New movements across Brexit Britain

Pro-EU march outside Downing St.

Andrew Burgin

As the referendum result was announced at Glastonbury Festival there were spontaneous demonstrations by young festival goers, hugely dismayed at the outcome. Many of those protesting won’t have voted – only 36% of 18-24 years olds went to the ballot box – but those that did voted in overwhelming numbers for Remain. Many of them will have thought, like almost everyone else, that Remain would win.

Around the same time that Glastonbury was adjusting to Brexit Britain, a group of shadow cabinet ministers was meeting secretly to plot the downfall of Jeremy Corbyn. No doubt their plotting started the day Jeremy became leader and they expected it now to come to fruition.

This was a coup attempt in which cowardice was the main ingredient.  The plotters weren’t brave enough to push it to a conclusion by putting forward a candidate of their own – clearly they have no one who could win.  Instead they sought to ridicule Jeremy into resignation but this only made them look weak and ridiculous. Over the course of the week more than 75,000 people joined the Labour Party and the majority gave their reason as ‘supporting Jeremy’. There have been mass rallies across the country. The phoney war is over and battle with the pro-austerity wing of the Labour Party is fully engaged.

It is difficult to see how the Labour Party can be put back together again now. But the main responsibility for the division lies not with Corbyn but with the inability of Angela Eagle and her colleagues to accept the democratic verdict of the membership.

Opposition to the referendum result and to the removal of Jeremy have within a single week created not one but two separate – but partly linked – mass movements. There were thousands in Parliament Square on Monday (27^th June) to support Jeremy and the following day there were similar numbers of young people converging on Parliament in opposition to the referendum outcome. Politics is engaging the nation. Everywhere you go – in pubs and cafes and shops – people are talking about both things. There is a heightened political sensibility and within that a deep concern at the wave of attacks on migrants that the Brexit campaign has unleashed.

young people opposed to Brexit march on Parliament

This is a profound social and political crisis which may well become an economic crisis too, moving at great speed. There are no historical parallels to fall back on.

There have been countless local rallies supporting Corbyn over the past week. Today (Saturday 2^nd July) saw large rallies for Jeremy in Leeds, Bristol, Liverpool, London and many other places. It also saw a huge March for Europe some tens of thousands strong, possibly 100,000. It was organised on social media by students and it was largely spontaneous. Thousands joined the march as it wound its way very slowly through central London. For many it was their first ever march. The placards were all homemade bar the one distributed by Left Unity. In 15 minutes we distributed 1,000 placards whose slogan was ‘Defend Free Movement’. There was no organised chanting and by and large the organised left was not present.

It had the feel of a new movement. There were thousands and thousands of young people, very multicultural, including lots of European migrants. These young people were by and large anti-racist, anti-Tory, anti-UKIP/fascist, pro-refugee and migrants, against borders, politically mobilized and generally progressive. In its overall character it was a march of the liberal left/the liberal middle class. They probably haven’t marched in these numbers since the Iraq war march of 2003. For want of good slogans the crowd sang Hey Jude.

Cameron has resigned and Boris Johnson’s political career has been ended by Michael Gove in a scenario worthy of the Game of Thrones. But at Downing Street there was real anger against them both: ‘Eton Mess – Shame on You’ and ‘Fuck you Boris’.

The new movement around Jeremy is slightly different to that which saw him win the leadership. It has a more chaotic quality – people are joining desperately hoping they can save his leadership. It is a last ditch attempt to make Labour fit for purpose – to make it a party working for the ordinary people of Britain, not for the tiny elite that populate its green benches.

That was this week – what will next week bring?