a day in the life of


O


h I do like to be beside the seaside – especially stuck in a hall for days on end listening to endless speeches by trade union delegates at annual conferences.


It seems hardly anyone else agrees with me


that gatherings of workers are worth covering for the media any more. When I started covering unions for the Press Association in the 1980s, newspapers had up to three labour correspondents, who disappeared for weeks on end during the summer conference season. Lurching from one resort to another, working/


drinking for up to 18 hours a day, rubbing shoulders with some of the most powerful figures in the country, journalists found covering these conferences was a highlight of the year, producing a string of front-page stories. Competition was intense, so the odd


“exclusive” was so exclusive that no-one believed it, or a misplaced comment could lead to a scoop. The legendary David “Nozzer” Norris of the


Daily Mail once said he thought he’d seen a submarine patrolling off the coast of Blackpool during a political conference, in case of an attack. A rival reporter wrote it up, it was splashed on the front page, and Nozzer got an irate call from his newsdesk asking why he had missed the story. The days were long. Sitting in hot, windowless


halls for hours on end was a challenge, and the drinking sessions were epic, as were the hangovers. At a National Union of Mineworkers’ conference


in Blackpool in the late 1980s, I was on the press table in mid-morning, listening to a debate about the future of deep mined coal, when I heard a can being opened behind me. It was a well-known Labour correspondent opening a can of lager, smiling and groaning in equal measure, and asking for a “fill” on the debates he had missed. Drinking has always featured heavily at union conferences and, for journalists, spending time


10 | theJournalist


Speeches, briefings, and a lot of late-night drinking – all in a day’s work for Alan Jones


in hotel bars usually leads to hearing the best stories – as long as you can remember them. I have always been amazed at how officials could stay up so late and drink so much, yet appear on a stage the next morning dealing with challenges from delegates to committee decisions. A league table of the heaviest drinkers would be too long – but I did marvel at how some Prison Officers’ Association officials stayed up all night once in a hotel bar in Southport, then went straight to their conference, looking much brighter than me, even though I’d had a massive five hours’ sleep. My personal best was leaving the Grand Hotel


in Brighton at 3.30am during a Labour party conference, and attending a breakfast briefing on wages four hours later with Peter Mandelson. A union press officer I’d been with left the Grand at 6am – to a round of applause from police officers about to finish their night shift. At another conference, a photographer was


thrown out of the Grand in the early hours for wearing Timberland boots. It turned out he was wearing ONLY Timberland boots. The Grand was also the scene of one of Tony


Blair’s appearances at a private dinner with the TUC general council during a TUC Congress. One of his press officers released extracts from


what was billed as him reading the riot act to union leaders about the need for pay restraint. The trouble was – he didn’t. I met a succession of general secretaries, including the NUJ’s Jeremy Dear, who were confused to hear they were supposed to have been given a lecture.


The days of scrambling for a press place are long gone. Most conferences are covered by me, Mark Ellis of the Mirror and a Morning Star reporter, usually Conrad Landin, with the occasional guest appearance by the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire. We spend very little time in halls, watching


events from a press room, relying on press officers to give us stories and keep us up to speed with the event, or to give us details of a speaker who has made an interesting point. The quality of speeches ranges from the truly


inspirational to the boring, awkward and embarrassing. Union leaders have always been among the best speakers in the country, and the current crop is no exception. Mark Serwotka of the PCS, Dave Ward of the CWU and Unite’s Len McCluskey can rouse any audience. “Most of those MPs, they’ve never


done nuffing,” was a great line from the RMT leader at a rally.


an industrial correspondent


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