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We didn’t ‘go it alone’

While Government policy by design shifts wealth to the rich from the rest of us, HG Smith isn’t interested. Instead his preoccupation is the mythical “thousand years of blood”.

His letter (August 2) piles fantasy onto myth. Whatever your position on the EU for HG Smith it’s all about 19th century racial clichés which are today mostly avoided, for fear of embarrassment, even by right wingers.

“Going it alone” (a touchstone for HG) has never been a feature of Britain’s history; witness the British Empire’s vast extraction of wealth from round the globe. Or witness both world wars. Even mainstream Brexiters talk about trade under World Trade Organisation rules.

“Make this land great again” he says. Even when Britain’s reach was longest the lives of ordinary people were far from great. When our rulers needed cannon fodder for the Boer War they found very few working class people fit and well enough to use as soldiers, so bad were living conditions here. In some areas nine of 10 were unfit. When is he talking about?

On HG Smith’s “island race” and thousand years of blood myth: The back cover of one book which analyses the rich migrations to and from these islands through the ages via DNA and archaeology says “(we are) a ragbag of migrants, reflecting thousands of years of continuity and change”.

Also, the thousand years he refers to include a number of civil wars, rebellions and tumultuous periods of class struggle, not so much true blood as blood spilled.

Peter Smith, Woodside Avenue, Swindon

United we stand

I write in reply to HG Smith in his letter “ Shut up and put up” in which he talks of the true people of England (nb English, not British.)

I went to my brother’s 80th birthday celebrations the other weekend. He presided with his Spanish wife. His black son was there. His daughters were there, one with her son and Chinese daughter in law and their two children, another with her son and French partner.

My other brother was there with his Swedish wife and two sons, the eldest with his Swedish wife and two children.

Our cousin was there with her husband whose parents were refugees from Franco’s Spain. Her daughter brought her Welsh husband.

Our Gypsy grandfather of course wasn’t there as he died many years ago.

We partied in the Irish centre in Camden Town.

There is no mythical English race, HG Smith. Like most Little Englanders (I am sorry but can think of no other term) he thinks our country is England.

He then has the cheek to say we should unite the nation. We are the United Kingdom as any true patriot knows.

Steve Thompson, Norman Road, Swindon