• IN response to Philip Kemp’s beautifully put Forum, (Suggestions for Labour’s manifesto, January 4). I heartily concur.

On the touchy subject of drugs, however, I would remind everyone of the great social reforms of the 1960s, the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion, the abolition of capital punishment and the lifting of censorship in the theatre.

Arguably all of them at the time were potential vote-losers had they formed part of Labour’s manifesto, and all of them were the subject of continual rants in the right-wing press.

That they became law was thanks to the admirably democratic, but these days sadly overlooked, device of the private member’s bill which in each case allowed MPs to vote with their conscience rather than with the whips.

Politically they were steered to a successful conclusion by the Labour home secretary, Roy Jenkins, who rightly took much of the credit and who faced down the inevitable backlash in the press.

A lesson from history perhaps, and one whose time has surely come.

MARTIN PRESTON
Kilburn Priory, NW6