Lock-out
Sir: I am flattered that in my absence a phrase in one of my articles should have provoked Richard West into such a fine frenzy-of denunciation (17 July), but I can- not help feeling that he has extracted from it an inference ignited more by his own in- dignation than by the sense of the article.
Has he not told us many times that one of the prime iniquities of contemporary Bri- tain is the increasing dominance of trade unions? He can therefore hardly quarrel with the notion that they are a 20th-century phenomenon, in which case 'to lock out the 20th century' means simply to keep the unions out. It says nothing about whether I am for, against or indifferent to them — unless of course merely to use the phrase 'lock out' brands the writer as a disciple of Trotsky.
Because Mr West elects to cast himself as a lonely chronicler of vanishing freedoms — indeed, it sometimes appears that he would have been happier in the days of bottle-blacking — he suspects everyone. And like so many to whom print is merely the playground of prejudice (that, after all, is why we buy the Spectator), he tends to assume that the only 'good' journalists are those who agree with him, even if he has to invent the disagreements that lead him to castigate 'bad' ones.
Hugo Davenport 35a Arlingford Road, London SW2
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