Prime Minister's visit - April 15th 2005

Like buses, you wait ages for a VIP visitor to come, and then 3 or 4 come along at once! On Friday April 15th 2005, Broadfield Youth & Community Centre played host to the Prime Minister and his wife, the education minister and local MP Laura Moffatt. The purpose of the visit was for the PM to see the thriving pre-school groups which operate from the Centre, but I am sure he was also impressed by the evidence of all the other activities which take place at the Centre. It was obviously a bit of a media circus, with television crews from the BBC, ITN and Sky News all in attendance along with press and radio reporters. The pre-schoolers obviously had their normal sessions disrupted more than a little, but we are sure they all had a day they will remember for a very long time. Certainly BYCC itself was pleased to be at the centre (if you will pardon the pun) of so much positive publicity.

On arrival, the VIP guests all signed the (hastily improvised) visitors' book, and were shown round the Centre by the Chair of the GMC, Jayne Skudder. This was followed by a coffee morning session in the Social Hall where parents of pre-schoolers and other local residents had the chance to ask questions of Tony Blair. The questions were, apparently of a very high quality and best described as 'tough but fair'.

After the coffee morning question-and-answer session, Tony and Cherie Blair spent some time with the pre-school groups, talking with the children there. The various news crews took great delight in finding that one of the pre-schoolers has the name 'Tori'!

The Prime Minister's visit was cut short as he had to get up to Birmingham and deal with the problems at MG Rover, but before he left he agreed to pose for some photographs with the Chair of the GMC and the Centre Manager, Julie Skinner.

The Blairs stayed for about 90 minutes, although there was a lot of preparation beforehand, starting with letting the Police in at 6:30am to check the building, and a lot winding down afterwards. Throughout the whole visit the Chair took every opportunity to remind everyone that the Centre is a charity in the hope that some of Rupert Murdoch's millions might be donated. As it happened Radio Mercury, who were present, did say they would be making a donation to the Centre's funds, for which we are very grateful indeed. (The Treasurer would happily have charged the Police for an hour's hire of every hall during their security check, and would have charged a parking fee for the satellite uplink vans and the Labour Party 'battle bus', but was over-ruled by the chair as the Centre was the beneficiary of a great deal of positive publicity.) One consequence of this visit was that the Sussex Police were very impressed with the Centre, and expressed an interest in using it for training exercises for their sniffer dogs and handlers. So at the end of the day we had some potential closer links with the local Police force, a promise of a donation from Radio Mercury, and everyone had a day to remember.

Another consequence was a visit the next week from World At One as part of a programme about the election campaign. (Broadcast on Monday 25-May-2005)