Liberty
Sir: John Gouriet or Robert Moss may well respond on behalf of the National Association for Freedom to Ferdinand Mount's fundamentally friendly study (19 February). But there are one or two points to be added by a founder member of the Council, speaking for himself alone. First, it may be good news that several members are currently collaborating in the production of a volume of essays, to he published as soon as possible by Cassell, In my own contribution on 'The PhilosophY of Freedom' I shall certainly betrying I° meet some of Mr Mount's points. For instance, he says, 'It is an ancient fallacy to
imagine that liberty is necessarily linked With order. Both may be highly desirable, but they are distinct from one another.' Indeed they are. But they are also necessarily linked. For while you can and all too often do find law and order without liberty, there can be no liberty without law. Whatever liberties we have, precisely are rights guaranteed and protected by law.
Second, Mr Mount speaks of 'what most People mean by social democracy,' and notices that the fifteen-point NAFF Charter does not 'impose on the government a duty to care for every citizen in childhood, Poverty, sickness or retirement nor a responsibility to educate all children to the best of their ability.' If Mr Mount really means to stipulate that it is of the essence of social democracy, as currently understood, to require that the general care of children, the provision of pensions, and education should be state monopolies, then these are indeed ultra-left-wing policies, surely incompatible with that Charter. But if all he wants to say is that a social democrat is one Who insists that the state must ensure that m all these vital areas there is a safety net, a floor beneath which no one shall be allowed to fall, then this makes every Conservative a social democrat. This idea of the essential safety net, as opposed to state monopolies in which the floor beeomes at the same time always also the ceiling, was a main theme of the home ',policy speeches of Sir Winston Churchill trom at least 1945 and onwards, and it remains a continuing commitment for all Conservatives. But it is not something Which has a place in a Charter of liberties. Antony Flew
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