Not clockwork
Sir: Mr Jones (Letters, January 5), has let his imagination outrun all reality. No clockwork duck, with which he amusingly compares me, could, I would have thought, ever change its quacks as he alleges I have done in my references to Mr Harold Wilson. I have not varied my basic opinion about one of this country's great and intelligent Prime Ministers though it is not always boringly expressed in the same way as Mr Jones would appear to wish. Nor do I ever hesitate to criticise Mr Wilson when, like other mortals, he has sometimes been wrong. Just now, in his statement about our present economic plight, he is emphatically right. His balanced analysis of our affairs will bring added support to his and my party. So much do I think this is so that the hawks in the cabinet who want to build up the Government's campaign of union-bashing, so that an early 'Who governs us?' election can be staged, are now, I guess, feeling worried. Such a revised attitude by them will not be made of course with any concern for the national interest they have consistently spurned. It will be born of a fear that their party risks an electoral defeat once the public !knows the facts.
Mr Wilson is correct too in his assertion that Mr Heath's obduracy, obsessionalism and stubbornness in his handling of industrial relations has consistently and, as I think, almost deliberately played into the hands of the small group of intelligent and active militants both in the unions and elsewhere. Because it has given them a greater influence than they would normally have, they are probably grateful to Skipper Ted without, of course, publicly admitting it!
Reds under the bed, let me add, are far less sinister than is the large number of blues actually misbehaving themselves in bed. We had some notorious examples of these last year. It would not really be accurate to describe them as the tip of an iceberg in view of the cosy and warm conditions so many blues provide for their clients when they want to get something out of them. The gross un fairness of all this has left us poor reds with no alternative but to agitate, recruit allies, and make an underbed disturbance which will eventually dislodge the blues from the mattress they continuously and often unfairly occupy. I hope neither Mr Wilson nor your readers will be shocked when I say 'up the reds.' For I am sure that some swapping over could result in more general satisfaction and amusement than the blues are supplying either to their bed partners or the rest of us. I am told that even some of the reds in Poland itself are indirectly suffering from reactionary developments there at the hands of some who would like to copy what the blues are doing to us here!
T. C. Skeffington-Lodge 5 Powis Grove, Brighton
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