• READING the letter from Phil Rosenberg, a valued local councillor, left me feeling beyond sad (Moshé Machover’s historical revisionism is not just poor history, it is malicious, October 19).

We are both members of the Labour Party which, if it is about anything, is surely about working towards a fairer world.

We live in a country governed by the rule of law, itself underpinned by the concept of natural justice which is fundamentally about fairness and is often described as having twin pillars. The second of these is “hear the other side”.

What has provoked, initially, the outpouring of support for Professor Moshé Machover, both locally and nationally, is what Richard Kuper rightly calls the Labour Party’s “abject denial of any form of natural justice or due process” in his summary expulsion (Labour expels professor at its peril Letters, October 12).

Professor Machover was not expelled, as Cllr Rosenberg appears to claim, for his alleged “ravings”, or “bizarre hypothesis”, or for distorting history, but for his assumed support for or membership of “a political organisation other than an official Labour group or unit of the party”.

Only when his expulsion is rescinded, as fairness surely demands, will the party enable itself, to “properly investigate” the allegations of anti-Semitism made against him by a person or persons unknown.

The admission that it has not “properly investigated” exposes his expulsion as an act of grotesque unfairness. Even murderers are allowed to be heard in their own defence before they are sentenced.

JILL HOOD
Sumatra Road, NW6