The peace activist and union official ejected from the Labour Party conference have been invited to lunch with the party chairman.

They have also been told they will both be welcome at next year's event.

Walter Wolfgang, 82, became the centre of attention after he was unceremoniously taken out of the Brighton Centre when he shouted "nonsense" at Foreign Secretary Jack Straw when the minister mentioned the UK's involvement in Iraq.

Steve Forrest, a London official of the GMB union, was also ejected after he tried to stop stewards taking Mr Wolfgang out of the hall, and the two men had their conference passes confiscated.

The two became media celebrities yesterday after the Prime Minister and other ministers apologised for what had happened.

They met party chairman Ian McCartney after the conference closed and he invited both of them to have lunch with him.

They were also told they would be welcome to attend next year's annual conference in Manchester.

Mr Forrest said: "He seemed genuinely sorry for what had happened, so we accepted his invitation."

Meanwhile, Mr Wolfgang said his ejection showed there was "something deeply wrong" with the Government under Tony Blair.

Mr Wolfgang, a party member for 57 years and long-time campaigner for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, used a front-page article in The Independent to expand on his critique of New Labour.

He said: "What happened to me when I was ejected from the Labour conference - simply for a one-word protest during Jack Straw's speech this week - tells us there is something deeply wrong with the culture of our Government under Tony Blair."

Again expressing his opposition to the "unnecessary" Iraq war, he drew parallels with Nazi Germany, from where he fled in 1937.

He said: "When I was a child living in Germany in the late Thirties, with relatives who died in the concentration camps, things were very frightening.

"But the policy of the American government today frightens me, too.

"And so does the attitude of the British Government."

He added that he believed the Labour Party was becoming convinced that going to war in Iraq was a mistake.

The pensioner, from Richmond, south-west London, said: "That is why some people at the conference this week lost their cool with my single word of criticism."