Sir Harold's aim
Sir: Ferdinand Mount is entitled to believe (29 October), if he wishes, that Sir Harold Wilson has shown unwavering loyalty to Jeremy Thorpe because it happens to fit in with his natural kindness to anyone in distress. I prefer to believe that Sir Harold is not motivated by any tendresse towards the former Liberal leader but rather by a desire to keep the Liberal Party alive and kicking in the interests of winning power for the next TUC puppet government. He realises only too well that with our 'first past the post' electoral system, Labour governments have only resulted from Liberal intervention.
It was not Guilty Men and the rest of Victor Gollancz's yellow propaganda books which produced the 1945 landslide of seats on about 49 per cent of the total vote; Attlee and Co. could thank Sir Archibald Sinclair and massive Liberal intervention in every single constituency in the country. The strategy of Labour demagogues is obvious — keep the muddled-headed middle voting Liberal in the naive belief that aggressive Marxist louts can somehow be stopped in their tracks by putting a cross on a piece of paper.
David Levaggi 79 Wilton Street, Denton, Manchester
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