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I’ve spent a depressingly large chunk of my life sitting in meetings with other ageing white lefties. So last night’s Respect meeting in Bristol’s Easton Community Centre was something of a revelation. George Galloway joined a panel of local activists to deliver one of his trademark speeches – inspiring, fiery, and at times oddly intimate. It was an excellent performance, but what struck me most about this rather special night was the make-up of the audience who came along to hear him.
Something over one hundred and eighty people braved the cold to pack the Community Centre to overflowing. Of those, I would estimate that around half were non-white. Moslems, Sikhs, Somalis, Africans, and a host of others rubbed shoulders with white working class men and women. For many in the audience that I spoke to, it was their first political meeting. The atmosphere was terrific, the questions when they came were utterly unpredictable, and the mood was uplifting. And, just for once, I felt that I was at a meeting with real people – the sort of people, in fact, that we’ve been trying to reach for years.
And there’s the rub. George takes all sorts of flack, as often from the ‘left’ as from the bourgeois media. But when it comes to it he can attract the sort of audience for socialist and anti-imperialist ideas that most other speakers would happily die for. To make a simple comparison, when John Pilger spoke in Bristol last year at the Old Vic, his audience was predominantly white and white collar. And he was preaching to the converted. No disrespect to Pilger, who is also a fantastic asset to the movement, but George is capable of bringing socialism as a living idea to much broader sections of the population, galvanising many into political activity for the first time.
Last night’s meeting was the most exciting and uplifting political event I’ve attended in years. And it’s only the beginning. In Bristol, as in other cities up and down the country, Respect still has a long way to go. But we’ve taken a massive first step!
Jay Woolrich
www.bristolrespect.org
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A positive story? Whatever next!
thats good to read 