Tory Conference Pride: The Times They Are A'Cliche

What a transformation. Big, light conference room in classy hotel. Signs all over the hotel pointing Conservative conference representatives the way. Good wine and canapés. Room packed, plenty of MPs, standing room only. Bright, confident, cheerful Tory delegates, half of them surely under 30. And I one of the warm-up acts to a government minister on his way to address us.
This, in October 2010, was the fringe meeting organised by Stonewall and LGB Tory — the party’s gay and lesbian organisation, of whose predecessor group I was, as an MP, a parliamentary vice-president. That early 1980s past now seems another country. Dingy basement rooms in cheap hotels, no explicit signs because the hotel didn’t want them pinned up. Nothing in the conference brochure because the party wouldn’t have it. Bad white wine, crisps and perhaps a couple of dozen furtive attenders, looking embarrassed. And I and my fellow committee officers desperately hoping that at least a couple of other MPs might turn up. Here I would make my usual speech about the march of progress being in one direction only — and struggle to believe it.
This week, the impressive Nick Herbert, our ministerial speaker, used that same phrase about the one-way march. But this time we believed it. As he was announced — Minister of State for Police and Justice — there can have been only a handful in the room, the oldest, who felt that old, instinctive tingle of anxiety down the spine at the word “police”.

Matthew Parris, The Times, 'For Gays The Past Really Was Another World'.
Presumably it read "Another Country" til a sub fucked it over.
No mention of Adam Rickitt, neither [Insert sad face].