True socialist character
Sir: Whilst welcoming your new practice of inviting people of various parties to contribute ar- ticles to the SPECTATOR (we may soon—who knows?—see an article by a socialist), but people like the Labour MP Eric Heifer should realise that readers of this journal are, on the whole, a little less easily taken in than those of, say, Tribune who might possibly swal- low the sort of claptrap which appears in the 13 February issue of the SPECTATOR under his name.
One quotation from his article shows the whole thing up in its true light : It is only in a situation like the one we have today, that the true character of the Labour party is revealed'. Stuff and non- sense. Or rather worse--cant and humbug, The true character of a party (as indeed of a person) is revealed not when it is shooting its mouth off about how wicked are the party in power and how much nicer we would be if we had their power, but when it is actually in office so that one can see not what they say but what they do. After all, it is well known that talk is cheap and that the Labour party has never been short of people like Mr Heiler who are so generous with that inexpensive commodity. But it is really an insult to the intelligence of your readers for him to sound off so smugly on the sub- ject of the Industrial Relations Bill, of all things. For what did his party sound like when they were in power only a few months ago? And on this very issue?
Perhaps I may be permitted to answer in words,from the Observer (by no means a Tory paper these days, of course). My quote is from their issue of 29 November. 'Mrs Barbara Castle on Robert Carr's modest little Bill: "We shall fight these proposals tooth and nail, line by line. and however long it lakes, we shall destroy this Bill". What rhetoric! What bullshit! Full of venom, she attacked a Bill that is all but identical with the one she was forced to abandon in the last Parliament. And still she managed to accuse the Tories of hypocrisy.'
It only remains to add that neither Mr Helfer nor any other Labourite wrote defending their party either in the Observer or in his own Tribune (where I quoted the nassage). I repeat. SPECTATOR readers can recognise bullshit when they see it.
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