Recipe for the Liberals
Sir: There is much truth in what Mr Grimmond has to say about liberalism (25 February), but he makes a fundamental error when he sugggests that his party should occupy the middle ground of politics and assert the general interest. In British Politics today, the middle ground is a soft pink quagmire; it is a no-man's-land where enterprise and initiative die and the pestilences of bureaucracy and repression breed unchecked; and it is the habitat of the Butskell-Heathkins elite, where Tweedledum CBI and Tweedledee TUC fight their sham battles and the brooding shadow of the Establishment crowd obscures the light.
Let the Liberals struggle out of this slough and leave it to the charges and counter-charges of the blues and reds. Let them make for the high ground away from the battlefield and there raise the standard of liberty. Let them proclaim that they will put every ministry, board and commission and every statute on trial for its life and promise that, if elected to office, they will repeal four laws for every one that they enact.
Let them declare war on every monopoly and oligopoly — state, union or business — and on bureaucracy in all its forms. Let them promise to encourage the individual and the small business, where enterprise thrives, strikes are a joke and workers participate all the time without compulsion. Let them extol the virtues of individual responsibility and mutual support and promise to foster the formation and transfer of private wealth — reserving the welfare safety net for those who genuinely cannot cope —and to make life simpler for ordinary people.
There are few certainties in politics, but it is a near-certainty — evidenced by the protest vote at the last two general elections — that the British people are fed up with the political establishment, its phoney wars and its disregard of the needs and interests of ordinary citizens. At present, the Liberal Party offers no alternative and has no prospect of office. If it will only have the courage to be different it may be astonished by the results.
D.H.R. Archer
Redriff, Newport, Saffron Walden, Essex
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