The Labour Party tonight apologised to to an 82-year-old member who was thrown out of its annual conference after heckling Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, about the Iraq War.

Labour had earlier displayed zero tolerance on dissent when Walter Wolfgang, a peace campaigner , was bundled from the party conference for shouting out "nonsense" as Mr Straw defended his policies on Iraq.

The eviction from the auditorium of the 82-year-old was immediately followed by that of Steve Forrest, a local constituency chairman who shouted at stewards to "leave that old man alone".

Mr Forrest, who had his conference accreditation confiscated, later alleged that he had had to appeal to police officers to stop the stewards manhandling him.

John Austin, Mr Forrest’s MP, said that ministers should be able to deal with the odd heckler as their predecessors had done. He added: "I think it unforgivable that an elderly member of the party who doesn’t agree with what’s being said and shouts 'nonsense' should be thrown out like that."

The trouble came as the issue of the Iraq war raised its head again at the Brighton conference. The Foreign Secretary was in the middle of a wide-ranging speech, on issues such as the Turkish membership of the European Union and the future of Iran, when he turned to the occupation of Iraq.

He warned delegates that there were "more dark moments" to come for UK forces there after the rioting in Basra ten days ago, but rejected calls for a swift pull-out.

He drew a comparison between the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the UN-backed intervention in Kosovo - at which point Mr Walter shouted out: "Nonsense!"

Delegates said that five stewards, dressed in yellow reflective jackets, surrounded him and tried to prise him from his chair.

Although delegates regularly heckled ministers during the height of Labour disunity in the 1970s, party conferences have become more sedate, stage-managed affairs in recent years. Stewards were taken by surprise last year by a group of smartly-dressed pro-hunting campaigners, who joined the party especially to heckle Tony Blair during his leader’s speech.

Security is particularly tight at this year's conference following the July 7 suicide bombings in London. A massive security cordon has been placed around the Brighton Centre, with several hundred officers ringing the conference hall and nearby hotels, and large barriers erected to foil car bombers.

The occupation of Iraq is still deeply unpopular with many rank-and-file Labour members. Mr Wolfgang arrived in England as a German Jewish refugee before the Second World War and joined the Labour Party in 1945. He is a former vice-chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and an organiser of the Aldermaston marches of the 1960s.

Shivering on Brighton promenade after his expulsion from the conference hall, Mr Wolfgang said he would not be leaving the party. "This is not a good reason for leaving. I think the policies that they are following are a better reason, but that would mean leaving the party in the hands of a clique that has taken it over," he said.

Mr Straw told delegates that they should not underestimate the challenges still lying ahead in Iraq after its violent past. "Take Germany: after the war there was great hardship and much unrest; it took four years before national elections could be held," he said.

"In Iraq it was less than two, 60 per cent turnout, braving the terrorists - and remember how proud they felt holding up their thumbs marked with the indelible ink which showed they had seized their right to vote."

Delegates appeared, however, to prefer the earlier intervention by Barry Camfield, assistant general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, who called for a swift withdrawal of British troops.

Mr Camfield accused the Government fearing "loss of face", even though the occupation was fuelling the escalating crisis, he claimed. Watched from the platform by Mr Straw, Mr Camfield declared: "Our troops should be pulled out now and quickly.

"Tony Blair has admitted he was wrong about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He was wrong to support the neo-conservative Republican Party in their battle for regime change. And he is wrong now to drag our country ever deeper into the crisis that is Iraq."

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