Protests were held during the two-day Welsh Conservative Party’s spring conference in Newtown urging the government to do more about the rising costs of living.
About 50 people gathered outside Theatr Hafren with their banners and chant slogans including “you go to gala dinners, we go to the foodbank” while Chancellor Rishi Sunak attended the party gala event at the venue on Saturday evening (May 21) to give a keynote speech to the Welsh Conservatives.
Elizabeth Blanche campaigning outside the Welsh Conservative spring conference in Newtown on Friday, May 20, 2022 Picture by Anwen Parry/Powys County Times
Elizabeth Blanch, a mother of four who lives near Newtown, was at Saturday’s protest and also held a protest on the day that Boris Johnson spoke at the conference on Friday afternoon standing with a sign directing “Tories” in one direction, and a “foodbank” in the other direction.
Elizabeth, who has links to the food surplus project at Pendinas, said the use of foodbanks has increased “phenomenally”.
“The government has been in charge for over 10 years now and the austerity and poverty in this country has just absolutely grown exponentially. There are nurses using foodbanks, people working two, three or four jobs using foodbanks because the government failures.”
Anti-Brexit protestor Steve Bray outside the Welsh Conservative spring conference on Saturday, May 21. Picture by Anwen Parry/Powys County Times
Also among the protestors was Steve Bray, who is best known as the Stop Brexit Man who made daily protests against the UK leaving the European Union in College Green, Westminster.
“We have a government hell-bent on looking at serving themselves and the more we stand up to them and show people that we’re not going to accept this maybe people will take on board the message.
“The Tory party have absolutely divided every part of the United Kingdom. This is not a government for the people, they are self-serving. They’re looking after themselves and the amount of cronyism and corruption; that’s our money. We need them out of office.”
Police officers outside Theatre Hafren where the Welsh Conservative Party conference in Newtown was held on Saturday, May 21, 2022. Picture by Anwen Parry/Powys County Times
Speaking during his visit to the Hilltop Honey factory in Newtown, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government is putting in "huge amounts" of support for people struggling financially.
"The reason we can is because we came out of Covid with a strong economy. We’ve got the fiscal firepower to put money into people’s livelihoods to try to support people during Covid.
"The issue that we have to tackle is not only the help for the immediate cost, the cost of people’s energy, the cost of food – what you’ve got to fix is the supply of energy in this country."
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