Labour arrests its 4,000th protester, a 94-year-old lawyer, same conference that calls unions democracy's last line.

…(cont) Inside the same conference, at a packed Stand Up to Racism fringe meeting, delegates heard the far right described as a bigger threat than at any point since the 1930s, and organised labour as the force built to answer it. Public & Commercial Services Union general secretary Fran Heathcote told the room: "The far right are on the march and a serious threat at the ballot box. We need to challenge them, and for trade unions, that means the responsibility to expose Reform's real agenda and the damage it would do to working-class communities."

So one conference produced two facts on the same day. A fringe meeting named organised labour the last defense against fascism. A police operation outside the door added to a proscription count that keeps climbing toward four thousand. The lawyer arrested outside was not accused of planning an attack. The sign in her hands made the same argument a speaker inside was applauded for making at greater length. The government did not have to choose between the two roles it played that day; it played both, on the same conference badge, in the same city, without anyone inside needing to know what was happening at the gate.

The tally is the story now, more than any single arrest in it. Almost four thousand is not a raid; it is a running count, and it grows by the week whether or not the people applauding a union speech ever hear the number. A 94-year-old human rights lawyer is not a security threat under any reading of that word the public would recognize. Fourteen months into that test, the number is the only thing that has grown.