List is taken by a Committee representative of the leadership
of all sections of the Party. I would like to inform Mr Thomas and others that the decision in each case was taken most carefully and was based on considerable enquiry as well as on reports from me on those people I had interviewed.
The hard truth of course is that there is enormous pressure to become a Conservative candidate. If the Committee had not set its standards at a high level, our list would very quickly have several thousand names on it. As there are just 630 constituencies, this would have been a list out of all proportion to the requirement and would quite obviously lead to inefficiency of advice. Mr Thomas and others may be interested to know that the majority of those who can no longer be included in our list of candidates have assured me and other principal members of the Party that they will go on giving their wholehearted service and support.
Conservative & Unionist Ceneral Office, 32, Smith Square, Westminster, S.W.1.
refers to " the stern refusal of Douglas Jay to have anything to do with negotiations at the ultimate cost of a place in the Cabinet." I am not sure that this is the story which history will tell. After all, Douglas Jay was a member of the Cabinet which approved the Labour government's application to join. He was a member of the Cabinet which specifically approved the text of George Brown's strongly pro-European speech to the Council of Ministers of WEU on July 4, 1967. These were two opportunities for resignation if Mr Jay had wished to show a "stern refusal . . . to have anything to do with negotiations."
Ever since he was thrown out of the Cabinet later that summer he has, it is true, been sternness itself.
Douglas Hurd
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