TELLING THE WORLD SIR,—Some time ago I had the acutely
embarrassing experience of hearing a Mr. Tiptaft, former Lord Mayor of Birmingham, address a meeting of the English-Speaking Union in this city. His talk con- sisted in the main of a diatribe against the British Welfare State. He maintained that in Britain all doctors and most laymen are opposed to the National Health Service, that British youth is pam- pered by expensive educational subsidies, that vast sums are spent on such extravagances as pensions. As a British citizen who has had the benefit of a government grant towards my university education I was perhaps inordinately indignant, but I couldn't help feeling that Mr. Tiptaft would not have de- livered himself of such sentiments in his home town. He went on to dismiss the Socialist Party as a moronic faction that some sad chance had foisted on the nation in 1945, but which no one really took seriously any more. He didn't think Labour would be elected to power again : he implied that the British Lion was hard to rouse, but when it did realise that it was being imposed upon, it was implacable.
Mr. Tiptaft has every right to his Eldonian opinions, though I would challenge him to give the same talk as he gave here on any public platform in Britain, let alone in Birmingham, and with the possible exception of Bournemouth East. He had, I gathered, volunteered his services to the ESU for a lecture tour of the United States, in the course of which he was to visit a large number of cities through-
out the country, where presumably his audiences would be treated to ,similar performances. The meeting in New Orleans which he addressed was well attended, and his talk was widely reported in the local press. The English-Speaking Union has as its object the fostering of friendship and understand- ing between English-speaking countries: I feel that it is doing a grave disservice to both America and Britain in sponsoring speakers of the calibre of Mr. Tiptaft.
While the musty odour of Mr. Tiptaft's remarks was still with me, Lord Attlee visited New Orleans to address the Foreign Policy Association, As some- one who considers himself bound to neither party, I could not have wished for a more objective presen- tation than Lord Attlee gave of issues in which he himself had been personally concerned. I am sure that his wise, lucid and non-partisan exposition of his views on world government must have dispelled many fears among his audience of what could be expected from a Socialist Prime Minister.—Yours faithfully, MICHAEL SISSONS Department of History, T ulane University, New Orleans, La.
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