Letters

Nip terror in the bud Sir: Correlli Barnett would have us believe Con Coughlin is suffering from paranoia and describes George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ as stale rhetoric (Letters, 2 February). One wonders what ailment Correlli Barnett suffers from — perhaps ‘paranoiac denial’ is a fair diagnosis. Could he inform us which countries, if any, with sizeable Muslim minorities are free of religious conflict? The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Thailand, India, the Middle East, Western Europe, all are in turmoil to a greater or lesser degree. As he says, in Britain there have so far been only ‘occasional acts of terrorism’.

Phoney war Sir: I was sorry to see that Con Coughlin (‘Agent Brown’s new plan to smash terror’, 26 January) has now joined the likes of poor William Shawcross on the pottier side of paranoia in asserting that the occasional acts of Islamist terrorism in the United Kingdom over recent years mean that ‘we are a nation at war’. Coughlin even justifies George W. Bush’s now stale rhetoric about ‘the war on terror’, and reckons that Gordon Brown ‘is not a man who fits easily or naturally into the role of a wartime leader’. All this goes to demonstrate a dangerous loss of proportion.

Have a heart Sir: I was longing to disagree with Rod Liddle that organ donation should continue to depend upon a positive act to opt into the programme (‘Hands off my organs’, 19 January). However, Mr Brown’s plans include New Labour’s usual targets and tick-boxes. This means that hospitals would be allocated funding according to the number of organs that they harvest, making life-and-death decisions the property of accountants and commissioners.

Too cosy with the KGB Sir: Denis MacShane (‘Welcome to the Vlad and Dave show’, 12 January) is right to imply that the attitude of the Conservative party to the Russian KGB state is reminiscent of the attitude of the same party to Germany in 1938. Only about a year ago the Russian services brought illegally a forceful radioactive material to this country, and then killed a British citizen. I can’t remember the Conservative party actively protesting against it in the European and other international bodies, particularly in the Nato. With such foreign policy, that party will never shine on the international arena.

Forgotten Army Syndrome Sir: Boris Johnson is to be praised for his intention to honour the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (‘How, as mayor, I would help our brave troops’, 15–29 December). Unfortunately, I believe he is up against Forgotten Army Syndrome. Burma, during the second world war, was an undeserved victim of this syndrome as well. It took 50 years before at last a fitting tribute was paid to the 14th Army Burma Veterans: at the VJ Day parade at Buckingham Palace and St James’s Park on Saturday 19 August 1995. It was tremendous and moving for the veterans, most of whom were by then in their seventies and eighties, to at last march past the Queen and great crowds of cheering, clapping people, including many children, all shouting, ‘Well done!

The US needs the UK Sir: David Howell is certainly correct (Letters, 1 December) in pointing to the massive shift of wealth to Asia and oil producers, a development to which I have repeatedly called attention in my columns for the Sunday Times, most recently this past week. But that, so far, has little to do with my contention that the maintenance of world order remains the responsibility of the United States, a responsibility that can best be discharged with Britain at its side. Yes, Britain should pursue other relationships that a changing world makes useful to it.

Lord of works Sir: Your profile of Lord Malloch-Brown was grossly unfair (‘Labour’s lord of the perks’, 10 November). I have known him since 1979 when, at the age of 26, he built and ran the Khao I Dang refugee camp in Thailand. Over 100,000 Cambodian refugees had reason to be very grateful for his superb work. Since then he has had a large number of significant international assignments, at the World Bank, the United Nations and elsewhere. He has enormous experience, particularly of the problems of poverty and international development. In recent years he has been very critical of US policies, including towards Iraq. I disagree with these views but they do not make him viscerally anti-American, as is now being claimed.

Telling Right from Right Sir: I was very disappointed to see James Forsyth pinning the xenophobe label to Gordon Brown for his comment ‘British jobs for British workers’ (Politics, 3 November). The trouble with Forsyth and his kind of Conservatives is their claim that the logical position of the Right is to welcome a free labour market, hence immigration. But they are best described not as true conservatives but as neoconservatives or market-obsessed Jacobins. Just as New Labour shouldn’t be confused with Old Labour, so the new Right should be differentiated from the traditional, small-c conservative Right. Traditional conservatives believe in markets as a means to an end, not as the end itself. They do not worship Mammon.

Gregory and the inquest Sir: We read once again an attack on Mohamed Al Fayed by Martyn Gregory over the inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed (‘No “flash before the crash”’, 27 October). As it happens, Mr Gregory has rarely appeared at the inquest, which goes a little way to explaining his skewed views. But he was present on Monday, and collared me to ask about the evidence relating to a white Fiat Uno. ‘It will be front-page stuff,’ he volunteered. Mr Gregory would barely notice if it was ‘front page’ or not. His article demonstrated that he has ignored the entire output of the British press in the past four weeks.

Stolen seats Sir: On what evidence does Stephen Pollard (Politics, 20 October) base his contention that the ‘only possible reading of the past three decades’ is that the voters ‘turn to the Conservatives only when the Labour party presents itself as unelectable’? Since 1977, the Tories have been in power for 18 years (60 per cent of the time) and Labour for 12 years (40 per cent). Apparently, then, Labour spend most of the time being unelectable. Even in 1997, opinion polls were showing that on all manner of economic and social issues, the voters consistently preferred Tory policies, albeit they had become sick of Tory politicians. Tony Blair, of all people, understood that.

Promises, promises Sir: Fraser Nelson (Politics, 6 October) suggests that the approach that won David Cameron the leadership in 2005 was conveyed in messages like ‘social responsibility’ and ‘general wellbeing’. I, and I believe many others, decided to vote for Mr Cameron after he promised to withdraw the Conservatives from the EPP/ED Group in the European Parliament. A new Tory strategy based on specific promises will only be successful if there is a genuine commitment to carry these out. Richard Soper New Zealand Lib Dems and the EU Sir: We read that again the Liberal Democrats are blaming their leader for their fall in popularity in the polls. Does it not occur to them that it is their policies which are unpopular rather than their leader?

Lift sanctions on Iran Sir: The resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis is breathtakingly simple, were sanity to prevail (‘Iran will be next’, 8 September). Iran does not need an atom bomb to attain the status of a regional superpower: the size of her population and territory, her vast natural resources, her access to the Caspian Sea and dominance of the Persian Gulf confer that status upon her. If the sanctions imposed by the Americans and the Security Council were to be lifted and, simultaneously, Iran agreed to an international inspection of her nuclear installations, Iran’s moribund economy would be revived at the same time that fears about her nuclear military ambitions would be assuaged. The alternatives are too terrifying to contemplate. Parviz C.

Theodore Dalrymple’s cover story about our sentimental and brutal society (‘Too many teardrops’, 1 September) has given me an idea. Our thuggish society Sir: Theodore Dalrymple’s cover story about our sentimental and brutal society (‘Too many teardrops’, 1 September) has given me an idea. In order to reduce the impact of the British disease of vulgarity and rudeness, the principle of offsetting could be extended beyond carbon pollution. I concede that a donation to the society of polite gentlefolk would not necessarily solve the problem, but it would help and it would remind us that incivility is not morally neutral.

What would Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, the coolest of heads, have made of poor William Shawcross’s overwrought emotional plea that we must stay on in Iraq as a kind of act of faith (‘Britain must stay in Iraq’, 25 August)? A menace of our making Sir: What would Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, the coolest of heads, have made of poor William Shawcross’s overwrought emotional plea that we must stay on in Iraq as a kind of act of faith (‘Britain must stay in Iraq’, 25 August)? Well, the Duke once opined: ‘The real test of a general is to know when to retreat and dare to do it.’ Surely we have reached that point in Iraq, although a retreat needs to be well prepared and deliberate.