A LABOUR party member who campaigned against his own local leader at last year's elections has been suspended from the party for three years following a private hearing this week.

Labour party notables Judith Blake, Rose Burley and Bernard Dooley were up in Morecambe as a panel of the party's National Constitutional Committee heard the case against Hest Bank man Michael Jackson. Complaints against him were initiated locally by Cllr Jean Yates.

Mr Jackson, who joined the party when Tony Blair took over as leader, had written a series of letters to local newspapers, including The Citizen , attacking certain individuals within the local Labour group and a number of town hall officers. The letters followed a series of local authority cock-ups which lost the district millions.

Last May Mr Jackson's actions culminated in a farcical poster campaign against former council leader Stanley Henig on election day. Officers from the town hall hared round the town tearing down the posters nearly as fast as Mr Jackson stuck them up! Henig was later ousted in a sensational election result which saw the local Labour group buck the national trend of great support for the party nationally.

The team working for Jackson's expulsion had assembled a set of his letters to local papers in the last two years and letters written personally to Tony Blair and MEPs had been rooted out to support the party's case against him.

In presenting their case, Morecambe Constituency Labour Party referred to The Citizen , which had initiated a campaign against local government secrecy and the wasting of tax-payers' cash, as having an-anti Labour bias and further claimed that the paper had supported the MBI election campaign.

Commenting on the suspension Jackson said: "I worked really hard for the party in supporting Geraldine Smith and getting the party's highest ever vote for the Lancaster Rural Central County Council Division. But is seems that 'old Labour' are dying off very slowly in Lancaster and Morecambe - but I don't blame Geraldine. I think it was Hilton Dawson who was Councillor Yates' ally in getting me kicked out. I hope others are there to work as hard for Geraldine as I did."

He described the hearing as "civil" and he was afforded an opportunity to explain his actions but he said that, despite a request, he was not allowed to have a non-party witness at the hearing. He said it was lamentable that the party operated in this way

"I explained that I thought the actions of Mr Henig and one or two others were bad for the rate-payers of Lancaster... that's all and I was right but they still suspended me," he said.

A lot of Jackson's criticism was aimed at one or two senior officers at the town hall but he claims people like Henig and Cllr Ian Barker came in for the flak because they chose to defend the officers' actions in the Press.

"Naturally they were referred to. They were the ones trying to protect or justify some dreadful decisions made by these officers."

Asked whether he had any future political plans Jackson said: "I would like to stand for the county council again, or perhaps even to represent Lancaster in parliament. I'd have to work hard to get enough people to nominate me at the General Election. This might be harder than getting people to vote for me!"