BRITAIN: Conservative Party leaders were accused yesterday by a deselected parliamentary candidate of behaving like "little dictators".
Adrian Hilton, who was to have contested Labour-held Slough at the coming election, said ordinary Conservative members were being treated with contempt by Tory Central Office.
He warned that he would pursue the matter "in law" because "natural justice" had not been done.
The row comes on top of the constituency battle at Arundel and South Downs after the sacking of Howard Flight as a general election candidate and can only cause further discomfort for Tory leader Michael Howard.
In Slough the constituency association has been suspended for refusing to accept the deselection of its candidate.
The association has been placed on "support status" and is being run from London while Sheila Gunn, who served as former prime minister John Major's press secretary, has been imposed as the candidate.
Mr Hilton was dumped a fortnight ago after articles came to light in which he suggested that the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, under Mr Major's government, was an act of treason.
He had been drafted in to fight the seat after Robert Oulds was sacked for being pictured on the internet with a range of guns and rifles and a hunting knife.
On BBC Radio 4's The World At One programme Mr Hilton said that, to be "fundamentally democratic", grassroots Tories had to have a say on policy and who stood as a candidate.
"These developments are causing me grave concern. There are people at Central Office behaving like little dictators and, seemingly, people who are ordinary members are being treated with contempt.
"I am simply appalled at the way the Slough Association has been treated."
Asked if he was giving up, Mr Hilton replied: "No, I'm not. I am pursuing this in law because I do not feel that I, personally, have had natural justice."
Mr Hilton said he had only learned of his deselection last night from a BBC website and had received no official notification after an "ultimatum" that he either resign or be sacked.
Labour's campaign director Alan Milburn said voters had a chance to "see off the last hurrah of Thatcherism" at the forthcoming election.
Howard Flight's suggestion that Tory spending cuts would go further than publicly announced had exposed the truth, he said.
"They have a Thatcherite ideological obsession that is deep and real" and continued to stand for privilege, the Cabinet minister told the Fabian Society in a speech. Both the nature of its current campaign and its proposals for the future show that the Conservative Party is resorting to type," he said.
"It is opportunist. It is hard right. It is keen to exploit problems, but its cupboard is bare when it comes to dealing with them. Above all, the Tories are unchanged and unreformed. Their belief is not that they lost because the Thatcher revolution went too far but that it did not go far enough."
Mr Milburn contrasted that with the "progressive modernisation" that Labour would offer in its manifesto.