From HVF Winstone

20 RIVERBANK COTTAGES BIDEFORD EX39 2QR

phone: 01237 470849

e-mail: winstone@winscribe.co.uk

web: http://www.winscribe.co.uk

Rt Hon Tony Blair MP

Prime Minister

10 Downing Street

London SW1

December 03

Dear Prime Minister

THE BIG CONVERSATION

You seek a dialogue with the electorate and I welcome the opportunity that your initiative holds out to those of us who voted your government into office on two previous occasions, and who must soon decide whether we wish to reaffirm our loyalty.

I do not of course speak for all who voted New Labour in those elections. I am sure that many had reasons and expectations quite different from mine. But I know that at the very least I speak for a substantial and vital minority, without whose continued support you cannot hope to win an election.

Why then did we vote for you in 97 and 01? Not, I assure you, because we sought tax reductions or a promise that taxes would never increase. Nor did we think primarily of financial gain for ourselves, or even of national economic stability, important though that is. After the long years of soulless Conservative administration that was incapable of decent conduct even within its own ranks, we looked forward quite simply to a caring government that would stand by its promises. Our concern was not for self but for the community, not just for the articulate but for the voiceless. After the Home Office follies of the other side we worried about the helpless refugee, about the oppressed and the deprived within and without our own country.

Your prospectus gave us hope. We did not stop to ask 'Is this merely an aim, an ambition, or is it an election pledge?' We assumed that it was a philosophy, an approach to modern society that everyone in government, if elected, would subscribe to, and we embraced it.

Naturally, we were interested in the big issues. We voted for a better future for fellow humans, hopefully within an enlarged and ethically sanitised Europe. We were of course interested in education and health, and we hoped that privilege, inequality and waste might be eliminated from both. But we voted too for the environment, for international agreement and a central role for the United Nations in matters ranging from global warming to peace keeping.

We voted for a fair deal for all the forms of life with which we necessarily share this earth, plant and animal. We were cheered by your party's assurance that the terrible suffering caused by vivisection in the pharmaceutical industry and the academic world would be ameliorated and that alternative forms of research would be encouraged, especially in respect of our closest evolutionary relatives, the primates.

For some, the virtues we looked for were biblical (though not of the vindictive Old Testament variety). For others, it was a Platonic sense of fairness and neighbourliness, a willingness to make sacrifices of time and wealth so that the resources of the earth might be more evenly shared.

There was a desire to ensure that the victims of violence and political oppression could seek sanctuary without fear, that people could move across frontiers without victimisation; that the animals we send into ethical limbo to provide food and foreign exchange might be treated with decency in the market place and in transit; that the hunting of animals to satisfy a sadistic human pursuit of pleasure would at last be ended; that draconian counter measures might be taken against commercial interests that arrogantly deprive the world of its breathing power by destroying vast areas of jungle and forest. In terms of government itself, we looked to a second chamber that would be elected and would have a recognised part to play in our democracy.

The account has yet to be rendered, but after six years of government that promised so much we are surely entitled to ask 'What does the balance sheet tell us thus far?'

In those matters of least concern to Labour's core voters you have delivered, after a fashion. You have given us economic stability and you have been as good as your word on income tax. But we are moving into record levels of national borrowing and overall taxation has increased greatly.

What of the areas of primary concern? Payment is demanded for university education, despite election pledges to the contrary. War - entered into with the disgraceful slogan 'Shock and Awe' in a territory that Britain made sovereign some eighty years earlier - has become your clarion call. Britain has allied itself to the most belligerent and environmentally insensitive nation on earth in order to launch an illicit attack on a small and virtually defenceless adversary, without international sanction, without so much as a declaration of war. We are engaged against our will in a replay of the Vietnam scandal.

We have moved ever further away from the European alliance that we solemnly entered into, always insisting that 'self interest' would guide our steps while others, in particular Germany, have made enormous sacrifices for the common good. We have paid endless lip service to the USA and the 'special relationship' while permitting our 'partner' to hold the global environment to ransom; and we have allowed the untested technology of genetic modification to invade our own farmland and compromise our own crops. And we have been, frankly, a pain in the neck to our real allies, the Europeans.

After three overwhelming votes in the House of Commons in favour of a ban on hunting with hounds, we now find ourselves at the mercy of a House of Lords without a single elected representative, that actively backs threats of civil disobedience in response to the use of the Parliament act. After all the lessons of the foot and mouth outbreak, farm animals are still kept for 12 hours or more in markets without fodder before being transported over long distances for slaughter. Despite Defra's admission that there is a dramatic rise in bovine TB in badger-free areas, an inexplicable cull of an animal legally protected by act of Parliament goes on. Perhaps the most savage of all the disappointments we have suffered has been the Government's decision to grant licences to a pharmaceutical company and an academic unit devoted to vivisection on primates. The Imutran 'Diaries of Despair' as they have been called, showing the suffering and agonising death of baboons after the transplantation of pigs' hearts, are a testament to the most appalling of research scandals. But you, it seems, are determined to support the pseudo scientists of the commercial companies and the university skinflints who take their money.

In short - Kyoto is virtually dead. Vivisection and intensive farming are thriving. A millionaire farmer and a scientist who has worked on behalf of hunt propagandists are in charge of food standards under a Labour administration

The record of disenchantment and forlorn hopes is long and I take no pleasure in reciting it. For those who share my view of your truncated achievement it is a disappointment beyond measure. We can't seek help elsewhere. The other main parties would be even less likely that your government to implement the humanitarian agenda for which we voted six years ago. Regrettably Britain doesn't have an Opposition, merely a rag bag of mediocrities permitted by the xenophobic ranks and file of the Conservative Party. A Lib-Dem protest vote designed to limit your numerical strength in Parliament and thus your freedom of action, or abstention at the polling booth, is the only response open to us. We are not by nature apathetic people or political abstainers, but positive action in all the areas I have italicised, in particular total withdrawal of British forces from Iraq, a pledge to take no further military action against other nations except with UN Security Council sanction, severance of an inappropriate Washington tie, the implementation of a ban on hunting, severe laws to restrict civil disobedience and the gratuitous culling of wild animals in  rural areas, and the outlawing of experiments on primates, would be the minimum requirement for our minority vote.

Yours sincerely

Victor Winstone

[revised 1 January 2005]