A Right Royal(e) Gala

I managed to get sunburn, which has not always happened in previous years.

The biggest Big Meeting in decades, with at least 150,000 people cheering on 50 bands and 80 banners, some of which were still arriving at the racecourse four hours after the first one had set out. The route is a mile long, if it is that. I am now promised that the Lanchester banner will be marched next year. About time, too.

Ricky Tomlinson was glorious, and the Shrewsbury case is utterly flabbergasting. After all these years, what could there possibly be that is so dangerous about it? If nothing else, it gives the lie to the claim that the Heath Government was even relatively left-wing.

And it is the sort of cause with which paleoconservative upholders of traditional civil liberties ought to be involving themselves, since the convictions were obtained only by a majority verdict, and even then only because the court ushers had assured the jurors that there would be nothing more than a £50 fine, which the men's union would have paid.

A giant inflatable pillar box was prominent, and the podium itself was festooned with a silhouette of the Queen's head, as part of a banner reading Save Our Royal Mail. In fact, Tomlinson, Owen Jones, Bob Crow, Len McCluskey and the rest were speaking directly above the word "Royal" as well as the outline of Her Majesty's image.

Another banner bearing the same slogan was also on the platform, with the usually central advertisement for the Morning Star between them. Its edition, distributed free (the Durham Miners' Association part-owns it), contained the following letter:

Flogging Mail treason

The proposal to sell off the Royal Mail is nothing less than an act of treason. Royal Mail goes back to 1516, the reign of Henry VIII.

I am surprised that Prince Charles or even the Queen herself has not spoken out against this gross act of treachery. Who will be the benefactors [sic, alas] of the sale? The state-owned Deutsche Post? Russian racketeers? US freebooters or dodgy hedge funds? Arab sheiks?

A positive way forward would be to bring TNT, City Link and the many other white van companies under the general control of our postal services. Among other things, one benefit would be to reduce the traffic on our roads and the pollution it causes.

Brian Ormondroyd

Leeds

He seems to be a fairly regular correspondent, writing in line with the editorial policy of the Morning Star. As here, in fact.

The term "Royal Mail" reverberated through Saturday's speeches. Davey Hopper amusingly introduced Kevin Maguire as "the Associate Editor of the Daily Mail", but Maguire made a speech which made one wish that he had contested his home town of South Shields. Among other things, he made the vitally important point that if Ed Miliband promised to renationalise the Royal Mail, then this privatisation could be stopped immediately, because no speculator would take the risk of buying it.

Owen Jones was the main attraction. Afterwards, people were queueing up to have their picture taken with him. He is a like a rock star. (Presented with my copy of Chavs to sign, he wrote "To David, Owen Jones", and when I was a bit taken aback he added, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world that, "I know exactly who you are." Now with my walking stick and everything else, I almost never get to London anymore, so I honestly don't know.)

Owen's speech was substantially the same as the one that he had delivered to the People's Assembly rally the night before, and it was magnificent. Half a million people are dependent on food banks in the seventh richest country in the world. We must control rents, and let councils build housing. We need the Living Wage, and an Industrial Strategy as in Germany. We must go after the £25 billion that is avoided in tax. There must be public control of the banks that the public bailed out.

Most of all, we need a broad-based movement, aware of the potential reception now that austerity has failed on its own terms. (See yesterday's inflation figures.) The majority of Tory voters is in favour of renationalising the railways, and 40 per cent of them favour a French-style wealth tax. That's right. Tory voters.

There will be a day of direct action on 29th September, "when the Tories have the effrontery to invade Manchester", and a day of peaceful civil disobedience on 5th November.

Owen had had to dash off from that meeting, which was held in the fabulous Miners' Hall at Redhills, in order to attend the pre-Gala dinner, but a speech from the floor by a youthful Trotskyist activist got me to my feet to say that the future could not lie in such things.

The attacks on the NHS, the Royal Mail, rural bus services, pensioners' and disabled people's benefits, and so on, reached deep into the heart of Tory Britain and the middle class and what have you, constituted an unprecedented attack on the most basic fabric of our national life, and offered an organisational opportunity such as I could never remember, having been listening to speeches like the previous speaker's for as long as he had been alive. "But we have to keep our act together, including minding what we say and who we put in leadership positions."

Though I say so myself, I was very warmly applauded, and perfect strangers came up to me afterwards to shake my hand. I have not always had that experience as a political speaker in the past. The following day, when I told this to Owen, he strongly agreed with me. Hard Left? Hardly!

Moreover, both Owen's and several other people's speeches at the People's Assembly rally made it very clear to me, having been at the Blue Labour Midlands Seminar exactly a week before, that Blue Labour and the People's Assembly were on the same page. Dialogue between the two is now most urgently necessary.

"Well, thank you, Bob, for that moderate contribution," said Davey Hopper after Bob Crow had called for a new party, not the first time that he had done so. Everyone laughed; the speech itself had been like a pastiche. In fact, the Blue Labour and the People's Assembly events had each felt like the meeting of the nucleus of a new party in the next Parliament. As, in its way, had the Gala.

But in all three cases, that party has to be the Labour Party. Having attended all three, I cannot imagine being in, or even voting for, any party that did not actively include them all. Nor can I imagine being outside any party that did.