1960 and all that
Sir: I regret that I did not see John Simp- son's 'The Irish Empire' article (21 Novem- ber), but I read four times Hugh Brogan's letter (5 December). How Mr Brogan can set forth so many correct facts yet come to such an erroneous conclusion I can't imag- ine.
I grew up in south Chicago and south suburban Cook County during the Fifties and Sixties, the peak years of the powerful Daley political machine, and I worked hard as a 'Young Republican' for the Nixon/Lodge Republican ticket.
It's quite true that the Republicans stole downstate rural votes whenever they could, but they never came close to the massive thefts of the entrenched Chicago Daley machine.
The 1960 election was quite typical: vot- ers arrived to find they had already been recorded as voting, the dead came to life, those long moved away returned to vote, more people voted in some precincts than were registered and ballot boxes vanished unaccountably for hours. In short, a normal Chicago Daley election, notable only as it swung the presidential election to John Kennedy by the smallest of margins. Daley simply stole the election back from the downstate Republicans who did their best, but as Daley had held back enough precincts until the count downstate was in, he knew how many votes he needed to beat them.
A Democratic relative of mine was one of those hundred-plus Chicago election workers indicted by a federal grand jury after the election. All the indictments were eventually quietly dropped, an investigation would only have needlessly damaged both sides and dragged on for years.
Nixon, the 'ardent patriot' as Mr Brogan sarcastically comments, did not choose to exercise his right to a recount. These were the darkest days of the Cold War and he felt that to demand a recount would delay the results of the election at a time when we could not afford to appear divided and leaderless.
John B. Hunter
Swaleside, Brabazon Road, Eastchurch, Sheerness, Kent
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