Open letter to Enoch Powell
Charles Fletcher-Cooke
My dear Enoch, In your Norwich speech you again recommend the Labour Party to the voters at the forthcoming general election. You argue that the first duty of a voter is to preserve the value of his vote. Membership of the EEC dilutes the value of that vote. Therefore the elector should vote for the party most likely to take the United Kingdom out of the EEC, however much he may disagree with the rest of its programme.
In this brief summary, I hope I have not distorted your argument. May I try to answer it on your own terms?
It does not take an amateur as I am to tell you that inflation, even at the current rate, presents not just an academic but an urgent threat to democracy. Opinions vary as to why and when, but the danger is surely looming. Italy seems to have escaped, momentarily, by the skin of its teeth, but there are plenty of examples the other way.
The first duty, therefore, of the voter at the general election is to prevent not the mere dilution of the value of his vote but its total abolition. Do you really think that a Labour government is more likely to reduce the rate of inflation than any other of the possible alternatives?
You touched, I believe, on this dilemma in your speech. You indicated that your advice might be different if you could discern in the policies of the other parties any fruitful proposals for dealing with inflation.
If this reading is right, it amounts to an admission, which someone of your intellectual calibre would naturally make, that the EEC issue may not take the supreme priority which you previously gave it. A vote against inflation would come before a vote against Brussels — if only there was some way in which one could vote against inflation. There is a way. You are still a member of the Conservative Party and still have great influence within it. You have no influence in the Labour Party and never will acquire an inch of muscle therein.
You must re-assert your position in the Conservative Party, which gives you the chance to persuade it to tackle inflation in the way in which you believe. You may not succeed but you have a chance. There is no chance for you anywhere else within the parameters of our parliamentary democracy. The purpose of this letter is to beg you to take that chance. Of course it means altering your .priorities and repenting of your Norwich speech. A bitter pill, perhaps, but without it you and we may lose the votes which you, as a good democrat, are so concerned to preserve.
Yours very sincerely, Charles Fletcher-Coohe Conservative MP for Darwen
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