Letters & opinions
letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk
More members than voters
Ross McKibbin’s article (“The red sag,” April) was written before the by-election in Walcot, a ward in the city of Bath. A council seat was held by the Liberal Democrats, with Labour coming last. The number of Labour votes (111) was fewer than the number of Labour Party members living in this ward.
Labour MPs need to work out some coherent and relevant policies. Right now, there would be no point in the bulk of the parliamentary party leaving to set up as an independent group, as McKibbin suggests. Such a group would not have the foggiest idea of what it would be breaking away to do.
Ivor Morgan, Lincoln
Medieval social care
In his review of Eamon Duffy’s book (“Where late the sweet birds sang,” May), Giles Fraser claims “too many of us have bought uncritically into a schoolboy notion of the pre-Reformation church.”
That caricature is indeed rife. The major centres for pilgrimage, such as Canterbury, were richly endowed, but these should not be conflated with the abbeys and religious houses throughout Scotland, Ireland and England.