Tuesday, April 01, 2008

UKIP's NW Spring Conference


Left is the truck, courtesy of our Tameside Branch, that spent the weekend parked on Morecambe Promenade outside the UKIP NW Spring Conference.

Like Christmas there are months of planning and anticipation then bang, it's over and done. The weekend just gone we had our NW Spring Conference in Morecambe and all the hard work was worth it. There was a very definite feel that this is no longer a single issue party but a full blown party with plenty to say.

On the Saturday we had excellent presentations from Phil Booth of No2ID on why we must oppose ID cards and the database state, Tim Aker from The Taxpayers' Alliance on the scandal of local government waste and Marc Sidwell, of the Adam Smith Institute, on the damage done to the developing world by fair trade. The final outside speaker of the day was a representative of the Lancashire Police Federation, who explained the police dispute with the government over pay and conditions. On Sunday we also had a talk from Sean Corker of Manchester Against Road Tolls who outlined their opposition to charging and satellite monitoring of motorists.

UKIP speakers included Party Leader Nigel Farage, who attacked EU nationalism, and Party Chairman John Whittaker who explained the perilous financial position of much of the Eurozone. Deputy Leader, David Campbell Bannerman, ably outlined his work with our policy working groups and emphasised again our role as a fully fledged political party.

There were also excellent talks from Robert Woods and Lisa Duffy on the growth of Young Independence and a whole host of other UKIP speakers including yours truly, Phil Griffiths, NW Chairman, Fred McGlade, Hilary Jones, Rachel Oxley and the excellent father and son team of Tom and Michael McManus, winners of our first two public speaking competitions.

There was a bumper attendance with excellent company, good food and plenty of drink consumed. A fine weekend was had by all. Now on with the May local elections!

2 comments:

Vindico said...

I bet the bloke from the ASI on Fairtrade was interesting. Watching the BBC London news this evening they had a pro and anti fairtrade rep on. Blimey, i thought, a balanced interview from the Beeb.

Mark Wadsworth said...

What was your talk on? Scrapping traffic lights? What sort of response did you get?