I agree with David Jones (Letters, May 30). The Labour Party has been slow to reverse the situation of the decline in affordable social housing.

When councils are faced with the delaying tactics of the NIMBYs ("not in my back yard" people against new house building), I'm not surprised.

The selling of council homes by the Conservatives, as a bribe to win votes in the 1984 General Election, didn't help the housing situation either.

affordable homes.

Housing was one of the reasons the electorate rejected the Conservatives in 1997.

As for galloping inflation in the Seventies, this was caused in 1973 when world oil prices trebled overnight.

Workers' industrial action for better pay was only the backlash they needed to keep up the value of their incomes.

Ted Heath's Conservative government also had trouble trying to cope with the miners' strike of this period. I remember it well. I was trying to do an engineering apprenticeship on a three-day week.

When old Labour came to power in the mid-Seventies, its prices and incomes policy was a bold attempt to control inflation.

Sadly, it didn't work. Where new Labour is today making mistakes in housing is in ignoring many of the working class poor but sucking up to its own kind the middle classes.

Most new affordable housing stock is being allocated to key workers, whoever they are, and the rest are being ignored.

-Ian Hunt, Pavilion Road, Worthing