Heath and the leadership
Sir: Anyone who cares for the future of this country must surely agree with your correspondent Mr Gordon Marsden and others in calling for an end to the Heath regime. I have voted and worked for the Conservatives since I was up at Cambridge fifty years ago, and as secretary of two Conservative branches and president of one in the West Country, have recruited many members and collected hundreds of subscriptions in what are called the 'grass roots.' But I have an oldfashioned belief that Conservatism stands essentially for the conservation of what is best in our natioral traditions, and above all our laws, our Parliament, and our Constitution. It has for some time been evident that we cannot regard as a genuine Conservative a politician who to satisfy his personal ambition has sold all these down the river to a sinister and plainly not even efficient tariff ring called the Common Market. He achieves power by declaring, quite rightly, that a statutory prices and incomes policy can never work, and then proceeds unblushingly to stand on his head. His spendthrift Government having got us into an appalling financial crisis — quite apart from the oil business, for which no-one can blame him — he goes to the country on what looks more and more like a trumped-up confrontation with the militant miners' leaders, hoping to snatch another five years of power. Now he has been hoist with his own petard. While Mr Heath still leads his party, I can see no hope of the temporary national agreement needed to get us out of the post-election dilemma and the industrial crisis. Let us work for the resurgence of a genuine Conserirative party of which Mr Enoch Powell, so often proved right, must be an honoured member, if not the leader. Irvine Gray 24 Lloyd Square, London, WC1
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