A slender marjonty
Sir: An overall Labour majority of about twenty-three will be the result of the general election of February 28.
This could be too slender a majority for Labour to live on for very long; but by the time of the next election perhaps the leaders of the present Government, in particular, Mr Heath, will have been superseded by a more truly Conservative element and example. It will be the function of that slender Labour majority to do this.
But the troubles of our time will still be with us for a very long period. This is because nobody will understand that the trouble-aggravator is neither the miners nor the Government, but the shopkeeper. The only way that anything effective can be done to offset his economic vandalism is for Government to keep out of the domain of both income and prices 'control' because every artificial measure it uses has to be administered, and so much in advance that the shopkeeper can take advantage of both administration and advance-warning so that by the time the measure becomes effective in law it is obsolete in reality. If you like, you can see the trade union leaders as shopkeepers also. Our real inflation is a greed-and-waste-luxury inflation. The greed is activated by a shopkeeperexploited lust for what might be called the gross refinements of a civilisation that is already in an unstoppable materialistic decline which has the deceptive appearance of a welfare improvement. Man is conquering 'external' nature but is being correspondingly debauched by his 'internal' nature. He is also making too much/many of what he doesn't need and is being too encouraged to do so by the shopkeeper who then charges him too high a price for what he does need: so then he has to turn for help to the money lender. And it is the money lender and shopkeeper alliance that must be broken. To do this one must become more puritanical and more aesthetically critical and more spiritually demanding. And less statecontrolled. State-control must pander to materialism and be overwhelmed by it. Observe the Conservative election manifesto. Is it trying to win the Labour vote, or change it? I think the former, it is therefore a treacherous manifesto. And true Labour deserves to win. But a slender majority will keep Communism out. Until true Conservatism can return and take over, we hope.
Thomas W. Gadd Alexandra Court, Woodborough Road, Nottingham
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