Lodge protest
Sir: It is nice to be missed, even by someone like Mr Anthony Walker (Letters, 18 July).
(1) The election was mistimed, and lost by Labour in the last four days through the widely publicised Heath devaluation and economic crisis scares. His press allies, one of which—the Daily Mail—carried a scream- ing headline 'Devalue with Labour' during polling week, together with other Tory engineered propaganda such as pop and pirate radio stations blaring out 'Vote Tory for free [commercial] radio', swayed a highly volatile electorate just enough to get Labour out. In East Anglia, in particular, the already dismayed broadcasters, many of them now
'jammed', undoubtedly swayed younger voters by their incessant appeals, encouraged by Tory party headquarters.
(2) The new government's honeymoon period with the country largely expired during its first week. Nothing else could be expected, of course, for those living in political sin who, all along, lost the argu- ments.
(3) The dock strike apart, the signals for Heath are already set at red. Thousands, everywhere—especially the women who were 'conned' into voting Tory on the tax and prices issues—are already feeling that the last state will be worse than the first. One has only to keep one's eyes and ears open in the shops. Those Tories, and they were legion, who pretended a solution to cure an inflation, which is today almost endemic, lay in the ballot boxes, merely deceived them- selves and others.
(4) Proposed arms sales to South Africa flouting the UN, offending much of the Commonwealth and involving another almost Suez situation with the us; Mrs Thatcher's policy of allowing Tory local councils to deny equality of educational opportunity to hundreds of thousands of our children (one such authority is in charge here); the threatened legal restrictions on the trade unions which could cripple the much needed extra production whereby to pay for the ful- fihnent of Tory election pledges, with no apparent similar policy to be applied to lazy, out of date inefficient management, all of this adds up to ultimate disillusion and dis- aster. Then there must be a big increase in government 'snoopers' to handle means-tested and curtailed social services, and following the abolition of SET whatever took its place would involve ever higher shop and public service prices with no guarantee that those who wantonly used SET as an excuse to put up costs to consumers would lower them if the tax was scrapped.
Finally, the new team at Westminster is, man for man, and woman for woman, with one or two exceptions, no match for the last one. An overall majority of thirty is in these circumstances inadequate to maintain a viable base for the introduction of highly divisive legislation. Heath's 'one nation' appeal consequently looks unreal before the battles start.
A growing nostalgia for a return of the Wilson era is what I predict in the ..light of this analysis, and I, with many others, have already started work to_ensure that before very long the most competent peacetime Prime Minister of this century will once again be installed at No. 10. As I see it just now, a far worse, and not the Tory advertised better tomorrow, lies ahead.
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