iliLIETTE'S WEEKLY FROLIC
After many a week spent floundering round the form book, Tartar Prince and Guillemot performed a gallant and timely rescue operation last weekend to send me bouncing merrily into an eighth great lossMaking month.
The July thoroughbred feast opens with Saturday's Eclipse. This £30,000 memorial to the four-legged father of the turf, brings Epsom hero, Mill Reef, face to face with his seniors for the first time. With the 121b age allowance, he was the unanimous choice of the " Sundays " and yet, they pFedicted a tight finish with champion Miler Welsh Pageant and French challenger Caro in the field. Unpatriotic, perhaps, but at the price decidedly more sensible is an interest in the latter.
' At four, he's the best age for the race, has been trained with this in mind, his three victories this season included the defeat of classy Stintino at Long champ in record time. and 1971's three-year olds have yet to prove their superiority over his year. Over the same course and distance some ninety minutes later a more humble band will contest the Warren Handicap, which could prove highly profitable, provided Collector's Slip, three times second in good handicap company, gets his nose in front over what is probably his best distance (10f). Oaks runner-up, Mains, will be a hot thing for Friday's Haydock equivalent, but there's a reasonable chance that Catherine Wheel who wasn't entered for the Oaks will prove her ability.
Assets: £67.67. Outlay: £3 to win Caro, Collector's Slip and Catherine Wheel. If, then, the present wage-cost inflation is being aggravated by wage claims, the only way to cure this mental disease is by psychiatric methods — by changing the mind of the patient. The only peculiarity in this case is that the doctor has to change his own mind too. We are heading for disaster if the patient — the working class — feels that the doctor is trying first to bash his whole family, the trade unions, and then to throw him out of work in order to break his spirit. He must be convinced to the contrary. Equally we are heading for disaster if the doctor himself feels that his patient needs the electric shock treatment of unemployment. In that particular the doctor is more insane than his patient.
This country simply cannot be run if the working class believe they are at war with the government, or if the government believe that the working class are naughty children who have to be taught an economic lesson through suffering. The social split can only be healed if financial and economic policies are agreed between the two parts and if the two halves of the nation co-operate in running a dynamic mixed economy. I was foolish enough to believe that Mr Wilson would heal the breach when he took office in 1964 but what did he do but apply the harsh monetary and fiscal tactics of the moneyed ruling clique on the first attack on sterling? He left a working class feeling itself more alienated than ever before from the ruling class. This has allowed the few revolutionaries to dominate trade union thinking and persuade even the moderates that there is no alternative but to smash the capitalist system, abolish the profit motive and apply the communist technique of central price control. That this would involve central wage control and the loss of freedom of movement and bargaining is not, of course, mentioned. You have to fool people if you want to persuade them to give you power. Mr Heath has only one chance left to reach the mind of the working class and gain the confidence of his mental patient. He will shortly preside at a meeting of the National Economic Development Council. This is the only meeting place where he can have a friendly dialogue with the trade union leaders. He must assure them that he understands their difficulties — especially those with the revolutionaries — and that he is as anxious as they are to stop the inflation and create a sound economic situation which will enable them to improve their living standards and the economy to expand. That is why it is so important for him to propose some reflation, first, a cut in Bank rate and a reduction in mortgage rates and rents, secondly, when the halving of SET takes place, a downward movement in the regulator so that prices can be reduced "at a stroke." This is the only way he can persuade the workers that he is not against them but for them. This is the only way he can touch their mind. If he can do so he might even convince them that helping lame ducks on the capitalist farm makes no economic sense — that the Tory quiet revolution' is perhaps better than the unquiet crazy revolution preached by Tony Wedgwood Benn.
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