APF = Affiliated Political Funding

 Saturday 9th November 2002 @ Holiday Inn Lakeview Impington Cambridge

Dear Colleagues        

My name is Ray Hill. Not a lot of people know that. I'm the Branch political officer as well as a Health and Safety representative. You can find my contact details here or email me direct here .By the way, that's me in the picture. This is my account of the conference.

After a comfortable ride, (Posh car - editor) I arrived at the Holiday Inn at 9.50 to be met by Tony Jones (regional APF officer) offering hot coffee but no donuts. By 10.30 there were about 30 delegates from the six counties of the Eastern Region, Bedford, Cambridge, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.

The Conference was opened by Peter Terry (Chairperson), who welcomed everyone and said out of the five thousand invitations sent out, it was great to see this vast number of delegates attending. A ripple of laughter echoed around the hall. He then introduced everybody to Tony Jones and Adrian Lougdon, who are both Regional APF Officers and the first speaker for the morning David Brown, Regional Secretary GPMU, Newmarket, who spoke about EEDA and EERA (see leaflet, ‘Spreading the Word – The Regional Agenda’), and Chris Mole MP, Ipswich, (see picture) who spoke about how the APF funds helps not only the Labour MP’s, but the Labour County and Parish Councillors in the Eastern Region.

He went on to say, ‘with the support and funding the Labour Councillors received in this area is fantastic, I should know, eighteen months ago I was a Labour County Councillor for Suffolk, until the untimely and tragic death of the Ipswich MP Jamie Cann’ said Chris, ‘now I am the Labour Member of Parliament for Ipswich and the fight still goes on, and your support is still needed, I would like to say now, a big thank you to all those nameless and faceless people that helped me win the Ipswich Seat for Labour’

We then had a Question and Answer session with David Brown and Chris Mole until lunchtime.

After lunch we had a Member from Head Office who spoke about APF Review and how they are now in the process of changing the name from APF to UNISON Labour-Link (see APF Review leaflet).

We then had an afternoon coffee break, after that Peter Terry asked for Three Members per County, to become members of the Regional APF Committee, the results were as follows:

1 Bedford – Heather Crozier, Two seats to fill
2 Cambridge – Lesley Nicholls, David Hodgeson, One seat to fill
3 Essex – Christina Huxable, George Hickman and Tom Pleasance
4 Hertfordshire – Jackie Holliwell, Peter Terry and Robin Chenery
5 Norfolk – Margaret Moss, Two seats to fill
6 Suffolk – Jan Lavender, Gill Robertson and Brian Monk

The other Suffolk Members present were Graham Kendal,  Ann Robertson, the Eastern Region (Health) National Executive Council Member and of cause myself, Ray Hill.

I proposed, could the APF Branch Members of each County meet a week before the Committee Meetings, so that if there are any relevant items on the Agenda they can then ask the County Committee Members to put there questions forward. Peter Terry thought this was a very good idea as it gets the APF Branch Officials in each county active. The proposal was agreed unanimously.

The Conference closed at 4pm.