every right that she had What right has she left

to complain? K. T. Moore 20 Queenborough Gardens, Ilford If this is so and if M Pompidou is planning to make some sort of bargain with Mr Heath under which he makes some concessions on the terms for entry, as he is now doing, in return for our sup- port once we are in for his econ- omic policy as opposed to Ger- many's, it is a very good reason for staying out and avoiding any inextricable entanglement in the quarrels of the Six. Our position within the Community as a coun- ter-balance between the two would be intolerable. It might be good for Europe to have us in on these con- ditions but not for us.

To delve further into M Porn- pidou's mind, in view of the na- ture of the terms for entry which we arc trying to get and of the course which the negotiations on them are taking. he with the rest of the Community must still be doubtful if we are sufficiently 'community-minded'. For it is ob- vious that concessions have been made only in respect of those terms which relate to our position in the Community during the transi- tional period. Those terms which relate to our position, once we are in. remain unresolved. The two most important of these concern New Zealand butter and our role as banker of the sterling area and holder of the sterling balances. Both these are in effect ties which bind us to the Commonwealth and

which we wish to keep after we become members of the 'EEC. Sugar

from the Caribbean and Mauritius is another such issue. We asked for an assurance that after we are a member of the Community we should still be permitted to buy some fixed tonnage of cane sugar A choice then has to be made. Europe or the Commonwealth? We can only 'go into Europe' at the expense of the Commonwealth. I have no doubt that the people of this country would choose the Commonwealth—and I am sure they would be right—if they were convinced that we cannot belong to both and that a choice between the two is inevitable.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home has re- cently said that we belong to Europe because we share with Europeans a common heritage— the heritage of the Christian re- ligion, the practice of democracy and the meaning of liberty. But so equally do the peoples of •the old 'white' Dominions, whose ances- tors carried with them that heri- tage when they crossed the seas four centuries ago. And in addi- tion, unlike the peoples of Europe, they acknowledge the same Queen, speak the same language and have adopted the same legal and poli- tical systems as our own.

To weaken, if not break, the ties which bind us to these for the sake of a closer and more rigid relationship with the Nations of Europe and to endanger so valu- able an asset of comradeship in a divided world seems to me to be both unwise and ungrateful.

Christopher Masterman Homefield, North Bovey, Devon Sir: 'Our eager Marketeers possess' you say in The Paris Trip (15 May) Sir: The sharp reversal of for- tunes at the very recent local polls has predictably produced already a variety of comments from po- litical soothsayers and others— often, one feels, sadly wide of the mark. Certainly the notion widely put forward that the result marks a violent swing to the Left in the mood of the electorate is not only premature but even unwise—and too much elation in Lord North Street scarcely seems in order. Mr Edward Short has predictably put it all down to the desire for com- prehensive schools—which seems a judgment all the more fatuous when one considers how too many trendy councils went on implement- ing that most idiotic and per- nicious of reforms in a vain at- tempt to be educationally with it!

Undoubtedly in all local elec- tions there is always the itch to slap down the sitting tenants-7- - arrogance and high-handednesS among local councillors is an all too frequent phenomenon and the ratepayer can always hit back at the polls! This time, however, there can be little doubt that the electo- rate was thinking largely of na- tional rather than parish pump issues.

People these days are feeling perhaps a little fed up with po- liticians. After all, the Tories have completed almost a year in office and life has, if anything, got per- ceptibly worse in terms of the cost of living—not to mention the increasing difficulty that many people experience in maintaining even a tolerable existence in the great urban centres, what with in- creasing traffic, aircraft noise, more and more expensive transport, the difficult housing situation etc.

At the back of many minds too is a vague sense of unease at the prospect of joining the Common Market—with the inevitability of a further rise in the cost of living and further inroads into a national way of life that somehow seems to be getting less and less tra- ditionally British year by year!

politics, which, I believe can only bring bloodshed and ruin to both parts of this island if attempts are made to graft old policies to the present situation there. To this end I spent several years writing a book The IRA (Pall Mall. 1970) which both gave the IRA'S history and de- monstrated how force has only succeeded in pulling tighter the gordian knot with the North.

In that book (page 261) as evi- dence of the hate creation that is so much a part of Northern public life I quoted from Dr Ian Paisley's Protestant Telegraph the bogus 'Sinn Fein Oath' which he printed in April 1967. The tone, and often the phraseology is strikingly simi- lar to your 'Oath'. This type of material circulates in the Orange Lodges along with spurious ver- sions of the Ancient Order of Hibernians 'Oath' and such like, with a view to keeping alive ancient feuds.

I would not like either your pres- tige or that of the SPECTATOR, which, tinder your editorship, has improved considerably, to be lent to this process of hate creation. There is in fact no Sinn Fein oath, as the now sundered 'red' and 'green' Sinn Feins apply no other 'rule of membership than that common to more orthodox poli- tical parties, and the equally sundered IRA does not have an oath either. Recruits merely sign a declaration of fidelity to the move- ment's objectives and as the move- ment is, of course, largely Catholic the hierarchy would not allow Catholics to become members of an oath-bound society. In all fair- ness to the IRA I should point out that the objects of the movement are not to promote sectarian strife of the type indicated in the 'Maria Monk-like' document you quote. but simply to get the British out of what they call 'occupied Ireland'. The death of Mrs M'Keague to which you refer is regarded in Bel- fast as being the work of some of Mr John M'Keague's extremist Protestant rivals who thought that Mr M'Keague's mother was away

with hint on holiday at the time when his empty shop was petrol- bombed. The unfortunate lady who suffered rheumatics was, however. upstairs when the bomb went off.

Tim Pat Con,f,,an Editor, The Irish Press, Dublin I [I regret accepting the 'Sinn Fein oath' which-1 gullibly took from an Army document.--G.G.]

Wembley line

Sir: I felt deplorably old when I read (15 May) Benny Green's sug- gestion that 'not too long after the Empire Exhibition of 1924 . . . Wembley Park must have been quite a pleasant little sylvan re- treat. firmly linked to -town by the Bakerloo line'. With all respect to Mr Green, the generation gap is with us indeed now that adults can relate the Bakerloo to rural sur- roundings.

Wembley was certainly a hamlet (in the parish of Harrow) before 1894 but its population exceeded 31.000 before the first war. The Bakerloo line did not get there until 1939 and then only by a kind of confidence trick. By driving a short tunnel from Baker Street to Finchley Road. London Transport was able to run Bakerloo trains over the slow lines of the Metro- politan to Stanmore. Their pub- licists claimed a 'new Bakerloo extension° but the result for Stan- more residents was an all-stations service in place of Metropolitan trains running fast from Wembley! James Brock Montacuie House, Montaeute, Somerset