THE ROW in the Conservative Party over the report of the Think Tank' Tories Central Policy Review staff shows the ultimate policy. The report suggests a complete dismantling of the welfare state, and in particular the health service and free education. The would be replaced by private medicine, and free education replaced by education 'vouchers' - purchased by the parents.
Without doubt the report was leaked to the press by a secret 'wet' in the cabinet - to the fury of Thatcher and her supporters. In the run up to a general election, the proposal to completely dismantle the health service is about as popular, as one newspaper put it, as a proposal to nationalise beer.
Thatcher and her supporters had hoped to keep the report secret and use it as the basis of Tory thinking for a re-elected Conservative govoriots.
Certainly a plan to be implemented, but not a plan on which to fight an election.
Now the 'wats' have blown the gaffe. The first person to rush to dissociate himself from the report was the health minister Norman Fowier.
For Fowier the leaking of the report came at a particularly bad time. Already Britain's most unpopuler man, fronting for the Tories the war cainse ins heath Fowlar was anxious not to have to fight a war on two fronts at once.
Tory Party chairman Cecil Parkinson and Thatcher herself neve report has been 'shelved' and had not even bee discussed by the cabinet. But the report had been more or less openly defended by treasury minister Leon Brittan and Rhodes Boyson. With an absolutely Impeccable sense of timing Edward Heath has denounced the proposals, and called for Thatcher to openly reject them. Thus a major row on the issue is bound to be created at the Tory conference.
The proposals to completely dismantle the STELE are plemented by a future They could only be pushed through on the basis of new defeats for the working class. But what the Tories have in store for us all should be shouted loud and clear throughout the election campaign.
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