Conferences past
I shall miss Blackpool.. •
Jane McKerron
I shall miss Blackpool this year; mostly because no editor — short-sighted, unimaginative fellows that they are — has thought to dispatch me northwards to report on the comrades' internecine strife, the state of the donkeys on the sands, the popularity of the illuminated trams, or the quality of the Henekeys champagne by the glass. I shall not be digging out my old bent pin for the whelk stalls or dusting devyn my faded crêpe number for the Mayor's Reception. Clive Jenkins's cocktail party (a Pretty exclusive and well-lubricated occasion, that) will whirl on without me, as indeed will the IPC party — Labour's equivalent of a Lady Pamela Berry soirée — where Cabinet Ministers, visiting social democratic nobs, political groUpies, quarrelsome economists and nymPhets from Granada Television squash cosily together with favoured men from the media in some suite at the Imperial Hotel.
I shall not, of course, be missed, although I was once described by some bright spark on the Guardian as the only reminder of Keir Hardie as I sat scribbling away in the Conference Hall• in a flat cap bought in a boutique in Chelsea. But that was Scarborough and that was a long time ago. Reminiscent of a bumper, once-yearly edition of Coronation Street, the stars of the Labour Party Conference would indeed be missed. They never let you down. Jim Callaghan's avuncular and reassuring address to the most restless of audiences has become an art form in itself. The Prime Minister's requisite Canter through the Government's record of tribulation and disaster, ending up with some brilliant tecbnological triumph, such as the fantastic success of our aluminium smelters — a great favourite a few years back — is clever stuff. Mrs Castle, her well coiffured red hair glinting aggressively under the spotlights, will be back in favour this year. In Place of Strife Will be forgiven and forgotten as she indulges in the ever popular Labour Party sport of consultant-bashing at a time when the National Health Service is finally cracking up. Ian Mikardo, the Mayor Daley of the NEC, will be there as usual, impassively puffing at his pipe, Showing no signs of strain from those late-night cornpositing sessions he's been conducting in the smoke-filled back rooms. Miss Joan Lestor Will no doubt make her usual worthy reply to a suitably worthy subject and manage to radiate a certain rude health into the somewhat jaded atmosphere. Mr Wedgwood Benn will take it all very seriously, but what he will actually say, or be allowed to say, from the platform will be the interesting twist to the plot. Conference will, of course, be treated to a lecture from the Chancellor, a comparative newcomer to the Platform, but second to none in his ability to convince us that there are worse times just around the corner.
Gone, sadly, will be the silent figure of Tom Driberg, wearily absorbing the scene through his dark glasses and recalling perhaps, as the debates drone on, past, more stimulating, discussions in Bayswater with the Sitwells, under the chandeliers of Emerald Lady Cunard, or over dinner at Arlington House.
There are the serious memories of Labour Party Conferences. Nye Bevan's startling and courageous conversion to the nuclear deterrent with his "I will not go naked into the Conference Chamber" speech which brought tears of shock and dismay to the left in 1957; Hugh Gaifskell's brilliant and equally courageous attack on unilateralism, "we will fight, and fight and fight again to save the Party we love", that brought tears of admiration from the right in 1960. Those two lost leaders were unique; no one has since stirred Conference to such emotions. Harold Wilson did make a brave try in his "New Jerusalem" speech. Science, it seemed, was to produce the new socialism. He was very convincing, but even in my most dedicated left-wing days, when Labour Party Conferences drew me like Mecca to Blackpool, Brighton and Scarborough, with Tribune as my prayer mat, my memories of those days by the seaside, whether as reporter or observer, are essentially comic.
There was the time when, locked out of my Brighton hotel at one in the morning, I discovered who my real 'friends were. Those passes made earlier in the Conference bars, at Fabian tea parties or half-way along the pier were soon forgotten when it became clear that I actually had not got a bed for the night. Yawns grew prodigious and backs scurried into the lifts of the Grand Hotel. After all, what would the Chief Whip think, should there be some unfortunate encounter over our early morning tea trays? I finally bedded down in a child's bunk in a boarding house in Kemp Town, in the company of a couple both working for the Labour Party machine.
Queueing one afternoon outside a phone box at the Winter Gardens, Blackpool, I made the acquaintance of a junior Minister whom I failed to recognise. Later, realising my mistake, I apologised, saying he was much too goodlooking to be a politician. Such flattery could have got me anywhere. Our next encounter was at a pretentious restaurant in Swallow Street where he told me, quite seriously, that he felt the time had come for him to take a mistress and from his observation of me at the Winter Gardens, he,had decided I was the ideal candidate. I turned the offer down. He had indeed considerable charm but I did not, I said, feel we knew each other well enough. Heaay though our encounter at the Blackpool telephone kiosk had been, I did not believe it was adequate to sustain what he would have described as a 'meaningful relationship'. When I visited his pied-a-terre later that evening, after the Division Bell had sounded, for a quick 'no hard-feelings' brandy, I noticed a pay telephone and a prominent, crude, reproduction of Van Gogh's sunflowers. I felt I had, for once, made the right decision.
Brighton (this time) and an earlier vintage: I remember being crushed together with a then member of the Cabinet, during the last waltz in the peculiarly dreary baronial setting of the Mayor's Ball. He asked me to join him for the night. I refused — again due to the brevity of our encounter, only preceded by holding hands during the hokey-kokey.
Helped by the levels of ozone and alcohol, the Labour Party Conference has always been as good a picking-up area as the grandest of
Scottish grouse moors after a successful shoot. Any woman, with reasonable presence, the regulation number of teeth and not short of a limb or two, stands a good chance of at least one proposition. The young and predatory can pick their quarry with the greatest of ease. I remember one ambitious bird's technique was to invite the most promising and easily flattered of MPs to give her some advice on her next selection speech. This, of course, had to be conducted in the privacy of her boudoir, with a generous amount of drink to encourage the required mood of general creativity. It worked. She now has a safe seat.
I could never take the Labour Party Conference seriously in terms of party policy. I agree with Phillip Snowden, who wrote in his autobiography, "Conferences will talk; let them talk. Governments, including Labour governments, dispose of Conference resolutions." They have understandable reasons for doing so; even more now than then. Reality lies in successful combination with Western neighbours in combating inflation and curbing the external deficit. Such serious matters cannot be affected by unilateral resolutions emanating from the English seaside Munich has its Fasching. I think the Labour Party Conference should become more of an emotional blood-letting; a sort of prolonged New Year's Eve, ending up with the 'Red Flag' in place of 'Auld Lang Syne'. It is a time for emotional outbursts and quiet private debate; a time for camaraderie and catching up on the gossip. It is extraordinarily difficult to evaluate. It is both completely necessary and anachronistic; idealistic and rigged, comradely and malicious. There is nothing quite like it.
I shall miss Blackpool this year.
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