One final act of control freakery as Labour abandons Millbank

Its brooding presence has towered over the British political landscape for years, its very name a byword for the black arts of spin and control. Yesterday, however, the scenes inside the once-immaculate war room in the Labour Party's Millbank Tower headquarters were decidedly off-message. The nerve centre from which two landslide general election victories were directed was strewn with hired crates and sacks.

Labour is on the move this weekend. The party is swapping its glass and steel riverside home just a short walk from Tate Britain for a more sedate town house in an elegant Westminster street.

Several crates stacked in a corner were labelled "high value donations" although one official was heard to quip: "They're not stuffed full of dosh." Another pile of boxes contained the regular predictions of the man dubbed "Mystic Greg" – Greg Cook, the party's polling expert.

Labour leaders hope the move will help the party shed the damaging image of "control freakery" associated with Millbank. But old tendencies were still evident yesterday inside the infamous tower block. One nervous official tried to stop us taking a picture of a workman unscrewing a plaque marked "John Smith House", the name given to the previous headquarters at Walworth Road after the death of the Labour leader in 1994. "You cannot take any photographs without a press officer being with you," he declared.

The new office at 16 Old Queen Street, with a view over St James's Park, was also in chaos yesterday as BT engineers installed telephone lines and the reception area still resembled a building site.

But the new HQ should be open for business next Wednesday. Technically, Labour is homeless until then. "I am carrying little chunks of the operation around in my briefcase," said David Triesman, party general secretary.

Some 75 staff based at Millbank have accepted a move to a new office in North Shields, Tyneside. But others were reluctant to leave London and about 110 officials will move to Old Queen Street.

Mr Triesman is delighted that, for the first-time in its 102-year history, Labour has finally got round to buying. It was a rent hike by Millbank's owners, Tishman Speyer, taking the annual cost to Labour to more than £1m, that persuaded the party to move out.

Labour has taken out a £5.5m, 15-year mortgage on its new home but Mr Triesman hopes it will be paid off sooner, possibly with help from the trade unions. Although Labour has further debts of £5m, Mr Triesman believes the new HQ will prove an investment and an asset.

He hoped the move would be symbolic but said many of the stories associated with Millbank were "myths". The party occupied only one floor of the 32-storey tower block, yet many people assumed its command and control empire took up the entire building.

Some of the myths were propagated by Labour's spin machine. "Excalibur", the database at Millbank, was feared by the Tories but one Labour official admitted yesterday: "It was basically one guy at a computer with a press cuttings library on it."

When he opened the Millbank media centre in 1996, Tony Blair said: "This is a very exciting and big thing for us. We are proud of it. We think it says a lot about the Labour Party. It is very New Labour. It's good, it's tough, it's professional, and it's going to work."

Although the Millbank machine delivered a massive majority the following year, its disciplinarian approach when Labour was in power led to debacles over the selection of candidates for London Mayor and First Secretary of Wales. The iron rule of Margaret McDonagh, who was general secretary at the time, extended to Millbank itself, with some colleagues complaining that she declined the offer of her own room so that she could sit in the middle of the giant open-plan office to keep an eye on everyone.

The new, more people-friendly home is aimed partly at drawing a line under such things. "I hope people will work in a pleasant environment," said Mr Triesman. "Very many more people will have desks with windows that look at the world outside – even if it is a leafy park."