The silent revolution
Sir: Your leading article (29 November) is of a piece with some excellent others in your con- siderable attempt to reason with an economic junta dazzled by its excess. (One demurral: surely punitive unemployment is not the alter- native to public thrift, in so far as Mrs Castle would have financially to comfort the victims?) The Prime Minister says he has been 'hated by some opponents because they recognise I am a Socialist and that I ntean business.' In this I believe he keynotes the march towards 1970, or whenever he is decisively to take on the silent revolutionaries.
Even a surplus of £100 million on balance of payments next year will hardly dent the external debt dated to 1975, only. While brokers of equities nurse their Christmas goodies and small importers scratch around for deposits (although a banker assures me foreign vendors will smother that exaction with aplomb—and dicky credits) most of us must wait for Maudling or Macleod, however lumbered with an O'Brienite unemployment figure, an only tardily reducible budget, and about £2,000 million the more urgently repayable to overseas 'opponents.'
The West Germans have undoubtedly saved themselves by their exertions, but Mr Wilson chooses not to find them exemplary. What with gnomes and speculators and midnight en- voys . . . If you, Sir, sometimes feel you are hitting at a brick wall, contrast this mattress of phony bogies.
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