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What I saw at Tory conferences made me never want to go again.
I had a column in The Independent for 18 years before I joined i in 2016. Ian Birrell, who now also writes for this paper, gave me that big break.
I was the first regular columnist of colour on a national newspaper ever, a fact that still sometimes astounds me. How did it happen? People like me were not seen as smart, well connected or informed enough to comment on politics or society. Those commentators back then were all male, white, middle-class and mostly privately educated. In my school, back in Uganda, we were taught nothing about the realities of Britain’s political system.
After writing columns for a few years, I asked the bosses if I could go to party conferences. They were a little startled by the audacity. One of them said money was tight. I persisted and they soon relented. Previously, I’d spoken at fringe meetings for the human rights group Liberty and various think-tanks, but had not had a proper pass, or spent heady days and nights with the party faithful, MPs and ministers.
Oh my, what heady, giddy days and nights.
Among the many memories: queuing up at a Tory conference and feeling my bottom being pinched by a chap behind me, a ruddy faced fella in a tweed coat. Through the years I was brazenly propositioned by Tory men, including one who said he had never touched brown skin before. I should have said something. But in those times, women put up with men behaving very, very badly.
I never had such encounters at Labour or Lib Dem conferences. Right wingers bang on about their country being invaded by foreigners, but many seemingly crave cross-racial sex. Some female members froze me out when I tried to talk to them. A woman festooned in pearls asked loudly: “Who lets ayahs come here?” I said nothing.
To them I was an alien being or impertinent shirker/worker who had barged into their space. (Barely any black or Asian Brits tuned up then. How things have changed.) But, I did hear some riveting speeches by, among others, Michael Heseltine, John Major – unfairly seen as the grey man – and Rory Stewart.
Sometimes I too felt like an interloper, a little person hanging around, observing Andrew Marr, Steve Richards of The Independent, The Telegraph’s Charles Moore, Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian and others doing their thing. Many of my peers insolently asked: “What are you doing here?” Same as you, I wanted to say, but didn’t dare.
Once, I went up to Laura Kuenssberg, then a political reporter, and told her she was amazing. She smiled politely and carried on, her face sphinx-like and unreadable. Cringe.
In the Tony Blair era, at conferences, elected reps and excited supporters behaved as if they were in a cult. I rowed with Jack Straw and Roy Hattersley about the way Labour was indulging ethnic community “leaders”, all unelected and male in order to harvest group votes.
After the Iraq War calamity, I remember MPs and members behaving odiously because I’d ferociously opposed Blair and George W Bush before, during and after that Western crime against a people they cared nothing about. Another bad memory: I joined two other journalists who were talking to Peter Mandelson. I chipped in. He completely ignored me and joined others in my gallery of rogues.
So too, Nick Clegg. Before he and David Cameron formed a coalition government, I thought he was a terrific moderniser and liberal. One year, I wrote a pamphlet for the Lib Dems – then, still overwhelmingly white – on diversity and equality. We presented it at conference together. I felt I’d arrived. I blush to think now about my naivety.
I had to lie, fight, cheat to get into the best parties at all three conferences in the evening, and I almost always left full of regret. Alcohol loosened tongues and instigated bad behaviour. I witnessed actual fights between men and heard language that made the ears bleed. Once, only once, I got into a party thrown by a top Tory in a hotel bedroom. And left quickly because I couldn’t stand the heavy, lewd, boozy atmosphere.
I haven’t been to conferences for six years and have no desire to go ever again. Yes, there were some good debates at fringe meetings, but what stays with me is the vulgarity, the madness, the disdainful, uncouth conversations, the showing off, the clubby atmosphere, political addictions, speeches made to provoke rage, and unwholesome attachments to billionaires.
What, I ask, is the point of these expensive circuses? Enthusiasts, can you please enlighten me?