YOUR article headlined 'Loo-dicrous' (LET, February 14), is representative of the shallowness of political debate in Britain as well as the tramline psychology of the British.

It's more fun to have a dig at local party apparatchiks and their methods than to analyse what goes on in political parties and why they behave as they do.

Clearly, political parties opposed to Labour need a label -- preferably a bad one -- and one which can be applied at all degrees of responsibility within the Labour party. Control freakery has been around for some time and fits the bill just fine.

In fact, it is an alternative expression of the truth about the other main party, the Conservative and Unionist party; their legendary "loyalty" -- control freakery by another name -- has locked Britain into a past full of misery for more than a century through policies inappropriate for 80 per cent of the population.

That does not mean that Labour should be let off. The whip system is a particularly anti-democratic and odious method of suppressing dissent. If whips applied themselves only to internal party matters, then it would be less of a problem.

But they take the pervasive notions of party management and apply them outside, in areas where they have no remit.

The most significant feature of this argument is whether the practice of political control at a comparatively low level can lead on to something else. The answer is that it can and it does -- it did just that in Nazi Germany for example.

New Labour is a genuine recognition by the movement that it is something else other than what it was prior to the last election. It is less a political instrument, more of a professional management machine.

That may not necessarily be a bad thing for the country, but it means that dissent is more or less finished.

FRANK FLYNN, Old Bank Lane, Blackburn.