The West German trade union movement sent to every member of Parliament today a demand that Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger act to ban the extremist National Democratic Party. The movement contended that there was sufficient evidence to bring such a proposal before the federal constitutional court to seek the ban. Interior Minister Paul Luecke has publicly called the NPD a neo-Nazi party but rejected earlier demands for action to ban it.
Meanwhile, it was reported today that the neo-Nazi party will not be able to hold its national congress at the end of June or the beginning of July in the Bremen City Hall, as planned, because the management of the hall finds it “lacks space” for the meeting.
The National Democratic Party now has 30,000 members of whom about one-third are between the ages of 20 and 45, an NDP member of the Bavarian Parliament asserted today. The membership figures were given by Wolfgang Ross, 32, a former German army captain. He said also that workers formed the largest segment of NPD membership, comprising 29.3 percent.
The next largest group, 12.3 percent, was made up of officials and civil servants, he added. He listed other categories and their percentages as pensioners, 12.2 percent; farm workers, 6.1 percent; school students, 3,6 percent; housewives, 2.2 percent; and members of the armed forces one-half of one percent.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.