LABOUR Party organisers want to stop their own members using Nazi analogies in internal rows over policy.

Finance chief councillor Theo Blackwell said the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency branch needed “to treat this matter seriously” after complaining that long-standing member Neil Fletcher had used the term “quisling”.

Another member, Terence Flanagan, provoked fresh anger last week when he quoted Hitler’s henchman Joseph Goeb­bels in a letter to the New Journal as he questioned the local group’s action on affordable housing.

Mr Fletcher confirmed yesterday (Wednesday) that he was asked to apologise for using the word “quisling” about local politicians – he says he meant somebody who betrays their beliefs – in an article last year.

He refused the request and says no further acton was taken, meaning that, as a Labour member, he was free to use it again in a similarly scathing opinion piece published in the Hampstead and Highgate Express months later.

Asked whether he was aware of any other disciplinary action, he said: “That would be news to me. A complaint was made against me last year by one member but it wasn’t upheld. I was asked to apologise and I said I’m sorry if people were offended by it but I’m not going to do that.”

He added: “Language evolves. If you look up ‘quisling’ in the dictionary, it may have meant something else in the past but now it means somebody who betrays their beliefs in general terms.”

Mr Fletcher, himself a former Camden councillor and the last leader of the Inner London Education Authority, has been critical of Camden’s Labour group on several issues, including its support of the bulky redevelopment of the old council offices in West End Lane, West Hampstead.

Mr Flanagan, meanwhile, has questioned whether the party is really making good on warm sentiment about providing more affordable housing. He wrote last week: “The cynic within me suggests that Camden’s Labour councillors have adopted the tactics often attributed to Joseph Goebbels that ‘If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it’.”

Cllr Blackwell is among a group of councillors who have suggested that the Labour Party members’ language should have been censored by the local press. 

He also suggested it was part of a trend of the “far left”, a comment which risks upsetting new members who joined the party locally in the past six months to support new leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“This isn’t a one-off, so the constituency party needs to treat this matter seriously,” he said, adding: “Repeatedly dubbing people Nazi collaborators after you lose arguments in meetings is offensive and wrong. It is not how debate in the Labour Party has been conducted or should be conducted now. End of.”

While the party leadership is frustrated with local newspapers, however, it is not explicitly saying what action it itself has taken on the matter. 

Some sources suggest further action is being sought after questions were raised internally over the chances of criticism taking a similar tone in future.

Fortune Green councillor Richard Olszewski, a party whip, said he would not comment on internal Labour Party matters, although he confirmed he had been behind the complaint around Mr Fletcher’s use of “quisling”.