Jeremy Corbyn came to Swansea on Friday evening after an afternoon rally in Methyr. As folk lined up round the LC2 leisure centre to listen to the controversial politician the media love to hate, the excitement was palpable.
Tyrone O’Sullivan speaking at the Corbyn rally in Swansea
On the podium with Jeremy was his long time friend Tyrone O’Sullivan who famously led the initiative of 239 miners, who each paid £8,000 from their redundancy payouts to buy shares in Goitre Tower Anthracite when the Cynon Valley pit was marked for closure in 1994. When the pit re-opened in 1995 it saved hundreds of jobs and continued to make a profit until the deep coal ran out in 2008.
Hannah Lawson, of PCS Union, speaking before Mr Corbyn
Also speaking was Hannah Lawson leader of the recently ended two year National Museum Wales strike as a rep for the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). The strike eventually resolved this summer, after the Welsh Assembly became involved.
The thousand plus strong audience were roused to strong emotion by the combination of Tyrone’s long experience, and Hannah’s new found confidence and surprise at finding herself capable of leadership through representation and support.
Together they made a superb frame for Corbyn’s popular insistence that it still is, and must remain, possible to think outside of the neoliberal box.
Corbyn is an energetic and motivational speaker, with an infectious delivery similar in rhythm to stand-up comedians who build each point up to a laugh, except in Corbyn’s case, he built up again and again to a crescendo of anger with greedy neoliberal policies selling lies to bolster unjustifiable policies, robbing working people of safety and security.
And each time the hall erupted.
Corbyn supporters in Swansea showing their enthusiasm
So much of the discourse on Corbyn highlights the difficulty of believing that any other kind of politics is possible anymore, when the kind we have has already killed so many.
And it is hard to fight the inner cynic and overcome the depression engendered by helplessly observing the rapacious corporate invasion of every element of our daily lives.
But the massive public support of Corbyn points to the continued existence of a communal appetite for decency, and the level of smearing and sabotage ironically points to it as well by showing an awareness of the potential danger of that appetite for the corporate timetable.
A joyful supporter at the Corbyn rally Swansea
The delight of the crowd says clearly that if it’s not too late to marshall public disgust with the blatant war on vulnerability that permeates our media and our politics, that seeks to enure us to racism, to hate-crime and intolerance, and to a guilty hatred of those more vulnerable than us, then this man, with his unpretentious common-sense analysis of greed and corruption, may be the last hope we’ve got.
The roar of the crowd that wants an end to racism says that if anyone can turn back that tide in the UK, it has to be Corbyn.
Has he got enough body-guards? That’s the next question.
The hall at the LC2 Leisure Centre full of cheering Corbyn supporters.
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