JOHN Blunt's outrageous tissue of half-truths (LET, January 17) should be challenged. In his article "Back to the Future," he accused the Labour party and its executive leadership of being in the pockets of the unions and that a return to chaos would begin if the party was elected to power in the next general election.

Funnily enough, just above this item, there was another entitled "playing politics of fear" and, in my opinion, this is what Blunt is doing in trying to union bash and tag the Labour party as puppets on a string.

I believe that this mystery man is a Conservative, as suggested by his extremist views of society and how to deal with the difficult problems which this decade has.

However, in his folly and total ignorance, he appears to have overlooked the fact that the Labour party is not just the most democratic one in this country, but that it isn't tied to the unions - as an objective look at the party's voting system would prove quite conclusively.

Labour is the only political party which is strong enough and democratic enough to sort out the problems which the Tories have created over 17 years and all the scaremongering by people like him will not alter that opinion - held, it might be said, by many people in this country. The opinion polls tell that, even to troublemakers like him.

DUNCAN McVEE, Rossendale and Darwen Labour Party, Robin Bank Road, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.