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It’s just myth-making!

Steve Halden is guilty of myth making. He says the 20 years before 1973 were a “wonderful golden age for British workers.”

He then refers to a list of related statistics intended to support his contention. There is a grain of truth; the unprecedented growth in the global economy meant workers everywhere won advances. But his examples range from misleading to wrong. For Steve, “trade surpluses were the norm in the 1960s”. The record shows, “1960s, the UK trade deficit was embarrassingly large.”

In fact “the longest sustained period of trade surpluses was the years between 1977 and 1985; the remaining nine were recorded between 1956-58, 1969-71 and 1995-97”.

Steve’s “golden age” saw the British economy, increasingly clapped out due to underinvestment by capitalists, being increasingly left behind by, well, everyone. The rose tints through which Steve sees the conditions of workers in the UK belie the experience as a low pay area of Europe, but does reflect that workers in the UK at the time successfully (partially) defended themselves through militant trade unionism.

Macmillan’s “never had it so good”, which Steve thinks “encapsulated “ the 1960s was actually said in 1957 and Macmillan later provided a measure of its value by trying to freeze workers wages.

Today we need wider recognition of the historical lesson that, especially with the growing possibility of an imminent global “economic slowdown”, before any substantial recovery from the last, working people will need to combine militantly to stop being made to pay the price, in or out of the EU.

Peter Smith, Woodside Avenue, Swindon

We’re a proud nation

In reply to Daniel Pitt (Letters, February 2) he makes a sweeping statement.

All his children 17 nieces and nephews and partners all want to stay in the European Disunion. Let me reciprocate on that one. I have more to do with my time than to ask my five children and eight grandchildren such a personal question.

The likely answer I would get is mind your own business dad. But regardless of that, I did get the general opinion from them that they were Brexiteers.

Perhaps I could give a few reasons of why most of them voted as I did. Britain before it joined this bully-boy tyranny club had fishing rights 200 miles from our coastline. It is now 12 miles. If Britain does not leave it will be asked to contribute to a European army. The European armies were crushed by Adolf.

We survived and freed them with our Commonwealth and American allies.

If we had not saved Europe from the Third Reich, the best-selling footwear in Europe would be Nazi jackboots.

There would not be any disgraceful hatred and vile abuse of the proud Jewish nation, as there would no Jewish people. Britain’s Parliament is no longer sovereign inside this dictatorial cartel.

Finally I would like to ask Mr Pitt one question. Do you have an open house and let anyone walk in your front door regardless? I thought not. But under the open borders of the European Disunion, you cannot control who comes into your own country. There is a rumour that Claude Juncker and Mrs May decided to toss a coin on a certain Brexit issue.

He said without asking her to call. Tails you lose Theresa, heads I win.That’s what he thinks. So did Hitler , the Spanish Armada and Napoleon.Not to mention the opposing fleet at Trafalgar, to mention but a few who took on our proud nation.

Bill Williams, Merlin Way, Covingham