IT was once a seaside tradition as dependable as the summer variety show or the end-of-the-pier farce.

Every autumn, Britain’s political parties would decamp to the seaside – and Bournemouth was one of their favourite destinations.

In recent years, the parties have shunned the resort in favour of city venues like Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.

Not only has that cost Bournemouth income and valuable publicity, but it has meant we no longer see front-bench politicians meeting Dorset’s ordinary people in the way they once felt they should.

Bournemouth has welcomed conferences for generations, but the opening of the Bournemouth International Centre in 1984 ensured it could continue competing for the biggest events.

Labour was the first party to hold its autumn gathering at the BIC, in 1985.

Ted Stevens of Bournemouth Labour party warned delegates they had arrived in “the land of lost deposits – a political wasteland”.

“As you journeyed down here you will have noticed that the air got steadily bluer. You passed your nearest Labour constituency 80 miles away,” he said.

That conference was most famous for leader Neil Kinnock rounding on the Militant tendency. But Mr Kinnock and his wife Glenys also found time to be pictured with babies in the creche and to visit the Court Royal convalescent home for minors. There, 69-year-old Will Ashton serenaded Mrs Kinnock with the song Cinderella Stay In My Arms.

Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party always had an eye for the photo opportunity. The Iron Lady was pictured riding the land train on Bournemouth sea front with Ken Clarke and dancing onstage with the Beverley Sisters.

In 1990, in one of her last engagements as prime minister in Bournemouth, she opened the BIC’s Purbeck Hall. A few weeks later, she would be toppled from power by her own party.

New Labour’s conference in Bournemouth in 1999 was said to be the biggest political gathering Europe had seen, with 20,000 accredited visitors. Activity in the local community was bigger than ever.

Health secretary Frank Dobson met laboratory employees at Royal Bournemouth Hospital, where pathology staff could still earn less than a supermarket checkout assistant.

Tony Blair visited Talbot Combined School to view a new classroom block and joined seven-year-old Alex Barton on a school computer.

The prime minister’s wife, Cherie, visited some of Bournemouth’s young carers and spent half an hour in a private chat with them.

Mr Blair visited Poole Hospital, while Mrs Blair chatted to staff and patients at the £100,000 women’s health unit at Royal Bournemouth Hospital and unveiled a plaque. “It's a marvellous story about how a group of women have got together to make an environment which is really woman-friendly,” she said.

Mr Blair was back in 2003, but the conference was a sombre affair in the aftermath of the Iraq war.

The Conservatives returned to the town as an opposition party under William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith.

During his visit in 2002, Mr Duncan Smith toured New Milton Health Centre, sat in on a lesson at King’s Park Primary School and even visited Bournemouth’s “underage” nightclub Fusion in Old Christchurch Lane – and had a lesson in DJ-ing from 14-year-old Tom Worrall of Boscombe.

Labour’s 2007 conference is remembered as the one in which Gordon Brown decided against capitalising on his early popularity by calling an election.

But he also visited Twynham School in Christchurch and attended a church service at Bournemouth’s Punshon Memorial Church, where he spoke to children from the Second Bournemouth Punshon Brigade.

Among them were Joe Cook, 10, from Southbourne, who said: "He asked me if I liked football and where I played so I said centre midfield … He seemed really nice.”

The Liberal Democrats have been frequent visitors to the town. In 2000, Charles Kennedy visited Royal Bournemouth Hosptial, chatted to staff and met Leon Atkins, 20, who had been brought in after a motorcycle accident.

To date, the Lib Dems are the last of the major parties to bring their autumn conference to Bournemouth, in 2009.

Mr Clegg visited Bournemouth and Poole College, where he chatted with culinary arts students and tried chopping an onion with the cameras watching.

He also dropped in a Highmead Community Farm, Longham, and was joined by treasury spokesman Vince Cable for a tour of Precision Disc Castings at Mannings Heath.

He might prefer to remember those encounters than what he said that year about David Cameron – that he was “the conman of British politics”.