The mood emerging from Sunday’s special conference – which overwhelmingly endorsed the Lib Dem leadership’s decision to enter into a coalition agreement with the Conservatives – appears to have been almost universally positive, with even doubters rallying at the prospect of the historic opportunity open to the party.
But we wouldn’t be liberals unless we found something to critique – and on this occasion it’s been the Lib Dem media office which has got it in the neck from some supporters. The Bracknell Blog puts it reasonably (many on Twitter have been a little more splenetic):
Why was this meeeting a closed meeting? … I feel the Liberal Democrats missed a trick here. There were some great speeches some of these could of made the news and atleast should of been shown on the parliament channel. Arguments for and against could of been heard and understood by the wider members and supporters.
We Lib Dems have had to get accustomed very quickly to having to make difficult choices, and one of those was faced by the party’s media team last week: whether to let the TV news cameras into the conference hall, or not.
There were two fears. The first was that, given the conference was being organised at very short notice after a gruelling election campaign and with the result never really in doubt, most activists would opt for a quiet weekend at home: cue TV footage of a cavernous hall with snarky voice-over suggesting that Lib Dem members had voted with their feet.
The second was that there would be one angry speech, even an orchestrated protest or a walk-out, which would grab the headlines and make the party appear disunited – regardless of the outcome of the vote – at exactly the moment we most need to pull together.
In the event, neither fear became reality: the debate was high quality, the speakers constructive, and the 1,500 activists who scurried to Birmingham eager to share in this historic moment wafted out on a cloud of optimism.
But you can bet your bottom euro that if the worst-case scenario had been realised there would have been any number of people queuing up on Twitter and in the blogsphere to wisely point out how the Lib Dem press office should have anticipated just such an eventuality, and what do we pay them for anyway etc.
Perhaps they were mistaken to adopt a safety-first approach, who knows? But given the quite extraordinary risks the party has taken in the last fortnight I don’t blame our media team for exercising some caution on this particular occasion.
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19 Comments
I have a different perspective.
Absence of press meant that our new ministers were talking to us, and not to the gallery at home and the press pack.
I really liked Nick’s speech because it was a conversational talk, aimed at people he knows, and who know him, not a speech full of soundbites for media regurgitation. Lynne got to be herself, talk about her concerns, and give us genuine assurances.
Those critical of the deal got to be critical and honest, and weren’t tempted to grandstand. The audience didn’t need to feel guilty applauding a good point they didn’t necessarily agree with, etc.
We do enough media driven conferences. And up until yesterday, the media mostly ignored them, or utterly misrepresented them (yes, Andrew Neil, we are looking at you). This one was for us.
I liked that.
(and so did my future wife, who’s asked me to type this line to save her the hassle of commenting)
Was anyone filming any part of the Special Conference?
Simon Hughes’ speech and the spontaneous standing ovation would be a great addition to the LibDem YouTube channel and I would certainly forward a link to the video to members and supporters who are anxious about the coalition.
I don’t think it’s all that hard to find opportunities to say things to the press, so losing one of them isn’t a big deal. It’s a good idea to have some places where they aren’t watching.
I would love to see Simon’s speech, we managed to just be out of the hall at the time. I think it should have been open to the press, but I don’t see why people get so worked up about it either way. Ditto for the coalition: We are where we are, and we need to get on with it. If someone has got Hughesy on cam can they make it accesible for us?
Obviously, the Press Office should have recorded the Conference. If it was united, they could then release the tape. If not, they didn’t have to release it. But they should have done so anyway – secrecy and spin are not attractive to voters!
As a conference attendee, I think it was the right decision.
The media are desperate to display the Lib Dems as a weak and divided party on the verge of collapse. Anybody who’ll admit to quitting the party is given their fifteen Warholian minutes, and even the understandable concerns and anxieties that Nick admits with frank honesty are seen as signs of fragmentation. Cameras and journalists were grubbing around outside the NEC and in the Wetherspoons bar, asking anybody if they’d seen anyone who might give them a contraversial quote against the party. When they did find somebody to interview, they didn’t challenge the blatant factual inaccuracies in his purported reasons for resignation, and merely nodded and smiled gleefully that somebody was on-camera slagging off Nick.
Had the media been in the hall, would they have reported people speaking honestly and from the heart both for and against the coalition? Would they have praised our democratic consultation of our grassroots, the excellent speeches from the stage and interventions from the floor? Would they have highlighted that this conference was organised excellently at short notice by a dedicated team, and that the grassroots felt so passionately about their party that over 1,000 members attended?
Would they bollocks. They would have quoted everything they could out of context. They would have talked about division, and strife. They would have made it seem that expressing dissent is a rarity at a Liberal Democrat conference, and implies division rather than honesty.
Until the media can grow up and report the facts rather than trying to twist them into a fraudulent narrative to continue their attempts to smear and discredit the Liberal Democrats, let them stand outside in the cold. Those who care can find plenty of first-hand accounts from party members online, both approving and disapproving of the coalition, and both more free from spin than anything they’d see on TV or read in the paper.
Did anyone give consideration to the party filming the Conference themselves, and then controlling release of the footage to the media? For example, recording it in full, releasing certain clips for the news bulletins, and then allowing BBC Parliament to show the whole thing later?
KL, there were cameras trained on people speaking, dunno whether it was recorded or not.
What really gets me is, that shouldn’t have been a decision for the press office. It should have been a decision taken by a vote at the beginning of the conference. That’s what we did in the Welsh special conference in 2007, and that’s the approach that should always be taken by a democratic body. The ‘media team’? I don’t remember electing them, so why are they making decisions on behalf of the party?
There was what looked like an official video camera filming the proceeeds; I don’t know what will be done with the result. Failing that, I took two 1-minute clips with my camera 🙂
I agree with the decision, though I thought they could have let the media in to film Nick’s speech at the end.
When I chaired the debate on the first Welsh coalition deal I did so on the basis that it would be an open debate. I then had a number of people wanting it to be closed so immediately had them primed to request an overturning of standing orders after the set peiece speeches to take us to closed session.
The result… conference voted for an open debate and all voices were heard in public.
Its a shame such a process were not adopted at the weekend as I was trapped at home looking after my children and woudl have loved to have watched proceedings on BBC Parliament
I agree it should have been open. Normally we pride ourselves on making our policy in public, and we accept the risks that entails – I don’t really think Special Conference should have been different. If there really had been only a few attenders or a hostile reception, the press would still have found out about it, and the attempted secrecy would have been even more difficult to defend than it is already. I realise that it’s easier for first-time speakers if they’re not being filmed (or not conscious of it – I remember being quite glad that I didn’t know until afterwards that my first Conference speech was live on BBC Parliament) – but that’s part and parcel of being in a party that values transparency, and should be dealt with by offering new speakers as much support as possible. Even small gestures such as the Chair announcing that it’s someone’s first speech, and the applause that inevitably follows, makes a huge difference.
Although I would have liked to have been able to watch from home (I had the kids so the missus could go) I think the arguments for having a closed session were strong.
Party business sessions at conference often are closed, it allows us to discuss party stratgey in private while conrinuing to discuss policy in public.
Do the Labour Party NEC or National Policy Forum meet in public, for example?
The video at the conference may have been a closed loop and not even recorded.
I protested at the decision to hold a secret conference as soon as I heard (on here somewhere). The decision was braindead buffonery of the worst kind. If this is the kind of PR service we are going to get in the next five years we are doomed.
(1) It is wrong in principle. If we cannot run our own affairs according to our stated principles of open honest discussion and open honest politics why do we bother at all?
(2) It was ludicrously wrong in practice. We missed out on the best four hours of TV coverage we could have imagined in our wildest dreams. (I assume the 24 hour news channels would have covered quite a lot and teh parliament channel taken it live). We also excluded all the members who were not there including people whose membership could have been saved by watching the superb debate.
(3) The fact that the decision was apparently taken by bureaucrats in the press department is a shocking reflection on internal party democracy and accountability and a very sad reflection on the way the party is now run. (And these were the people who proved rather incompetent in the recent GE campaign. At the very least it shows how out of touch with the party itself they really are).
Tony Greaves
A quick comment about the word “secret” – although the press may have been barred from the room, there was no attempt to keep it secret in the sense that tweets and blog postings from the hall were not only not discouraged, they were encouraged – see http://www.markpack.org.uk/a-small-note-about-the-secret-liberal-democrat-conference/
I wasn’t there. The view from outside was of an orderly grown up and serious group of people gathering to make a serious decision.
Literally, the history (or more poetically, fate) of the country depended on the result, for better or worse.
The coalition would not have survived rejection by the party. Kennedy’s rather weak abstention positioned him well for a leadership contest. Would the Lib Dems have survived that as a political force? Not as the same entity. I suspect a few ministers would have joined the Conservatives. Others taken the opportunity to reverse gang of 4.
We would have had another Election within months with a ?new?damaged? leader . Result – wipeout.
Was there a serious risk that the result could’ve gone this way? You tell me.
The decision was undoubtably the safe one.
By the way. Someone hasn’t understood quite what has happened this last week.
This from a previous poster had me laughing in my bloody mary, such a neanderthal understanding of political communications:
“We missed out on the best four hours of TV coverage we could have imagined in our wildest dreams.”
Get ready for the next year.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Jim – I’ll err on the side of caution and presume you don’t know who Tony Greaves is. If there’s anyone in our party who you don’t describe as having “a neanderthal understanding of political communications” it’s him. Without Tony, and others like him, we wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are now.
Like many, I had to content myself with watching the television coverage. I would have loved to have seen it live, but I agree with the decision.
I remember a conference just after the Lib/SDP merger, and watching journalists desperately looking for opponents of the new party. The overwhelming sentiment of those attending the conference was supportive of the leadership, but to the journalists, that was boring. They wanted to find angry dissenters, and of course they found them.
If cameras had been let in, and had had no effect on the conference, it would have been fine. The news bulletins would have reported that the coalition was passed overwhelmingly, they’d have had a clip of Nick Clegg, and one of a speaker against the policy. No real problem.
But I don’t think that would have happened. The presence of news camera crews changes things, and there’s a strong chance the good natured conference would have turned more ugly.
I see nothing wrong with the decision. There was no banning of messaging from the hall, everything decided was public knowledge. Sometimes, private meetings are the right thing to do. None of us can know it things would have been different if cameras has been present. And the consequences of getting this decision wrong could have been serious.
That said. I might be wrong.
And I totally agree with Tony Greaves’ sentiment, wishing that those thinking of leaving the party reconsider.
The Liberal Democrats is the stronger in its breadth of opinion, in its tolerance of dissent. And we are the weaker for every individual who feel they are no longer welcome among us. I hope, in the coming months, that those who leave keep contact with their old friends in the party, and know that if they reconsider, they will be welcomed back.
apologies to Tony Greaves.
My comment was uncalled for.