DPEARSON (Letters, September 16) thinks that workers at British Aerospace were cheering John Major at the news that we had won several big orders.

Sorry, Mr Pearson, those jobs were won by the skill, technological superiority and excellent labour relations by the workforce of British Aerospace, not by John Major.

Do you really think we are so shallow that we cannot see beyond our own factories?

We have children in schools starved of funding, health care at full stretch, property stolen and vandalised, local government starved of cash. We know who to blame for that over the last 13 years.

Many of us remember the 12,000 jobs lost in our industry through Thatcher's and Major's free-market policies.

Look down the road to the Royal Ordnance Factory, ruined by the Tories' obsession with free-market economics and a crook called Foxley.

No, Mr Pearson, I will not cheer John Major or the Conservative government, but I will cheer when they are defeated at the next election.

R FISHER (British Aerospace, Samlesbury worker), Shorrock Lane, Blackburn.

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