Liberal Burblings

Our hotel room is very comfortable and the hotel has offered a very pleasant stay with plenty of filling grub.

We stayed at this particular hotel because my wife worked here as a receptionist 30 years ago. The idea of returning was fun.

It was only this morning that I realised that I have been sleeping all this week above Liberal Democrat history. My wife just happened to look up the hotel on Wikipedia and there it was:

In 1988, the hotel was the venue for a conference where the Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party merged to form the Liberal Democrats. Writing in the New Statesman about the merger, the writer Jonathan Calder said of the hotel, “Blackpool’s Norbreck Castle Hotel does not lift the spirit at the best of times, and in January 1988 its Soviet ambience was enhanced by the trams and melting snow in the streets outside.”

As Jonathan explains, the event in question was a special assembly of the old Liberal party which voted to merge with the Social Democratic Party.

So, yes, I have been staying all week at the huge Norbreck Castle hotel in Blackpool. Not only that, but I have actually been sleeping above the Norcalympia Exhibition Hall in the hotel complex, which I assume was the venue of the conference described above.

So as we pack our bags, I got my daughter to take the souvenir photo above of me at the doors of the Norcalympia hall. A little piece of Liberal Democrat history…

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