The labour party conference (aláírt példány) [antikvár]

IntroductionHow does the Labour Party Conference work? How is power1 distributed among those who take part? How is policy made at, and through, the Conference? How does the Conference interact with other bodies within the Party? Is the Conference any longer a significant political assembly? These are some of the questions I have attempted to answer in this study.My interest in the Conference was stimulated during the period when I was a very active young member of a Constituency Labour Party. I never made it to the Conference as a delegate - the factional competition was too fierce - but like many others I joined the army of marchers and pleaders who took the annual opportunity to press their case upon the Party's leaders as they sped from hotel to meeting hall. Like many activists I had a reverence for what we liked to think was the supreme policy-making body of the Party, a rather inflated view of the significance of its decisions and a curiosity about its mechanism.That curiosity was enhanced when later I came as a student to appreciate how little was known about its detailed operation. Though a highly controversial institution and a much-discussed annual political event, the Conference remained something of a mystery. Each year the major controversies surrounding the debates received extensive mass media coverage2 and the Party's national officials carefully recorded the proceedings inside the Conference hall.3 But whole areas of Conference* politics, particularly the management of the agenda, the behaviour of the National Executive Committee (N.E.C.) and the taking of decisions by the trade union delegations, were and still are considered private matters and are reported only partially and spasmodically through informal press 'leaks'. And though books about the Labour Party4 have covered the Conference in the course of an investigation of the controversial relationship between the Conference, the trade unions, the Parliamentary Labour Party (P.L.P.) and the National Executive Committee, none has taken the Conference as the central focus and subjected it to detailed examination.It is perhaps not surprising therefore that one of the striking features of the way in which both participants and observers approach the Conference is the diversity of their perceptions of its processes and power structure. Secrecy, complexity and lack of information invariably generate a world of misconception; through the passage of time, prejudice and idealisation turn the misconception into myth.* Most Labour Party members and officials refer to 'Conference' rather than 'the Conference' , dropping the definite article. For convenience this form will occasionally be used in the text.