Saturday 9th September, Workers Party comrades from Manchester and Wigan booked a stall at the Wigan Diggers Festival. With the looming TUC Congress and the motions in support of war, our campaigning focus at this radical left-wing festival was on war and our opposition to it. We were extremely well received by most of the attendees who readily took our literature warning against the drive to war with Russia. So many residents of Wigan have been victimised by the cost of living crisis engendered by capitalist greed and billions of military hardware sent to prop up Zelensky’s puppet-regime in Ukraine. It was not hard for people to see our governments focus was not on improving the lives of ordinary British workers.
We spoke to many trade unionists who said that our No2NATO No2war campaign was a breath of fresh air against the GMB’s shameful motion to the Trade Union Congress for greater support for the Ukrainian fascists who are losing the war on NATO’s behalf. Those trade unionists rightly feared how a greater drive to war against Russia will lead to working class youths to be sent to their deaths in eastern Europe along with repressive war measures being implemented at home.
We set up the stall next to the campaign group, JENGBA, fighting the ‘joint enterprise’ aspect of Common Law used to imprison mainly working class youths for lengthy sentences for crimes they did not commit. We had a very friendly reception from families of those victimised by the ‘joint enterprise’ clause especially as a JENGBA spokesperson was interviewed by Workers Party member and former Labour MP, Chris Williamson here.
Alongside collecting great media for our online output and distributing thousands of copies of printed material, we collected over a dozen contacts; raised £22 for our fighting fund and recruited a new member for the Manchester branch. The more we run stalls and hold events the more experience we get in building the party wherever we go.