TO quote your political reporter, Specialist shops could soon be flocking to Old Town' (SA, November 6).

To my knowledge, for more than 50 years Old Town has been forecast as the Bond Street' of Swindon.

The conduct of successive Labour administrations shows how this dream has been frustrated through the years.

Car parking was made free in Gorse Hill (Labour) but charged in Old Town (Conservative). Labour's political affiliation to the Co-operative movement saw the establishment of the Co-op supermarket when there were other major and more attractive firms in the market.

In the 1960s the grandiose Savington development scheme was approved which showed a mall development from the Co-op to, and through, Boots in Wood Street.

This massive planning permission, which was doomed from day one, effectively blighted any possibility of development and investment in Old Town. With Labour still in control the Savington scheme was abandoned, to be replaced by the present re-development of the core area' which produced a single terrace of shops which were quickly snapped up, not by specialist shops, but by estate agents and food outlets.

In the 1950s, at the behest of the late David Murray John, the council purchased the property alongside the alleyway access from Wood Street with the express purpose of providing an inviting entrance to the core area'.

A second property was purchased in High Street for a second entrance. It is reprehensible that the developers were not made aware of these properties when the plans were being developed. The new buildings have blocked the High Street potential.

Late in the day, and not in the original plans, the council, still Labour-controlled, sold a piece of land at the rear of the Wood Street property for a hairdressing salon. This has effectively killed any possibility of demolishing the Wood Street property to provide an attractive access. We are left with a narrow, dark, and invariably filthy alleyway when it could have been wide with modern street furniture and decoration. A scandal and a great opportunity missed.

That is the legacy of Labour administrations' treatment of the Cinderella of Swindon. Let's hope that the present Conservative council will be able to find a suitable slipper'.

S H MACPHERSON.

Swindon