BRITAIN: An 82-year-old peace activist manhandled by stewards out of the British Labour Party conference in Brighton on Wednesday returned to the conference yesterday and accepted the profuse apologies of the party leadership.
Tony Blair was forced to apologise in a round of television interviews, following the embarrassing scenes when Walter Wolfgang was thrown out of the conference for heckling foreign secretary Jack Straw over Iraq.
Yesterday, Mr Wolfgang returned to the conference hall and Labour officials returned his security pass which had been confiscated when police detained him under terrorism powers. He was given an on-stage apology by defence secretary John Reid before meeting party chairman Ian McCartney to shake hands behind closed doors.
Mr Wolfgang, a Labour member for 57 years, later said he would be going to future party conferences and would not hesitate to heckle again.
But the long-standing campaigner for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament made no attempt to hide his disdain for New Labour and what he saw as its culture of stifling dissent.
"I think Tony Blair is the worst leader the Labour Party has ever had, not excluding Ramsay MacDonald," he told reporters. "His basic instincts are highly conventional and are basically those of a Tory." And he said he had only a little more faith in chancellor Gordon Brown, whose politics he saw as only slightly removed from those of the prime minister.
Pete Willsman, a member of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee, said he had asked for an official investigation to find out if the stewards who ejected Mr Wolfgang were members of the Labour Party or party staff. He said he had so far been unable to establish whether they were volunteers or professionals from an outside company.
Mr Wolfgang, from Richmond in London, said the use of muscular security was "a classic example of what happens when a party loses confidence in itself".
He was given warm applause as he walked back into the conference venue alongside Steve Forrest, the union organiser who was also thrown out after coming to his defence on Wednesday.
Earlier, Mr Blair told the BBC: "People are perfectly entitled to freedom of speech in our country and we should celebrate that fact and I'm really sorry about what happened to Walter and I've apologised to him.
"It's just an unfortunate thing that happened. The Labour Party has apologised, the chairman of the Labour Party, and I have apologised to him."
Later, Mr Reid began his end-of-conference address to delegates by saying sorry to the veteran activist, seated in the balcony from which he was removed on Wednesday. "I am sorry about yesterday," Mr Reid said. "I was on the platform. We didn't want it. It shouldn't have happened. It's not the way we do things in here."
Mr Willsman said: "Walter had a visitor's pass this year, so he had to sit on the balcony. Next year, the constituency party is going to apply for a delegate's pass for him, so he can heckle all he likes."