1951 and all that
Sir: As Mr MacCallum Scott (f1 July) lives in an area where the Liberal vote went up from 5,000 to 7,000 one can sympathise with his weariness at being on the periphery of that party since 1951. Still, if, as he main-
tains, politics art about power the rest nature ally follows. But they could conceivably be about principles. And as Conservative prin- ciples and Labour principles (and I would not deny that both exist and both are strongly held) differ essentially from Liberal principles, it seems a trifle arrogant to assume that the twelve million supporters of either party are going to accommodate them- selves for the million-odd Liberals apiece whom Mr Scott sees in the role of oysters to the Labour Carpenter and the Tory Walrus. Even from his own standpoint a large block of Liberal voters whom the other candidates seem only too anxious to woo are obviously going to be more effective than a remnant dispersed around the political spectrum.
I agree that Mr Peter Hain is the most effective (as well as the most widely admired) member of the Liberal party. He saved the Commonwealth Games and probably the Commonwealth itself. But we are not all of an age to challenge the fate of Bernadette Devlin and the young Cambridge students (they will not be forgotten) in this 'law and order' Britain of Mr Edward Heath. Equally one would no more expect Mr MacCallum Scott to like Mr Hain than to like the suffragettes (before women got the vote) or Christian martyrs (before the Emperor Con- stantine). The rest of us. while realising that it is only by the Peter Hains and the Berna- dettes of this world that any progress to- wards decency, justice and human dignity is advanced, can only back them up by joining the least selfish, least materialist of the three parties.
George Edinger Vice President, The Saffron Walden Liberal Association, Essex Sir: 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' This is Mr John MacCallum Scott's unedifying ad- vice to Liberals (11 July). He should know better.
He surely knows that ex-Liberals exert no influence on the parties they join. The Liberal Nationals were too timid to argue with their Conservative masters, and, unlike the genu- ine Liberals, never supported Churchill in his opposition to the disastrous pre-war Con- servative government. Lady Megan Lloyd George never liberalised the Labour party. They soon taught her to keep quiet, no mean achievement. In an exchange of letters with the then Mr Attlee in 1955 when she joined the Labour party, they both mentioned that they were working on the plans laid down by the famous Liberal Yellow Book of 1928. One hundred pages of this hook deal with the causes of industrial discontent and a pro- gramme for industrial co-operation. The number of strikes we have had during these last few years proves no Liberal influence.
The Liberal party must survive, if only to strive to unite all classes in industry. They will not succeed by joining either of the par- ticipants in the class war who have built up the two major parties to the detriment of the country.
David Woolf Middleton. Prestwich & Whitefield Division Liberal . Association. 34 Bury Old Road, Prestwich. Manchester
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