Sir: Peregrine Worsthorne is right in saying that public opinion
would have condemned the Prime Minister if she had 'thrown her son to the wolves', just as they would have condemned her if she had 'declared her interest', i.e. told the Omanis what they already knew, that her son was one of many competing for contracts.
Mr Worsthorne, however, slips into the same sort of journalism which he condemns, when he refers to Mark Thatcher as a 'selfish and irresponsible young man', and adds no evidence of either selfishness or irresponsibility. Senator McCarthy never accused anyone of any specific offence, or produced any evidence; he just ruined innocent people by the impression of some terrible treason which he never defined. In Lord Goodman's words in another case, the massed investigative joutnalists have not dug up `the smallest scintilla, jot or tittle' of evidence that Mark Thatcher is anything but an enterprising and perfectly legitimate business man, or that the Prime Minister's conduct has been anything but wholly proper.
This is not a banana skin — it is not even a squashed orange pip.
Gordon Smith
44 Devonshire Street, London WI
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