Apparently those great lumbering heavies who dragged him from his seat, and manhandled the younger man who had the nerve to object to what they were doing, were volunteers. That seems to be regarded as a point in their favour by the party hacks.

Of course there's a long tradition of having volunteer thugs take care of dealing with troublemakers. There are always people who like doing that kind of thing for the love of it. Hitler had his Brownshirts, Mosley had his Blackshirts (while Wodehouse's Sir Rodney Spode had his Black Shorts). And remember how Woody Guthrie sang about the all-American "Vigilante Man".

One thing - you can guarantee on the wake of this that anyone shouting "rubbish" at the Tory Party conference next week will get kid glove treatment now.

To see some a BBC news report on this and see what it's all about. click on this, and then on the strap line "Watch BBC news on video". (But that news link is only temporary, because it changes to show the current news.)

It's good that the Labour Party have repeatedly apologised for this,   but, as with the rather more serious business of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by the police, apologies aren't good enough. Things like that can only happen because people in charge of organising things have failed to carry out their responsibilities. Why didn't the person chairing the meeting tell the thugs to cut it out at the time, for example?