101 years of inflation
The Tories say they have that Labour's conference will cost Β£6.5 million in security alone. I don't have to hand any accurate guesstimate for the overall cost of this jamboree. But I do have beside me a pamphlet written by Paul Haslam, from the Labour Members in Northern Ireland group, which provides a lot of fascinating financial detail about the First Labour Party Conference, which took place in Belfast in 1907.
The venue was the YMCA's Wellington Hall and a letter to Ramsay MacDonald reveals that the total fee for the 2 day event was Β£10 10s.
The organisers did not have to worry about security, but they did have to order pencils, safety ink bottles and pens "at intervals along the tables to enable delegates to write letters if desirable". Hot topics included women's suffrage and whether the Labour Party should be unequivocally "socialist", a term which then had more of a revolutionary connotation than nowadays.
The founding father of the Labour Party, Keir Hardie, addressed a public meeting in the Ulster Hall. According to the newspaper "Labour Leader" he delivered "perhaps the best speech in his life" rejoicing "in this meeting as a sign that the old order of religious bigotry was passing from Belfast, and a new era of Labour and Fraternity had begun".
Well Keir obviously didn't have a crystal ball. War and partition followed, and by 1919 Labour was refusing affiliation to the Belfast party. In more recent years a series of court actions forced the Labour hierarchy to overturn the ban on the party organising in Northern Ireland. Now local activists say Labour has 210 members in Northern Ireland. Not a lot, although they claim to be the only region in the UK which is actually increasing membership.
I'm 
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