Labour Pains

Another year, another political party conference. This time, it again saw me heading to the Labour Party conference. All of my previous years of conference work have been in either Bournemouth or Brighton so heading to the sunny climes of Manchester was the new twist on familiar photographic territory.

As a little background for anyone outside of the UK (or just uninterested in current affairs) the governing Labour Party are currently having a few problems. After years of solid economic stability and the glitz of Blair, his somewhat less media sparkly successor Gordon Brown is having the pleasure of dealing with the global collapse of banks and worldwide recession fears while avoiding potential leadership threats from his cabinet. All of this comes at the same time as his PR staff attempt to train him not to do that odd thing when he breathes and learning that, if used in a certain way, the muscles in the cheeks can form the mouth into what’s known as a “smile”.

While some of the residents were happy to see the Labour crew, including the personally terrifying Hazel Blears below, descend on Manchester..

..others weren’t so happy.

To make life easier, there are always certainties to every conference;

1. The Sky News Top Trumps cards (top of page) always make an appearance in the media room at some point with everyone scrambling to get a shot of this year’s key players.
2. The photographers will all do their utmost to make the words on the stage spell out insulting words about the speakers.
3. The politicians vs. media football match always takes place on the Sunday morning. This year as I joined Eddie Mulholland of the Telegraph and Charlie Bibby of the Financial Times in both having a hangover and needing to cover the match, the challenge was set of trying to get a shot of the Schools Secretary making contact with the ball using his head, therefore allowing assorted tabloids to use the headline “Ed Balls Heads Balls”. Nothing like a stupid challenge to get the brain clear in the morning.

The odd thing about conferences is that, as far as I can tell, not much happens but everything apparently changes. It allows politicians of whichever party is gathering to stand up and say how well they’re doing and how badly their opposition is faring, it allows local government campaigners to get two minutes of fame as they get applause for being councillor for “Little Bunting-on-the-Nork” (Population 6) and it allows journalists to marvel at how well it’s all going or gloat at the impending collapse of the party, depending on their employer’s political leanings. Nothing seems to really “happen”. My lack of spark could well have just been down to the present situation though as in previous years, Cherie would say a few controversial words, Blair groupies would walk around covered in badges and stalls would be handing out Gordon Brown hemp shopping bags but this conference was a very different affair.

Having just come from Cuba, where the only English-language station we could receive in our hotel room was CNN, it was clear just how different the political landscape is from our American friends. While analysts complain of the lack of voter motivation in this country, you only need to look at how similar the policies are in this country to get an idea of why the population doesn’t feel the need to get excited about politics. Yes, there’s the obvious clichés with Labour raising taxes, Conservatives cutting services and Liberal Democrats never making their mind up but when it comes down to it, a voter in the US has something in their party that they can get emotional about. Imagine how easy it is to feel passionate when one party says “Yay!” to abortion and the other declares you a murderer. Imagine how strongly you’d feel if one party told you that the gun you had in your house was your constitutional right and that there was a strong case for arming school teachers while the opposition suggested putting strict control laws on guns with occasional hints at an outright ban. You can start to understand why people in America are pictured in tears during their party leaders speech while in the UK, the sobbing only comes from the photographers crouched at the front who want it to end so they can stretch their legs properly. I could go on to ramble about my support for a legal requirement to vote, even if it’s just to spoil your card but then this would be straying even FURTHER from a photography blog so I’ll shut up now. ANYWAY…

With Alistair Darling and his amazing dancing brows making possibly one of the more sensible speeches of the week (essentially “If you want to get through a credit crunch, stop buying plasma screens on credit cards..”), it was over to David Miliband for what was expected to be one of the crucial events of the week. With metres of column space filled with speculation that he’s gunning for Gordo’s job, the media were dissecting his every word as he spoke. The lovely set designers gave us a nice opportunity to do the obligatory wordplay game and his incredibly exaggerated hand gestures every few seconds only added to the opportunites.

With Miliband out of the way, it was time for El Gordo to take centre stage. Ushered into the hall an hour before he was due to appear, the scramble for a decent spot took it’s usual course with everyone eventually settling into their 3 sq cm of floorspace. For some reason, while they spend so much on designing the sets and making everything run as smoothly as possible, the one thing that always blights these events is the light; 1600ISO at f3.2 and 250th on a 400mm lens does not make beautiful pictures. While other agencies are using the wonderfully sensitive Nikon D3, I’m still on Canon mk2n bodies that are really beginning to show their age. My 5d was brought out as it’s better in the dark but then I lose the ability to fire rapid bursts to catch kisses and unexpected gestures. The first reader to quote Cartier-Bresson and “wait for the Decisive Moment” at me gets a digital slap. Modern news photographers are PERFECTLY capable of capturing the decisive moment, thank you very much. It’s simply a case of deleting the other 9 frames from that second to locate it… *cough*

Well, the speech seemed to all go down reasonably well with no-one really able to criticise anything too much and thanks to his famously media-shy wife Sarah taking to the stage to introduce him, the next day’s papers were full of kisses and smiles and hugs. I’m guessing they’ll probably be reasonably happy with that.

As is often the case in news and particularly politics, a big story can come from a completely unexpected angle. On the final day, traditionally a quiet round up with a light-hearted but rousing speech from the deputy leader of the party, I was woken by an SMS alert of breaking news about Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly‘s resignation. Shaking off the remnants of the media reception the previous night, new energy had to be summoned to head back into the hall to capture anything that could illustrate the rumoured unhappiness behind the scenes between Kelly and the boss. Thankfully, I managed to grab this frame which ended up in a few papers the following day. A nice end to the week.

If only I’d got Ruth to sign her Top Trumps card for me..

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 10:50 pm. It is filed under The working day and tagged with 2008, alistair darling, catchflash, conference, david miliband, ed balls, fisheye, gordon brown, hazel blears, journalism, kiss, labour party, leon neal, manchester, media, news, photographer, photography, political, politics, ruth kelly, sarah brown, stop the war, top trumps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.