Lodge protest
Sir: Poor Mr Skeffington-Lodge (Letters 25 July), my heart bleeds for him. It must have been bad enough getting his cards in the 1969 by-election, but 18 June was more than flesh and blood could stand. He really had to dig deep, though, to come up with some of those whoppers!
Being a housewife (yes! we do some of us read intelligent publications), the mother of a teenager, and also being frequently in Brighton, I would like to reply to three of his comments.
Housewives were not 'conned', as he put it, into voting Tory. If in fact more women than usual voted for that party, and I am not aware that this fact has been proven, then it was because they were sick of the whole sorry mess, and saw in Mr Heath an honest and capable man who would have the courage and integrity to try and put things right. His behaviour since becoming P,sime Minister has increased this confidence.
I am very interested in those shops where Mr Skeffington-Lodge has been keeping his 'eyes and ears open'. If they are in Brighton as one would assume, then I'd like to know which they are. It so happens that I am fre- quently in the shops there and I talk to a lot of people; all I have heard up to now leads me to believe that Mr Heath's popularity with the fair sex has increased rather than the reverse.
Mr Lodge asserts that pop and pirate radio stations swayed younger voters by their appeals to vote Tory. This is in fact assuming that the _younger generation is unable to think for itself. He's batting on a very sticky wicket there. Also we have been informed that the eighteen-year-olds mostly voted like their parents, those who voted at all!
His last paragraph of all, though, was the wildest of the lot. He predicts a 'growing nostalgia for the return of the Wilson era'. Really, Mr Skeffington-Lodge, you've just got to be joking! Enough is enough, and now our recently departed Premier is publishing his memoirs—well! even he can see that by the time Ted Heath is through
with Downing Street, he'll be a bit too old to stage a comeback, assuming' of course that he is still leader of the Opposition, which I doubt.
Rita M. Cross The Orchard, Lansmead, Blindley Heath, Surrey
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