HAVING crossed swords with Mr Hill before I think I am duty-bound to deliver the coup-de-grace in another duel, the latest drivel attacking the 'trendy McPherson report.'

A better example of the collapse of the British middle class mind in this post-imperial era could not be found than last week's letter from Mr Hill... poor deluded individual!

The giveaway comes from the final paragraph, when he encourages 'ordinary people' to stand up against 'left-wing fascists that pollute our political life' and who claim (quite correctly) that 'fascists are right wing'.

For starters, who is he calling ordinary? Could he mean anybody but himself and the fake 'independent' Cllr Beaman and their colleagues?

Secondly, it is obvious that the British establishment and its institutions are riddled with holders of racist illusions, a legacy of centuries of violent imperialisism. There is hardly a nation on earth which has not seen its people mown down by British forces.That is precisely why the British Empire, on which the sun never sets (and the wages hardly ever rose without a fight) no longer exists.

The legacy of this is racism pervading 'our' institutions.

Maybe the case of Mal Hussain, whom Mr Hill has not the courage to name, began over some other issue but it certainly developed in a racist direction.

This is why our Trades Council has backed his and other local cases.

If such apparently isolated individuals can be targeted like they have been with inadequate institutional response then who will be the next to suffer?

We recall the words of Pastor Niemoller in the 1930s, referring to the rise of German Nazism, I paraphrase: "I did not protest because I was not a communist, a Trade Unionist, a Jehovah's Witness, a Jew... and when they came for me there was no-one left to protest."

Mr Hill's phrase 'left-wing fascists' and his stupid denial that Hitler and Mussolini were right wing sticks right in my throat.

Why did Henry Ford, noted racist and anti-trade unionist, donate millions of dollars to the Nazi movement for which he was in 1937 awarded the 'order of the German Eagle' by Hitler himself?

And why did Hitler and Mussolini send arms and troops to help General Franco in the Spanish civil war -- surely Franco wasn't 'left-wing'?

I suggest that especially the working class people of Lancaster should be on their guard against the likes of Mr Hill and their attempts to falsify both history and the present for their own nefarious megalomaniac purposes.

The citizens of Ryelands have recently found out that it is rapacious big-business interests who threaten their 'peace of mind' far more than poor old Mal Hussain could ever do.

That's why I attended their recent demo against the MBI plan to carve up the estate up, apart from being a Ryelander by origin myself. I applaud their successful campaign.

McPherson was right. Those who churn out bunkum, like W Hill will be consigned to the 'dustbin of history' sooner or later, preferably sooner.

Steve Metcalfe President

Lancaster &

Morecambe TUC