SIR: I am really incensed by Mr Walsh's letter (BEN, January 9) about there being no difference between "New" and "Old" Labour, which can only be contemptuous to any fair minded person.

In the early years of this government, Margaret Thatcher almost trebled unemployment by decimating our industrial base and relished in the erosion of workers' rights.

Free enterprise only benefits minorities who line their pockets at the expense of workers losing their jobs from newly privatised firms. The minorities are the shareholders and further minorities are found in the fat cat bosses. For example, British Aerospace shares have never been so high at a time when employment at their factories has never been so low. Thatcherism is as rampant as ever and she is still in the wings telling the government to keep to the Right.

If M Walsh, wants to support an anti-working class government which is floundering, that is up to him. He should though, speak for himself regarding being "Taken In". I call it rich to talk of turning the clock back when in sixteen years the clock has been turned back sixty years!

B Howarth

Alexandria Drive

Westhoughton.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.