lerals' policies
Sir: It is sad to see a political commentator sink to such low nit-picking about the Liberal Party as Mr Patrick Cosgrave in your September 1 issue. ror a moment I thought 1 was reading the angry correspondence column of the New Statesman and Nation, where a series of Labour Party supporters have been scraping hard through individual statements of varied Liberals throug,hout the country (garbled by the Press or otherwise) trying to prove an inconsistency that just is not there. As an active Liberal supporter of twenty!lye Years' standing I find it heartening in a negative sort of a way. It proves how hard the recent Liberal by-election atieeesses have bitten, but the argument is at such a low level as to be a reason in itself why voters are deserting the other two parties in droves and voting for Liberal candidates at both Local Government and Parliamentary level
Whenever they are given the opportunity.
I suspect that if Mr Cosgrave had Met Cromwell, he would have only noticed his warts. Having asked for all the Liberal Party policy statements he finds three that do not have that final
polish to be expected from Conservative Central Office, instead of being amazed at the general high quality material produced by a Liberal Party Office starved of the big-business funds at the disposal of the Tories and the trade union funds sustaining the Labour Party.
Next he leaps on to the 'Peter Hain and the juggernauts controversy and shows his own lack of competence by not apparently having been aware that the Young Liberals' Executive have virtually censured their former chair
man for trying to commit them to a policy without prior approval, nor does he appear to have read the long and reasoned letter in the Guardian by Graham Tope, MP (President of the Young Liberals) outlining the very reasonable policy of the party, pursued both in and outside of Parliament, on this very issue.
I once heard Liberal policy described as" being opposed to the concentration of power in too few hands," whether that of big business interests, trades unions or through arbitrary government; and that the emphasis of that opposition would shift according to any particular circumstance, This nation has spent the years since the end of World War II being subject to one after the other of these oppressions. At last the electorate is getting wise to this and Sir Alec Douglas-Home can only berate them being " disgruntled." To paraphrase P. G. Wodehouse, they haven't exactly a lot to be gruntled about, and that awareness is something to shout about. The traditional voting patterns are being shattered. We are possibly facing an electoral revolution of 1906 proportions. Cheer Mr Cosgrave, dance all sons of freedom, awake 0 ye Spectator of former radical tradition!
Jack Barnett Flat 2, 63 Canfield Gardens, London. NW6
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