Labour, too, loves money

From Lord Crickhowell Sir: One brief section of Bevis Hillier's rant deserves a response (`The party of yobs and snobs', 24 November), and then only because it concerns what is currently the most important domestic political issue of all, the condition of the National Health Service. 'And look what they [the Tories] did with the NHS when it was in their keeping — bringing in prescription charges, for example . . . money, money, money always seems to be to the fore in Tory thinking,' he writes indignantly, Did Daddy not tell him that the coming into operation of the National Health Service in 1948 exposed what Bevan's biographer John Campbell has described as 'a miscalculation so fundamental that it virtually negated the central assumptions on which the Service had been set up'? Bevan and the planners of the NHS comprehensively underestimated what it was going to cost. Within a few months the Service was plunged in crisis. Bevan was obliged to keep coming back with supplementary estimates, and in October 1949 Cripps brought in prescription charges, to be followed two years later by charges for false teeth and spectacles, introduced by Gaitskell. Money, money, money had to be to the fore in Labour thinking then, as it still is today.

Incidentally, although Bevis Hillier would no doubt describe me as 'a nincompoop public school officer', or something much worse, during the eight years that as secretary of state I was responsible for the Health Service in Wales, I was able to increase the money available to it by a third in real terms, making it possible to treat about 25 per cent more patients in hospital, to carry through the largest hospital-building programme in the nation's history, and to achieve a good many other improvements in health care as well. Whether that was as 'compassionate' a set of actions as editing a Saturday magazine and writing 26 books, it will be for others to judge. No doubt, Mr Hillier, anxious to get through the eye of the needle, did not write them for money.

Nicholas Crickhowell

Abergavenny, Monmouthshire

From Mr lain Cassie Sir: The basic tenor of Bevis Hillier's piece is one of snobbish class-hatred, exactly the same vice of which he accuses his subject. His disparaging reference to the relatively humble domestic backgrounds of Mrs Thatcher, Mr Major and Mr Hague is just the sort of comment that, according to his analysis, we might expect from the hateful Tory party.

As for the deficiencies that he identifies in the railways, these are the result not of privatisation but rather of the failure of nerve of a Conservative government weakened by the rantings of men such as Hillier himself, Can Hillier deny that the service delivered by the gas, electricity, telephone and water utilities are immeasurably improved and better value than they were before 1979?

lain Cassie

London W11

From Mr David Hughes-Jones Sir: Bevis Hillier's dad was lucky to have spent most of the war in the RAF at Aden, which was not the most hazardous or vital place during the second world war. This might be the reason that he had the misfortune to serve with some 'nincompoop' officers, who had probably been sent there for that very reason.

David Hughes-Jones

Adelaide, Australia

From Mr Michael Wadman Sir: Perhaps it would be in order to point out to Bevis Hillier that the 'glory of the nationalised British Railways system' that 'served the whole country' was constructed entirely by private enterprise, and not one mile of track was added to it after nationalisation in 1948. And while Dr Beeching was indeed appointed chairman of the BRB under a Conservative administration, most of the line and station closures for which he became rightly infamous were carried out under the succeeding Labour government, which could, had it wished, have put a stop to them at any time. This had nothing to do with party politics: it was, alas, the spirit of the age.

Michael Wadman

London SE25

From Mr Jonathan C.P. Birch Sir: I enjoyed Bevis Hillier's amusing polemical troll through Conservative party policy over the last 70 years, and I speak not from the sneering Left, but as one of those few individuals still imbued with something of a Burkean conservative conscience. I rather suspect that the modern Conservative party (having been hijacked by quasi-American liberalism) has conspired with the social liberalism of the post-Sixties Left to destroy much that was valuable in British social and cultural life.

However, I feel compelled to defend Conservatives from his charge that 'racism is much more prevalent on the Right'. The uncomfortable truth for the metropolitan liberal elite is that the BNP is gaining support from the old Left who feel that New Labour has sold out to the middle classes and big business.

Jonathan C.P. Birch

Pontefract, West Yorkshire

From Mr John Dodd Sir: I cannot allow Bevis Hillier to get away with such misinformation about stags — 'which lock horns while the does look on, waiting for the victor'.

Does might look on for a while, but they soon get bored with two stags locked in combat. Instead they give the eye to much less enhanced deer, called Sneaky Rutters, and let them have their way with them.

Now there's an omen for modern political theorists to grapple with.

John Dodd

South Harting, West Sussex