A tense start to conference - from David Charter
11:37am
Monday, 27th September 2004
The first day of conference on Sunday was overshadowed by two things - the Ken Bigley hostage drama and Gordon Brown's interview in the Sunday Telegraph which was interpreted as deepening the Blair-Brown difficulties. In the evening I went to an emotion-charged fringe meeting of Labour Against the War which had a telephone link with Ken Bigley's brother Paul. As the packed meeting listened in pin-drop silence, Paul Bigley made increasingly desperate appeals for the Labour conference somehow to influence Tony Blair to do more to help his brother's plight. The ghostly voice was given a three-minute standing ovation. A Cabinet minister tells me later that he totally sympathises with the Bigley family and knows he would do absolutely anything too if he was in their shoes. He said it was terrible for the Cabinet to see the way the thugs in Iraq were using not only the Bigley family but also exploiting a free media in a free country to try and turn people against each other.
The first day of conference on Sunday was overshadowed by two things - the Ken Bigley hostage drama and Gordon Brown's interview in the Sunday Telegraph which was interpreted as deepening the Blair-Brown difficulties. In the evening I went to an emotion-charged fringe meeting of Labour Against the War which had a telephone link with Ken Bigley's brother Paul. As the packed meeting listened in pin-drop silence, Paul Bigley made increasingly desperate appeals for the Labour conference somehow to influence Tony Blair to do more to help his brother's plight. The ghostly voice was given a three-minute standing ovation. A Cabinet minister tells me later that he totally sympathises with the Bigley family and knows he would do absolutely anything too if he was in their shoes. He said it was terrible for the Cabinet to see the way the thugs in Iraq were using not only the Bigley family but also exploiting a free media in a free country to try and turn people against each other.
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