MR. FRASER'S BEDTIME STORY

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 56, 4 September 1945, Page 6

MR. FRASER'S BEDTIME STORY

In taking us back to childhood days and the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf, the Prime Minister is straining both metaphor and the credulity of listeners. "The old wolf of Toryism is ready to spring out and destroy what has been done iri this country in the last 10 years," declared Mr. Fraser. A grandmotherly Labour Government lying in a bed (which she has made for herself) and innocently waiting for the wolf could not be made credible, even by Walt Disney. But when it comes to Labour as Little Red Riding Hood, tripping along singing "Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf!" —well, the picture is quite impossible. Many people—taxpayers, farmers, merchants —will think, rather, that this particular sophisticated child with the Red Hood or the Red Flag is well able to take care of herself. In fact, the wary user of woodland paths will keep one eye open for the wolf • and one for Little Red Riding Hood. The late Wish Wynne's cockney version of the nursery tale has its moral. When Red Riding Hood's mother sends her with stewed tripe and a bottle of winkles for her grandmother she gives a warning: "'Give me all yer pins. Yer grandmother knows whether tripe's chewed off or cut off. Nor she ain't taking no empty shells neither. And if yer so much as lifts the lid of the basket I'll take the 'ide off yer, me lady.' She was well brung up, she was." Little Red Riding Hood is even now getting ready to "winkle" private holdings out of the Bank of New Zealand. However, there are no wolves except in Mr. Fraser's bedtime story, and, anyway, if Little Red Riding Hood should meet Mr. Fraser's imaginary "Tory wolf" the betting would be even on the wolf getting her or Red Riding Hood arriving at her grandmother's in a fur coat.