FAREWELL TO THE FUMES
SIR,—In saying farewell to the Fifties, Cyril Ray closes with what he calls a fact : 'the fact that for the shabbiest of shopkeepers' reasons the free electors of Britain sent back to office in October, 1959, the hangers and floggers and let's-bomb-the-woggers.' As political polemic it is well phrased, but as explana- tion it is fairly far from the mark. It is little more than just another of the too shrill shrieks of modern British Socialism, a grossly misleading simplification.
Among the millions who voted for the first time last year many who voted for the Government were opposed to capital and corporal punishment as well as to colonialism. They were in complete disagree- ment with Tory policy on such subjects but yet voted for another Tory government. It is silly to pretend that this was only done for selfish reasons and, if a Redbrick University is anything to go by, it was not. Politics in the middle of the twentieth century has become infinitely complex, but many of us tried to analyse and judge the issues involved. One major issue emerged : the clash between Capitalism and various forms of applied Marxism. The struggle between East and West was seen as an economic struggle, and so we went to the polls and voted against the Labour Party because we believe that Tory economic policy is a stronger weapon in the economic cold war. We may be wrong; it is quite possible that we are, but we sincerely think that that is the case. It is too easy to impute materialistic selfishness to those who disagree with one's particu- lar moral view, and very little is gained by doing so. Economic motivation is frequently not the 'fact' that it is claimed to be. By his own account Mr. Cyril Ray is a man of principle, but there are others and some of them are Tories. There are always a num- ber of ways of looking at anything, and if Mr. Ray keeps resolutions he might think about looking at beliefs that differ from his own but are equally sin-
Faculty of Technology Union, University of Manchester, Sackville Street, Manchester, 1
Previous page
