The case for an election now
Sir: Rarely has the SPECTATOR, even under its present regime, which has gone a long way already -towards making it an organ of ill- thought-through views, lent itself to so many malicious and question-begging assertions as those made in your issue of 17 May. It would take too much of your space to refute all your mis-statements, and after what you say about me, I would feel it unfair to ask you to 'reduce' your readers to keeping company with my views in any but a reply of reasonable length.
The fact that you link my name with that of Lord Longford in making an insulting re- ference to both of us in the context of your latest 'personalised' attack on the Prime Min- ister rejoices my heart. For to find myself, even in print, associated with such a widely admired, charitable and fair-minded public figure in a cause as good and right as ours, is flattery indeed—even if it appears in your columns! It is, too, a welcome change from the usual patronising tone you adopt towards your poli- tical opponents, for outright abuse is often easier to deal with than snide asides. In defend- ing Mr Wilson against your calumnies about him I have always tried to avoid following what seems too often to be your own policy of
indulging in evilly motivated histrionics. I am sure this is even more so the case with Lord Longford, whom I have never known to be 'nasty' about anyone of a different persuasion from his own. May I put our difference in what, to you, may be a new context?
I believe the country to be faced with a stark alternative—success for the present Wilson-led government in its economic policies (which you have approved) or failure, involving indus- trial chaos, under its alternative. A Heath government would inevitably be divisive, in- determinate and largely unprincipled, based as it would be on the current 'hotch-potch' com- promise in the Tory party between the dan- gerous 'Rightists' and the lesser, but more admirable group of reasonable 'Progressives.' A probable uncontrollable clash with organised labour, which would follow the early return of a Tory government, would put paid to all hope of Britain's industrial and modernised expansion, and it might even lead to the extinc- tion of our still widely admired and tolerant system of government. Is this, I wonder, what you want to risk by your call for an election now? Your attitude, I believe, does a disservice to the country's real and long-term interests, and • it would be refreshing if the SPECTATOR could for once put aside its often cheap partisan approach, and though, as I think, it is on the wrong side of the political fence, show itself at least to comprehend the position as I claim it now exists. Perhaps then it might lend critical but 'positively' helpful support to the Government, at the same time cutting out its overpersonalised approach to current political issues.
The. 'insulting reference' to which Mr Skeffington-Lodge refers asserted that Lord Longford and he, at least, remained admirers of the Prime Minister.—Editor, SPECTATOR.
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