Sir - John Phillpott asserts that the “big hitters” of the Labour Party who tried to kill off his column in the 1990s have failed to “move on” (Worcester News, 4 October).

Not only is he correct, citing Labour’s current embargo on any response to the Phillpott file. Even more telling is the fact that today’s Worcester Labour Party is run by mostly the same people who ran it in the 1990s.

Phillpott contrasts this with the ability of Worcester’s Green Party leader, Louis Stephen, to accommodate him in discussion while often “agreeing to differ”.

Labour’s contribution to democratic debate was to lumber us with an MP for eleven years who demanded total conformity and the vetting of letters to your column and who succeeded in driving away a string of senior Party members, including two council labour group leaders.

The practice of control freakery was nurtured by Joy Squires in the ‘90s, then party chair, now Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate.

Regrettably, the 2015 general election will see people flock to the rosettes without any consideration of the quality of their candidates.

However, should the people of Worcester take a closer look at their candidates, they would find the Green Party’s Louis Stephen standing head and shoulders above the rest.

He is a decent man representing a principled party, not lobby fodder for Labour or the Tories which has been Worcester’s fate since 1997.

Peter Nielsen.

Worcester