Back in 1997 I was the constituency secretary of the Hove Labour Party when we won that historic victory, causing Tony Blair to say: "Now I know we have won."

I never thought that, ten years later, not only would I have walked away in total disgust but fully agree with the comments of Jean Calder when she said: "Goodbye and good riddance" (The Argus, May 5).

The question now is will the Labour Party face up to the true cause of the reversal of fortunes?

I still have a copy of Tony Blair's book New Britain, My Vision of a Young Country.

On the back cover are the words: "When we make a promise, we must be sure we can keep it.

That is page one, line one of a new contract between government and citizen."

Twice now, both locally and nationally, I have stood as a UKIP candidate due to a broken Blair promise to give the people of Britain a referendum on Europe.

As soon as Blair came into power, the Labour activists were told we must not expect too much too soon. Then we were told the pre-election promises might not be possible. When we asked why, we were told not to be disloyal. Those of us who persisted in asking why the pre-election promises had not been kept were elbowed out of any position of responsibility within the Labour Party. I joined thousands of other Labour activists in leaving the party.

Since Labour came to power, the Greens have gone from strength to strength. That is a direct result of Labour's refusal to listen to ordinary British people.

In Hangleton and Knoll the Respect candidate polled 297 votes.

I wonder if the local Labour Party bothered to notice how many former dedicated Labour Party activists made up the campaign team?

Did they also notice the bulk of Respect votes were at Labour's expense? People were voting one Respect and two Labour.

The only redeeming factor is that it is not just Labour which is refusing to listen to people.

At the general election, I polled 750 votes for UKIP. At the time there was no way of knowing how much that affected the election result. Had the local Tories been watching the ballot papers as they were being counted for the local elections, they would have realised the UKIP vote kept Labour in power in Hove.

Last week, people were voting one UKIP and two Tory.

However, what should concern every thinking person of Sussex is the rise of the BNP. Their share of the vote gets bigger at every election.

Their growth is the direct result of party activists being willing to listen to the fears and concerns of ordinary British people.

That is how Hitler won power.

The question is, are both Tory and Labour parties going to wake up to this?

  • Stuart Bower, Towers Road, Upper Beeding