Voice of the siren
Sir; The appearance of Banquo's ghost before Macbeth could not have aroused greater astonishment than I felt on reading John Grigg's article (3 September). Extraordinary it was, and discursive too — so discursive that it is difficult to know where to begin. Mr Grigg regrets that ' Mr Powell should gloat over the current state of the Tory Party, but if Grigg's prognostications are correct, he has good reason to gloat. For we are told that 'it is now very much on the cards that the Tories will revert to such a policy (i.e. an incomes policy) even before the next election.'
Now one of the tactical advantages to our party from the Government's forced abandonment of its semi-compulsory incomes policy is that we are saved tht problem of having to perform this difficult operation ourselves on coming to office. Why in heaven's name should we revert to the apparatus of controls again, when even the Labour Party, philosophically more disposed to a controlled economy, has had to abandon them?
John Grigg says that 'it is absurd to talk of the free play of market forces in an economy which includes large public monopolies.' But we are not talking about absolutes. We want 'the freer play of market forces.' We want to undermine the 'large public monopolies.' Perhaps Mr Grigg ought to read George Ward's eloquent indictment of the corporatist system to breathe some of the air that Conservatives now find so exhilarating after an era of undiluted corporatism that has brought us to the brink of disaster. If the next Conservative government is lured onto the rocks by siren voices like Mr Grigg's, it will fully deserve the fate which overcomes it.
Nigel Saul
Hertford College, Oxford
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