I am writing in reply to the letter from Peter Halliday, deputy leader of Tendring Council (Letters, September 22).

The economic crisis the Government is trying to foist on to ordinary working people was clearly caused by the banking and finance industry on an international scale.

The irresponsible, short-term greed of the spivs in Wall Street, London, Paris, Frankfurt and other financial centres is clear for any honest person to see.

This shallow Tory propaganda being repeated by local Tory luminaries in Clacton that Labour administrations were to blame is too ridiculous for words, unless, of course, Gordon Brown was also in charge of the US, French, German and other economies.

Some within the Tories’ ranks bemoan the fact many of our essential services are now run by foreign enterprises. We would remind those with a short memory that it was the Tory governments of the Eighties and Nineties that sold off the gas, water and electricity industries and introduced private catering and cleaning companies into the NHS in the days when MRSA were just four letters for most of us.

Privatising British Rail was the most disastrous of all, as many commuters can no doubt confirm.

It is indeed true the Labour Government introduced winter fuel allowances, free bus travel and exemptions from paying for a TV licence for the elderly, and I would like to thank the Tory correspondent who pointed that out in last week’s Gazette.

There were other progressive moves, like the introduction of the minimum wage that many employers now circumvent by using bogus self-employment practices and exploiting illegal migrant labour.

There is concern in union ranks that more should have been done – like investment in British manufacturing and a massive council house building programme.

My union, the GMB, will fight at every level to argue the case for such policies to be adopted within the Labour Party.

Keith Henderson
Clacton Labour Party
Trade union liaison officer
Meredith Road
Clacton