Losing the Pensioner Vote

30 September 2005



New Labour Throws out Old Member

Jack Straw is one of Britain’s more human politicians. One must confess to actually liking the man. But as Her Majesty’s Foreign Secretary, it fell to him to defend the British role in the War of Aggression in Iraq during the Labour Party conference earlier this week -- and he deserved heckling. And when an 82-year old man, who joined Labour before Prime Minister Blair was born, shouted “nonsense” during Mr. Straw’s speech, he was manhandled out of the conference hall and prevented from returned with security personnel relying on the Prevention of Terrorism Act to stop him.

This isn’t the first time that Walter Wolfgang, member of Labour since 1948 and prominent member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, has had trouble with political authorities. He fled Nazi Germany as a teenager, and no matter how bad Tony Blair’s “control freakery” gets, he and his team haven’t a patch on the SS.

However, it does go to show to what extent politicians have decided that their image is more important than democracy and the right to dissent. Twenty years ago, “Old Labour's” conference saw the party leader denouncing Derek Hatton, as awful a hack for Militant Tendency (a Trotskyite entryist group that was appalling in the extreme) as existed, while Mr. Hatton shouted back “Liar!” Chancellor Dennis Healey was roundly booed for trying to justify IMF-ordered spending cuts in 1976. And hero of the left, Nye Bevan, set off near riots by saying he would never give up Britain’s nuclear arsenal and “go naked into the conference chamber.”

And any visitor to the House of Commons can attest that ministers routinely hear the other parties shout the word “nonsense” (or at least that is was the transcripts in Hansard’s put in rather than “lies,” “bollocks,” or “bullshit”). What Mr. Straw said about British policy in Iraq was, most certainly, “nonsense” (as well as “lies,” “bollocks,” and “bullshit”), and Mr. Wolfgang’s interruption was nothing more than calling a thing by its name. Should he have been polite and said nothing? What precisely is a party conference for if not to allow the party membership to exchange thoughts with the party leadership? What country and year is it when the people are expected to listen politely to their leaders and applaud when the light goes on no matter how much they disagree?

Mr. Blair and the rest of New Labour have made their apologies to the man who’s been in Labour longer than most of them have drawn breath. Simon Hughes, a leading Liberal Democrat MP however, hit the nail on the head when he told “BBC1 Breakfast”, “Here's a conference with the Foreign Secretary tackling some of the most controversial issues of the day and people aren't allowed to stay in their seats if they shout any protest, even restrained protest. It just seems to me that it's an attitude question about authority and authoritarianism. The Labour Party has so much in it still that says ‘We will make you do it our way’.” New Labour acted like old fascists or communists. Shame on them.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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