Among us there are those who worked very hard to get David Hanson elected as the first Labour MP for this constituency back in 1992.

Also among us and among our friends whose names do not appear here, are those who actively protested against the 1991 Gulf War waged by Americans and by a British Conservative government on the pretext of defending Kuwait. Since then another much bloodier attack has been made by the same two powers upon the same nation with no legitimate excuse. What has changed? What changed was that the second attack was made by a British Labour government.

We would never have believed it possible that a labour government could outdo a Tory government in waging unjust wars. Nor could we have expected our Member of Parliament to have been an uncritical supporter of such actions. None of us would have worked for his election and voted for him in 1992 had we known that he would support actions more appropriate for a right-wing imperialist Tory faction than an avowed Labour government. We share memories of former times such as the War in Vietnam when Labour and indeed Conservative Prime Ministers refused to bow before the bullying tactics of American Presidents while still maintaining friendly relationships with them.

Many letters of protest to our MP pointing out the illegality and folly of the attacks upon Afghanistan and Iraq bore no fruit whatsoever so we will now take advantage of the only power we have left to show our anger, a power we can only exercise every four years: we will not vote for David Hanson on May the Fifth.

Yours sincerely

Freda Hynes
Stewart Milne
Joan Santana
John Thompson
Margaret Webster
Keith Williams
Margaret Williams