Sir, I have been a member of the Labour party for well over half a century and even during low points I have never dreamed of resigning. I regard myself as “mainstream”, “progressive” or “liberal left”, and have admired figures as diverse as Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle, Denis Healey and Yvette Cooper. But I am finding it harder and harder to identify with the direction the party appears to heading in, especially the expressions of antisemitism. I am coming close to the attitude summed up by Janice Turner, that “True Labour supporters no longer have a party” (April 30). I haven’t quite reached that point but there is undoubtedly a crisis of a kind that I have never previously experienced, however much the woefully inadequate Jeremy Corbyn may seek to deny it.
Giles Oakley
London SW14
Sir, The debate about antisemitism is spiralling out of control. It’s main aim seems to be vilifying the Labour leadership in the eyes of the British electorate. Those who accuse the Labour party of tolerating antisemitism and racism should read Albert Einstein’s letter to the The New York Times on December 4, 1948 in which he condemned the actions of Menachem Begin and his party for initiating a campaign of terror and intimidation against Jews, Arabs and British alike, and for espousing ultranationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority. Was Einstein an antisemite? We should refrain from accusing anyone who opposes injustices and occupations as antisemites. This accusation itself amounts to racism and intellectual terrorism.
Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob
London NW2
Sir, I have little time for Ken Livingstone and none for Hitler but it should be remembered that in 1940 Hitler did propose a Jewish homeland — of a sort. This was to be the island of Madagascar and to be run by the SS. The British blockade made this impossible. Ken Livingstone is correct but he made his assertion in a typically challenging way. However he said that Hitler did some terrible things. Let’s stop the McCarthyist witch-hunt and allow that, outside Isis, we are all allowed to speak our minds.
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Kim Hollingshead
Sandwich, Kent
Sir, What Ken Livingstone is presenting as fact is clearly opinion. As a history teacher, one teaches young people to distinguish between fact and opinion as it is important that they understand the difference, but politicians don’t help when they deliberately distort matters to try to prove something by presenting opinions as facts. It is misleading and can be, as this case is showing, dangerous.
David Armstrong
Belfast
Sir, Ken Livingstone refers to Hitler’s supposed comments in support of Zionism as having been made in 1932 “before he [Hitler] went mad”. Should we assume that Livingstone believes that Hitler was completely sane when he wrote in Mein Kampf in 1923 that “the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew”.
David Burns
Princes Risborough, Bucks
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Sir, You do not have to be a Jew to have met the prejudice experienced by Graham Weiner (letter, April 30). My wife was a charge nurse in a London teaching hospital in 1955. If she had been promoted to be a sister she would have worn a sister’s cap and belt buckle but would have been obliged to wear the plain blue dress of a charge nurse. The distinctive spotted dress of a sister was forbidden to a Catholic. In 1958 I was refused an interview to join a medical practice as they replied in writing that they did not wish to consider a Catholic. This sort of prejudice must always be resisted.
Dr Alan Porter
Camberley, Surrey
Obama on trade
Sir, President Obama made several assertions about US trade policy that do not hold up to scrutiny. He claimed: “America’s priority is to negotiate with big trading partners.” In fact, the US has trade agreements with 20 countries — all of which are smaller than the UK.
President Obama said: “America could not negotiate simultaneously with the EU and the UK.” In fact, America has been negotiating simultaneously with the Pacific trade block and the EU. The Pacific deal is now completed so they have plenty of spare negotiating capacity.
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He also said: “It would take five to ten years to complete a US/UK trade deal.” In fact, bilateral deals are simpler, quicker and more comprehensive than deals involving large numbers of countries. All 28 EU members have a veto on the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) negotiations, which is why it is taking so long and excludes so many areas.
I have no doubt that, post-Brexit, we could reach a satisfactory deal with the US in parallel with the EU, maybe more speedily. The president is entitled to say that it is in America’s interest that Britain remains in the EU. But he was ill-advised to try to bully us with empty threats.
Peter Lilley, MP
Former secretary of state for trade and industry
Sir, Supporters of the EU Leave campaign assert that the former US Treasury secretaries wouldn’t cede sovereignty over their borders or the Supreme Court.
In fact the US is an example of states doing just that. Throughout the late 18th and 19th century nearly 50 independent sovereign states came together to form the most powerful and wealthiest single market the world has ever seen.
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It has gone further, with the states electing a federal president, pooling security and economic policy. It emerged after the First World War as a global superpower, illustrating that if countries work together they are safer and richer.
Sir Richard Ottaway
Chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, 2010-2015
Sir, As the president of the United States is helpfully making clear that he would sooner the UK stayed within the EU, perhaps he could be pressed to tell us whether he would support a free trade deal with the UK if we decided to leave.
David Travers, QC
6 Pump Court, Temple, London
Gallery ‘innovation’
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Sir, Richard Morrison (“Museums and galleries must charge for evening admission”, Times2, April 29) appears to have forgotten that Gabriele Finaldi was at the Prado when it received the 2003 London Titian exhibition from the National Gallery. Some short time previous to this the Prado had introduced free evening admission from 6 to 8pm.
The pleasure to roam the Prado’s collection during the early evening Monday to Friday in a quiet calm atmosphere cannot be underestimated. The director of the National Gallery must have smiled at Richard Morrison’s suggested “revolutionary innovation”, trailing some 14 year after its introduction at the Prado.
William Stacey
Malvern
Smoking cycles
Sir, There was something eerily familiar about the arguments of eight academics disputing the health benefits of e-cigarettes, so carefully described by the Royal College of Physicians in its ground-breaking 2016 report (Letters, April 30).
Then the penny dropped: they were just like the arguments of the tobacco industry disputing the health damage of cigarettes, so carefully described by the Royal College of Physicians in its ground-breaking 1962 report.
Perhaps these things go in cycles?
Clive Bates
Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), 1997-2003
Rotten parliament
Sir, Ben Macintyre’s article (Rotten parliament, April 29) ignores one of the big causes of structural damage. I refer to the 1974 underground car park, in New Palace Yard. The excavation for this caused the Clock Tower to lean out of the perpendicular; and for the north wall of Westminster Hall to fracture. This car park should not have been built in such a waterlogged site.
Ivor Hall’s proposal to relocate parliament on pontoons on the Thames (April 30) might become even more waterlogged than the underground car park. We’ve heard of the “floating vote”; now we might have the floating parliament too.
Peter Hancock
Skibbereen, Co Cork
Bligh’s blunders
Sir, Further to Patrick Toal’s letter (April 30), it should be noted that, despite his superb achievement of seamanship, William Bligh’s command style was not ideal. While governor of New South Wales he was subject to a second mutiny in 1808 and his colonists kept him in jail for two years. Again he was vindicated and promoted to admiral, but as Lady Bracknell said: “Twice is carelessness.”
Nicholas Coates
London SW6
Osborne 5:2 diet
Sir, That was a good joke of George Osborne’s that his 5:2 diet explained why he had to eat his own words in two out of five budgets. I think he may be selling himself short. Surely he should only eat his own words in two out of seven budgets? Does this explain why the budget numbers never meet the “longterm plan”?
James Dawson
Woodmancote, Cheltenham
Britons in Brussels
Sir, Your leader (Apr 23) says that Britons account for only 3.6 per cent of European Commission officials. This is a shameful indictment of Britain’s failure to engage with Europe. The government should be encouraging bright young people to apply for jobs in Brussels. If you want influence you have to work for it.
Richard Davy
Oxford
Classicists for EU
Sir, What has the EU ever done for us? Well, apart from making it easier for British students and researchers to travel and work in other European countries and for European scholars and students to come here, funding collaborative research projects and infrastructure, promoting peace and co-operation, encouraging intellectual and cultural exchange, and the roads and the sanitation . . .
As classicists and ancient historians, we study the earliest civilisations in Europe and their continuing legacy. We know as well as anyone that claims about an unbroken European cultural tradition from classical antiquity to the present are dubious, and have been put to dubious uses. However, we have no doubt about the existence of a vital tradition of engagement with classical antiquity as one of the constituents of European culture; and we have no belief at all in a pure British culture, isolated from any “continental” influence.
The study of classical antiquity has been pan-European since before the Renaissance. Today these intellectual exchanges are supported and encouraged by EU institutions. If we leave the EU, Britain might retain some access to research funding, but only after a period of destabilising uncertainty; and our research culture would be deeply impoverished.
Prof Dame Averil Cameron (Oxford)
Prof Paul Cartledge (Cambridge)
Prof Helen King (Open University)
Prof Neville Morley (Bristol)
Prof Oliver Taplin (Oxford)
Prof Tim Whitmarsh (Cambridge)
Dr Carol Atack (Cambridge)
Prof Hugh Bowden (KCL)
Dr Emma Cole (Bristol)
Dr Liz Gloyn (Royal Holloway)
Dr Lucy Grig (Edinburgh)
Dr Katherine Harloe (Reading)
Prof Steve Hodkinson (Nottingham)
Leofranc Holford-Stevens (Oxford)
Prof. Mark Humphries (Swansea)
Dr Georgy Kantor (Oxford)
Dr Tony Keen (Open University)
Dr Alice Koenig (St Andrews)
Prof Peter Kruschwitz (Reading)
Prof Ray Laurence (Kent)
Dr Helen Lovatt (Nottingham)
Dr Dunstan Lowe (Kent)
Dr Eve MacDonald (Reading)
Dr Regine May (Leeds)
Prof Andrew Meadows (Oxford)
Mai Musie (Oxford)
Dr Jo Paul (Open University)
Dr Martin Pitts (Exeter)
Dr Richard Rawles (Edinburgh)
Dr Emma Stafford (Leeds)
UK Classicists for Europe: https://www.facebook.com/classicists4EU/