Stolen seats
Sir: On what evidence does Stephen Pollard (Politics, 20 October) base his contention that the ‘only possible reading of the past three decades’ is that the voters ‘turn to the Conservatives only when the Labour party presents itself as unelectable’?
Since 1977, the Tories have been in power for 18 years (60 per cent of the time) and Labour for 12 years (40 per cent). Apparently, then, Labour spend most of the time being unelectable. Even in 1997, opinion polls were showing that on all manner of economic and social issues, the voters consistently preferred Tory policies, albeit they had become sick of Tory politicians. Tony Blair, of all people, understood that.
As for the supposed unpopularity of the Tories at recent elections, Pollard states that if they had been ‘led by a combination of Solomon, Aristotle, Churchill and Bobby Moore, the party would still have been crushed.’ Well yes, they would, but only because the electoral system is so grotesquely biased in Labour’s favour. After all, in 2005 the Tories registered more votes in England — by far the largest nation in the United Kingdom — than did Labour, yet won just 193 seats to Labour’s 285. That’s not so much ‘crushed’ as ‘ripped off’.
David Thomas
West Sussex
Inherited virtue
Sir: Irwin Stelzer (‘Listen to Adam Smith: inheritance tax is good’, 20 October) suggests that inheritance tax is a good thing economically because the absence of inheritance encourages people to work and makes them less likely to retire. I find this a surprising proposition from a supposedly conservative journal. The great benefit of inheritance is that it creates a class who are independent and do not have to ‘stay in line’ to support themselves and their families. Before the war there were a large number of MPs who were financially independent by reason of inheritance and thus MPs were far more ready to speak up for the public interest than the present salariat dependent upon keeping in with the Whips to pay their mortgages.
Adrian J.G. Pellman
by email
Islam and truth
Sir: Piers Paul Read (‘The Muslims’ letter to the Pope is not all it seems’, 20 October) raises many good points but asserts that Islam enjoins truth. At the risk of attracting the Thought Police, may I draw attention to the following authoritative scholar?
Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (died 1368 AD) in his manual of sacred Islamic law entitled The Reliance of the Traveller says: ‘Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish it through lying because there is no need for it. When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible … and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory’ (my emphasis). The Reliance of the Traveller, translated by Nuh Ha Min Keller, Amana Publications 1997.
Edward Spalton
Derby
History retouched
Sir: Norman Stone (‘What has this “genocide” to do with Congress?’, 20 October) raises the red herring of alleged forgeries without mentioning that ‘the professor at Princeton’ who claimed that the US ambassador’s memoirs had been retouched resigned the chair when it was discovered that it had been established by a $750,000 grant from the Turkish government. It is also nonsense to suggest that ‘on the whole historians who know the subject and the sources (they are very difficult) do not take the “genocide” line’. It is hard to find a disinterested historian who has taken the trouble to read the 1948 UN Genocide Convention and takes the ‘no-genocide line’.
There is a vast amount of unimpeachable evidence, much in James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee’s The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-1916 (2005), which shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the massacres amounted to genocide. Or is this a forgery too?
Philip Stevens
London W12
Wrong about rights
Sir: Whilst I agree with Julian Brazier (Letters, 20 October) that human rights have a murky ‘Enlightenment’ provenance, his American Civil War example is inaccurate. Rights were not ‘trumpeted loudest by those supporting slavery’. It was the Abolitionist Federal North which framed its case in terms of rights, whereas the South asserted established law and the Constitution.
The legality of secession was privately acknowledged after the war, when the proposed prosecution of Jefferson Davis for treason was dropped after advice from the chief justice that secession had indeed been in line with the standard Constitutional theory that Davis had been taught at West Point.
This is not a matter of legal/historic pedantry. Human rights have since become the weapon of choice of ‘progressives’ when they cannot secure their objectives democratically. How else can unpopular measures such as abortion, exclusion of religion from schools or gay marriage be established in the USA if not via unelected judges?
A similar tension lies behind the current European debate, with constitutional ‘advances’ promoted by unelected officials of the Commission. We might profitably learn from history that human rights and federal ambitions have a poor record of respecting legislatures and the will of the majority — let alone ‘red lines’.
Martin Sewell
Gravesend, Kent
Potato head
Sir: Following the recent behaviour of the Prime Minister, should he not perhaps be known as ‘Hash Brown’?
J.M. Leggett
Wimborne, Dorset
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