Letter: Grass-roots opinion in Wallasey and Wales

Sir: We are writing to express our extreme concern at the serious inaccuracies contained in your article, 'Labour grass roots give voice to disillusion' (9 June), and its account of the recent history of the Wallasey Constituency Labour Party. Your analysis amounts to a simplistic and highly misleading caricature of recent events and actual grass-roots opinion.

Angela Eagle was not, as you suggest, 'imposed' by the party's National Executive Committee; she was selected by local members from a shortlist approved by the NEC but formulated from nominations by local party branches and affiliates. The decision not to include Lol Duffy on the shortlist clearly offended some sections of the local party, but it is erroneous to imply that Mr Duffy's particular brand of socialism is representative of local opinion.

It was also inaccurate to suggest that the suspension of the Wallasey party's general management committee was the result of 'political skirmishes'. The decision by the NEC was in response to grass-roots complaints about the conduct of the Wallasey annual general meeting and systematic breaches of party rules and procedures.

It is perhaps also relevant that the two people quoted in your article who were most critical of the party's alleged drift from its grass roots, Paul Davis and Kenny Murphy, both failed in their attempts to be elected as officers and delegates from their own local branches.

Ironically, the influence of the 'hard left' within the Wallasey party has been strongest in those branches with a predominantly professional middle-class membership. The evidence, nationally and locally, is that it is the party's traditional working-class supporters who are least susceptible to the simplistic rhetoric of the ultra-left.

It is within the communities that suffer most at the hands of the vicious anti-working-class government that there is the greatest and most acute appreciation of Labour's need to broaden its appeal and modernise its message to secure victory at the next general election. Perhaps those who are not currently capable of absorbing this message should follow their erstwhile comrades from the Militant Tendency on the long trek into the political twilight zone.

Yours faithfully,

E. DON PROUT (Secretary)

S. DAWSON (Chair)

R. ROOM (Executive Officer)

Leasowe Branch

Wallasey Constituency Labour

Party

Merseyside