Jack McGinn and another protester in the crowd during Rachel Reeves’s speech on Monday. On Monday morning, we walked into the main hall of Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, before the keynote speech of the chancellor, Rachel Reeves . What we did next, you might have seen. Shortly after Reeves began her address, two of us stood to speak out on Labour’s complicity in suspected Israeli war crimes, and the party’s ties to climate-wrecking corporations. We were there on behalf of Climate Resistance, a group campaigning to end the cosy relationship between politics and the fossil fuel industry. Just like arms manufacturers, oil companies have been guilty of hindering democratic processes with donations and lobbying, putting human lives on the line for their own profits. Faced with the assault on Gaza and Lebanon, and the deadly impacts of climate breakdown all over the world, we needed to end the silence. We needed to remind Labour that, until it breaks its ties with these organisations and takes meaningful action, there is no time to celebrate. The booing of our action was anticipated, the manhandling was not. We were removed, arrested and questioned in a police van for an hour, before being driven from the venue and dropped 10 minutes down the road. The landlord of the pub opposite remarked that he wasn’t sure how to feel about the police choosing this spot for dropping detainees after arrest. I was slammed into a wall, the handcuffs made marks and there was unexpected verbal abuse. But it’s important that our rough treatment isn’t the main story to come out of Monday’s disruption. Though we couldn’t hear it at the time, Reeves replied: “This is a changed Labour party. A Labour party that represents working people, not a party of protest.” To say […]