In the 1950s and 1960s and even into the 1970s when it siphoned many wage-workers off Labour National proclaimed itself, with cause, the national party. Labour, it said, was captive to the unions and therefore sectional. Now it is National which looks sectional: wall to wall white. Last year, out of 600 conference delegates, only about 15 were non-white. Labour's conference, by contrast, is a United Nations of colour and ethnicity. Women and gays are there in numbers and influence. It even has space nowadays for out-of-the-closet, practising Christians. --Colin James, on Labour and National, 2008 . Well, Labour still has its unionists and gaggle of gays, according to one of its less diverse members , Damian O'Connor. The LGBT Community has apparently taken great offense this description. Yet we seem inured to phrases such as "wall to wall whites" and National being described as a party full of middle aged white men, or ... if O'Connor and Nash want to ...