A Brief History of British Party Conferences

What is it all for?

Party conferences serve many functions. Over time they have grown and changed – and, generally, become more open. Power, where there is power to wield, has moved from platform to conference floor. In some cases, this means votes. In others, it means the power to embarrass; Conservative Home Secretaries for example, rarely got an easy ride at their party’s get togethers. This means that leaderships have evolved different ways of attempting to keep the floor ‘on side’. This includes timing – a 9am debate is less likely to be difficult – and taking care to find persuasive speakers to argue the leadership’s case.

Conferences are not just an optional extra. Holding a conference is written into both the Liberal Democrat Constitution and the Labour Rule Book. Conferences appear in the Conservative Constitution too, but here the rules allow cancellation in emergency.

In some parties, conference is the sovereign decision-maker. Votes decide policy, strategy and internal party rules. It was a special Liberal Democrat Conference which agreed the Coalition with the Conservatives in 2010. A special Labour Conference was needed to change its leadership election rules. The policy of revoking Article 50 which appeared in the Lib Dem Manifesto in 2019, now widely seen as misjudged, was not a leadership whim but a decision made at a party conference. The Scottish National Party made a key decision on NATO at its event in 2012, ditching a 30-year-old policy and agreeing that an independent Scotland would want to join the strategic defence alliance. At one point in the voting, fewer than 30 delegates made the difference.

In some other parties, conference is more of a get together. Conservative conferences for example, do not make, or vote on, policy. They do, however, present plenty of pressure points, with fringe meetings (semi-official or unofficial gatherings outside the main conference hall) providing plenty of red meat. It has been a rare Conservative event without several troublesome fringes on Europe, for example.

What do we look like?

One of the most noticeable changes in party conferences has come in presentation. It was common at one time for the platform to be full of leaders and officials – sometimes three solid rows of them. The Soviet Politburo had nothing on the 1960s Labour Party! Today, we are more likely to see a couple of people chairing, and a speaker at a lectern some distance away. Sometimes there are sofas and a chat show-style approach.

Over time, party managers have come to realise that the look of the stage matters. The problem with rows of ‘senior people’ is that disagreement and lack of interest can easily be seen. The viewer was often looking at a group of people going about their work regardless of the hall. Richard Crossman explains it well in his diary entries for 1964: ‘[It was] a dreary morning in the conference hall. But I found myself seated on the platform between Barbara Castle [then Minister for Overseas Development] and Jim Callaghan [then Chancellor of the Exchequer] and as a result I was able to get quite a lot of information. While the Young Socialists’ discussion dragged on, James was telling me of the seriousness of the economic situation’.

Significant moments at British political conferences

1907—First conference of the Labour Party

1918—Labour Party conference agrees new constitution, including individual party members and (original) Clause IV

1957—Aneurin Bevan makes speech against unilateral nuclear disarmament – says it would send government ‘naked into the conference chamber’

1960—Labour conference votes for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Leader Hugh Gaitskell (who disagrees) tells conference he will ‘fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love’.

1963—Resignation of Harold Macmillan turns governing Conservative party conference into a leadership beauty contest

1976—Liberal leader David Steel’s speech disrupted by Young Liberal protests as he talks about need to work with other parties

1976—Chancellor Denis Healey heckled by delegates as he explains plans for IMF loan

1978—Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe dramatically arrives at Liberal Assembly to take seat on platform - despite having been charged with conspiracy to murder and incitement to murder.

1981—Labour Party special conference at Wembley. Constitutional changes. Contributes to breakaway of senior figures to form Social Democratic Party.

1981—Liberal leader David Steel tells members to ‘go back to your constituencies and prepare for Government’

1984—IRA bomb at the Conservative conference hotel in Brighton. Thatcher escapes unscathed but many injured and five die

1985—Neil Kinnock attacks the Militant members of Liverpool City Council in his conference speech.

1988—SDP and Liberal parties hold special conferences to vote on proposed merger. Leads to the setting up of the Liberal Democrats

1994—Tony Blair announces planned change to Clause IV. Major part of move to New Labour

2010—Liberal Democrat special conference agrees coalition with Conservatives

2014—Mark Reckless MP defects from Conservatives to UKIP on stage at UKIP conference

2014—Labour special conference approves recommendations of Collins Review – changes rules of leadership elections

2017—Comedian hands fake P45 to Conservative leader and Prime Minister Theresa May during leader’s speech.

OPEN IN VIEWER

© Press Association

Seniority has not always been a platform criteria either. At one time the Liberal party and then the Lib Dems had an open platform policy. Anyone could sit there. This meant that every now and then there would be vigorous and visible head shaking going on behind a speaker.

Presentation, of course, goes beyond the stage. Conference organisers and marketing professionals know they need to have messages everywhere. In 1986, the Labour Party decided to change its logo to the red rose ahead of the party conference. But making the switch was far from straightforward, as spin doctor Philip Gould explained his book in The Unfinished Revolution: ‘We decided that in addition to the rose, we would give all the delegates peach-coloured wallets to carry their conference documents around in … to match the conference backdrop…and when Peter [Mandelson] and I took them to show Neil and Glenys Kinnock…they retreated, horrified.’ Mandelson reported that Glenys Kinnock told him: “You’ll never persuade the NUM [National Union of Mineworkers] to walk around with these under their arms.”

As parties have professionalised, so the environment of conferences has changed. Increased security, a wealth of lobbyists and special interests and what can look like a media city is a far cry from the early days.

Stepping up to the mic

Party conferences can launch careers or at least give an initial profile boost to an ambitious newcomer or a precocious youngster. William Hague, then a 16-yearold schoolboy, later an MP, party leader and Cabinet member, wowed the much older audience in 1977. Props can help the novice stand out, too. When Edwina Currie, then a local councillor in Birmingham, later an MP and Government minister, made her points on law and order in 1981, she was brandishing a pair of handcuffs. And it is David Cameron’s performance as a leadership candidate at the 2005 Conference which is said to have moved the dial in his favour.

Conferences, however, can be overshadowed, or ruined, by who does or does not turn up. Labour activist Walter Wolfgang was ejected from his seat in the conference hall in 2005 for heckling then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw over the Iraq war, causing much embarrassment all round.

But perhaps the most embarrassing visitor was to the Liberal Assembly in 1978. Jeremy Thorpe had stood down from the party leadership in 1976 over allegations, which then became formal charges of conspiracy to murder and incitement to murder. David Steel became leader. Thorpe remained an MP. In Against Goliath, Steel describes what happened: ‘Jeremy had assured me…that he would not attend the September annual Party Assembly in Southport. He changed his mind… he didn’t just appear but with his usual showmanship, the doors at the back of the hall were flung open and he marched down the crowded aisle….One journalist shrewdly observed [that] Mr Steel shook him warmly by the hand while looking as if he would rather have gripped him warmly by the throat’.

Leadership messages

For party organisers, the leader’s speech is meant to be the high point of the event; the key vehicle for sending messages to the audience, the wider membership and the voters outside. Leaders know the speech is important and can start preparations weeks or even months before delivery.

Most parties choose to schedule the leader’s speech for conference end. Before the days of rolling news, huge efforts also went in to arranging the speech for just before the news bulletin. Labour’s timing tradition was different, with a leader’s slot roughly half way though conference. The slot moved to the end of the event in the last few years.

Whatever the slot, the speech is a high risk, high reward platform for the leader. This has led to some memorable phrases and some conference clashes.

In 1981, Liberal leader David Steel was riding high after his party had formed an alliance with the new Social Democratic Party. The Alliance was scoring highly in the polls while the Conservative government and Labour opposition faced problems. ‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government,’ was his soundbite message. In the 1983 election, the Alliance won just six seats.

In 1985, Labour leader Neil Kinnock decided to confront the Liverpool Labour Party, and more particularly the local Militant Tendency. As former MP Peter Kilfoyle writes in Left Behind: ‘The whole occasion was one of those rarely witnessed in a political lifetime’. Kinnock’s passage is among the most famous of speeches at party conferences: ‘You start with farfetched resolutions. They are then picked into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council – hiring taxis to scuttle around the city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.

“For party organisers, the leader’s speech is meant to be the high point of the event, the key vehicle for sending messages to the audience, the wider membership and the voters outside.”

Towards the back of the hall, Derek Hatton and Tony Mulhearn, Labour and Militant Councillors, shouted ‘liar’. National Executive Member and Liverpool MP Eric Heffer walked off the platform and out of the hall in protest.

Nearly a decade later, Tony Blair was to use the party conference to propose a change to a significant part of the party constitution – the so-called Clause IV. Alastair Campbell’s first volume of diaries explains how, gradually, party staff and senior members were briefed. ‘I told them straight out that the headline from the speech would be ‘Blair scraps Clause IV’. I thought Hilary’s eyes were going to fall out. David gulped and whistled. Murray looked ill’. The change to the Constitution was actually made at a special conference some time later, but this was new party leader Blair using the annual conference platform to make his mark.

Among the most memorable leader’s speeches was Margaret Thatcher’s at conference in 1980. Her government was unpopular. Unemployment was on the rise and there was criticism coming from all sides. ‘For those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media phrase the U turn, I have only one thing to say,’ the then recently-elected Conservative Prime Minister declared: ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning’. Thatcher’s comment was partly a broadside at her internal critics. While the party membership were generally great fans, there were continual stirrings within Parliament.

Not all speeches get through the risks so easily. In 2017, Conservative leader, and then Prime Minister, Theresa May, addressed her party in Manchester shortly after a poor result in a General Election. The speech was marred by a coughing fit, letters falling off a backdrop and a comedian running onto the stage to hand over a mock P45. May never really recovered.

The future

The Coronavirus pandemic means parties have had to cancel Spring events and look at how things might run in the Autumn. Virtual elements are being considered, which are clearly more challenging for those parties that make decisions by delegate vote. Large-scale face-to-face conferences are unlikely to disappear though. Parties will not want to give away their fundraising and profile-raising opportunity of the year. So next year at the seaside then.