29 MAY 1976, Page 24

CAER

Sir: Though Sheila Donaldson (8 May) has never heard of Conservative Action for Electoral Reform, this has not prevented her from attributing to us the feat of both manifesting 'the inbred political thinking of the main parties ... which persist in putting their own interests first', and at the same time espousing a cause incompatible with the interests of the Conservative Party.

CAER is a group of Conservatives who believe that our present electoral system has proved to be undemocratic and damaging to the nation and to the party.-The group was formed in 1974, when a poll (the Times 25 April, 1974) showed that 74 per cent of Conservatives thought our system to be unsatisfactory and that it should be changed.

It is under our system, not under PR, that small or large minorities control the government, as our present situation shows all too well. We believe that our elections have been a sham because they have allowed the expressed wishes of the majority to be overridden by those of a minority. Moreover despite the widely different views held by the main parties on every subject, Mrs Donaldson can still say that very little changes whichever party is in power. This may at least partly be attributed to the process of repeal and re-repeal which is taking the place of progress, and to the ineffectuality of trying to impose difficult measures when everyone knows that the electoral lottery may cancel them almost immediately. It is intolerable that any government needs obvious economic crisis to give it the authority which it lacks through being unrepresentative.

Since electoral reform would put the choice of government back in the hands of the people, it will benefit the Conservative Party to the extent that it has policies and beliefs that appeal to the majority, instead of being merely a repository of entrenched interests which has to be artificially supported in order to cling to a pretence of political power. I believe that it is such a party, and that consequently its own interests and those of true democracy are in this case identical. Hugo Page Conservative Action for Electoral Reform, 6 Queen Street, London W1