Standing up for the proud tradition of heckling.

Britain

Abusing old men is bad public relations, said Ben Russell and Andrew Grice in the London Independent. The Labor Party should have thought of that before it frog-marched an 82-year-old out of its annual party conference for the crime of heckling. Walter Wolfgang is no ordinary old man, either. A party member for 57 years, he came to this country as a Jewish teenage refugee, fleeing Nazi Germany. Apparently he has yet to find a land of freedom. Last week, Wolfgang was “bundled out of the conference hall” after he cried “Nonsense!” during Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s speech defending the Iraq war. After footage of the “heavy-handed” eviction played over and over on the news, the Labor Party “was forced to make a humiliating apology.”

Too bad the apology was “offensively halfhearted,” said the London Daily Mail in an editorial. The fact is, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Labor Party has become a ruthless machine, requiring “drilled conformity.” It deploys “heavies to jump on anyone” who dares to dissent. Now it is actually perverting anti-terrorism laws for its partisan uses. After Wolfgang was expelled, the party invoked the Prevention of Terrorism Act to deny him re-entrance for subsequent speeches. Apparently, a single word of disagreement is a threat to the nation.

How our standards have fallen, said the London Times in an editorial. They call that a heckle? Saying “Nonsense” to a politician, as Wolfgang did, “is a platitude rather than a heckle.” It’s the equivalent of yelling “Boo!” A “true heckle should be a rapier, not a bludgeon: Its object is to discombobulate, not to drown out.” Ideally, the comment should be biting—and apt. It is then the job of the interrupted speaker to restore his upper hand with an equally clever counter-riposte. Such exchanges can be illuminating, and they certainly “should not be beyond the wit of any politician worth his salt (and vinegar).”

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The Labor Party, though, is run by “control freaks,” said the London Morning Star in an editorial. Determined “to create an image of unanimous adulation of the party leadership,” they went to huge efforts to muffle any off-notes. Security officials actually frisked party members entering the conference, “confiscating their packets of sweets” lest the candies be “used as missiles.” Such stage-managing is downright un-British. The House of Commons itself is frequently a tumult of “baying and catcalling, often alcohol-fueled.” Nobody would dare demand silence for a speaker.

Robert Shrimsley

Financial Times