25 JUNE 1977, Page 18

Harmful

Sir: Having read Mr Waugh's article (28 May), I hope that you may be able to appreciate the kind of harm steady sniping, apparently at bureaucracy, but in fact at individuals, can do. These have no means of reply in print — as you know. I share Mr Waugh's dislike of trade unionists and can assure him that civil servants have little need of a general trade union, because the Whitley Councils function well. But the latest militant body (the Civil and Public Servants Association) is becoming a force to be reckoned with.

D.H.A. Mitchell,

79 Great King Street, Edinburgh