Student grievances
Sir: On behalf of those defended, supposedly, by your editorial of April 20, I must deplore your own unthinking reaction to the NUS conference.
To reply to its intellectual thuggery by relishing restraints on student grants is to fall squarely into the trap of taking this body to be genuinely representative of students. It is not, precisely because the great majority are more concerned for their studies than for student politics, an attitude you appear to applaud. For you to make wild sweeps at "the puling and selfish insensitivity of university students" is absurd. The real value of grants has been allowed to decline to a point where widespread student poverty is a reality. Almost all students, .even those who work each vacation when they should be studying, know the experience of choosing between a necessary text-book and a meal.
Public insensitivity to these conditions is certainly not reduced by stupid and offensive NUS conference decisions. The answer is to motivate ordinary and sensible students to put their acceptable face to the world and eject the ultra-left playboy politicians. Hounding the.ordinary student for the sins of the wreckers will only help them in creating bitterness and spreading the infection of intolerance.
Cohn Maltby Chairman-elect, Federation of Conservative Students, 32 Smith Square, Westminster, London SW1
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