Walter Wolfgang

Walter Julius Wolfgang (born June, 1923) is a German-born British socialist and peace activist. He is currently Vice President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Vice Chair of Labour CND and a supporter of the Stop the War Coalition. He became an unlikely hero after cameras recorded him being forcibly ejected from the annual Labour Party Conference in Brighton on September 28 2005 for shouting "nonsense" during Jack Straw's speech on the Iraq War, in an incident that provoked much media comment and embarrassed the Labour leadership.

In August 2006 Wolfgang succeeded in his bid to become a member of Labour's National Executive Committee.

Background

Wolfgang was born in Germany. As Jews, his family suffered persecution under the Nazis, and in 1937 his parents arranged for the teenaged Walter to move from Frankfurt to Britain (this was before the start of the Kindertransport programme). Wolfgang attended Ottershaw College, Chertsey, while his parents followed him to Britain two years later and settled in Richmond. During World War II, Wolfgang volunteered to serve in the RAF but was rejected due to a physical condition. After the war, Wolfgang qualified as an accountant; he joined the Labour Party in 1948. He allied with the left and was Secretary of the Bevanite pressure group 'Victory for Socialism' from 1955 to 1958. He co-authored several of Victory for Socialism's pamphlets, including "In Pursuit of Peace" (1954) and "The Red Sixties" (1959); Wolfgang also assisted Hugh Jenkins in writing "Summit Talks" and on an unpublished work on Socialism in general in the late 1950s.

In 1956, Wolfgang co-wrote a pamphlet "Tho' Cowards Flinch" calling for all meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party to be made open meetings for the press to report, and for the abolition of the standing orders of the PLP in order to allow Labour MPs freedom to defy the Labour whip. In the 1959 general election, Wolfgang was Labour candidate for Croydon North East, polling 15,440 votes, losing to sitting Conservative Member of Parliament, John Hughes-Hallett.

Nuclear disarmament

Wolfgang was a founder member of CND in 1958, participating in the group's first march to Aldermaston. After Hugh Gaitskell vowed to overturn the 1960 conference's decision to support unilateral nuclear disarmament and won sufficient support to make it likely that he would do so in 1961, Wolfgang wrote a pamphlet called "Let Labour Lead" which asserted that those who supported unilateralism would adopt Gaitskell's slogan and "fight, and fight, and fight again" to save the Labour Party. Leading a revival of the Aldermaston March in 1972, Wolfgang asserted that there was a 50–50 chance that nuclear weapons would be scrapped before the world was destroyed by them.

In 1961 Wolfgang joined the more radical section of CND in seceding to the Committee of 100 where he became Chairman of the London Executive. He organised a protest on November 1, 1961 in which he delivered a milk bottle labelled "Danger — Radioactive" to the Soviet Union embassy in London in protest at the detonation of Tsar Bomba, at 50 megatons the largest nuclear explosive to ever be tested.

As the delegate of Richmond-upon-Thames CLP at the 1972 Labour Party conference, Wolfgang made two speeches, one calling for nationalisation of land and the other moving an amendment to withdraw Britain from NATO and abandon nuclear weapons. In the late 1970s Wolfgang was a leading member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, which campaigned for reforms to the Labour Party structure to give constituency parties more power.

2005 conference

Wolfgang attended the 2005 Labour Party conference as a visitor and sat in the part of the hall reserved for visitors, which is at the back. During a speech by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, in response to Straw's comment that "We are in Iraq for one reason only: to help the elected Iraqi government build a secure, democratic and stable nation", Wolfgang shouted "Nonsense!". Some witnesses claimed he then may have added "That's a lie and you know it!" and/or "Pack of lies!".

In full view of the television cameras, much larger Conference stewards, who were on alert for any attempts to disrupt the speech, then physically picked up and forcibly removed the frail-looking, diminutive elderly man and confiscated his security pass. Erith and Thamesmead Constituency Labour Party chairman Steve Forrest, who was sitting nearby, was also removed (more forcibly) for voicing his objections to Wolfgang's treatment. When Wolfgang attempted to re-enter the conference later the same day, his pass showed that he had been removed previously, and he was briefly held by police under section 44 of the Terrorism Act.

Reaction

The Labour Party leadership quickly apologised for the 'heavy-handedness' of the incident, but Party Chairman Ian McCartney said on the BBC's programme Newsnight that evening that the conference had the right to expel repeated hecklers. The following day McCartney appeared before the media with Mr Wolfgang and personally apologised to him. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, apologised to Wolfgang on the following day's "Today" programme on BBC Radio 4 and BBC's Breakfast television programme, stating that he should not have been removed.

Wolfgang justified his actions by saying "when you have an international debate that does not deal adequately with the international issues of the day, the least you can do, if someone is talking nonsense, is say so". He was quickly hailed as a hero by sections of the Labour Party and sections of the media. His expulsion, and the use of anti-terrorism legislation, was condemned by both the political left and right as symptomatic of an increasingly authoritarian tendency in the Labour Government and the gradual erosion of civil liberties.

Wolfgang's pass to the Labour party conference was at first withdrawn following the incident, but this decision was later reversed and he returned to the conference the following day to a "hero's welcome". [cite news|title=Hero's return for Labour heckler| date= 2005-09-29|publisher=BBC News|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4292342.stm|accessdate=2006-07-17] In his closing speech at the conference, John Reid said "I'm sorry about yesterday. … We didn't want it, it shouldn't have happened, it's not the way we do things. Everybody is really sorry and we apologise for that."

The incident seems to have offered useful propaganda for opponents of the Labour government, being held up by some as an example of authoritarianism, and one such opponent claimed that if Mr. Wolfgang had shouted "nonsense" twice, he could have been charged according to the Protection from Harassment Act which was primarily created to deter stalkers. [cite news|title=Protest is criminalised and the huffers and puffers say nothing
date= 2005-10-04|publisher=The Guardian|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1584114,00.html]

NEC candidacy

Wolfgang has been a member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, a group which campaigns to increase the level of democracy within the Labour Party. In 2006 he was chosen and elected as one of the Grassroots Alliance slate of candidates standing for election to the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, stating that he would be campaigning on a platform of opposition to the war on Iraq, rejecting the Royal Navy's Trident missile program, and making the Party more democratic.

On 3 August 2006 it was announced that he has been elected to the NEC, coming fourth in the election (the top 6 get seats).

References

External links

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4291388.stm BBC News article]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4292342.stm Follow-up BBC News Article]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5243220.stm Heckler voted on to Labour's NEC] - BBC News
* [http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour2005/story/0,16394,1580806,00.html Guardian article]
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1803377,00.html Times article]
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/29/uwolfgang.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/09/29/ixportaltop.html Daily Telegraph: Heckler - a Jewish refugee who joined Labour in 1948]
* [http://www.stopwar.org.uk/article.asp?id=230105&a=5&b=15 A letter from Walter Wolfgang to "The Independent" newspaper, 23rd January 2005]
* [http://www.labourcnd.org.uk/ Labour CND homepage]