Conservative heartland
Sir: Many of your loyal readers who live far from the metropolis have a clear picture of the identity of regular contributors to your papers: Petronella Wyatt, Paul Johnson, Christopher Fildes, Taki and the sadly missed Jeffrey Bernard, for example. We can agree or disagree with their opinions without losing respect for them. But there are others, such as Leanda de Lisle, who present blank canvases on which we must construct our own images. Reading Leanda de Lisle's 'Country life' column makes me paint a portrait of her as an amalgam of Emma Nicholson, Edwina Currie and Hugh Dykes. She is sitting on a high horse at a southern hunt's meet, look- ing down her nose at the rider of a sturdy Cob, who speaks a strange tongue. In your issue of 11 October, she writes, The Conservative party is as dead as a doornail,' and that William Hague embar- rasses her so much she wants to die. Let me tell her that the Conservative party is by no means dead. Here in North Yorkshire we still have Conservative MPs, and on 1 May Conservative candidates won back three seats on the county council. We are backing William Hague to the hilt and think it a bit ripe for Leanda de Lisle to write, 'William Hague resembles nothing so much as a lit- tle fart of a ghost,' and snobbishly mock his humble Yorkshire background. To com- pare the humbleness of her own record at the age of 36 with his might be more appro- priate. Some little fart of a ghost! Before the 1 May elections, she abused Eurosceptic Tories. It may interest her to know that during the 1971 debate in Parlia- ment about entry into the EEC, the Con- servative MP for Thirsk and Malton was one of the few MPs in the two main politi- cal parties to foresee the consequences resulting from our entry. Speaking coura- geously against the party line, he said, 'Par- Lament will become a rubber-stamp of Brussels under Article 189 of the Treaty of Rome. All those regulations and directives already made or to be made will be binding on this House.' Who was he? No less a man than Lord Tranmire, then Sir Robin Tur- ton,. who was a barrister, gallant soldier, minister of the crown and of Yorkshire county stock. Finally there is an old English ballad which is worth remembering by those who despair of a Conservative revival:
Fight on, my men, says Sir Andrew Barrton, I am hurt, but I am not slain.
Ile lay me down and bleed awhile and then Ile rise and fight againe.'
Deramore
Heslington House, Aislaby, Pickering, Yorkshire
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