6 OCTOBER 1984, Page 5

Bad omen

prospects for the Conservative Confer- 1 ence have been clouded by motion number 342, from Newham North-West, which reads: 'This Conference rejects utterly the conception of a feudal [sic] or confederal European Community, and trusts that Her Majesty's Government will do likewise.' How can a party have sunk so low that it calls. itself Conservative and repudiates feudalism? It is to Mr Scargill that the feudalist must look for comfort, confident that King Arthur retains a prop- er conception of society as a pyramid, he and his barons at the top, the serfs, whose duty from generation to generation is not to govern, but to spend their lives working out of sight, kept underground.