Heaton & Lostock Labour Party - 2004 Annual Report

Secretary's Annual Report 2004

Introduction

2004 was the first full year of the Heaton & Lostock Labour Party and quite a successful one it was too. I think that, in our ward at least, we did reasonably well in the local elections, our meetings have been well attended and interesting, with guest speakers and discussions covering a wide range of topics. Our finances too have been healthy and on a better footing since Noelene fully took over as Treasurer. The social side of the Branch has also been excellent and despite our undoubted political differences we remain a group of friends as well as comrades.

Nationally, a great deal has happened and there have been a number of "downs" as well as "ups" with the Iraq war continuing to be on the deficit side. Thankfully we didn't significantly lose further ground in the European Parliament elections and we've ended the year considerably ahead of the Tories nationally, with Michael Howard pleasingly making no better a job of leading them than Duncan-Smith. It's been an incredible year for Ruth with two promotions, ending up holding one of the key portfolios and one on which there will be a lot of focus in the coming general election.

2004 The Year

TWhen looking back at a year it's too easy to forget what happened early on and concentrate on the last couple of months. But were some highly controversial issues.

January:	The introduction of variable top-up fees for English universities with the Government only winning the final vote by five and The Hutton Report into the death of weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly. The Government escaped censure in the latter with the BBC receiving the brunt of the criticism, leading the Chairman and Director General to resign. Tony Blair had to admit that he’d been wrong about Ken Livingstone when the latter was readmitted to the Party.
February:	Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin said that the Tories would cut public spending from 42% to 40% of GDP without affecting Health or Education but, not surprisingly, was very vague about how the savings would be achieved other than by “cutting waste and red tape”!
March:	The month was dominated by “non-UK” events relating to terrorism and the Iraq war. There were bomb attacks in Spain, killing 200 people and it’s believed that this directly influenced the general election there with the “anti-war” Socialists taking control.
April:	Tony Blair announced that there would be a referendum on the EU Constitution, taking a massive U turn; however, he didn’t say when it would be held. There were allegations that he had been pushed into this by the Murdoch press in return for continuing support at the next election. But only a cynic would think that, wouldn’t they?! Beverley Hughes, the Immigration Minister, resigned after admitting that she "unwittingly" misled people about a suspected visa scam and 52 former British Ambassadors wrote to Tony Blair criticising the policy on Iraq and Britain’s subservience to the USA.
May:	To big celebrations in mainland Europe, ten new countries joined the EU; shamefully, the occasion was virtually ignored here. In the Commons, Tony Blair was hit by a condom of purple flour thrown by a Fathers For Justice campaigner.
June:	There was no doubt that we did poorly in the European Parliament elections. We lost six seats, the Tories, however, lost eight but UKIP gained ten and promptly fell out over who should be their leader. In the NW we were reduced to three MEPs – Gary, Terry Wynn and Arlene McCarthy and Gary was reappointed Leader of the British Socialist Group. The local elections were equally disastrous with us losing control of a number of towns and cities, including Bolton.
July:	The Butler Report on the UK intelligence used to justify the Iraq war was published. It concluded that the intelligence was now in doubt and later in the year, the Iraq Survey Group said that there had been no stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq when the war had been called. Tony Blair nominated his old friend and ally, Peter Mandelson to be an EU Commissioner.
August:	It seemed that everyone went on holiday in August because nothing in particular appeared to have happened. Oliver Letwin accused Gordon Brown of “clobbering homeowners by failing to increase the threshold for inheritance tax, despite the rising cost of houses”. Later it was revealed that less than 5% of the population pay this tax. The UK Information Commissioner warned about the proposed introduction of ID cards into the UK, saying that the country could “sleepwalk into a surveillance society” because of them.
September:	Ruth was appointed to the Cabinet Office as Alan Milburn’s “understudy” for the general election campaign and we won the Hartlepool by-election with the Tories falling to fourth place behind UKIP. The opinion polls found the Tories less popular under Howard than under Duncan-Smith and Tony Blair announced that he would be standing down “some time after the next general election”. Charles Kennedy said at the Lib-Dems’ conference “Dissent, democracy, debate must never be beaten by bullets, barbarism and bombs. But we should also remember this: we do a disservice to democracy if we simply meet terror with terror”.
October:	In Iraq the war continued to “drag on” with Ken Bigley being kidnapped and subsequently murdered; the Black Watch were sent to Fallujah so that the US Army could demolish it and kill yet thousands more innocent civilians. In the NE the referendum on a Regional Assembly was resoundingly lost and this has effectively scuppered debate on this issue as well as plans for a plebiscite in other regions, including the NW.
November:	The US voters made the worst possible choice, returning “Dubya” as President and soon after a ferocious assault was carried out on Fallujah with the Red Cross estimating 6,000 civilian deaths. Yassar Arafat died and Tony Blair announced a middle east conference in London early in 2005. The government announced plans to ban smoking in most enclosed public places but stopped at a complete ban, proposed in Scotland and so successful in Ireland. Amongst huge protests legislation to at last ban “hunting with dogs” was passed with massive support from MPs. How well the legislation will work in practice and how effectively it will be policed remains to be seen.
December:	Just before Christmas and only days after speaking at our Branch meeting Ruth was appointed Britain’s youngest ever female Cabinet Minister, taking over at Education from Charles Clark as he replaced David Blunkett following his resignation over a visa application for his ex-lover’s nanny.

It was quite a year and as we look forward to a "fun-filled" 2005 with a possible election in May. It's unlikely that the next twelve months will be any less eventful.

What About Us?

Away from the world stage we continue to work away at local level as best as we are able. We successfully completed our first year as the Heaton & Lostock Labour Party with the local elections being the main event.

Local Elections 2004

In a much-criticised all out, all postal, ballot, held at the same time as the European Parliament elections, we lost heavily in Bolton, the Tories failed to gain ground and the Lib-Dems took control as they have 21 seats to our 20 and the Tories 19. The Council couldn't be more balanced (or "hung"?). There were allegations of fraud in several of the wards where we lost seats and it was believed that, had there been a traditional ballot box vote, we would have remained the largest party. Sadly, our own Bob Howarth lost his seat and Clifford took over as Labour Group Leader. However, we held an excellent celebration party in October to mark and thank Bob for the decades of fantastic public service he has given and the immense difference his leadership has made to the people of our town.

The local election result in our ward was:

Alan Rushton (Con)	3,485	Barbara Sharples (Lab)	1,043
Bob Allen (Con)	3,445	John Gillatt (Lab)	1,027
Colin Shaw (Con)	3,419	Chris Macpherson (Lib-Dem)	988
Charles Cooper (Lib-Dem)	1,080	Ghulam Raja (Lab)	806
Tom Swarbrick (Lib-Dem)	1,046	Turnout	53%

It was a bit disappointing that two of us were beaten by two of the Lib-Dems but it shows that we will be neck and neck with them in the future. My sincere thanks to Barbara and Ghulam for being excellent candidates and to all the members who organised and helped deliver the thousands of leaflets.

At the Branch AGM in January, Graham was elected Chair, John Secretary, Eve and Sheila Vice-Chairs, Pat Membership Secretary, Sheila, Pat, Craig and Graham CLP Delegates, Terry LGC Delegate, Terry and Gwen REC Delegates and, latterly, Noelene Treasurer.

I very much hope that all of these who are able will continue to serve the Branch in 2005 as I think we have a very good and effective team.

Our Membership in 2004

Membership of the new Branch remains at approximately XXX and we are still the largest Branch in the Bolton West CLP. There have been a few new members to the Branch in the last year but most are either people transferring in from elsewhere in the country or have been discovered as having been wrongly allocated to other Branches when the new ward parties came into effect 18 months ago.

Fund-raising

The Branch barbecue remains our main social event of the year and was, once again despite the wettest summer in 93 years (the BEN said so, so it must be true!), held very successfully in August, raising about £XXX for our funds.

The Branch's main fundraiser continues to be the Heaton & Lostock Labour Party Stakeholder Society (100 Club). It makes a major contribution to our funds and we have been quite successful at recruiting new members this year, several from outside the Branch. We have informally set a target of raising £X,XXX towards Ruth Kelly's re-election campaign and that should hopefully be achieved as long as a general election isn't held too soon!

Branch funds currently (end of December 2004) stand at almost £X,XXX and we were able to fully fund our activities during the year.

The celebration party for Bob, although not billed as a fundraiser, nevertheless made a small contribution to our account, thanks to the generosity of members who attended.

Branch Meetings

Branch meetings have been generally well attended with XX to XX members usually being present. We've been very fortunate in that several members have continued to offer their homes as venues and my special thanks to Ian and Sheila, Alan and Joyce, Pauline, Anne and Leilia for both the use of their homes and their hospitality.

We look forward to continuing to rotate our meetings between members' houses and maybe, if the summer this year is rather better than in 2004, we'll even have an outdoor meeting as Deane-cum-Heaton once did in 2002.

We would like to continue the practice of Branch meetings being occasions for us to participate in political discussion and debate and 2004 was a very good year in this respect. We managed to have either a speaker or a topic for debate at all of our meetings:

We look forward to continuing to rotate our meetings between members houses and maybe, if the summer this year is as good as that in 2003, we'll even have a outdoor meeting as Deane-cum-Heaton once did in 2002.

January - Gary Titley, MEP - To Boldly go to €uroland!

February - Lesley Bostock - The Bolton Credit Union

March - Cllr. - Bob Howarth - That Council Tax Increase

May - Janet Rae - Overdevelopment in Heaton

July - Phillipa Shaw - A New Anti-Discrimination Organisation

September - Gary Titley, MEP - The EU Constitution

October - Branch Debate - The Life & Soul of the Party

November - James Frith and Keith Bowes - A Third Term & The 2004 Conference

December - Ruth Kelly, MP - A Third Labour Government

We are very much looking forward to hearing from our very own Clifford Morris, Bolton Labour Group Leader, at the AGM.

Most gratifying has been the vigour and enthusiasm with which members have entered into the discussions regardless of whether or not there has been a speaker.

Members are urged to think about the topics they believe we should be discussing and all suggestions for guest speakers will be most welcome. Our Chair is very good at twisting people's arms up their backs to come along and address us. He does it ever so gently!

Our last meeting of the year, in December, was very special with Joyce and Alan laying on a magnificent buffet to celebrate the year's end and to enable us to look forward to the year ahead in the spirit of comradeship that we genuinely do share. Our very sincere thanks to them for their sterling work and wonderful generosity.

Heaton & Lostock Online

I've managed to keep the Branch's Internet Web site (http://www.boltonwest.org) reasonably up to date and shortly after each Branch meeting there is usually a summary of what took place and a link to any talk given by a guest speaker. The updating process is a bit like painting the Forth Bridge and I'm rapidly running out of server space, so quite a lot of the historic stuff from the 1997 and 2001 general elections will soon have to be ditched. But with a new general election on the horizon, maybe that's not a bad thing.

I continue to get responses to the site, although not all are complimentary! However, all messages left in the guest book are left there for at least six months regardless of their content. We've had almost 7,100 visitors since the counter was reset in July 2001 with about 1,100 hits in the year just gone.

Thanks

As Secretary I'm happy and proud to have served the Branch for another year but it would have been impossible for me to carry out my job without the help and support of very many Party members. I would therefore like to especially thank Graham, Sheila, Eve, Pat the other Branch Officers, the members who deliver the Branch meeting notices month on month and all those ordinary members without whose help we would have been a pointless debating society.

Most of all, and as always, I'd like to thank Noelene, my wife, who has not only performed the role of Treasurer better than any before but has held the purse strings even closer than Terry used to and has supported me throughout the year.

Thank you and best wishes for 2005.

John Gillatt Branch Secretary
January 2005