Should indeed this particular piece of contem- porarily typical public

impertinence collie into force, the probability is that it would be best to submit to it--even to welcome it—as a means of ensuring that our letters do not get bundled into the sorting machines. After all, hand-sorting leads as a rule only to a light scatter of little mistakes resulting— at worst--in minor delays (a human confusion be- tween, say, Folkestone and Felixstowe) that the recurring presence of reasonable good will distri- buted along a misrouted journey can be expected to retrieve within a day or two.

Not so the surrealist potential for wholesale error of a machine gone secretly, insouciantly, viscerally awry without warning—directing irrecoverably to Brasilia whole clutches of correspondence intended for Brancepeth without, from start to finish, a living soul being one whit the wiser.

J. M. CARRUTHERS

201 Sandgate Road, Folkestone

Thoughts on an Incomes Policy

SIR,---None of your contributors seems to share Mr. Brown's optimism about the prospects of devising an effective incomes policy.

- Successive Chancellors have surely been right in insisting for the last seventeen years that we shall be priced out of export markets if we allow incomes to increase faster than output., The uniont have repeatedly recognised the need to stabilise costs and prices, but were very reluctant to accept Sir Stafford Cripps's, White Paper of February 1948 owing to the 'limited and weak' character of its references to profits. Since then they have often insisted that they can only co-operate in an incomes policy if it applies to all incomes; and the Govern- ment seems to be hoping that the coming budget will be such as to induce the unions to refrain from pressing claims of more than 3,1 per cent a year. But

I should like to suggest that an incomes policy applying to all incomes cannot be achieved either by increased taxation of profits or by making new pronouncements on prices, but only by making basic changes in industrial ownership. If industry were 'organised in the interest of all those who bring a contribution of useful service to the common stock,' the problem of devising an effective incomes policy would be much simpler. If the surplus earnings of companies accrued to those actively associated in production, real earnings would increase automatic- ally with productivity. Incentive would be increased, whereas any kind of tax on profits necessarily tends to undermine it. As Sir Alec Douglas-Home put it last June, 'nothing less than an attempt to .work out a partnership will do.'

PAtn. DERRICK 30 Wandsworth Bridge Road, SW6

Rights and Privileges

Si.—MPs are free in the House of Commons to say what they like about anyone who is not an MP. Why should there not be a corresponding privilege to write or say anything about MPs? This would strengthen the position of TV and the press and extend the total area of freedom in this country.

PIELIP SKELSEY

32b Abbey Road, NW8

Misplaced

SIR. - Great heavens! As a consistent professional reader and admirer of your pallet. I was horrified to discover in last week's issue the assertion that 'Mt. Kennedy, in the Yukon' is 'tile IA's highest un-' Climbed peak. Certainly Canada has its difficulties in maintaining a national identity with a populous, wealthy and powerful neighbour next door. But I am quite certain that Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was fully aware, even if the Spectator was not, that he was a guest in another country when he scaled the peak named for his late brother.

Perhaps Canadians tend to be over-sensitive. But how would the editor of the Spectator like it if I were to refer to him in a dispatch to your namesake, the Hamilton (Ont.) Spectator, as an Englishman? In view of his Yorkshire birthplace, it might be more appropriate under the circumstances.

CHARLES KING

London Correspondent Southam News Services, 40-43 Fleet Street, EC4

Amber Light for Public Schools?

SIR,----What is wrong about 'meritocracy'? Why should Mr. Rhodes James think that 'it is any more 'self-regarding' than a self-perpetuating plutocracy (or whzitever word describes the present clientele of the public schools)?

The boys at the grammar school where I teach ('A' and 'S' level aspirants all) are just as keen to serve the community as any group of public school- boys. For instance, how many public schoolboys want to teach in comprehensive or special schools in depressed areas? Two of our most brilliant recent Oxbridge graduates are doing just that.

We are tired of the assumption that moral fibre is the prerogative of the privileged classes.

K. H. GROSE

Bradford Grammar School

SIR,—Mr. Richard Rhodes James seems to have been so dazzled by his 'amber light for the public Schools' that he has lost his better judgment. He presents his own assumptions as established facts— there is yet no clear evidence for his insistence that the Government has abandoned the notion of in- tegrating public schools by radical measures, such as expanding the sixth-form clement or introducing Problem children. Indeed, the Government does not Seem to have formulated the principles of the in- tegration it desires. Some of the facts that Mr. James does argue from are inaccurate—for example, the Soviet boarding system is not now based on child- ren from unsatisfactory homes and Marlborough is not admitting boys at primary but at sixth-form level. His treatment of the case for a new approach t9 the sixth form combines wilful and crude dis- tortion of the serious educational issueS involved With cheap sneers at the universities of Essex and Sussex. Even 'Mr. James's approach to the challenge of integration seems curiously smug and limited. A phrase like 'who is to have the first pick?' be- trays an odd lack of awareness of the position in Which public schools may find themselves, and a competitive, bargain-counter mentality which many of them would repudiate. To talk of boys coming in from the state side as 'dilution' and to preach the need for 'broadmindedness' towards them sug- gests that Mr. James himself has not realised the implications of the integration he professes to Welcome.

their relationship with parents, their hierarchal structure, and the contact they allow their pupils with homes and locality.

In this connection it is worth mentioning the 208 maintained and direct grant schools with boarding provision. They have been dealing with just the sort of children whom the public schools may be taking in the future. Their objectives are often remarkably similar but many of the most successful of them have developed styles and methods of boarding dif- ferent from the public schools and based on the attributes of their pupils. Great as is the new ex- perience of the public schools and extensive as are the changes now going on in them, they may still have something to learn from the neglected state side as they themselves cross its threshold. That is one reason why I have arranged a conference here in July bringing both sectors together on the basis of their common experience of boarding, and why in the New Year there will be another on the specific problems of integration.

of 'compulsive self-exoneration.' but the present time when the Vatican Council has just officially de- nounced traditional anti-semitic pleas, when the Pope in opening the session of the Council has publicly confessed to the Catholic share of responsibility for the divisions of the world, when indeed hardly a day passes but one can read some statement by a Catholic ecclesiastic condemning some aspect of Catholic conduct in the past, seems a, very extraordinary one for such a complaint. If one wants to complain of Catholics—which is a very reasonable thing to do—I should have thought that there WAS much more pertinence in the complaint of a decoct thinker, Mr. Osbert Lancaster's Lady Litt Ich a motion, who confesses to getting weary with the Roman Church washing its clean linen in public.'

Cliff ISTOPHER HOLLIS

Little Claveys, Melts, Fiume