Sun stroke
Sir: Baldwin's famous attack on newspa- pers, borrowed from Kipling, as exercising power without responsibility is, as we should know, based on myth. In an adult democracy, newspapers can articulate the popular mood but their direct influence is negligible.
In the United States, Roosevelt won four elections despite the hostility of most news- papers. Labour had the mass of the press ranged against it in 1945, yet it triumphed. Subsequent socialist success was always achieved against newspaper hostility.
I was the chief leader writer of the Sun for 13 years from 1979 — the period of Tory triumph. I never had the slightest impression that the paper had more than a peripheral effect, and indeed, throughout those years, a fair proportion of Sun read- ers believed that it was a Labour newspa- per!
The Tories would still have won in 1979 and in three subsequent elections, and John Major would not have won last year even if Mr Rupert Murdoch had remained in Wagga Wagga.
. Yet now we have the Sun's present edi- tor, Stuart Higgins, threatening on a radio programme that his paper would continue to back Tony Blair so long as he 'did not try to push Rupert Murdoch around' over the single currency. Just who is Mr Higgins? I can tell you from experience. He is a politi- cal illiterate whose sole importance is as his master's voice.
I hope that Tony Blair and his acolytes will overcome their misplaced gratitude to make clear that an elected government is running Britain, not an absentee Aus- tralian-American.
Ronald Spark 19 The Rotyngs, Rottingdean, East Sussex
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