Walter Wolfgang's Reply

Submitted by AWL on 7 October, 2005 - 5:23

Walter Wolfgang, the Richmond constituency Labour Party delegate who was thrown out of Labour Party conference by stewards for shouting “Nonsense!” when Jack Straw spoke about Iraq, and was then initially refused readmittance to the conference by police citing anti-terrorist legislation, spoke to Solidarity.

Labour Party leaders have increasingly controlled Conference over the last few years. We used to have a very inclusive culture in the party. But New Labour has damaged that. We must reclaim it before it is too late.

The way it started was that, though Conference was being ignored, it was becoming more progressive. We had nuclear disarmament affirmed and reaffirmed by Conference. New Labour decided that democracy had to be stopped.

The Conservative Party does not believe in inner-party democracy. That is why Michael Howard wanted to stop their members voting on who should be the new party leader.

But Labour, in theory, tries to be democratic. Only Blair, for doctrinal reasons, opposes inner-party democracy. He does not believe in inner-party democracy. He probably does not even believe in having a Labour Party.

We used to be able to send motions in from constituency Labour Parties on any subject, and then they would be composited. We don't have that any more.

We have the National Policy Forum, which is a sort of "guided democracy". But then they ignore even the "guided democracy". The whole thing is a charade.

The problem before was that the members made policy, but the policy wasn't adhered to. Now the members don't even make policy.

I would like to see Partnership In Power [the reorganisation of Labour Party procedures in 1997] scrapped, and the constituency Labour Parties' right to put in motions restored.

I'd like to see a moving programme, a document which each year would incorporate the decisions of previous years but could be amended, and which would form the basis of election manifestoes.

We almost got that in the early 1980s. The leadership says it lost us the 1983 and 1987 elections. That is nonsense. We lost those elections because the electorate was in love with Thatcher.

The unions were told we need the changes in Labour Party structures in order to keep power. We don't need them. We need them like we need a pain in the ear.

By now, a lot of young people probably don't even realise that the Party conference is meant to control policy. And in fact it doesn't control policy.

Some of the constituencies hardly exist, and anyone who wants to go to conference as a delegate can go. Once they are there, they come under a lot of pressure from the Party leadership.

Now New Labour is breaking up. Blair will retire. Brown is not a solution. We'll have to rebuild democracy in the Labour Party.

The real issue now is that we have to bring the troops home for Iraq, we have to get rid of nuclear weapons, and we have to restore the Health Service.

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