Caring New Labour - Oh Yeah

Walter Wolfgang and 82 year-old life-long activist with the Labour Party and a Jewish escapee from Nazi Germany in 1933, was jumped on by stewards (bouncers) for having the cheek to shout 'nonsense' during Jack Straw's speech at the Labour Party Conference and was thrown out. His conference pass was unceremoniously removed and broken. Jack Straw was, yet again, trying to convince a skeptical world that it had been right to launch an 'unprovoked' and probably illegal attack on Iraq and preparing to stay on indefinitely.

Erith and Thamesmead constituency party chairman Steve Forrest, who was sitting next to Mr Wolfgang, was also thrown out after complaining about the stewards' response.

Free speech is alive and well in the 'People's Party'!

When Mr Wolfgang tried to re-enter the conference hall he was then detained under the Terrorism Act. Welcome to Blair's England!

Apparently, the Party has now apologised and allowed them both to return to the conference - so that alright then. Question is, why did it happen in the first place?

Shortly after the octogenarian hoodlum had been evicted, another trouble-maker, Great Grimsby MP, Austin Mitchell, had his camera phone confiscated for taking pictures of people queuing to get their passes.

Mr Mitchell, a keen amateur photographer, was taking photographs of the queues when stewards demanded to know what he was doing. He said: "The police were called over and asked if they could look at my pictures. I said of course they could but I did not want the pictures deleted. I kept repeating that I did not want the shots deleted and the police officer said it was alright because he didn't know how to use the camera. After he handed it back to me I found he had deleted every picture. This is security gone mad. And what's the point. The party has given the security staff absolute carte blanche and they have gone mad. It's completely over the top."

I can't decide whether this is just more of the party control-freakery or fear of terrorism. If it is the latter, then the terrorists are winning, and if it is the former, then we need to get shot of them and get a truly social-democratic party in power that is not afraid of free speech.