LETTERS The good old days
Sir: If I were to seize 97.5 per cent of Paul Johnson's earnings, he would summon the police. In his time John Freeman confiscat- ed likewise his countrymen's earnings. Yet Johnson praises him CA man of many, epiphanies to remind us what England was once about', 4 March).
Yes, let us remind ourselves. The Attlee Government of which Freeman was a senior member imposed a basic rate of income tax of 45 per cent and surtax up to 97.5 per cent on incomes over £20,000. The Government effectively confiscated all incomes over that level. It also, of course, expropriated the owners of industry after industry in pursuit of its nationalisation plans. It entrenched trade union power. It laid the foundations of an unaffordable and unworkable welfare state. It perverted the tax system from being a means of levelling. It maintained rationing in peacetime. It treated as criminals those who bought or sold goods, such as sugar and meat, in free markets, which it called black markets. It suppressed production at the same time as it promised universal 'free' goods from cra- dle to grave. It morally exterminated any- one who dissented — this was a time when Bevan could say, 'The Tories are lower than vermin'; when Shinwell said, 'The organ- ised workers are our friends — no one else matters a tinker's cuss'; when Orwell reck- oned between 20 and 30 Labour MPs were communists; and Professor Harold Laski, a Marxist, was personal aide to Attlee.
That was what England was once about.
David J. Kidd
Citroen Wells, Devonshire House, 1 Devonshire Street, London W1
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