The Spectator

Those who think Britain is no longer a great and decent country should consider the events of the past two weeks: an alleged Islamist plot to attack airliners has already led to the charging of 11 suspects; our airports have been in turmoil; there is a furore over the effectiveness and propriety of ethnic ‘passenger profiling’; the Home Secretary warns that there are ‘dozens’ more terrorist plots under investigation. Yet — in the midst of all this — the country is finally embarking upon a long-needed debate on immigration, and doing so (with a very few exceptions) in a calm and pragmatic fashion. Elsewhere in the world, such a conjunction of events would have led to inflammatory rhetoric by politicians and widespread social disorder.

Too many or too few?From K.R. HoustonSir: Rod Liddle’s assertion (‘Our overpopulation is a catastrophe’, 12 August) that an ever-growing population fuelled by mass immigration is seriously debilitating our quality of life was spot on. But it also highlights the question of why we ever reached this state of affairs in the first place. When my three children were born between 1977 and 1982 — a period which took in both Labour and Conservative governments — new parents were sent a missive from the local health authority stating that while family size was a matter of personal choice, Britain needed to have a population level that it could ‘sustain’. The underlying message was clear: don’t have too many children.

A new Holocaust From Lucy MandelstamSir: Melanie Phillips’s mention of the ‘annual hate-fest’ on the streets of London filled me with despair (‘Hezbollah cells await Iran’s orders’, 5 August). Last month I celebrated my 80th birthday. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to live so long. I survived four years in Vienna under Nazi rule, and three years in concentration camps. After the end of the war I was a refugee for three years, spending those years mostly in displaced persons’ camps in Europe and Cyprus, finally coming to Israel. I had hoped to live out the rest of my life in relative peace. It was not to be.

Hezbollah and genocide From Lord KalmsSir: William Hague’s usual good sense has deserted him. Criticising Israel for being disproportionate without serious consideration of the alternatives merely mouths the buzzwords of the ignorant armchair critic. Think again, William, for whom you speak. How do you deal with the Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, who is committed to Israel’s total destruction (not a single Jew to remain alive in Israel) and who rains thousands of rockets on Israel, keeping the population in shelters, devastating industry, kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers within Israeli territory? Hezbollah combines a unique and dangerous formula: a terrorist organisation ensconced within a large area of the independent but incompetent nation state of Lebanon.

Lebanon: who’s to blame? From Nicholas MillmanSir: It was refreshing to read your editorial (22 July) after a week of witnessing the rest of the British media sadly misrepresent the Middle East crisis. In typical fashion Hezbollah has manipulated the journalists on the ground to the point where, for example, Channel 4 News must now be considered an effective extension of Hezbollah propaganda. The constant talk here of a ‘disproportionate’ response by Israel is baffling. A gang of nasty thugs, with only a tenuous claim to represent a sovereign state, violate the border of a neighbouring sovereign state and kidnap her soldiers.

Cameron on crime From Oliver Letwin MPSir: Your leading article ‘Love isn’t all you need’ (15 July) misses the point of David Cameron’s speech on the causes of crime (indeed, it gives the impression that you did not read the speech very closely). David’s speech focused from the very beginning on the fear and suffering caused by crime and disorder; the no-go zones our town centres become on a Friday or Saturday night; and the damage done by vandalism and graffiti. But — more importantly — it looked beyond the usual hand-wringing and hasty gimmicks of Labour’s approach to consider how we solve these problems for the long term. It is now 13 years since Tony Blair first pledged to be both tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.

Elite electorates From Alan HallSir: I was amused by your leading article this week (1 July), criticising New Labour for treating ‘the highest office of government’ as if it were ‘the captaincy of its own team’. You affect to be shocked that the debate on who should succeed Tony Blair is not being conducted, so to speak, in open forum — or perhaps at the Court of St James’s — where the Queen’s loyal subjects might be invited to contribute their own pennyworth of opinion. But since when was the leadership of a political party (in or out of office) anything more than a matter for the party itself to decide?

Prison doesn’t work From Peter J.M. WayneSir: That not one but two highly indignant letters to the editor (24 June) should have been occasioned by my humanitarian concerns about children in prison (Books, 17 June) is a sad and disturbing reflection of the cruel and punitive mood that dominates the whole stagnant debate about crime and punishment. Of course Mrs Jettubreck should expect to be able to walk the streets near her home unmolested. But merely to throw these troubled youngsters into jail — a temporary respite at best — at such a critical and impressionable age will only serve to heighten their sense of alienation.Yes, they need taking in hand, but not by the older, already contaminated prisoners they will meet inside.

Age of innocence? From Mrs Sam JettubreckSir: Having lived in the same street for many years and seen the area gradually taken over by feral youths, I wonder what Peter J.M. Wayne might suggest I do to stem the rising tide of crime in my street? ‘These are children ...for goodness sake,’ wrote Wayne in his review of David Fraser’s A Land Fit for Criminals (Books, 17 June). So that makes their vile insults, burglary and aggression to the community acceptable? When a 14-year-old boy next throws a brick at my windows, and smashes glass in the nearby park so that my grandchildren cut their feet, or when next I am confronted, taunted, spat at or abused, I’ll just remember their age, shall I? Is that supposed to console me?

Al-Bashir’s immunity From Ralph Blumenau Sir: Peter Oborne’s powerful piece about the ethnic cleansing in Darfur and eastern Chad (‘Darfur’s terrible export’, 10 June) has only one strange omission. Here, as in almost all media reports, we are told that ‘the Sudanese government’ is actively helping the murderous Janjaweed, but the dictator who heads that government, Omar Hasan Ahmed al-Bashir, is not named. It is as if one had never referred to the crimes of Saddam Hussein, but only to those of ‘the Iraqi government’. Why is al-Bashir being given this cloak of relative anonymity by our media?