The Winston Churchill Trophy
SIR,—I do not think it is so funny that Mr. Fenner Brockway should enquire earnestly why the Iver Heath Conservative Association used a U.S. servicemen's baseball tournament to raise money for party purposes, and why Mr. Churchill allowed his name to be given to the trophy donated to the winning team. But perhaps " H. B." does not know the local background to the question in Parliament. The matter was given some prominence in a local paper, the Slough Observer, in its news columns as well as in an editorial, two weeks before the event. This caused some critical comment in Labour circles, and this criticism found expression in the Daily Worker (as Mr. Churchill was careful to point out in the House of Commons), and in the local paper before the event, on the grounds that the baseball match, being part of a fete to raise money for the Conservatives, was a partisan intrusion by American servicemen in our politics. There was time, therefore, for the match to be stopped. The local Con- servatives countered the criticisms, which by now were being printed in at least two local papers, by saying that political propaganda was kept out of the speakers' addresses and the display matter at the fair; but this was negatived by a report in a third local paper, the Buckinghamshire Advertiser, of the opening speech given by Mr. Ronald Bell, M.P., in appealing for finance to help spread " a belief in the rightness of the Conservative Party's cause throughout the country."
The incident has not been without its humour—as when Capt. D. B. Halcum, P.R.O. to the U.S. Forces in Britain, said: " The word 'Conservative' probably did not mean anything to the men. They would not realise its political significance." However, a number of people in this area did realise it, and Mr. Brockway gave expression to their views in Parliament. Mr. Churchill's admission of error serves to emphasise the value of individuals' criticising and questioning those in authority on matters of principle, even though, as in this
Previous page
