How the Mirror's events at Labour Conference embodied Andy Burnham's 'quiet patriotism'

At a party in the bowels of Liverpool conference centre, after the Prime Minister’s big speech on Tuesday, Andy Burnham was in reflective mood. There he explained what he had been trying to “summon from my dad” during his long stint on the main stage. “I was invoking his quiet patriotism,” he said, addressing a reception held by the charitable foundation This Day. “Patriotism that comes from the bottom up… steeped in the values of togetherness.” In a quiet rebuke to the men in paramilitary masks who think they can bully our national story, he called on the crowd to find “people of decent heart and good values” and to mobilise them. “Gather them together, face the same way and say no, this is us, this is what we stand for.” There was a golden thread running through Labour conference this year, and it was summed up in four words in the PM’s more public speech – “Get behind each other”. For us at the Daily Mirror it started on Saturday night at Birkenhead, celebrating the social revolution on the Left Bank of the Mersey, and it carried all the way to the ‘Community Power’ bus parked on Liverpool waterfront. This year we held three big fringe events, and took part in many more with partners including UCL Policy Lab, Power to Change, We're Right Here and Locality. Our theme – across our different projects, from Britain Talks to Island of Strangers – was that a small minority of people are hijacking Britain’s idea of ourselves. And we want our country back. Like the Prime Minister, we see people pulling together every day. In Stourbridge, he told the conference, “I watched a whole community getting stuck in to support those whose homes had been burnt down. Proof the British people haven’t changed. Still as great as they ever were.” At our first event at Future Yard, in Birkenhead, we screened two of our new Island of Strangers films. We were joined at the screening by the Fasi family, who star in the Bute film. Abbie, a Bute islander now engaged to Abdul Fasi, said: “This film has given people like me and the majority of people the opportunity to show, we do welcome people into the country and we’re grateful for them. We’ve not only changed their lives, but they’ve changed our lives too.” After the screening, we visited the revolutionary Joy – which is reinventing mental health for a modern age – via a walking tour led by Liam Kelly of Make CIC. And wherever we looked we saw an often-underestimated community of people getting behind each other. The following day, we held a packed-out fringe meeting to persuade people to sign up to our new ‘political tinder’ platform ‘Britain Talks’ – aimed an bringing the country back together ‘one conversation at a time’. We screened our short ‘When Tracy met Ross’ film, featuring soap rivals Tracy Brabin and Ross Kemp tackling the north-south divide and getting serious about our broken politics. With an expert panel including Mayor of West Yorks Tracy, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy, Jo Cox’s widower Brendan Cox, Lord Alf Dubs and Imam Adam Kelwick, we explained our plan to deploy tech that, for once, is bringing people together. Lisa Nandy spoke powerfully about how good people must "fight for the country we believe in”, acknowledging her town of Wigan is on the frontlines. “We are a working-class town where for over 100 years we've always been targeted by the far right,” she said. "Working-class, white, British people have fought off the fascists over and over again every time they've tried to get a foothold in our town. So, I know that people are decent, because I see it every day with my own eyes. But something has changed, because a couple of years ago when we had the riots in Southport, a lot of my constituents were down there. “People who when I first became the MP, would never have gone near a demonstration like that. And it worries me, because they're not the same as the racist thugs who've always come to towns like mine and try to cause trouble. They're people who don't see themselves heard in our national story. They don't see their contribution is recognised or valued. Thank goodness for all of these people on the panel who've been fighting for the better country that we know that we are.” Brendan Cox said: “There's something fundamentally gone wrong in our country when we have blackshirt paramilitaries on our streets in balaclavas, when Jewish people are too scared to identify themselves as Jewish in case they are attacked in the street, when our Muslim friends face not just hostility from extremists, but increasingly from mainstream politicians who even question whether they should be able to pray. “When you are responding to awful events like the killings in Southport and the response to that is to try to burn asylum seekers and refugees to death in a hotel. When you're seeing on the streets of Belfast people going street to street and burning down the houses of those people with a different skin colour… I think it does require a more fundamental response.” The following day, the Mirror held a lively pub quiz at the legendary dockers club, The Casa Bar. An excuse to have a bit of fun with the wider Mirror family, it was also to highlight this column’s Save Our Social Clubs campaign, with our friends at the 21st Century Social Clubs. On Monday, I chaired a fringe for the National Youth Agency about how we can rebuild a sector decimated by 14 years of Austerity. As well as hearing from rising star of the Labour Party, Natasha Irons MP, it was impressive to hear from 19-year-old panellist Anna Gibson, who has been advising councils up and down the country. From there, it was off to chair a panel with the inspirational Liam Kelly, the chair of the Birkenhead Pride in Place board. And we were delighted that the Secretary of State for Communities – and Queen of the North – Angela Rayner, chose the event for her only fringe appearance. “The work you are doing is helping local people to thrive and boosting the economy in ways people can see,” the Communities Secretary said. “We’re all here to tackle the same problems. We want people to have the hope and the belief that their neighbourhoods will be better than they are today.” It takes courage to tell a different story about Britain, but it was a story we heard from every platform, and very clearly from the Prime Minister himself. Even so, the quote of the week goes to Tracy Brabin, who spoke out against misogynist abuse at our fringe event. “If we are afraid, they win,” she said. "I know that the majority of the hate I get online is bots. The rest of it is losers in their Y-fronts in their mum's back bedroom eating Pot Noodles, who would never say that to my face.”