Party politics
Sir: Michael Foot (14 January) is right to defend party politics, however exuberantly. His old ally, that colourful extremist, Aneurin Bevan, once declared: 'We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over'. Churchill, too, on another occasion, in a speech in the House on the formation of a National Government in 1931, is said to have remarked: 'Is this Coalition to be above party government or below party government?'
Hatred or reproach (call it what you will) is surely one of the foundations of 'good government playing almost the same role in parliamentary democracy as acid in chemical reactions. Those well-intentioned moderates and gabble gobble assemblies voting to continue such innovations as the Lib-Lab pact should realise that political compromise is deadly because it means dissimulation.
John O'Riordan
79 The Mall, Southgate,
London N14
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