{"id":51132,"date":"2026-05-03T11:41:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T11:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=51132"},"modified":"2026-05-03T11:41:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T11:41:41","slug":"nadia-whittome-mp-speech-disrupted-by-the-rcp-at-mayday-nottingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/51132","title":{"rendered":"Nadia Whittome MP speech disrupted by the RCP at MayDay, Nottingham"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Nadia Whittome MP speech disrupted by the RCP at MayDay, Nottingham\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-vz3RbgMhrs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Nadia Whittome MP speech disrupted by the RCP at MayDay, Nottingham <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nottingham, this mayday, we are standing together against the far right. A far right that threatens everything that we hold dear. Our sense of community. Our human rights. Our workers&#8217; rights. Not only did every single Reform MP vote against the Employment Rights Act. But they said they&#8217;d repeal it in their great repeal bill. That bill would legalise fire and rehire. It would reverse changes to bereavement leave, to sick pay and pregnancy protections. It would also scrap the Renters&#8217; Rights Act, bringing back no-fault evictions and allowing landlords to hike rents year on year. And it would rip up the Equality Act. This is a bonfire of rights. If you&#8217;re a woman, or you&#8217;re an ethnic minority, or you&#8217;re LGBT or disabled, if you rent, if you work for a living, if you rely on public services, if you are part of the 99%, not the 1%, reform is not on your side. Nigel Farage is banking on people seeing through the tight and the flat cap so he can distract and divide us by scapegoating minorities and blaming them for the deep structural problems in our society. But we know that it wasn&#8217;t migrants, or Muslims, or trans kids, or whoever they go after next, who cut our public services, who stole off our public utilities and our council housing, who bled our councils and our communities dry. It was right-wing Conservative governments cut from the same cloth as reform. Not even cut from the same cloth. Some of them are literally the same people, the same Tory ministers, like Robert Jenrick, who are directly responsible for this stuff. Reform tried to divide us so we don&#8217;t stand up and fight for ourselves and for each other. And so they can exist, so they can do what they exist to do, which is to represent the super wealthy. Their multi-millionaire donors don&#8217;t want to solve those deep structural problems in our society. They&#8217;re part of the class that created those problems. They profit from them and they want to rig the economy to make exploitative landlords, bosses and corporations even more powerful than they already are. But there is hope. It is solidarity with one another. No matter who we are or where we come from, that can defeat this darkness. And we only need to look around us to find hope in struggle. In Birmingham, BIM workers refusing to accept a race to the bottom on their pay and conditions. Across the country, resident doctors striking for pay restoration that was stripped under austerity. And here in Nottingham, university staff continually striking over job losses and course closures. Solidarity with them. These are just a few examples of the brave workers who are standing up against their employers. And I am proud to stand with them every time because I am a proud representative of the trade union and labour movement. We also draw inspiration from those who have been fighting for far longer. Like the all three campaigners who are still demanding accountability and justice. The mine workers pension campaigners who refused to accept that their pensions were being stolen and have recently won a historic victory. The point that I really want to make is this. Throughout history, our rights have not been gifted to us by any government. They have been fought for and won from the bottom up by movements built by people. Movements that became too powerful for governments to ignore. That is what we need to do now. We need to demand better and we need to challenge for our rights with a political programme of genuine hope. One that heals the vies and builds a future worth inheriting. I know it feels bleak right now. I feel it too. But we have to keep turning our despair into action. And together we can win and we must win. Solidarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nadia Whittome MP speech disrupted by the RCP at MayDay, Nottingham Nottingham, this mayday, we are standing together against the far right. A far right that threatens everything that we hold dear. Our sense of community. Our human rights. Our &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/51132\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,48],"class_list":["post-51132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-nottingham","tag-protest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51133,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51132\/revisions\/51133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}