Op tin g out Sir: It seems probable that the Houghton Committee
on Aid to Political Parties will be strongly influenced by the recently published PEP paper Paying for Party Polities: The Case for Pulic Subsidies.
The recommendations are, to say the least, disturbing, not only because all subsidies distort but because, in this case, they will also help to disguise the mixture of apathy and antagonism which so many of us feel for the works of the established political parties as a whole and the actions of their representatives in Parliament over the past thirty years. The decision to withhold financial support for these parties — in the hope that others may replace them — is the only sanction remaining to us.
It is, therefore, not one minute too early to canvas the principle that, just as it is possible for any member of a trade union to 'opt out' of paying the political levy destined to swell the Labour Party coffers, so those of us who to not support any of the parties represented by at least two MPs or by one MP and a national vote exceeding 150,000 (these are the minimum requirements to qualify for a slice of the subsidy cake), should be permitted to 'opt out' of this political levy.
Perhaps we can invoke the catch phrases so debased by the left — 'civil rights', 'democracy' and 'freedom' — in our campaign to withhold contributions designed to sustain those responsible for the continued decline of this once great and still much-loved country.
Bee Carthew B Flat, 7, Park Road, East Twickenham, Middlesex, TW1 2QD.
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