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BILL WORMLEY, general secretary of the National Union of Ballot Box Makers, was admitted to an orthopaedic ward of a London teaching hospital last night with severe strain to the wrist and forearm.

Mr Wormley damaged his arm while writing a spontaneous outburst of support from the membership for him to withdraw his resignation, which he submitted last week.

Lett-wingers — who have MLLN -.tried for years to subvert the union - took advantage of his injury to reopen the attack, saying that he had been caught "rigging a response from the membership"

Mr Wormley - too tired last night to talk to any: one except a couple of dozen reporters - said from his hospital bed 11. -1 11-. do us an chat this was typical or te carping he had to put up with at every executive "I know what the membership wants, and I was just putting it into words", he said.

Mr Wormley has been the centre of a storm since the Labour Party conferunion to es hir Norman Tebbit in the election for the National Executive.

The union executive had tried to tie Mr Wormley hand and foot by passing a resolution to "oppose Tebbit" , but Mr Wormley said he had to interpret the union instruction as best he could.

Mr Wormley said: "Circumstances have chanded since the ence vote to 'oppose Tebbit at all costs' • and I found myself having to weigh up the consequences. I sent 9 second class letter to Mr Scargill asking him whether he still wanted me to vote for a miners' candidate, but I had no reply by the time the vote came"

Left wingers were furious that: we leading * 10Ly 1L - Tamer union-basher should have been voted onto the National Executive of the Labour Party, but Mr Wormley had once again put his finger on the pulse of the membership.

For this hard-hitting, nononsense bluff man of the people knows that behind the rhetoric, Mr Norman Tebbit is the kind of man ballot-box makers respond to best.

The hard-line leftists on his delegation also complained that Mr Wormley had not given any hint of the way he had voted. Mr Wormley said, "It is a lonely life at the top. It would be only too easy to keep asking your delegation this, that and the other, but the buck has to stop somewhere"

: Crime Ir Mr Wormley does go, it will be a tragic loss to the trade union movement of one of the few men who had any public credibility.

Mr Wormley's main crime has been to call for a truly socialist incomes policy. He had told the TUC that 11 the trade unions really wanted to help the low-paid, they would cut their members' wages until health workers no longer seemed badly off by conparison.

It was this kind of plainspeaking truth that the trade union barons and hard-line Marxists on his executive could not stomach. But among ordinary rank and file ballot-box employers it made him a hero.

From that day to this, the Moscow-paid assassins on the unrepresentative executive have been out to get him.

Mr Wormley's response -was to go over their heads to what he knew the membership's real interests were.

it mient seem to some т мы мы мель de a cera on carping critics that sitting in a hotel room writing out letters of support to himself was an example of manipulating the democratic process.

But that is only in the twisted logic of those who want to use democracy to their own ends and reduce it to a question of vulgar majorities.

Tha damarrary which Mr Wormley has sought is the democracy which counts up the real desires of the members .the innermost desires well hidden beneath the surface that! even the membership doesn't know they are there.

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Socialist Organiser no: 104 October 14, 1982 Page 4 International News mermational News Free this victim i ai ..... ... " .........