Report of the eighty-eighth annual conference of the Labour Party [antikvár]

Councillor Brian Fitch (Mco>or of Brighton): Thank you. Chair. May I, as Mayor of this town, welcome you to Brighton once again at a time when the Labour Party is leading in the opinion polls — a lead that is our biggest for many decades. I think that is a good way to start a conference off. Some four and a half years ago this town was still under the control of the Conservatives. At that period they lost elected control of the council. Some two years ago the Labour Party took power with the casting vote of the Mayor. It is my privilege tonight to welcome you here to a Labour town with a working majority. (Applause) Labour has ended over a himdred years of Tory rule in this seaside resort. We have put an end to Thatcherism in Brighton. Out! It came about because in the seventies we became a campaigning Labour Party. We turned to local campaigns, and by the early eighties we were moving across the town in townwide campaigns. We had housing campaigns stop the rot, welfare rights, peace initiatives, environment and coimtryside campaigns and, important with that, campaigns to preserve the National Health Service. In the middle of the eighties we took power in this town and we set about carrying out our promises. And that was no easy task, because we had just been ratecapped by the Conservative government. We, as a Labour Party in this town, breathed new life into a dying town, a town that had really given up in administrative terms', a town that faced many problems. We brought in a welfare rights shop to begin to show people that there were benefits available. We actually made major grants to the voluntary sector, far greater than many of the Conservadve-controlled county councils around us. But, biggest of all, we committed ourselves to a housing programme. Indeed, I am proud tonight to say that this town has one of the biggest rented, new-build housing programmes in Britain. (Applause) Thirty-three million pounds has been committed to building homes in this town for rent. We have a programme of housing security to look after the young and elderly in our homes. We have a ten-year programme of better homes, where L80 million is committed over the next ten years to put housing stock into good repair. And if you look around this town you can see the council houses, because they are the ones with the new roofs, they are the ones with the new double glazing, and they, of course, have brand new doors!We have started work on a new industrial estate. There are plans ahead for a new hotel. And a few weeks ago we clinched the deal that will build a new shopping and leisure centre adjacent to our station. Under work at the moment is Brighton's first sport and leisure centre. That says something for Toryism in this town: it is our first one. And that is being built on one of our most deprived estates. We have put major funding for the arts. We have a workplace nursery. We have opened five children's playgrounds and another five are under construction and planning. We have opened three community centres. We have a play bus. We have play staff and entertainment for children in our parks. We are able to put 24 staff into action during the summer holidays, which gives relief to parents. In the countryside we supported and gained Environmentally Sensitive Area status for the South Downs and for much of the council's farmland. We have produced a farm conservation policy. and out of the 16 farms that this borough owns, one of them is now pursuing conservation farming in line with the council's new policy. And a few months ago we opened Brighton's first coimtryside ranger service. We have needed to redress years of neglect in this town, because we acnially care about people. We care about the adults and the children, and we have put together a package of improvements to help low-income families in this town. We have a council-rented sector and we have a very, very high private-rented sector, and in those areas, as I have said before at conferences, there are streets of shame. There is a despair and neglect in many inner city areas because of the appalling housing situation, and we as a Labour council are committed to tackling that and we are getting on and doing the work. There is a sidespin off that, because the housing programme that we have committed ourselves on is actually producing work and jobs, and there are more people in Brighton at work today than there were three years ago under the Tory administration. That is despite the effects of Thatcher on the economy of this town. But it has not been easy. There are, in fact, extremists amongst us. Only last week I said there were vacancies on our countryside committee, and do you know who will not sit on the countryside committee? Conservative extremists. The Countryside Commission sit on it. The Friends of the Earth sit on it. But the Tories have some kind of hatred for the countryside. And when it comes to our children's play sub-committee — you have guessed it — the Conservatives will not sit on it. I should like to know what the little children of Brighton have done to keep Conservatives off planning for children's care in this town.