The Heaton & Lostock Labour Party

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

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Annual Report 2002

Introduction

2002 was quite a contrast with the previous general election year. World events seemed to have been headed by George Bush's determination to bring the planet to the brink of another war and to achieve global domination for his right wing version of capitalism. I personally regret Tony Blair's determination to match Bush move for move and involve the UK in what will be a calamity for the already poor and suffering people of Iraq whilst doing nothing at all to attack the causes of global terrorism. Labour completed its fifth year in government and continued its attempts to improve health, education and transport, with varying degrees of success, whilst reducing poverty. More parochially, we had quite a good year in Deane-cum-Heaton, a number of guest speakers at Branch meetings and a relatively good result in the local election. Our membership fell slightly and we held only one fundraising event, the annual barbecue, on a very wet June evening.

The coming year offers us a challenge as we face another local election campaign and with a degree of sadness great change as ward boundaries are altered and the Deane-cum-Heaton Labour Party will be no more.

2002 The Year

The BBC review of 2002 has the headline "Labour take a battering" and to some extent our troubles during the past year overshadowed steady progress in a several areas.

There were a number of high-profile personal dramas, notably the harrying and fall of Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, whose decisive and applauded move against Railtrack delighted Labour MPs and infuriated the City, but who was eventually driven from office after numerous allegations of truth-twisting and deceit.

He was already in a weak position over the Jo Moore "bury bad news" incident and was further weakened by the perceived failure of the government's transport policy, as the roads became ever more congested and the railway system declined into incompetently managed obsolescence.

That policy was at least partly reversed by new Transport Secretary Alistair Darling, who announced a quick-fix programme of road widening and improvement. But no one other than the Government itself seems to hold out hope of much improvement in the railways in the coming years and the situation on the roads won't get better until we have a fast, efficient, affordable public transport system.

Not Good Enough - There were obvious parallels with the sudden resignation of Estelle Morris as Education Secretary, after a long disagreement with Number 10 about university top-up fees and her failure to meet targets on literacy and numeracy that her predecessor David Blunkett had said would cause his resignation.

Her resignation was almost unique in being wholly voluntary and accompanied by the bald statement that she thought she just wasn't quite good enough at the job.

What was not unique was the failure to meet targets - just as John Prescott's road use targets were not met (again, he had promised to resign but had moved on and did not), so targets on hard drug abuse, street crime, asylum returns and much else became mere embarrassments.

In the Comprehensive Spending Review many targets were quietly ditched as the Blair's young government's naive optimism came back to haunt harried ministers five years on.

The move paralleled a larger struggle going on about the very direction of New Labour. It was inevitably driven by conflicting views from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the Prime Minister.

Economic Crisis? - Gordon Brown was taking some risks with the "Middle Britain" electorate Tony Blair had so carefully nursed for so long: his massive injection of money for the National Health Service, the largest investment in its history, was accompanied by a rise in National Insurance contributions which many voters will eventually feel as a straightforward income tax hike.

They were already grumbling about a worrying deterioration in the pensions industry and a slowing economy. However, Britain again did better than most of her competitors but, as the year progressed, the Treasury's numbers worsened and the economy seemed worryingly unbalanced, with manufacturing in deep trouble while house prices and consumer spending roared on.

For Mr Brown, though, the political priority was to save the NHS and to continue his work of quietly and doggedly redistributing money towards poorer working families.

He increasingly seemed to view the more market-based and private-sector solutions to the problem of public service delivery as politically unacceptable; during and immediately after the Labour conference in Blackpool, a vicious political struggle about "foundation hospitals" outside the ordinary structure of the NHS raged between Mr Brown and Alan Milburn, the health secretary.

The year finished with the bizarre and complex story of Cherie Blair's entanglement through her "lifestyle adviser" with a convicted conman, was only the latest chapter in a sequence of stories in which the personal really was political - and hurt.

Cherie Blair's problems with Peter Foster, which had newspapers flinging abuse at one another, as well as politicians, press officers and journalists mud-wrestling, came down essentially to a question of who was lying - the Blairs and Number 10, or their accusers.

It included her own bravura, much-argued-about speech in her own defence, variously compared to Shakespeare's Portia and Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive".

But though it brought embarrassment to Downing Street and for a while poisoned relations with journalists, it did not connect with the public, policy-delivering job of government.

Justifying War - A wider perspective would remind us that behind these policy problems, the government was managing a world still reshaped by 11 September, with British troops involved in the unsuccessful hunt for Osama Bin Laden, further terror attacks in Africa and Bali, and fierce anti-terrorist legislation at home.

Tony Blair's own diplomacy was increasingly focused on helping the United States persuade more reluctant allies that a war against Iraq was justified if Saddam Hussein failed to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction.

Though this is one of those issues big enough to our Party, so far Tony Blair's emphasis on the United Nations has held most MPs with him - however much they worry in private.

However, I cannot for the life of me accept the dangers that Bush and our Prime Minister believe are posed by Saddam Hussain when there are at least two other savage dictatorships brandishing nuclear weapons, threatening neighbouring countries and suppressing their own people many of whom live in dire poverty. I mean, of course, N. Korea and Pakistan. Perhaps it's a coincidence that neither of those countries have huge oil reserves!

Nothing at all has been done to fight the causes of terrorism around the world, for example the oppression of Palestinian statehood by the rabid right wing Israeli government and the suppression of their people which has been at the heart of many of the terrorist acts.

Opposition? - In some years this catalogue of slipping targets, dissent over policy in the heart of Whitehall, and personal resignations would have meant that the government was en route for an election defeat next time around.

Yet despite some aggressive hatchet-wielding by Iain Duncan-Smith - he fired his party chairman, David Davis, while the latter was on holiday - the Tory leader failed to achieve a clear Opposition revival.

The Tories produced a raft of new policy ideas, united in being sceptical about the centralised state of new Labour, and Mr Duncan Smith won some good headlines for his "quiet man" conference speech.

But he rarely cheered his MPs during the weekly bouts of Prime Minister's Questions and suffered from endless rumours of plots and putsches. In the last weeks the Tories have declared themselves once again as a "tax cutting Party", pledging to make savings by cutting waste and bureaucracy rather than services. Now, why didn't we think of that?

The Liberal Democrats did score some Commons successes but showed no sign of really breaking through as the main rival for power, an ambition Charles Kennedy proclaimed but has not so far delivered.

This was a hectic year and on balance a bad one for the government. Tony Blair is still a long way from convincing the public that he can properly modernise and improve public service. His credibility has taken a battering and his prospects for running a successful euro referendum next year are hardly shining.

We should be thankful to Iain Duncan-Smith!

What About Us?

Away from the world stage we continue to work away at local level as best as we are able. The Branch AGM in January turned up few surprises with virtually the same team (the "usual suspects") being elected to run the Branch. I was appointed Secretary; Graham, Chair; Pauline and Eve, Vice-Chairs; Jean took over from George as Treasurer and Joyce handed over he reigns as Membership Secretary to Pat, helped by Anne. We had a full complement of five Constituency Party delegates and Terry was our delegate to the Bolton Local Government Committee.

Local Elections 2002

We had taken a deliberate decision to run a very minimal local election campaign in our ward and to concentrate our efforts on helping Branches where we were defending seats vulnerable to attack. Quite a few members helped Dave Chadwick in Westhoughton, although the seat was unfortunately lost. Overall Labour lost ground in Bolton and our majority is currently only two with one seat being held by just five votes! However, 2002 did see the election of the first three Asian Labour Councillors, including our good friend Akhtar Zaman in Halliwell.

In Deane-cum-Heaton the result was:

	John Gillatt (Labour)	1,199
	Colin Shaw (Tory)	2,607
	Stephen Bromley (Lib Dem)	902
	Majority	1,408
	Turnout	34%

Considering our lack of serious campaigning the almost 1,200 votes we received can be regarded as quite a good result.

Bolton was one of the Councils to experiment with electronic voting and, although it didn't improve the turnout, it certainly made the count easier and quicker.

I was honoured to have again been selected as the Branch's candidate for the 2003 local election and, although victory is no more likely than in previous years, I feel that it's important that we work as hard as possible with the objectives of:

Giving every elector in the ward the opportunity to vote for the party of their choice
Making sure that Labour is a recognised force within the ward
Maximising the Labour vote at the 2005/6 general election

More important still is to prevent Bolton becoming a Tory/Lib Dem coalition council. We only have to lose one seat to make this likely. Labour has achieved a great deal during its stewardship of Bolton and we owe it to those most in need of what we have to offer, even if they don't always go out and vote, to ensure success in May 2003.

Our Membership

We ended the year with about XXX members, slightly down on the previous year. Notably we failed to recruit many new members but I think that we have fared better than the other Bolton West Branches and, probably the town's other political parties. Joyce handed over the job of Membership Secretary, which she had performed "above and beyond the call of duty", to Pat and Anne helped out on the Deane side of the Ward.

Fund-raising

Due to ill health George was unable to continue as Treasurer and Jean offered to take over. However, due to problems with the Bank the necessary formalities were not completed until the end of the year and Jean hasn't had the opportunity to take over so far. Nevertheless, a full statement of our accounts is presented separately.

We held only social event during the year - the annual barbecue held on a wet and rather cold June evening at John and Noelene's house due to Anne's incapacity at the time. Probably due to the weather and unfamiliar venue, attendance was down on previous years but those who did come along had a very enjoyable time and we raised a fair amount for Branch funds.

The Branch's main fundraiser, the Deane-cum-Heaton Stakeholder Society (100 Club) continues to operate successfully and contributed a net income of about £X,XXX. The 100 Club membership has decreased slightly to about XX by the year-end. It includes several contributors who are no longer Party members or have moved to other Branches. Therefore, if we are to fully fund our own Branch's activities and help other sections of the Party wherever possible, we need many more members. I hope that we will take action to recruit new members in the coming year.

Branch funds currently (end of November 2002) stand at just over £X,XXX and we were able to fully fund our activities during the year as well as save towards our hoped-for large donation to the 2005/6 general election campaign in Bolton West.

Branch Meetings

Branch meetings have been generally well attended with 10 to 22 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 Graham and Anne, Pauline, Alan and Joyce, Pat and Craig, Anne, George and Leilia. However, because of the bad weather we weren't able to repeat the previous year's experiment of an outdoor meeting. Maybe in 2003 we'll be able to do that again.

We were quite successful in getting guest speakers to our meetings: " January Bob Howarth " June Gary Arthurs " February Frank White " September Keith Bowes " March Rosa Kay " November Clifford Morris 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. We would like to continue to have a guest speaker at as many meetings as possible and suggestions of who to invite will be most welcome.

We were quite successful in getting guest speakers to our meetings:

	January	Bob Howarth, Bolton Council Leader
	February	Cllr. Frank White
	March	Cllr. Rosa Kay
	June	Gary Arthurs, NW Organiser for Britain In Europe
	September	Ruth Kelly MP's Researcher, Keith Bowes
	November	Cllr. Clifford Morris

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.

We would like to continue to have a guest speaker at as many meetings as possible and suggestions of who to invite will be most welcome.

Surf the Web With Deane-Cum-Heaton

During the year I've tried to keep the Branch's Internet Web site (http://www.boltonwest.org) up to date, although doing so is a bit like painting the Forth Bridge and it's currently about six months behind! However, I hope to rectify that in the coming month. Shortly after each Branch meeting there is usually a summary with what took place and a link to any talk given by a guest speaker.

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. We've had almost 4,700 visitors since the counter was reset in July 2001 and the number of hits seems to be increasing year by year.

Thanks

As Secretary I am happy 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 specially thank Graham, Pauline, Eve and Pat, the other Branch Officers 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 as well as working so hard to successfully complete her degree course at Bolton Institute, has had to put up with me constantly monopolising the computer so much of the time and has supported me throughout the year.

Thank you and best wishes for 2003.

John Gillatt
Branch Secretary
January 2002

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