Sia,—You counsel Mr. Gaitskell to hang on to office, whatever
the Party Conference may decide, until the electorate expresses itself in favour of uni- lateralism. But if party programmes are to be de- cided by Big Brother in the House, and if the two Big Brothers, being identical twins, are determined that this issue shall not be put, how is the electorate going to do it? The suggestion sometimes made by their opponents that the unilateralists should run one- issue candidates is barely a canard—they would be defeated, of course, as handsomely as Mr. Gaitskell would be if he ran as a pro-bomb candidate without a Labour ticket.
We seem to be left with the only other possibility —if party conferences must not tamper with party programmes until the electorate has approved them, and the electorate can only approve the party pro- grammes submitted to it, we could always vote with our feet, as the Aldermaston marchers and the Direct Action Committee have done, and the Japanese are doing. Personally, as an anarchist, this is what I've always thought we should do, but, if so, we will be vociferously attacked for subverting democratic procedure. Might it not be simpler if Mr. Gaitskell followed Ko-Ko's example and cut off his own head first ?—Yours faithfully,
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