Sir: As with virtually all of our national problems, and
increasing disregard of the law is the fault of the Government whose first duty is to enforce it.
For far too many years, Home Secretaries have adopted a placatory attitude towards mob violence; when Mr Callaghan persuaded the MCC to cancel the South African cricket tour he was admitting that he could not — or would not — enforce the law. When Mr Roy Jenkins negotiated with the Price sisters through the good offices of their elderly errand boy and agreed to return them to Northern Ireland during the course of this year, he was bowing to the wishes of convicted criminals. And has any prominent politician pointed out that the death of a student in Red Lion Square came about solely because he and his friends decided to attack the police with various weapons. To many of us, the boy got what he asked for or, to be fair, a little more than he asked for.
From the enforced charity of their elders and, in the main, betters, students receive in money and money's worth a tax-free and really unearned income far greater than many of their unwilling benefactors receive for actually working and we benefactors are getting restive. If the Home Secretary were to announce that the cost of policing Red Lion Square and of compensating the injured policemen were to be deducted from NUS grants; that any demonstrator convicted of assault would receive the maximum prison sentence that the law allowed and would not be permitted to return to university on release and that any future mob violence would be
dealth -with by soldiers brought back from Ulster and told to have no mercy, Mr Wilson could hold an election any time he likes and win it. Since I have no desire to see the Labour Government returned, it is as well perhaps that Mr Jenkins will confine himself to bleating about freedom of speech (when he means of violence) and deplore the actions of 'a minority'. But it is an idea for the Conservatives who are rather short of them although unfortunately Mr Heath is also terrified of actually governing instead of merely babbling about being firm and fair. Sooner or later (and it could be sooner) the conditions that produced Hitler and Mussolini will be created here by our weakkneed political masters, and an increasing number of us is beginning to envy the Greeks their colonels. A fuhrer is beginning to look like the least of the available evils.
C. W. Bond 88 Lower Bristol Road, Weston-superMare, Somerset
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