The 2020 Conservative conference starts today in earnest.
It was supposed to take place in Birmingham - our hotels were booked, dinner reservations made - but thanks to the pandemic it will be online only.
Whether anyone outside the Westminster bubble will bother with this downsized virtual event remains to be seen.
Did anyone notice the Labour conference the other week? I was only aware of it because I was sent advance notice of a virtual fringe meeting that asked the question 'How Can We Achieve a Smoke-Free England by 2030?':
This panel discussion will examine how we can collectively work towards making England smoke-free by 2030 – the ambition set in the Government’s Prevention Green Paper.
The meeting was organised by the New Statesman 'in association with Philip Morris International' and featured Alex Norris MP, Shadow Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety; Mark Oates, Director of We Vape; and Dr Moira Gilchrist, Vice President Strategic and Scientific Communications at PMI.
Sadly I forgot about it but I hope PMI got their money's worth.
We considered hosting a virtual meeting on the 2020 Conservative fringe but I couldn’t see Forest attracting much of an audience for a daytime webinar, especially if we were in competition with a host of other events.
Truth is, with the exception of David Hockney’s guest appearance on a panel at the 2005 Labour conference in Brighton, Forest’s most successful conference events have always been social events.
I’m under no illusion why this is the case. Entice people with enough food and drink and they will come.
It doesn’t guarantee a good event, though, as I can attest from having attended many a dull corporate soirée, so there has to be something that makes it stand out from the norm - properly chilled wine, decent beer and cocktails, delicious food, interesting location, etc etc.
A big name guest helps but it doesn't define the event because if it's a social occasion they rarely stay long before they rush off somewhere else.
On the question of booze, never underestimate how much alcohol your guests will consume. Last year I went to one reception and within 30 minutes the room was dry - not a glass of wine or bottle of beer to be seen - and it was scheduled to run for another hour!
Thankfully, Forest has developed quite a good reputation for our conference events. We don’t always get it right but the successes outnumber the failures.
At risk of repeating myself, here are some of our better events, in chronological order:
Labour, Brighton, 2005
I’ve written about this so many times you may want to skip it but this is where our party conference adventure began, at the 2005 Labour conference in Brighton. The event itself was quite modest - a panel discussion in the small but perfectly formed Library Room at the Metropole Hotel. But what a panel it was: Joe Jackson, Claire Fox, Sue Carroll (a much-loved Mirror columnist who sadly died in 2011), Sue Brealey, co-author of The Joy of Smoking, and David Hockney.
We invited Hockney to help promote our campaign against the proposed smoking ban and the publicity far exceeded our expectations. Following appearances on breakfast television and the Today programme (Hockney says Labour smoking ban will ‘destroy Bohemia’), and a photo op that went slightly awry, the great man spent the afternoon giving interviews to Andrew Neil on BBC2 and most of the broadsheets. Only one or two reports are still online but they include this one in the Independent, when it was still a serious newspaper: ‘Hockney blows smoke on Labour's plan to ban tobacco‘.
When it came to the Forest event at 5.00pm every seat was taken and it was standing room only, although some people sat on the floor. The unlucky ones were those who couldn’t get in because I’ve never known a conference event rock with so much laughter. (One man I remember enjoying himself enormously was the Labour MP Austin Mitchell.)
Conservative, Bournemouth, 2006
Over 300 people attended our themed party at the Royal Bath Hotel. The main ballroom was dressed to look like a Speakeasy in Prohibition America and the Boisdale Jazz Band provided the music. This was our last conference event before the smoking ban and in one corner we even had some shisha pipes for people to smoke. The event finished with blue flashing lights and the sound of police sirens as a troupe of local amateur actors staged a mock police raid and ‘arrested’ the speaker, Boisdale MD Ranald Macdonald, for “inciting people to enjoy themselves”. As Ranald was led off in handcuffs everyone sang ‘Always Look On The Bright Side of Life’. Glorious.
Conservative, Birmingham, 2008
It’s forgotten now but The Freedom Zone, the mini conference that ran alongside the official conference for three or four years, began in 2008 as a joint collaboration between Forest and The Freedom Association. Forest and our sister campaign The Free Society were responsible for half a dozen events including Tories Got Talent (in which contestants had to give a three-minute 'speech' on which they were judged by a panel including Iain Dale and Nadine Dorries) and a 'chat show' in which the Academy of Ideas’ Claire Fox interviewed a number of guests including Michael White, political editor of the Guardian, and a pre-IEA Mark Littlewood. We also hosted discussions on a variety of issues with a range of speakers and panellists.
Labour, Liverpool, 2011
Labour was no longer in government. Nevertheless, to promote Forest’s Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign we booked the Cavern Club and organised an event that featured drinks, speeches and a 60-minute set by an excellent Beatles tribute band. Five Live presenter Nicky Campbell came and interviewed some of our guests for his breakfast programme the following day, but the greatest compliment was paid by the Labour MP Michael Dugher, PPS to party leader Ed Miliband (and later a member of the shadow cabinet), who stayed to the end and told me, "That was the best event at the Labour conference.”
Conservative, Manchester, 2011 and 2013
Stand Up for Liberty! was a comedy event Forest hosted at the Comedy Store in Manchester in 2011 and 2013. We asked them to book three ‘libertarian’ comedians and they duly obliged. Canadian Tom Stade was the standout act. His edgy routine was near the knuckle, certainly, but kudos to him for testing our audience’s limits. Our second comedy event in 2013 featured the brilliant Australian comedian Steve Hughes who we tried to get two years earlier but he was unavailable. Same night, same venue, in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs, we also hosted an ‘In Conversation’ event with Nigel Farage. No jokes, please!
Conservative, Birmingham, 2014
Our third and final comedy evening took place at the Hyatt Hotel in Birmingham. In the absence of a proper auditorium, we set up a small stage at one end of a large conference room with 120+ chairs and a bar area at the back. By the time the entertainment began it was standing room only. Journalist James Delingpole kicked things off but the headline act was Comedy Store veteran Alistair Barrie who brought the house down on several occasions with his political barbs.
Conservative, Manchester, 2015
The magnificent rooftop terrace at Great John Street Hotel in Manchester has hosted three Forest events – in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Whatever the weather (and the beginning of October is always a lottery) the heaters and awnings are more than a match for it. In fact, it can sometimes get too hot. I'm singling out the 2015 event because, being our first time there, a lot of people commented on what a great venue it is. Also, we went with a beach barbecue theme with the food being cooked and served on the smoker-friendly terrace.
Conservative, Birmingham, 2016
Four years ago we booked the ground floor at Nuvo, a local nightclub. The capacity was 250 so we were shocked when a late surge resulted in 650 conference delegates registering to attend. Fortunately another event on the first floor (capacity 200) was scheduled to finish at the same time as ours was due to start so we were able to commandeer the upstairs space where, thankfully, there was another bar. On the night we counted 499 guests. Our speakers were LBC’s Iain Dale and Paul Scully MP but there were so many people few could hear them. Iain tweeted that he was “petrified”!
Funnily enough, although we have organised better, more original, events, it was later nominated for a public affairs award. It was also reviewed, in a surprisingly positive way, by the home affairs correspondent of Vice, a notoriously hard organ to please.
Comparing it to several other fringe events, which got an absolute pasting, he wrote:
What the party was like: Actually really good. An upper-middle market bar packed to the gills with free booze, mini burgers, pocket ash-trays (a weird plastic wallet thing you can carry around) inscribed with the words, "Say no to outdoor smoking bans," and leaflets about how "A once benign nanny state has become a bully state, coercing rather than educating adults to give up tobacco."
Entertainment: It was advertised as "Eat. Drink. Smoke. Vape.", so like all good parties there were no frills beyond the amount of inebriants you could stuff in your body.
Btw, at risk of being immodest, Comedy Unleashed, 'the home of free-thinking comedy', last year hosted their own comedy evening at the Comedy Store during the Conservative conference in Manchester and in comparison to our comedy events it was very poor.
For some reason they didn’t even book the main auditorium. Instead the audience sat on chairs facing a small stage adjacent to an open spiral staircase on the lower ground floor.
The comedy was neither biting nor particularly funny. I found it disappointingly tame although, to be fair, I left at the interval so it may have improved later.
It took me back, though, to 2011 when a Conservative MP (who is now a government minister) tweeted:
Forest fringe at the Comedy Store is possibly the best ever in my 14 years at conference. Smokers showing antis how to do #nudge. #cpc11
Those were the days.
Update: I’m told there are 51 fringe events today, starting at 9.00am. However, at the time of writing (8.55am) my attempt to login to the conference website to see the schedule was greeted with this message:
SORRY ... It’s not you. It's us.
The system is currently unable to process your request.
Please try again later or contact registration@conference.conservatives.com.
Not a good start.
Below: Audience for Forest’s Stand Up For Freedom! event at the Hyatt Hotel, Birmingham, in 2014. Ironically most of them were sitting.
Below: Forest reception at Nuvo night club, Birmingham, in 2016
Below: Nigel Evans MP addresses guests on the rooftop lounge at Great John Street Hotel, Manchester, in 2017
