MR Anthony says it is the right of every “Englishman to fly his national flag under constitutional reforms to give British people a stronger sense of what it means to be British”.

He also goes on to say “why is it considered racist to be English?”

I am an Indian, born in Africa, raised in England since 1966 at the age of three. I consider myself as British/English but most questionaires ask if I am Asian not Indian. I am not Chinese, Taiwanese or Japanese yet I have to answer Asian.

To answer his points: Every human needs to feel part of something, it’s what you do with that belonging, some use it for good, some for bad.

When I was in primary school I and my friends had to run home and avoid going through certain areas because pupils from my school and other schools would be on the look out for “Asians”.

For no other reason than being of a different colour, we were picked on, spat on and sometimes beaten up.

The National Front were always demonstrating, particularly in areas where Asians lived, using the English flag as a cover for their white supremacy.

Some residents placed the flag in windows to indicate their affiliation with the National Front.

It is part of the history of the English flag that it was displayed in all the countries that the British Empire occupied during its heyday.

These countries were not part of the empire through choice but through bloody wars using guns against swords, bows and arrows. No code of conduct existed in those days.

People have long memories and regard the flag as colonialism (wars) or nationalism (National Front) and more recently BNP.

The problem is not the flag but what it is used for by a minority. God forbid giving people a stronger sense of what it means to be British becoming an excuse to feel superior to others.

MR H SULEMAN (via email)