Hope Is Back With Burnham, Apparently – But Not for Pensioners Opposing Genocide

Cast your mind back, for one moment, to January. I was freezing my socks off outside various supermarkets around Manchester, chatting to locals outraged that then-PM Keir Starmer and Labour’s NEC had blocked Andy Burnham for standing in the Gorton and Denton byelection. 

Fast-forward nine months, and it’s Burnham’s first Labour conference as prime minister under the slogan “Hope again”. How things change. But in other areas, matters are decidedly the same.

Yesterday, we once again saw mass arrests of peaceful protesters under the Terrorism Act, the majority of them elderly pensioners holding paper signs. These scenes were a shameful fixture under Starmer’s government, and now too, it seems, under Burnham’s. Undeterred by bouts of wind and rain, 200-odd people gathered outside conference on its opening day to unveil or swiftly pen placards reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” 

I’ve reported on a lot of these demos – of varying sizes and in varying kinds of weather – since Palestine Action became the first direct action group in British history to be proscribed as a terror organisation in July 2025 by then-home secretary Yvette Cooper.

What I’m always struck by is the quiet dignity of the older generations – the men and women in their 60s, 70s and above who sit silently with their placards, risking being arrested as terrorists because, as one man told me yesterday, they “have less to lose”. They stand in stark contrast to the geriatric audience members at Reform conference, filmed apparently assaulting a young female activist. 

Those taking part in yesterday’s demonstration, some having travelled from as far as Cornwall, told me that it’s about sending a message to Burnham, about refusing to do nothing in the face of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and about the attack on free speech that the Palestine Action ban represents. 

Merseyside police began nicking grannies and grandads about 40 minutes into the demo. Witnessing officers carrying elderly and frail people away never fails to be unsettling. It puts an ugly crack in the idea of this country as one where our basic civil liberties are protected, and with each arrest, the crack gets bigger and wider and fractures the mirror surface of our democracy further. 

By 8pm, police confirmed that 50 arrests had been made. Over at the New Statesman drinks reception at the Museum of Liverpool, foreign secretary Ed Miliband gave a speech about Burnham and the party’s “progressive values”. He urged listeners to “look at what we’ve done on Israel and Palestine”. 

Miliband was later approached in a Pizza Express by activists, across from where arrests were being made, and asked to come and “have a conversation” with the pensioners being carried away. He declined.

Organisers Defend Our Juries told Novara Media that arrests of peaceful protesters were made until 4:30am, with Merseyside police stopping sign-holders from leaving the area. Eight were ultimately left unarrested, according to Defend Our Juries, including two people in wheelchairs.

“Hope again”? Conference has only just begun, but I wouldn’t say we were off to a great start.