PETER Sandland-Nielsen, who enlivened the Worcestershire political scene and the letters page of this newspaper for more than four decades, has died at the age of 76.

A former chairman of Worcester Labour Party, he was no great fan of Tony Blair or Neil Kinnock. Mr Nielsen believed the latter abandoned the party’s socialist principles, adopting “a craven posture”, and after a letter he wrote to the Evening News in 2002 criticising Blair’s reform agenda, he was promptly dropped as Labour candidate in Claines ward in Worcester’s upcoming local elections.

In the early 1990s Peter Nielsen was among 250 Socialists who wrote an open letter to the New Statesman urging Labour Party members to join them in forming a breakaway party to return to Labour’s roots. Ever more disenchanted with the direction of parliamentary Labour policies, he eventually left the party to adopt an independent stance and in latter years joined The Green Party.

Adrian Gregson, leader of the Labour group on Worcester City Council, said: “Peter was a man of principle who over the years worked very hard for the Labour Party, both on council and trade union business. He was a very loquacious and effective debater for the causes he believed in.”

Mr Nielsen, who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1941, probably inherited his political interest from his mother, who was active in the Labour Party and the Trade Union movement in Birmingham in the 1930s, while his father was an agricultural worker who taught himself to read and write and went on to become a newspaper editor.

Peter Nielsen served as a county councillor on the combined Hereford-Worcester authority from 1977-1982 and as a Worcester City councillor in 1980-81. At a county council meeting in the summer of 1980 he caused a furore by tabling no less than 41 questions at a single meeting, when the cost of answering each one was estimated at £25.

He was chairman of Worcester Labour Party from 1973-76 and chairman of North Wards Labour Party, Worcester from 1999-2003. Mr Nielsen also stood three times as a Parliamentary candidate for Labour (1979, 1983 and 1987) and once as an Independent (2010), being unsuccessful on each occasion. His career was in IT, teaching and engineering.

Mr Nielsen died in Worcestershire Royal Hospital following a fall at his home in Severn House, St John’s, Worcester. He leaves twins Esther and Svend and grandchildren Jessie, Jensen, Anya and Mila. Funeral arrangements later.