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Labour Party Conference: Heckler = Terrorist

We're The Great Old Ones Now

20:54 / 28.09.05

The Labour Party has apologised after an 82-year-old member was thrown out of its annual conference for heckling.
Walter Wolfgang, from London, was ejected from the hall after shouting "nonsense" as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw defended Iraq policy.

Police later used powers under the Terrorism Act to prevent Mr Wolfgang's re-entry, but he was not arrested.

From The Beeb.

It was, I suppose, inevitable that these powers should be blatantly mis-used. And I realise that they have already been deployed in circumstances where the application of laws intended to prevent terror attacks was at best tangential. This strikes me as particularly egregious, however. I don't feel that Labour should be apologising to this chap so much as I feel that they and the police should apologise to pretty much everyone for the false use of these powers.

20:56 / 28.09.05

The other relevant point is that the other guy forcibly evicted didn't even heckle, merely attempted to make a complaint about the way Wolfgang was being treated. He was restrained and had his mobile 'phone confiscated.

Fucking shocking. Absolutely shocking.

21:03 / 28.09.05

And while the heckler has recieved an apology, the person who spoke up for him has received no such expression of regret at this time.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:10 / 28.09.05

For a party widely regarded as masters of spin, to pull this kind of shit at your own fucking conference HAS to be something of a PR disaster, doesn't it?

At least, I pray to God it does...

21:25 / 28.09.05

Two of tommorrow's papers carry this on their front page - and Sham69, who appear to have been booked to play at the Labour party conference (!) - although if their performance on newsnight tonight (!!) was anything to go by, i doubt the band will be on stage tomorrow...

08:54 / 29.09.05

What is even more shocking is that Walter Wolfgang fled Nazi Germany in his youth. For him to be bundled out by political enforcers for exercising his right to freedom of speech, not least during Jack Straw's use of Germany as a parallel for Iraq, is a grotesque irony. And a coup of surprising idiocy on the part of Labour. It is not surprising that Blair himself, the direct opponent of free speech and free debate in this conference, has had to apologise to head off the potential fallout of such a disgusting move on his party's part.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:05 / 29.09.05

Well, yes. The photo on the front pages - frail octogenarian being yanked out of his seat by security - was just astonishing.

Blair on the Today programme was interesting - he maintains that the application of common sense makes it clear that his laws will only be used for the cause of good. As the political analyst said, he is saying to people "Trust me, I will ensure these laws are used responsibly" and people are replying "No, we don't trust you." Given the use to which they were put here, that doesn't seem entirely surprising.

09:30 / 29.09.05

Quite - the counterarguement to Blair is that common sense obviously didn't work as an effective counterbalence. Worse - 'common sense' is more unified and cohesive concept in a polite enivronment like a labour party conference - it is less of a unified and cohesive concept out on the street in a less polite environment.

09:58 / 29.09.05

According to Simon Hoggart's sketch the delegates were prevented from taking sweets into the conference because they might have been used as missiles...

09:58 / 29.09.05

Ask Jean Charles de Menezes how "common sense" is going.

10:16 / 29.09.05

Walter has just had his victorious and applauded return to the conference, but managed to include a couple more swipes against the war. Good man!

The quote that I have a problem with now is from the linked article, from Labour apologist and Party Chairman Ian McCartney, who graciously said Walter "was asked to calm down and be quiet, he could have taken that opportunity and watched and listened to the debate but he chose to continually disturb the event and so we removed him."

Is his, and New Labour's, definition of a 'debate' slightly different from mine?...

14:48 / 29.09.05

Or even "democracy"?

I've been thinking a bit about what the "freedom of speech" bit in the U.S. Constitution really means lately. I don't know if Britain has similar guarantees, but there's something about the ability to be heard in a public forum that seems central to the enterprise.

15:01 / 29.09.05

Britain has less of a guarentee of free speech, more of a tradition of free speech, and Tony Blair is a bit obsessed with 'modernization' . Could this be another tradition that he thinks needs reform?

15:38 / 29.09.05

yeah.
the only guaranteed free speech in the UK is at speaker's corner.
the law was made in 1872, and straw apprently would like more of them.

16:05 / 29.09.05

It was a crap decision to eject him and brutally done by the look of it but the own goal Labour scored has been a boon. The bad press it gained them resulted in TB schmoozing on Today with John Humphreys this morning, saying sorry several times, unreservedly. This from a man who can't apologise for the big stuff he has got horribly wrong.

There is an underlying question about the purpose of the Party Conferences. In the 80's the Labour Party Conference was a real debating and decision-making forum but the end result of that was seeing reports on tv each night in that September week where the party seemed to be a roused rabble shouting down their supposed leaders. Democracy in action though, even if all the motions and composites confused the yawning electorate.

Much of the goodwill Kinnock managed to garner to himself derived from his ability to shout down the hecklers at Conference, which played very well with Middle England as they caught a few headlines on the evening news between mouthfuls of M&S convenience food.

The comparison then was with the Tories under Mrs Thatch, who had the glitz of a well regulated Republican Convention and scored therefore with the voters who saw the sham of Nuremberg Rally control freakery as evidence that this was an army on the march with clear objectives, all on message, and returned them to power over and over again.

I can see why the only Labour Government in history that has managed three consecutive election victories is going to stifle dissent at Conference, which is not any longer connected in any way with democratic decision-making within the Party. Walter Wolfgang's unceremonious rejection was simply the logical option in those circumstances. Blairco see him as a troll rather than an elder voice representing some of Labour's finest traditions, deserving of respect.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

16:24 / 29.09.05

I think the law on Speaker's Corner guarantees a right to assemble. I don't know that discourse there is privileged beyond what is normal in the UK. I'm trying to find out now. I also doubt that the assembly right is unlimited.

17:11 / 29.09.05

have a look at speaker's corner.net.
and
here
here
and here

07:32 / 30.09.05

Worse - 'common sense' is more unified and cohesive concept in a polite enivronment like a labour party conference - it is less of a unified and cohesive concept out on the street in a less polite environment.

sleaze, brilliantly said. And Xoc, you're on the money.....

Tryphena Absent

01:28 / 01.10.05

I reckon that there's more to this story than meets the eye. Walter Wolfgang is well known in the Labour party for being uppity. So I conclude from their behaviour that 1)the stewards were sick of years of heckling and had been sitting in front of him recently thus taking the opportunity to manhandle him a little was too good to miss. 2)The stewards were new.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:40 / 01.10.05

Ahhh, but 'uppity' works well with 'gets kicked out of speech by wimps', but is less good with 'is restrained under anti-Terror laws'.

Unless there's a new paragraph I missed on 'possession of dangerous snotty attitude and off-message crustiness". Which appears more than likely.

08:15 / 01.10.05

There was a great cartoon I saw in some tory rag I found last night (I didn't buy it, honest!).

The cartoon is a scene at a big Nazi rally with the entire crowd saluting, and one voice cries out from the back: "Nonsense!" Hitler remains still, and whispers to one of his aides, "Have a quiet word with him afterwards. The last thing we need right now is a scene."

Tryphena Absent

21:51 / 01.10.05

Well presumably there was an administrative error- for instance the party probably told the Police to confine anyone who had been evicted from the conference and attempted to re-enter until they'd been checked out thoroughly (regardless of appearance). The easiest way for the Police to do that to the letter of the law (probably with the least amount of paperwork) was via terror laws. I don't like the method but I don't think this is a good example of why they're negative because the real violence was done by the stewards not those using the law. The Police detained someone, there are all kinds of ways they could have done that anyway, they simply used a law that could have serious consequences.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:01 / 02.10.05

The real violence? Are you sure? Wolfgang was jostled, the other chap was manhandled, but ultimately it was fairly tame. The use of these admittedly-extreme new anti-terror powers in a known non-terror situation for political purposes seems to me utterly terrifying.

Seems to me the real violence was done to liberty. Sorry.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:51 / 02.10.05

And the other guy doesn't seem to have been bombarded with personal apologies, what with not being old and all...

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

15:50 / 02.10.05

isn't "common sense" another term for what the speaker believes to be bloody obvious?

which, of course, isn't necessarily obvious to anyone else?

it's the most meaningless rhetorical pap most commonly used to defer any explicit policy.

or so I take it.

ta
tenix

20:28 / 02.10.05

The police weren't violent as far as I'm aware, but they detained the man under an utterly ridiculous act, one that was said would not be used against protestors. That's their fault in that they were obeying a ridiculous law; it's Parliament's fault for passing said law in the first place, and it's an example of inherent bias in that you can bet the average heckler at a random non-Labour political meeting would not have had the same trouble.

08:59 / 03.10.05

A couple of hecklers being removed is one thing, but today's Scotsman tells me that in fact 600 people were detained under the new Anti-Terrorism Act during the Labour Party Conference.

I am not sure if the link to the article will work, as I am a registered user on the site.

Now, in 600 people, it is true that the law of averages (and in the British political scene, it is a plain ol' likelihood) dictates that some of the people were almost certainly in need of some restraint. But six hundred, in a few days?...

Tryphena Absent

13:38 / 03.10.05

The use of these admittedly-extreme new anti-terror powers in a known non-terror situation for political purposes

Primarily I don't think this was used for a political purpose, it was used to counter a potential terrorist threat at a government conference. This is precisely why these laws were brought in. Was there an assumption involved? Yes, that these people could be terrorists, that the conference would be targetted, that such extreme security was needed. Now I don't agree with keeping Party members out of the room because they'd been asked to leave the conference for unspecified reason, I think this was disorganised and biased and completely unnecessary. However I do maintain that it was the easiest law for the Police to use to keep people out of the area, I doubt that the Labour party are politically stupid enough to direct the Police to use this specific legislation at their conference. Presumably their PR people and members are brighter than that and the whole notion was overlooked rather than specified.