Letters to the Editor
The new reformers
Sir: The chairman of the Conservative Party, Lord Thorneycroft, will recall that the Tory Reform Committee, of which he was a prominent foundermember in 1943, based its philosophy on ;the great words of Sir Winston Churchill on creating a post-war society in 'which there would be a minimum subsistence level below which no one should be allowed to fall, and beyond that free competition to any level of wealth that ability could command, but subject to safeguards against monopoly.
In 1945, Mr Attlee's government., swept this aegis out of our hands and no subsequent Conservative government has felt able or willing to restore it, preferring what has been called the "ratchet process", merely to administer whatever current level of socialist dogma it had inherited.
What, therefore, is to be said for Mr. Peter Walker's 'Tory Reform Group', a body which usurps the name chosen a generation before, summons the spirit of Disraeli and pleads for one united nation? At first sight the appearance of this group may seem traditional and refreshing. But, sir, let no one forget the' great' politico-semantic shift that has occurred in the years between. The Tory Reform Committee was at war_ with the "unacceptable face" of capitalism in the 1920s and after that. Mr Walker's new, group bids fair to hoist the ratchet another notch and get Conservatives to accept the advanced state of socialism we have now reached. Many will be watching anxiously to see whether Mrs , Thatcher's new front bench team ' reflects the sentiments of her magnificent Blackpool speech or a mere "seeding" from all who call themselves Tory. Sir Winston would, surely, have preferred the former.
Victor Montagu! Chairman, Conservative Trident Group' Mapperton, Beaminster, Dorset.
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