IN reply to Mr J Porter (Letters, September 9), in Victorian and Edwardian days any street urchin with the rags of his backside hanging out could be heard to say: "I am English and proud of it." But why?

Because a unique feudal system, passed down since the time of William the Conquerer, conditioned people to think that they were better than anyone else.

This myth still persists in certain quarters, albeit that its days are numbered.

Empires are not forged and formed out of benevolence. This is not a slight on the British people. They are the salt of the earth. Being part of an Empire which covered one fifth of the earth's surface, never did them a scrap of good. They were never allowed to share in the wealth that was created by it. The fact is, history was never comprehensively taught in British schools. A selected version was fed to schoolchildren.

This was the wish of the ruling classes who held the country firmly in its grip and even today, we have not cast off this yoke completely.

And this is where these naive notions spring from. Britain is and has always been the most secretive country in the western world. The archives are full of information the public are not permitted to know - secrecy for the sake of secrecy.

The truth does hurt, but it's about time the realms of the romantic were brought to the realms of the realistic.

J P VERNON, Accrington Road, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.