Or doesn’t. Here follow my thoughts on Labour party conference.

I was in the invidious position of attending for work reasons, meaning that I had to look after a stall and two fringes, plus staff and service users. Attending for work also meant that when I had a moment free to attend other people’s meetings, I had to go to the worthy ones about young people’s policy rather than the party political ones I wanted to. Oh well. The one I really enjoyed was a breakfast meeting featuring Howard Williamson calling for youth workers to have £50 in their back pocket for young people’s financial crises, whilst criticising Welsh education policy over bacon and eggs as Jane Davidson AM looked on in bemusement, as we’d all just agreed how much worse were English policies!

One of my highlights of the week was catching up with old friends and making new ones, especially at the B4L do on Wednesday night. Tom I’d already met (if briefly) so his forthright debating style was no surprise, especially as he appears to get plenty of arguing practice with an old friend of mine who’s now a better friend of his, Kirsty McNeill. The revelation that he joined the party because of the war, to make up for those leaving, did take me aback somewhat. Andrew from B4L was entirely as I’d expected - a co-ordinator and facilitator, as befits his bringing-together role online, who got us all in one place and let the fireworks commence. Skuds (calling people by their online handles rather than their names is an occupational hazard of meeting them in real life) was a strightforward Labour guy, one you’d want on your side when somehting needed doing. Damien (PG) was the real surprise: I’d never bracketed him in my mind with us B4L types, possibly because he doesn’t post about politics with a capital P. I certainly wasn’t expecting the contrarian that he is, though why that would be, given that all the scientists I know with a thirst to communicate their disciplines with the rest of the non-scientific world are, I don’t know. At times it felt as if we were back in a tutorial without a tutor, pushing and being pushed to justify our beliefs within the bounds of logic. Re-reading that, I make the evening sound less pleasureable than it was: it was immensely good fun, and bloody hell, could you tell it was a convocation of people well used to the space to put their views out there in their own time on a near-daily basis! (Including myself in that, obviously)

I also made it to a couple of non-work fringes, notably to see Shimon Peres (Jo has a great picture which she’ll no doubt put up soon) at Labour Friends of Israel on Tuesday night. He spoke of his gratitude for the support of the UK, and the Labour Party in particular, for a secure Israel and for the right of the Palestinians to a democratic viable state. Looking around the room, it was a who’s-who of young Labour wannabees; uncomfortably so for Jo and I, clearly unusual in attending from the left of the party, but in full support of the agenda of LFI, despite it so often being seen as a stepping-stone for ambitious rightwingers. I did try to get to Labour Friends of Iraq, but the EOC fringe I was at earlier was so entertaining (as Trevor Phillips and a woman from the Muslim women’s organisation An Nisa went at the issue of religious discrimination hammer and tongs) that I only made it late, by which time Jo was nearly nodding off at the over-staffed panel, so we didn’t stay long.

Other things I enjoyed - well, being on the conference floor for Jo’s impassioned speech about lesbian and gay equality was an amazing experience; thanks to the lovely Labour staffer who responded to my pleas for a pass upgrade so I could hear her in person rather than on the telly outside the hall. I have rarely been so proud, and stood there with tears in my eyes listening. It made such a difference from the leadership-mandated claptrap in low voices mumbled at the podium that was the experience of listening to most other delegates. The response to her speech was instant - congratulations came hard and fast from all sides, including from the leader of my union, Tony Woodley, who came up to shake her hand. I was proud to be no more and no less than Jo Salmon’s girlfriend that morning.

And lowlights? Well, despite being organised and getting our pass applications in June, a total of nine hours were spent collectively by my staff and young women in the queue for pass pick-ups: it would have been more had I not queue-jumped them, to the understandable fury of others in the deceptively-short but virtually-unmoving line. Sorry, unfortunate delegates without a forceful former PPC to make your case: in my defence, they were teenage mums due to meet Tessa Jowell in fifteen minutes’ time.

I also hate the layout of the secure zone, with the Brighton Centre and Grand on one side of the road and a sodding bridge over a blocked-off side street to get to the main fringe venues in the Metropole, meaning that if your feet didn’t hurt from standing at a stall all day, they would by the time you had unneccessarily traipsed up and down over a bridge *beneath which there was no traffic because the road was closed* four or five times a day. Apart from that, the security was fine and as unobtrusive as several thousand bored coppers who can’t quite believe that this is what they joined up for can be.

Tom has already talked about the idiocy of some of the advertising, so I won’t. I can’t type up for you the variety of anti-abortion literature I received, as, not being as self-restrained as him, I tore it up and threw it straight back. They can sod off to Tory conference. Why they think they’d get sympathy for their views when they use words like “Jewess” and talk about abortion as the second holocaust, I don’t know. And the trashing of the Countryside Alliance stall didn’t receive the press it deserved. Why were they allowed security passes after their antics last year? (Permit me a small smile that the guys who use invasions of parliament and dead horses to make their case got a small taste of their own medicine).

Blair’s speech was, for me, a low light. I’m probably at the closest point politically that I have ever been to him (relatively speaking: I’m not actually that close in real terms, just that I have been further from him in the past). Waffle-filled nonsense, much of it, though the public services bits weren’t too awful (we both want excellent services for all, he thinks he can get them through choice, I’m not so sure, as rich people have only ever chosen excellent services anyway, so why not just resolve to create excellent services rather than the over-capacity and waste of “choice”?) and the recognition that reducing anti-social behaviour means creating opportunities for young people to have fun in constructive ways was welcome. No matter how wrong he was on Iraq, he’s now right - it is our job to stay there and support the Iraqi people - democrats, students, trade unionists, workers - in their struggle for democracy.

But the bit that infuriated me was the peroration: how dare a Labour prime minister say (and I paraphrase) “The world is changing. We must give up all pretence that we can influence that change and just ride with it”. How dare he imply that Labour would have been forced to make at least some of Thatcher’s reforms - what, so we would have sacked the miners more nicely?!? Taken away the rights of the unions with a smile?!? And created a housing crisis and a permanent underclass with one hand whilst handing over bars of Dairy Milk with the other?!?

If we’re Labour, then we should never retreat from the battlefield or give up the means to effect change - it’s our job to go in to bat for the interests of the people we represent. If not that, then what are we for?