Simon Jenkins makes a good case for reviving royal commissions (Royal commissions transformed Britain in the 1960s – we desperately need them now, 3 February); but his praise for Roy Jenkins’ admirable achievements as home secretary misses the point that those reforms were purely legal and social. Abolishing theatre censors, legalising homosexuality and easing divorce cost not a penny, and disturbed no financial interests. Harold Wilson’s 1960s administration achieved many liberal but few socialist goals. Hopes for national economic planning and new labour-management relations “in place of strife” were never realised.
Our problems today, meanwhile, are all financial-political, and require solutions that won’t be enacted without upsetting many private and sectional interests – often among those who are happy to be accounted among the liberally “woke”, but whose actual interests won’t necessarily be helped by egalitarian economic reforms. Royal commissions might well be a means to cut this Gordian knot of class interests, but we shouldn’t underestimate the political problems that they will encounter.
Brian Hatton
London
• Simon Jenkins’ call for the revival of royal commissions is to be welcomed. So how about one on the honours system? Here there is widespread criticism of the current situation, but realistically some sort of consensus is needed outside the political arena to effect any change. Perhaps Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the nationalist parties could consider putting the establishment of such a commission in their manifestos for the next general election?
Julian Harber
Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire
