Reflections on losing

Sir: That piteous, bleating cry from Coombs "Why didn't they vote Tory!!??" (March 30) astounded and disgusted me. Just another proof of the complete lack of understanding of the ordinary working man — the lack that lost them the election. Certainly the Tory party needs working men's votes, and yet how they/Heath alienated the worker!! Locked him out in a three-day week! and now expect votes! While there remains the faintest suspicion that the three-day week was not entirely necessary, while that foul suspicion lingers would any working man vote Tory? The harm that Heath did the Conservatives in that mad move! Ten years in opposition will hardly heal that wound. That is why so many went out and voted Liberal (without knowing what it stood for): they could not vote for the man, the party that locked them out. Petrol should have been rationed to private cars, we too should have had car-less Sundays, and housewives at home should have suffered cut-offs of electricity, anything. any sacrifice women and children could have made to keep the men folk in work. Such a blunder, so little understood by typical MPs (Tory) by men office workers that I prophesy that the Tory party will die away as did the Liberal party. Workers have long memories. In the three-day lock-out (if such it was) they spent their savings and withdrew all they had from building societies. They won't be holidaying at all this year, because of the threeday week. Would men so punished go out and vote Tory? Then the Common Market — this country was dragged unwillingly in — again by Heath. He seemed to say "You'll like it when you get used to it" — but that is slavery, and Englishmen fought many a war for freedom, and will fight themselves free of the Common Market. Coombs says "the Liberals favour the market, the Tories favour the market"; in his blindness he can't see that the ordinary voters don't favour it, and they have just spoken.

Then Coombs has the impudence to write "Knowing that we (Tory) were the party best equipped to deal, etc, etc" — a shout must have gone up from workers "Who got us into this mess? Who but Heath's government?" How can you be so barefaced as to claim to be the party best equipped to get us out!! That is blind arrogance. Just reading D. Coombs's reflections shows why Conservatives lost this time: they are so out of touch with what the working public thinks and wants.

M. M. Mawson 40 St Johns Rd, Morecambe, Lancs.

therefore the electorate was stupid in producing the result it did. I would agree with Mr Coombs that the Tory Party, for which I have voted for most of my adult life, would have made a better shot at coping with inflation, but the fact is that the electorate, though perceiving this, also perceived (perhaps in some cases unconsciously), that a far greater issue was at stake. That issue was democracy itself.

For many years now no government has been responsive to the will of the electorate. Yet the very essence of democracy is that the will of the majority shall prevail; that that will shall be carried out by the government. There is at the moment no party, judging by its words and deeds, that subscribes to this definition.

The Labour Party has declared its intention to act as our conscience; to give into the keeping of politicians and administrators those powers of decision pertaining to the individual which in his own hands constitute his liberty.

The Liberal Party, judging by its policies, wishes to put the individual under the heel of the government almost as much as the Labour Party does and has no right, therefore, if it wishes to be truthful, to call itself liberal.

As for the Tory Party, under Mr Heath it has behaved as though 'representative government' means that the electorate votes men in to power to pursue whatever policies that they happen to fancy. I understand that it has been openly stated by Tory politicians concerning the Common Market that MPs are representatives not delegates and therefore are empowered to do what they think best for the country.

There is here a very grave constitutional crisis. Repeatedly it has been asked, 'Who governs the country?' It is indeed the question of the hour. Mr Heath posed it in terms of the government versus the Trade Unions; unfortunately for him, the country saw It in terms of the government versus the electorate, for in his brief tenure of office Mr Heath and his colleagues made themselves our masters instead of our servants — and we were not having it!

Most people agree that though the country has been in economic difficulty since the last war, its present Intensity stems from the miners' strike of 1972. That strike and that defeat of the government came because the public's attitude was ambivalent. On the one hand was the feeling that no section of the community ought to challenge the government, but on the other hand was a fierce pleasure that at last somebody had succeeded in making the government listen, at last somebody had halted the steamroller.

The recent miners' strike produced the same attitudes — the miners both threatened our economic prosperity and at the same time stood up against a dictatorial government bent on destroying yet more of our liberties in the name of our ereater eood. Shades of Bloody Queen Mary who tortured and burned at the stake most enthusiastically for the good of her subjects's souls!

Law and order are breaking down, it is said, the law is not as respected as it once was. No doubt, and the cause is not far to seek. The law is not as respected as it once was because it has become less respectable. It no longer embodies the will of the electorate, but

more and more the will of a small majority, some of them Labour politicians, some so-called Liberals, some Tory politicians, some economists and journalists — all of them trendy leftwingers, what ever their official label may be.

If Mr Coombs wishes to get back into the House of Commons and to see his party back in power, let him use his time and his energy in seeking to change the outlook of the Tory politicians so that they may regain a little humility and once again truly represent the people of this country instead of merely themselves.

M. Lavender 308 Pensby Road,

Pensby, Wirral, Cheshire.