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

1996 was an excellent year for the Labour Party both locally and nationally in almost all respects. We have seen a boom in our membership as never before, increased activity at all levels, achieved wonderful results in local elections and parliamentary by-elections and in Bolton West selected a bright, young, energetic candidate who represents the very best of our revitalised Party. 

1996 The Year
Because of the meetings to shortlist and select Bolton West's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) our 1996 Annual General Meeting didn't take place until March and with the local election campaign then beginning to get underway and myself away on business in the Far East I was unable to be a particularly active Secretary until early Summer.

Ruth Kelly Selected as Candidate

In March, with the participation of many of our Branch's members, Ruth Kelly was chosen as Bolton West's PPC.

Ruth, aged 27, is deputy head of the Bank of England's inflation report division. She was selected from a shorlist of five other hopefuls and was described by the Bolton Evening News as a "Woman high flier". But, even with Labour's massive lead in the opinion polls and the popularity of our leadership, it must be remembered that the transfer of Halliwell from our constituency to Bolton North-East increases Tom Sackvilles's majority from a wafer thin 1,079 to an almost respectable 5,000 or so. It will take a lot of hard work and all the determination we have to return Ruth, but return her we will.

In an interview with the BEN after her selection she succinctly said: "I am delighted to have been chosen to spearhead Tony Blair's new Labour Party campaign here in Bolton, Westhoughton, Horwich and Blackrod. It will be a campaign that will bring new hope and opportunity to the area. People in Bolton, like everywhere else in the region, are disgusted with the record of the Tories. They see a party that is out of touch with the real world; a government that has presided over record crime figures, rising home repossessions and unemployment. What Tony Blair's New Labour offers is realistic solutions to the problems of 17 years of Tory misrule, made worse by the local neglect of Tory MP Tom Sackville. As a junior minister for Home Affairs, Mr Sackville has already acknowledged that there is a massive problem with law and order in Britain. Mr Sackville had urged councils to crack down on drug dealers on housing estates, but Labour amendments to the Housing Act would give them power to do so."
Bolton West Labour Party vice chair, our own Eve Walker, said at the time: "I'm very pleased with the result. I think Ruth is a bright, dynamic young woman. She won overwhelmingly but there were some excellent candidates."

Regional secretary David Evans told the BEN: "In Ruth Kelly, Bolton West have one of the brightest young politicians as their candidate."

Following Ruth's selection most of our work has concentrated on preparing for the General Election and campaigning. It is no coincidence that the main item on the agenda of our monthly Branch meetings has been this activity.

Our Membership in '96

We began the year with over xxxxx members but, it must be admitted, many of them had lapsed, moved or were no longer interested. An analysis I did when I took over as Secretary indicated that our true fully paid up membership was around xxxxx. However, during the year the Party's national recruitment campaign and the untiring efforts of Joyce Platt means that we now have xxxxx members and almost all of those are fully paid, genuine members. In 25 years of active Party membership I have never seen such an increase and it continues.

Campaigning

Even though we have such a large membership when it comes to active campaigning we do still tend to "round up the usual suspects". Nevertheless, primarily thanks to Pauline Ferguson, our campaigning has been better than ever.

The Local Election

Eve Walker was selected as our candidate with Pauline as her agent. One abiding comment of the campaign was from a voter on Johnson Fold who said: "Isn't she that one with the grey bit at the front of her hair"! Actually, she told me that it's a very expensive blond bit! Whatever the colour of Eve's "bit" we achieved an excellent result when the setback of 1995 is taken into consideration:

It seems more and more possible that we could yet return a Labour Councillor in Deane-Cum-Heaton.

The General Election

Campaigning in preparation for the General Election has followed two main paths at Branch level.

Firstly, there has been the voter identification exercise where we have attempted to find where our support lies and to avoid us having to knock on thousands of doors during the three week actual election. Voter id'ing has been mainly by telephone and for quite some time was spearheaded for the Constituency by Janet Crease. Voter identification in Bolton West has reached about xx% and we need a more volunteers from within our own and the other Bolton West branches.

Secondly, we have been very regularly leafleting much of the Ward, especially with the Party's campaign newspaper, The Rose. Pauline will know for sure but I would imagine that we've delivered more than 30,000 copies so far and there will be quite a few more to come. Pauline has been greatly successful in establishing a tight network of distributors in all areas except on our stronghold, Johnson Fold. That area is, I believe, one that we should concentrate on in the next couple of months before the start of the General Election campaign proper.

The politics of the campaign itself will be based on the Manifesto document on which, controversially, all members had the opportunity to vote. One of the things that we must always remember and repeat over and over again to our colleagues, neighbours and friends is that it is the Tory Party that is the Party of high taxes as these figures show:

Taxation 1978/9 Compared With 1996/7

Fund-raising

Probably our Treasurer will want to say more about this. We managed to hold only two fund-raising socials this year, the tradition Midsummer Madness Barbecue at Graham and Anne's and a Christmas No Turkey Party at Alan and Joyce's. Both were greatly successful both as fund-raisers and as a way of getting members together socially.
Our great hope for Branch income is now The Deane-Cum-Heaton Stakeholder Society (100 Club) which, if fully subscribed to, could give us an income of £xxxxx per year. This would enable us to run our own Branch very comfortably and also promote other Party activities in Bolton and, maybe, beyond. Our fund-raising efforts must be focused on increasing the number of members of the Stakeholder Society as early as possible.

I estimate that our Branch needs an income of about £xxxxx per year to cover the essentials of the annual local election costs, affiliations, postage, cost of meetings, etc. Thanks to the generosity of one of our members the xxx meeting notices I send out each month are now delivered by post and this is a much more efficient method, allowing our distributors to do other things. However, once the General Election is over we will need to fund this ourselves.

Thanks

As I said in my introduction, 1996 was an excellent year but, returning after a year away, it would have been impossible for me to carry out my job of Secretary without the help and support of very many Party members. I would like to thank them all but name only one, Noelene, my wife, who has had to put up with me monopolising the computer so much of the time and supported me throughout the year.

Thanks to all the rest of you too.

John Gillatt
Branch Secretary
January 1997