This time next week Ed Miliband be will giving his last speech to Labour party conference before the general election. The conference speech remains a moment of high drama and tension for any speaker and quite often the audience as well.

To get you in the mood for what could be an election defining party conference season, here are five of the best speeches from conferences past.

1. ‘The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution’ Harold Wilson, 1963

Still perhaps the most far-sighted speech given by a leader of the Labour party since the end of the second world war. Wilson begins by reflecting on the pace of technological change and it is not until the closing moments that he utters the line for which he is most remembered, but often misquoted.

The brilliance in Wilson’s speech is the combination of high-minded policy with low politics, managing to depict the Tories as outdated and unfit to govern Britain in the coming era of change, while simultaneously shifting Labour’s image in the mind of the voters.

Wilson later wrote that his aim had been to ‘replace the cloth cap [with] the white laboratory coat as the symbol of British labour’ and for a while at least he did, uniting a previously divided party behind his leadership. Election victory was to follow.

 2. ‘As we stood together to oppose apartheid in South Africa, we are today called upon to join forces for growth and development’ Nelson Mandela, 2000

Guest appearances at political conferences are always a risky business. Some work and some really just don’t. Nelson Mandela’s appearance at the 2000 conference, however, was always going to be a special moment.

Humorous, self-deprecating and, above all, inspiring. Mandela frequently praised the Labour party’s role in the anti- apartheid struggle, even going so far as to call Britain the ‘second headquarters of our movement in exile’. He closes by calling for the new century to be one in which the ‘gross inequalities of the past, at last are eradicated’.

3. ‘I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises’ Neil Kinnock, 1985

No collection of conference speeches would be complete without ‘that’ speech. In what is possibly the bravest speech given by the leader of any political party in the modern era, Kinnock derided the militant tendency and set Labour on its long path from bitter infighting to modern electability.

It’s debatable whether this was Kinnock’s best speech (his speech to Welsh conference the same year, which was used in the ‘Kinnock the movie’ ad, is at least its equal) but it was certainly his most significant.

4. ‘Fight and fight and fight again’ Hugh Gaitskell, 1960

Although he faced almost certain defeat in his attempt to prevent his divided party endorsing a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament, Gaitskell’s speech to the 1960 party conference remains one of the best. And while he always suspected the vote would go against him, he nevertheless urged his supporters to ‘fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love’.

While conference did ultimately vote for a policy of unilateralism, the fact that this decision was overturned a year later and that his speech continues to be remembered as one of the best in British politics would seem to confirm Vernon Bogdanor’s assessment that ‘Gaitskell lost the vote but won the argument’.

5. ‘You’re the future now’ Tony Blair, 2006

Of course there had to be a Tony Blair speech on here. There could have been more than one – his Clause IV speech from 1994, or 1999’s ‘forces of conservatism’ could easily sit on this list. Although his nearing departure meant that it was his least consequential speech to party conference, that should not take away from the fact that it may just have ended up being his best.

While the joke about Gordon and Cherie, or the valedictory ‘I’ll always be with’ are probably the parts which come most easily to mind, the main thrust of the speech is actually about the effect of globalisation, much of which still holds up pretty well today.

On the other hand, given what happened subsequently, the ‘if we can’t beat this lot’ line about David Cameron and the Tories is probably best forgotten …

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Rich Durber is a former speechwriter for a shadow minister and writes a fortnightly column for Progress. He tweets @richdurber.