A KEY seat in next year's City of York Council elections is being fought for Labour by a former Green Party activist.

Paul Baptie is standing for the party in the Westfield ward, currently controlled by the Liberal Democrats.

But, only five years ago, he fought for the Green Party in his former home of Leamington during the General Election.

He spent a year on that party's national executive.

He said today: "I changed parties three years ago and it was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

"But to me it doesn't feel that I have changed very much. I would describe myself as a 'Leftie' concerned with international issues. I found that I wanted to talk about people and social conditions and jobs, but when I spoke about those issues in the Green Party I never seemed to win the argument.

"I kept meeting Labour Party people whom I admired and respected, and it got to the stage where I thought, why am I campaigning against them? I never want to say anything disrespectful against the Green Party, but Labour represents what I believe as an individual more."

Mr Baptie, who moved to York from Leamington in October last year, for work reasons, is joined in campaigning for Westfield by fellow Labour members Gordon Campbell-Thomas and James Tipton.

York Green Party spokesman Andy D'Agorne said: "There are people in the Green Party who have been active within the Labour Party as well. In fact that is far more common.

"We have a prospective candidate who is expected to stand in Huntington who stood there for Labour at the last elections, and another member, Mark Hill, was a Labour councillor for a London borough for about ten years."

He said the Green Party was intending to stand candidates in nearly half of the city's wards in May's elections.

Updated: 10:48 Tuesday, December 31, 2002