No-confidence vote for Avon M.P.

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 1

No-confidence vote for Avon M.P.

The Labour Party’s electorate committee in Avon has passed a vote of no confidence in its sitting member of Parliament and candidate in this year’s General Election, Mrs Mary Batchelor. Mrs Batchelor said yesterday that the motion was passed at a meeting on Monday evening by seven votes to six with the electorate chairman, Mr Lou Burns, abstaining. The reason given for it was that she had attended the wedding of the dissident member for Sydenham, Mr John Kirk, in Wellington last year, she said.

“They felt that I. had no right to do it but I have no intention of letting anyone tell me who my friends will be.” She did not know what, if anything, would come of the vote but she doubted that the Labour executive would be very interested in it as it had emerged from “a personal action which had not brought the party into disrepute in any way.” Mrs Batchelor, who has held the Avon seat for three terms, narrowly won this year’s nomination against a strong challenge from the secretary of the Storemen and Packers’ Union, Mr

Paul Piesse. She said yesterday that Mr Piesse and his followers on the electorate committee had supported the no-confid-ence vote and that she was angry that there were people in the party “doing no more than pin-pricking to make life as difficult as possible.” The Kirk family had long been friends of hers, she said, and she had a right to choose her friends. Mr Burns declined to comment on the matter yesterday. The party’s general secretary, Mr John Wybrow, was in Auckland and could not be reached.