Sunday, 25 September 2005

Labour Party Conference - First Day Report

As this years constituency delegate to the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, I thought I would use my blog, to provide a daily update to events and happenings at conference, please note as with all entries on the blog / my website these are my own views and not necessarily the view of any part of the Labour Party.

After a fairly straight forward trip down to conference, only interrupted with a 'terrorist alert' at Victoria which saw myself and my brother Rob (who is a Unison delegate to conference) trek up the underground to change lines, only to trek all the way back down again once the alert had finished a few minutes later.

Upon arrival at conference as the constituency had submitted a contemporary motion, which was disputed by the Conference Arrangements Committee, the first slightly daunting task at conference was to meet with the CAC to discuss the motion.

You enter the room where they are situated, sit at the centre of a horse shoe shaped gathering of the full committee, who introduce themselves, tell you what wrong with your motion, and then allow you a chance to defend your motion and say why it should reach the ballot.

Well in the case of the High Peak motion, it was one which had been circulated about remembering Robin Cooke, it wasn't utterly controversial, and addressed a number of issue that local members felt were worth addressing, so I made our case, asked a question on if others had submitted the same motion, and then left to await the fate of the motion by telephone call later on that day.

Well the call came, and the motion was rejected on the ground that the issues raised were not contemporary, first day over, a good test / introduction to process of conference and plenty to look forward to other the next few days.

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