Orchestrated chaos?
Handful of protesters
play into Jim Murphy’s hands
Andrew Learmonth
The National, May 5th, 2015
THE plan, they said, was for Jim Murphy and Eddie Izzard to address Labour Party supporters and gee them up for the final 72 hours of the campaign. Instead, protesters, the Scottish press pack and a handful of Labour party supporters got involved in a mild rammy.
Thinking back to the newspaper inches Murphy’s street-theatre-with-eggs generated during the referendum campaign, you might be forgiven for wondering if this was the plan all along.
And Izzard was quick to accuse the protesters of being “violent” and “aggressive”. Certainly there was pushing and shoving between the Labour Party and the protesters. And most of this was when Murphy and Izzard went walking. Aggressive would not be unfair, but violent is a little strong. At one point, the leader of Glasgow City Council Gordon Matheson hit The National’s correspondent in the face with his placard, but we’re 99 per cent sure it was accidental.
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