Lost direction

Like George Kerevan (Perspective, 15 February), I enjoyed the evening of TV programmes about former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.

For much of Wilson’s leadership, I was a Labour activist and met him and heard him speak a number of times. Harold was never a charismatic figure or speaker, he was very interested in economics and statistics – what people today call a “policy wonk”.

However, listening to his speech at the 1975 Labour conference detailing his government’s achievements, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Ironically, last Thursday also saw the launch of a new economic policy by that other more recent policy wonk, current party leader Ed Miliband. This wasn’t, I am afraid, as impressive: a mansion tax on houses worth more than £2 million and using the money to reintroduce the 10p tax rate.

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These are modest measures compared with what Wilson achieved in government and 
pathetic when compared to the record of the post-war Labour government in creating the welfare state amid the tough economic times of the 1940s.

I spent much of my political life in the Labour Party as an activist, a councillor and an MEP. I watched it consistently move away from those old Labour values of 1945 or even Wilson in the 1960s. When I was expelled by 
Labour in 1998 for opposing Tony Blair’s policies, I said: “I haven’t left the Labour Party, the Labour Party has left me.”

Hugh Kerr

Braehead Avenue

Edinburgh