Lord Campbell of Eskan professes to find my article easy
to read, but difficult to swallow. He writes that he 'read it with ease, but with a growing sense of cold distaste.' Your readers may have noted 'that he nowhere even attempts to controvert any of my arguments : he merely convicts me of being Edwardian and old-fashioned. But it is clear that he thinks me guilty of moral insensitivity. I much hope that your other readers will not share this misapprehension. Far from coldly and callously surveying the scene, I and those who think as I do are much concerned with the affliction of the peoples of the so-called underdeveloped world, notably poverty, oppression and fear, especially of authority. But we profoundly disagree with Lord Campbell of Eskan and other supporters of the current orthodoxy over the means for alleviating their condition. We not only doubt the effectiveness of their policies for relieving poverty, but also be- lieve, on the basis of much experience, that they are calculated to aggravate the conditions they set out to remedy. In particular, they perfect the despotism and enhance the fears with which so many Asians and Africans are oppressed, besides retarding their material progress.
The accusation of moral obloquy is a commonly employed and by now familiar device in the armoury of humanitarian rhetoric. The charge is freely and generously levelled against all who venture to ex- press disagreement on intellectual or other grounds. Your readers should know that concern for the poor, the afflicted and the oppressed, and a desire to see their lot bettered, are not a monopoly of any in- tellectual system or political party. The purveydrs of universal benevolence have succeeded for decades in obfuscating this simple truth.
P. T. BAUER
London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2
How Not To Go Comprehensive
SIR,—I moved from Enfield ten years ago and am hardly qualified to comment on the local situation. However, some of the quasi-statistics used by Ralph Harris (November 11) are simply misleading.
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