by I.A.M. Special
An email from Tom Watson. A “Special invitation”. It continued this was an invitation to a “special Campaigners’ lunch” for key campaigners to share ideas with Tom Watson and Ian McNicol. Just to make it clear, “This is a special event by invitation only”.
There was definitely a whiff of exclusivity: maybe even food while sitting on a chair.
And so across the country hundreds of people put the date in their diary. And on that special day wedged themselves into a heaving Barbirolli Room at the Radisson. They patiently queued for spring rolls and carrot cake which they held in their hands, plates having long since run out. Then they took turns to look longingly at jugs of iced tap water unaccompanied by the glasses needed to drink from it.
They shouted loudly to all their chums, who’d also been invited. And they listened as Tom Watson treated the special, if thirsty, with a never before told tale of how it was him that did all the dishes in the McNicol/Watson bachelor household. They whooped and cheered “Milton Keynes” and then “Edinburgh” for doing something very important and probably special. And as they took our bottles of warm water from their bags and swigged they reflected on all those ideas and best practice they’d swapped. And that somewhere, surely, there were some members that hadn’t been invited.