Integrity

Press, 6 April 1989, Page 20

Integrity

Sir,—Few M.P.s seem to realise the secondary importance of economic, industrial, employment and race relations problems in our society compared with what underpins every one of them and can no longer be shelved — namely the loss of integrity. At present we associate this loss mainly with such things as stolen milk containers, converted cars, rip-offs in our marketing, and so on, without realising that these merely foreshadow what is to come. I lived for some years in a country where, for my own safety and my family’s, I had to pay protection money. As soon as I parked my car, a boy employed by a racketeer was at my side with his hand out, and I paid up because the alternative was to find on my return that all four tyres had been slashed. We have not quite come to that yet here, but it is on its way. If the dissolution of integrity continues at the present rate, how long will it be before we hear M.P.s tackling this problem in their pre-election statements? So far, except for what Peter Tapsell has been consistently saying, anyone who has heard anything of the kind has sharper ears than mine. — Yours, etc., D. ELLIOT-HOGG. March 28, 1989.