Dear Sir,
I am writing in response to the letter entitled Labour Abuse from the issue released on 9th December.
Firstly I would like to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party in Sedgefield. There were around forty Members present that day and some had travelled from outside the area. We have attempted to discover the identity of the member who made the inappropriate statement but have been unable to identify the person. We do suspect it was not a member of our local party as two of our regular attendees confirmed that the incident occurred without being able to recognise the person.
I would be happy for the member of the public who was called “stupid” to contact me so that I can apologise personally on behalf of our members as Chair of the Constituency Labour Party. We have very high standards of behaviour that have not been upheld in this instance. We are disappointed to have let this member of the public down.
We would also like to thank the members of the public for their largely warm and friendly response to our presence. The good people of Newton Aycliffe were largely an absolute credit to the town, listening to the messages of hope and the positive campaigning that we did. They were largely respectful and kind. There were two incidents of our members being spoken to aggressively, with foul and abusive language, but that in no way reflects the general attitude of the public.
We hope that the people of Newton Aycliffe have a lovely Christmas. For the Labour Party there is much hard work to do and we will endeavour to continue to do whatever we can to support the people of Newton Aycliffe.
Kind regards,
Paul Daly
Chair, Sedgefield CLP
Address supplied
