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. Their main concern is that the state should continue to naturally command the allegiance of its people, from which arises their cautious approach to immigration.
Yugo Kovach
Twickenham
Sir: In your leading article (27 October) you repeat the Home Office claim that immigrants ‘contribute £6 billion p.a. to the economy’ as if somehow this extra output is available to the rest of us. That is the impression that the government wished to give in their highly tendentious evidence to the Lords Select Committee.
In fact immigrants are not only producers but consumers. Their consumption over time would exactly equal their production were it not for any redistribution via the tax and benefit systems. So it would be as true — and as misleading — to say that ‘immigrants withdraw around £6 billion p.a. of goods and services from the economy’. But that would not suit the government’s aim of pretending that the native population benefit hugely from large scale net immigration.
The Rt Hon Peter Lilley MP
House of Commons, London SW1
Scotch the Scots
Sir: The interesting thing about English votes for English MPs is that it would mean that Scottish MPs at Westminster would become virtually pointless (Leading article, 3 November). Currently no MP at Westminster can vote on Scottish issues, which is why the problem has arisen in the first place. If the Scottish MPs at Westminster voted the same way as the MSPs, e.g. free tuition at university, it wouldn’t be too bad, but they vote for English students to pay for their tuition while Scottish students get theirs free. There is also the issue of free prescriptions and drugs for certain types of cancer and Alzheimer’s available north of the border but not in England. Is it any wonder that we want parity?
While Westminster is under the control of so many Scots it’s unlikely to happen, but it would be a good vote winner for the Tories. I say to David Cameron ‘go for it’ — you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Pat Bibby
Gloucestershire
Sir: I do not recall any sympathy from you during the Thatcher years when Scottish business committees had to be packed with English MPs as the Scots so consistently voted for Labour that there was scarce a Tory MP left north of the border.
Where were your rousing editorials when a Parliament dominated by English Conservatives forced the Scots to accept unpleasant experimental legislation such as stop and search and the poll tax, a year before England? Perhaps you rightly considered it was but the swings and roundabouts of our parliamentary system. Why the outcry when the boot is on the other foot for once?
Dr Ian Olson
Aberdeen
A debased report
Sir: A document sent direct from Conservative Central Office is, by definition, indicative of being consistent with a range of Conservative thinking. Thus the report from the Conservative Muslim Forum recently distributed must be taken very seriously and it is regrettable to see that what should have been the opportunity to represent a consensus of our Muslim community has been debased by the extremism of several of its views: in its blatant attempt to influence the Conservative party over its attitude towards Israel; in its shrill threat that support for Israel would damage Britain’s relationship with the world Muslim community; and in its abuse of the sense of purpose of the forum.
The Conservative party is enjoined to change its traditional policy towards the State of Israel. The advice shows a total ignorance of the facts on the ground. One cannot call for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories before negotiating a two-state solution.
There is a lot of common sense and meaningful platitudes in much of the report but it is the underlying comments that spoil the total impact. For instance, it advises that the history syllabus in schools should be revised to include ‘full recognition to the massive contribution that Islam has made to the development of Western civilisation’ and blames the Christian Churches for suppressing facts. It suggests that Iran is developing the nuclear weapon as a defence against Israel.
The report clearly reflects many of the concerns of Muslims, the vast majority of whom clearly wish to become integrated into our society, while at the same time being allowed to pursue their own religious identity. But this report, when closely studied, has clearly been hijacked by those who have a more demanding agenda, which the Conservative party will need to interpret extremely carefully.
It would have been better if this paper had not been produced under the auspices of the Conservative party, and we must ensure that every issue is fully debated and, where appropriate, rejected.
Lord Kalms
London W1
Witty rejoinder
Sir: Being attacked by Mohamed Fayed comes with the territory of attempting to establish evidence of how Princess Diana died on the Fayed watch (Letters, 3 November). He has spoken only two words to me since Diana died and they have both been identical — ‘bastard’. I would hope, however, that no Spectator reader would believe the statement of his press officer, Katharine Witty, that I have ‘rarely appeared at the inquest’.
I attended all eight day-long pre-inquest hearings this year. Since the inquests themselves started on 2 October, I have missed only a handful of sessions. (Of 22 days sitting with the jury present I have been present on 16 occasions.) Witty’s former colleagues on Sky News, for whom I now work as the channel’s inquests expert, would confirm this. On my few days’ absence in October I was writing for The Spectator and the Independent on Sunday. This leads Witty to characterise my empirical quest as a ‘fanatical obsession’ with criticising her boss, Mohammed. I would describe my work as scrutinising Fayed’s self-exculpatory ‘conspiracy theories’. Rest assured that if Planet Fayed should ever produce any credible evidence that Prince Philip organised the murder of his grandsons’ mother, I will report it.
I have attended more London sittings of the inquest than either Katharine Witty or her boss. When the court was in session in Paris on 9 October, I was in Paris broadcasting live on Sky News from outside the Ritz with Sarah Hughes, Witty’s successor as Sky News’ royal correspondent. Hovering uninvited behind our camera and appearing to be listening intently was one Ms Witty. Her eyes and ears must both have deceived her if she failed to detect my presence. Or perhaps my suspicion that a full-frontal journalistic lobotomy is a necessary requirement for recruitment to Planet Fayed is correct?
Martyn Gregory
Ballymore, Ireland
I was no sneak
Sir: Your columnist Martin Vander Weyer alleges that, in a demonstration at Oxford in 1973, I was ‘…running about taking pictures of (him and his friends), presumably to pass on to the authorities’ (Any other business, 3 November). This is totally untrue — I took no photographs of any demonstration and certainly never reported any students to the authorities for demonstrating or anything else.
In fact, on that day, a small group of Conservatives were indeed active. By arranging a fire hose through an upper window of New College, we were able to soak a large proportion of the demonstrators, greatly reducing their number by the time they reached their destination. This action took the shine off the reports of the demo on News at 10. The subsequent sense-of-humour failure among many students left me disappointed that the leftist ideas of acceptable direct action were so limited in scope, but then, as Cpl Jones would say, ‘They don’t like it …’
Julian Brazier
London SW1
Real atrocities
Sir: Osman Streater (Letters, 3 November) dismisses evidence concerning the treatment of Armenians in Turkey during the first world war on the grounds that it was British propaganda just like that concerning German atrocities in Belgium. He refers your readers to a book published on the subject 25 years ago. Since then, it has been (re)established beyond doubt that the Belgian atrocities were real.
He further suggests — a familiar argument — that atrocity propaganda during the first world war was a reason why people were subsequently slow to believe in Nazi crimes. The real reason for such scepticism is precisely the opposite: that the governments responsible for atrocities during the first world war, abetted by sympathisers abroad, brazenly denied them on the grounds, now repeated by Mr Streater, that they were merely propaganda. Interested readers might wish to consult Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven University Press, 2007), who also discusses the wider question of postwar denials.
Robert Tombs
Cambridge
Selfish students
Sir: I read with great interest the article by Harry Mount (‘Better always to be late than selectively late’, 27 October) about punctuality. He quoted his friend’s father’s opinion that Cambridge students are less punctual than before because of the mobile phone. That is also the case with universities in Japan. The students are much more likely to be late for meetings with their teachers. When they are late, just before the appointed time they almost always send emails saying they will be late. It seems they think it all right to be late and keep their teachers waiting as long as they let the teachers know that they will be late. I hate this trend.
Koshi Okano
Tokyo, Japan
Protection from the people
Sir: As William Dalrymple implies in his perceptive article on Syria (‘Syria shouldn’t be demonised’, 27 October), democracy would be a disaster for minorities, especially Christians, who comprise 10 to 13 per cent of the population. If the Sunni Muslim majority won power, Christians and others would experience the same fate as their co-religionists elsewhere in the region. Democracy is not always the panacea we arrogantly suppose it to be.
Christopher Maycock
Crediton, Devon
Your right to chews
Sir: Paul Johnson asks (And another thing, 3 November) if it is true that Gladstone chewed his food 39 times. Horace Fletcher writes in Fletcherism: What It Is or How I Became Young at Sixty (Frederick A Stokes, New York, 1913): ‘Mr Gladstone’s advice to his children which has become classic, viz.: “chew your food 32 times at least, so as to give each of your 32 teeth a chance at it” was a general recommendation. Mr Gladstone was observed once at “high table” at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the average number of “bites” (masticatory movements) as far as they could be counted, was about 75. That did not speak very well for Trinity fare, unless Mr Gladstone happened to choose food that required that amount of chewing.’
David Macfadyen
Isle of Skye
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