IN the late 1980s, I was proud to stand as the Labour's General Election candidate for Worcester.

While I was candidate, Mrs Thatcher did something appalling. She allowed the American government to use British bases to bomb Libya.

We learnt afterwards that the plan was to kill Libya's President.

In fact the raid succeeded in killing only civilians, including one of the President's young children.

At the time, I represented Labour in an hour-long debate about this on local radio. I know that I spoke for everyone in the Labour Party in condemning Mrs Thatcher's disregard for the UN and international law.

Now, a decade and a half later, we have a Labour government and Worcester has a Labour MP. Yet faced with a similar request from the Americans, they have changed sides.

Indeed they have gone further, doing more to undermine the sovereignty of the United Nations than Mrs Thatcher ever dared.

I am no longer in the Labour Party, but I think it is time for party members to recognise that Tony Blair has to go.

His version of what it means to be "Labour" is more deeply conservative than Margaret Thatcher ever was.

Urgent task

But that's for the future. The Secretary of Worcester Constituency Labour Party faces a more urgent task.

The time has come to tell us publicly where the constituency party stands on the issue of war with Iraq - in particular, to tell us what steps the constituency party has taken to stop its MP, Mike Foster, and its Prime Minister, from supporting military action against Iraq.

In my view the Constituency Secretary needs to reply here in the pages of the Evening News. On this reply may hang Labour's fate in future elections in this area.

If the Worcester party has been doing nothing to challenge the position of their Prime Minister, then I think many of us will draw one conclusion - that Worcester Labour candidates, for local and national elections, no longer represent anything that is worth supporting.

I am sorry if this sound like an ultimatum. It is. But that is how Labour has chosen to conduct itself on the international stage.

It's time Worcester Labour Party told us whether it supports traditional Labour values or not.

MIKE WEBB, Malvern.