The Heaton & Lostock Labour Party A Members' Branch of Bolton West Constituency Labour Party

Annual Report 2008

Introduction

In 2008 the Heaton & Lostock Labour Party has continued to be a successful and active Branch, making a significant contribution to the Party's activities not just in our own Constituency but in Bolton generally.

Attendance at Branch meetings has "remained steady" and whilst it would always be good to get more members involved at our monthly gatherings we have nevertheless had some good meetings, especially on the occasions when we have met together with our neighbours in the Smithills Branch. Only the December meeting, held jointly with Smithills, was a disappointment in that the speaker was ill, there was heavy snow on the day of the meeting and only a small number of members at Pauline's house. However, the mince pies were delicious! We've continued to have a variety of guest speakers and discussions covering a wide range of topics. Our finances remain healthy and we have been repaid half of the large loan that we made to the Bolton West CLP at the end of 2007.

As in three years out of four, the main political event of the year was the local elections. Despite a night of disaster for the Party just about everywhere else in the country our vote in Heaton & Lostock held up well with us coming a good second to the Tories and the Lib-Dems trailing in third place. In Bolton generally we made a further gain in the election and this combined with Richard Sylvester, Councillor for Smithills moving from the Lib-Dems to Independent and then to us strengthened our position as the largest party with our own Clifford Morris continuing as Leader of the Council.

Nationally the year has had its ups and downs with it seeming to "be all up" for Gordon Brown as Leader and rather nasty whisperings that he should be replaced. The Tories climbed to an almost 20% lead in the opinion polls in the summer but then everything changed. With the near collapse of the banking system and the economic catastrophe that seems to have befallen us, Gordon's experience at handling the economy came to the fore as the Government implemented policies which will hopefully allow us to avoid the worst of the recession and bring us out of it quicker than would have otherwise been the case. At the end of the year the Tory lead was down to 4%.

In Bolton West we were shocked at our MP, Ruth Kelly's revelation at the Labour Party Conference that she would be standing down from the Government to "spend more time with her family". In Ruth's case that euphemism for having to resign having been caught with one's fingers in the till just doesn't apply and it seems that she simply does want to spend more time with her growing family at an important stage in her children's lives. However, many of us were very disappointed that she decided to not stand again at the next general election. As a result we are now going through the complicated procedure of choosing her successor as the Labour Candidate for Bolton West.

The end of another era has been brought about the announcement by Gary Titley, our own Branch member and friend, MEP for 20 years, that he will also stand down at the next Euro-elections, taking place in June 2009. Many, many tributes have been paid to Gary and I cannot hope to match them. I will say, however, that we could not have hoped for a better MEP and that we will miss so much the very interesting, informative and inspiring talks that he has given at our meetings

2008 The Year

Here are just a few of the highs and lows of 2008, in no particular chronological order:

      10p rate of income tax abolished - this produced such an outcry that there had to be a very expensive (£2.7 billion) climb-down to compensate many of the losers.

      Northern Rock was taken into public ownership (yes - let's hear it for public ownership!) in February to stop it going under. Although at the time this seemed to be a very major event later happenings were to dwarf this acquisition completely.

      Elections were, on the whole not especially good news for us in 2008. Our performances, with shining examples such as Red Bolton the exception, were pretty dismal in the local elections and we are, nationally, now significantly behind the Tories and only just ahead of the Lib-Dems when it comes to numbers of Councillors. Not too good for a governing party but something which often happens when one party has a sustained period of power nationally.

To compound the gloom, barking mad Boris Johnson beat Ken Livingstone in the London Mayoral race and we had a string of by-election defeats, most notably at Crewe and Nantwich and Glasgow East, although we were encouraged in that we managed to hold on to another Scottish seat at the Glenrothes by-election.

      During the summer there were grumblings and even open calls from some disloyal activists for there to be a Leadership election with Scotland Office Minister David Cairns resigning. He had also been the front man for the Glasgow East by election and made it clear he couldn't remain a minister while Gordon Brown remained Prime Minister.

But the nascent revolt was crushed by the elephant in the room; the deteriorating state of the economy and in the end the only Cabinet resignation was that of our own Ruth Kelly and that really was for "personal reasons".

      Gordon Brown seemed to step up a gear at both the Party Conference and afterwards, really taking the fight to the Tories and Lib-Dems and bringing Peter Mandelson back from Brussels as Industry Minister.

      There was a lot of hoo-hah about the Police raid on the offices and home of the Tory MP Damien Green but how many "real" people care at all about something like that when the world economy is going down the toilet!

      In November we had the best and possibly most important good news of the year with Barak Obama achieving a landslide victory in the US Presidential election. To me it was the American equivalent of 1st May 1997 but let's hope that his term of office doesn't culminate in the sort of disappointment we eventually felt during Tony Blair's Prime Ministership.

      The Government, it seems, has finally given up the idea of detaining people without trial for longer than the already lengthy 28 days without trial. After only just getting it through the Commons with the help of some strange bedfellows in the form of the Ulster Unionists, the measure was heavily defeated in the Lords and with events more important to real people, such as jobs, savings, possible loss of their homes coming to the fore, it seems that this measure has been quietly dropped.

      However, "it's the economy stupid" as Bill Clinton said, which has been the only real issue since the summer and the way in which Gordon Brown has dealt with the problems brought about by the excesses of unbridled capitalism has lead the world, even if, unlike his namesake Flash Gordon, he hasn't actually saved the world. Not yet anyway.

What About Us?

Out of the spotlight of the world stage we continue to work away at local level as best as we can. We successfully completed another year as the Heaton & Lostock Labour Party and carried out a very successful local election campaign with our members helping out in several other Bolton West wards.

Our result in Heaton & Lostock was pretty good – much, much better than in the country as a whole and ahead of many of the other Bolton wards in terms of the swing vote. We did lose some ground compared with 2007 but we are still ahead of our 2006 vote and seemingly increasing year on year. I can’t promise that we’ll win next time but….. Overall in Bolton we gained one seat (from the Tories), the Tories gained one and the Lib-Dems were the real losers. Labour remains in de-facto control with Clifford Morris continuing as Leader of the Council.

With Richard Sylvester joining the Labour Group the present the Council is now:

Labour 28

Tories 23

Lib-Dems 9

At the Branch AGM in January several familiar faces appeared once again - Graham was elected Chair; John, Secretary; Noelene, Treasurer; Bob and Leilia, Vice-Chairs, Pat Membership Secretary; Rafiq, Bob, Terry and Clifford, CLP Delegates; Rafiq, LGC Delegate; Terry and John, REC Delegates. I very much hope that all of these who are able will continue to serve the Branch in 2009 as I think we continue to have a very good and effective team, although a few more players would be very welcome.

Our Membership in 2008

There has been an improvement in the updating system from the Membership Unit and we now get quarterly reports once more. "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut suscipit nulla sit amet arcu. Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed orci magna, pulvinar in, iaculis nec, vulputate eget, lacus. Vestibulum tempor justo sed turpis. Nam varius. Sed enim. Aenean eget felis. Cras volutpat feugiat erat. Donec quis dolor". In fact we have had several new members in the last year, including "Duis metus dolor aliquam" .

Very sadly George Kelly passed away towards the end of the year. He was a unique individual, a regular attendee at Branch meetings and during his relatively short period of Labour Party membership; he'd previously been a member of the Tory Party; he became one very much on the left of the Party, especially on economic issues, on which he often spoke at great length. He will be very sadly missed.

I would like to thank Pat Walker who has continued as Membership Secretary and "Leaflet Commissar". Without her things would be even more chaotic than they sometimes appear to be and certainly all those local election leaflets wouldn't have got out to those who, along with Pat herself, did the actual delivering!

Fund-raising

The Branch barbecue remains our main social event of the year. After a break in 2007, as a result of Anne's death, we resumed last year at the event's traditional home - 8 Coverdale Avenue. In wonderful weather during an otherwise awful summer (it was promoted as the "It Must Stop Raining Soon" Barbecue - and it did!) it was very well attended and Graham cooked his heart out over the barbecue which he handles almost uniquely, although I'm quite adept at actually lighting one these days! We had great fun as always and made a profit of over £xxx for Branch funds. Gary made a special guest appearance straight from the US Democratic Convention in full Obama outfit!

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, although the membership has decreased somewhat in the last year. Nevertheless the contribution from it still approaches £x,xxx per year and we remain on target to make a major contribution to the next Bolton West general election campaign. Our Treasurer will give a full financial report separately but it seems that our funds remain buoyant at present with our account standing currently at almost £x,xxx, with Bolton West CLP owing us £x,xxx.

Branch Meetings

Branch meetings have been generally well attended, although attendances fell to single figures in the autumn. We've been very fortunate in that several members have continued to offer their homes as venues and my special thanks to Graham, Alan and Joyce, Pauline and Anne for both the use of their homes and their hospitality. We look forward to continuing to rotate our meetings between members' houses in 2009. A welcome innovation was holding joint meetings with Smithills Branch which is trying hard to reinvigorate itself thanks to the efforts, it seems, mostly of the Jones and the Bradleys. Three joint meetings were held with the Chair and Secretaryship alternating between the two branches and an encouraging attendance from both.

We would like to continue the practice of Branch meetings being occasions for us to participate in political discussion and debate and to continue with the joint meetings throughout 2009. In 2008 we managed to have either a speaker or a topic for debate at most of our meetings:

January	Cllr Clifford Morris	The Year Ahead For Bolton
February (joint)	Ruth Kelly, MP	How Labour Makes A Difference
March	Ray Collett	Befriending Refugees And Asylum Seekers
April	Branch Discussion	Local Elections 2008
May	Cllr Frank White	The ICOCO Report Into Community Cohesion
June (joint)	Julie Hilling	Partnership Into Power - Creating Sustainable Communities
July	Cllr John Byrne	Extending The Chorley New Road Conservation Area
August	No meeting but we had a very successful "It Must Stop Raining Soon" barbecue
September (joint)	Lindsey Kell and Lucy Smith	Campaigning For An Even More Historic Fourth Term
October	Meeting cancelled - replaced by a special meeting at which Ruth Kelly explained her resignation
November	Branch Discussion	Cllr Clifford Morris was double booked!
December (joint)	Guest speaker Martin Rathfelder was unable to attend because of flu and it snowed!

We are honoured to have Gary, our MEP, with us today and we are very much looking forward to what he has to say. As you know, Gary, after 20 years in the job, is retiring from the European Parliament at the elections in June which presumably means that we will see much more of him at our normal Branch meetings! No doubt he will continue to enthuse us with the "European Idea" as he has done brilliantly during the many visits he has made to our Branch as our MEP!

In February we have our Branch Parliamentary Nomination meeting and I would suggest that in March we invite the new Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bolton West to a joint meeting with Smithills Branch.

Members are urged to think about the topics they believe we should be discussing and all suggestions for guest speakers will be most welcome. Most speakers, once approached, just cannot resist the kudos of having addressed a Heaton & Lostock Labour Party meeting!

Heaton & Lostock Online

I've started to do a major update on the Branch's Internet Web site (http://www.boltonwest.org) although, like our house during all the alterations we've had done over the last few years, it currently looks rather unfinished and a bit untidy. Hopefully this year I'll have time to finish off the update and then will resume the practice of putting a short summary of each meeting onto the "news" page shortly after it has taken place along with a link to the speaker's talk or report of a Branch discussion. Maybe I could even set up a webcast of some of our meetings!

Thanks

As Secretary I'm happy and proud to have served the Branch for yet 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, Bob, Leilia and Pat, the members who've hosted meetings in their homes during the year, helped out at the socials, delivered leaflets or played a part in any other way as well as 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, holding the purse strings even closer than Terry used to, but has supported me throughout the year and guided me when I've gone astray!

Thank you and best wishes for 2009.

John Gillatt Branch Secretary

January 2009