stop interfering.
Yes we already know that Starmer’s Labour would increase spending on CCTV, call monitoring, tighten up what you can/can’t say on the net, spooks, police and prisons. While all stats show crime is still falling he’d build more prisons and sentence people to longer ensuring that locking people up becomes an essential part of the economy.
I can say with certainty that the society they are creating is not a healthy or promising one.
Starmer recently volunteered to let the world know that he was opposed to a united Ireland.. WTF has it to do with him exept for his chummy links with the unionists – any responsible would be PM would accept that it was a matter for the people whose lives are directly affected. Is he dreaming of the Anschluss?
Bone chilling footage there. More reminiscent of a Hitler or Mussolini rally than a convention of a supposedly social-democratic party in the UK.
So the choice is between Johnson and Starmer. What a nightmare scenario! Which of these two reprobates is more authoritarian? And which the most shameless liar?
Let’s cut this crap. We need a new party to represent the millions of ‘ordinary’ working (and non-working) people in the country today. Let’s cast aside our illusions in the Labour Party. It can never again be a vehicle for progressive change (the years-long persecution of Jeremy Corby proved that, plus the way the global elite ensured that he would never be Britain’s Prime Minister).
Let’s get together and lay the foundations of a new party that could be a pole of attraction far beyond the self-styled progressive left. A party that will be there with workers in struggle and with those battling for justice in the community. A party that will be 100% on the side of the people and not the billionaires.
Who is up for this?
Once upon a time, Harold Wilson was making his Leader’s Speech at Conference. A guy in the audience started to heckle him.
Security started making moves towards the heckler – presumably, to eject him.
Wilson stopped his speech, and said :
‘Leave that man alone! In this country, we have Free Speech! He’s entitled to heckle me, or anyone else!’
Security retreated. Wilson returned to his speech. The heckler was silent.
That’s the way to do it. Confidence in democracy.
I didn’t see anybody being forcibly ejected from the conference hall yesterday. did you?
Where did I say there was?