Conservative aims
Sir: John Grigg's attack (16 April) on the 'radical' Right is so confused in its logic 35 scarcely to merit comment, except that he represents an influential Conservative group. He argues that Tories have never had truck with 'theories', have always supported, 'the state.' So, a Conservative goverrunem should not diminish the role of the state, but make it more efficient. Most people feel the state is inefficient because it is trying to do too much. Were' to become efficient, in all its relentless interference with the citizen's life, then we should be living not in a democracy, but in a fascist dictatorship. Conservatism can only survive hY responding, constantly, to changing needs in society. Disraeli understood this. He saw that Conservatism must have an appeal td the newly enfranchised industrial worker. In his political novels he appealed to the mind and heart. So much for Grigg's contempt for ideas in Conservative politics. We live in a world of mass conr munication. It is communication. It is essential to win peoples' minds and hearts. We are now at a watershed, political' The British people are deeply disillusionen with socialism, collectivism, bureaucracy. They long for greater freedom, for more air' Just as, in 1951 they longed for an end to Me wartime controls – deliberately prolongea from love of socialist 'control', by the Attlee government. The yearning for more individual free; dom, less state control and interference, there. It is a reality. Keith Joseph, Margate' Thatcher have not created this mood – theY have responded to it, while voicing it t If Margaret Thatcher has a chance to `sfii the people free', as Churchill did, she um_ respond the needs of the time, not to
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a One feels John Grigg must lead an extrthe ordinarily privileged life, secure from ot vexations that beset most of us, if he cannbe understand why a radical change in ttiv nature and scope of government is urge° ' needed.
Betty Dunmore 11 King's Gardens, Hove, Sussex
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