22 MAY 1959, Page 7

I DID NOT AGREE with Nicholas Davenport's criticisms last week

of the Institute of Directors' 'State Control or no?' advertisement. The Insti- tute has got hold of an inherent contradiction in the Labour Party programme and it is entitled to hold it up to ridicule. But the Institute's con- tinual reiteration that it has 'no affiliations whatsoever with any political party' is tiresome. Its members do not shed all their political opinions the moment they cross its doorstep. They are, almost without exception, Government sup- porters : some of them MPs, many of them active in the Conservative Party's counsels. With the present horizontal division of the parties this is inevitable: and there is little point in pretending that the Institute has no political bias. In fact, by doing so the Institute only weakens its own case—it can justly be charged with hypocrisy— and thereby does the Government a disservice.

PHAROS