J ALCOCK (Letters. June 17) argues that we do not need Europe because, with regards to a number of problems -- transport, health, law and order, education, unemployment, etc -- that affect ordinary people in the UK, nothing will change for the better by having even closer ties with the EU.

Whilst this is probably correct, as far as problems associated with law and order and education are concerned, it is suggested they might well be self-inflicted, rather than a corollary of membership of the EU.

If the facts and statistics presented in Peter Hitchins' (2003) A Brief History of Crime: The Decline of Order, Justice and Liberty in England are to be believed, the UK may well have been subjected to a failing, perhaps even failed, liberal 'experiment' with regards to law and order.

Hitchins states that recorded crimes have risen out of all proportion. They are up from 103,000 in 1921, rising to 525,000 in 1951, to over five million by 2001. This cannot be accounted for solely by population growth or unemployment alone.

The statistics cogently demonstrate that the great Victorian achievement of an essentially peaceful, ordered society has, at best, been seriously eroded. Even if one does not agree with everything Hitchins writes, his exegesis of the decline of law and order is tightly argued, powerful and very worrying. His conclusions will not, however, be entirely welcomed by the liberal, do-gooder elite.

Finally, as to the EU, I distinctly remember voting for entry to a seemingly innocuous trading organisation, rather than the present burgeoning political leviathan that guzzles goodness knows how many billions of pounds of British taxpayers' money.

GEORGE HILL, Darwen (full address received).