THE BLOCK GRANT
SIR,—It was encouraging, even at this late date, to read Mr. Stuart Maclure's article on the block grant. His conclusions, that many people feel that this proposal 'could ruin the education service and, when reaction sets in, local government,' are dramatic enough, I should have thought, to have merited the attention of serious editorial comment through- out the press.
Almost everyone concerned in running the educa- tion service shares this view and yet the matter has been treated by the greater part of the press, even the serious press, as a matter of third- or fourth- rate importance.
It was, no doubt, the Government's intention to wrap up this economy measure in such a way that, when the economics were eventually felt, it would be the local authorities, and not the Government, who would get the blame.
Although, as you point out, it will need 'a strange eruption of public opinion or a rush of blood to back-benchers' heads' to prevent this measure going
lb-rough, I should have thought that everyone with resPonsihility for informing public opinion should exercise every effort to ensure that one or other of these unlikely phenomena should take place. Far ,rilore than the education service is at stake, as we tlave been so often reminded; it is the very existence uf this country as an industrial nation and the basis cif our democracy—local government—which are
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