IN "The Crucial Years" in your opinion column (June 19) you failed to justify the claim that "the two main
parties insulted the electorate." It is quite true that
"Labour . have lost £900,000,000 of our assets ..." and that ". . . we stand at the foot of the international growth league tables". These facts are indisputable. The relevant statistics conclusively prove them.
But it is much less true that "Labour's recent problems . . . owed as much to world trends as to domestic management". Many labour supporters would
say this some may even believe itbut however clear it seems that this is not in fact the case, the techniques now available to us are inadequate to allow us to judge finally on the question.
On this issue, Sir, as on most, close examination makes makes it clear that the Conservatives, whatever their faults, are clearly to be preferred to Labour.
David J. Cashman Felton, Northumberland.
Dirty trick
PREVIOUSLY I had
formed the opinion that Mr. St. John-Stevas was highly intelligent. This week he lets himself down; or was he merely playing to the gallery'?
Really Norman. what connection has the Red Flag with the Labour Party? You know, if you are honest, that Communist thought is nearer to Tory opinions than to Labour ideas. And that Labour and Tory are more like-minded than Labour and Communist.
I imagine that you might be old enough to remember the Attlee government. Don't you realise that every new measure they introduced could have been taken from the Papal Encyclicals on the social Question: a matter of course, of similar thinking.
So your party won the election. And how? In the way they have won repeatedly on previous occasions: by a dirty trick. This time it was a blatant lie. told even at the risk of undermining the country's financial position, How can you support such a party?
H. M. Myers Godshill, 1.W.
Women in black
WHY the anachronism of women being received in audience by the Pope in black? This form of purdah is rather degrading.
Richard T. Wheeler London, WA.