No Snow in Lithuania

Trakai Castle, Lithuania. 13 January. The Snow Meeting is famous. Every January Lithuania brings together prime ministers, foreign and defence ministers from across what is increasingly referred to as the Nordic Baltic region, together with senior American, French, and German officials and commentators. The British were of course not there.  Shame. Thankfully, Blogonaut Friendly-Clinch was in full Churchillian flow at one point asserting that “Britain would NEVER accept German leadership” (adopt suitable Churchillian tones). The old man would have been proud of me.

As I draft this I am gazing across a wistful winter lake at a real-life, make-believe castle dusted by the late snow of an unusually warm Lithuanian winter. We did the rounds of the usual suspect subjects – one feels the warm breath of Russia always in Lithuania, NATO was no-goed, although for once I may have come up with a good idea for the forthcoming Chicago Summit by suggesting the Strategic Concept be reinforced by a Strategic Contract. The European Onion was peeled, skinned and dissected…again, and much time was spent considering America’s retreat from Europe. The Grim Banker sat silent in the corner.

However, what really struck me was the significance of a Nordic Baltic Grouping.  What could it possibly mean? The “Nordic-Baltic 8”, or NB8 as it known in the awful parlance of international wonkery, sounds like a group of wrongly-convicted political prisoners. On the face of it there is little in common between them other than a large expanse of water – the Baltic Sea…and perhaps yet another European idea in search of a bureaucracy. Three reasons:

The first is Germany. All roads lead to Berlin. The many new bridge, road and railway projects discussed all had one thing in common – Germany. To appropriately mix my metaphors Berlin is cementing its political leadership of Europe by hard-wiring Germany into the physical centre of Europe. The Nordic Baltic 8 flank Germany to the north. As such the ‘8’ have very little to do with balancing Russia, which was seen more irritant than threat, but influencing Germany. The old East-West European axis is being replaced by a new North-South axis with Germany the 'pivot' (this month's fashionable word in the strategy boutiques).

The second reason is energy and here Russia will be an issue. Massive oil and gas reserves are being discovered in the Barents Sea and Greenland, still nominally Danish. An arc of energy will soon stretch from Canada to Russia via the ‘High North’. The Nordic region in particular will become the epicentre of the new energy geopolitics. This could also lead to renewed tensions with Russia, both in terms of competition over the exploitation of said resources and because over time Europe could well be weaned off Russian energy. The Kremlin needs high oil and gas incomes to maintain its grip. If Russia sneezes the Baltic States catch cold.

The third reason represents nothing less than a revolution in strategic affairs and will turn the world on its head. As the Arctic ice melts the fabled North West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific will become real, linked to a new North East Passage via Northern Norway. This change to global trading and energy shipping patterns will be so profound as to revolutionise the way the world makes money. Norway’s North Cape will become the new Cape of Good Hope. Canada’s Baffin Island will become the new Cape Horn. The Middle East will be by-passed together with much of the piracy-strewn Indian and Pacific Oceans. In time China, Japan, Russia and Central Asia might well look north for their ports and trade routes, rather than south and east.

So, implicit in this modest meeting of modest people in a beautiful place was not just another regional wrangle, but the forthcoming revolution in strategic affairs that will do much to define the twenty-first century world. This makes America’s decision to retreat from Europe all the more silly, just as it makes Europe’s decision to retreat from strategic reality all the more dangerous. Indeed, the world will not just ‘pivot’ on Asia, it will also ‘pivot’ on the two High Norths of Continental North America and Europe; the new Super-Highways for the ‘Global Commons’. A meaningful US-European strategic partnership will be critical to the security of both.

Therefore, the transatlantic relationship will be as important in the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth and the Nordic-Baltic states will be on the front-line. When I come to the Baltic States I am always reminded why we need NATO and the European Union, which is today little apparent in the old, tired West of Europe. The proud, decent people of Lithuania deserve our support and our solidarity.

Or maybe it is just that the cold, clear air of Europe’s east clears my befuddled strategic brain. Shame there was no real snow though.

Julian Lindley-French

Beaufort: Why We Must Leave Afghanistan Now, Not End 2014

Alphen, the Netherlands. 9 January. Beaufort is a great film. It tells the story of a platoon of young Israeli soldiers at the turn of this century pointlessly asked to defend an isolated, old Crusader fort deep in Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon at the very end of a failed occupation. One-by-one they die, with the only apparent point to their sacrifice being to ease the embarrassment of their squabbling political masters back in Tel Aviv. Swap Lebanon for Afghanistan.

As a professor of defence strategy I know there are times when given the dangerous world in which we live the West must regrettably use force. Equally, I also know that on such occasions people are going to die – enemies, bystanders and our own soldiers. Therefore, I take my profession, my thinking and my guidance very seriously; especially as I am conceited enough to believe my opinion may on occasions count for just a modest something.

On each occasion when our forces are sent into action I ask myself six simple questions concerning objective, strategy, cost and performance. Specifically, I seek to understand the aim and that said aim is properly clarified and weighed against the necessary method and resources - strategy. 1. Is the use of force, the size of the force and its method appropriate to the achievement of a just political objective? 2. Is there a clear strategy for success? 3. Are the minimum conditions for ‘success’ achievable and understood? 4. Is the use of force legitimate in the eyes of the international community and the region to which the force is being sent? 5. Is there sufficient political will and capital at home to sustain such an effort? 6. Are the resources committed sufficient to succeed?

Even back in 2001 none of my six questions could be answered unequivocally in the affirmative. However, such was the impact and gravity of the attacks on New York and Washington and so clearly was Afghanistan the focal point for Al Qaeda activity that a significant response was called for. However, in the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the US withdrawal from Iraq, the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan, the now decisive shift in US defence strategy away from such types of engagement and given the depth of the West’s economic crisis, and after much careful thought I no longer believe that any of my six questions can be answered in the affirmative.

1. There is now no clear link between the use of force in Afghanistan and the achievement of something that would look like a stable Afghanistan;

2. There is no clear strategy for success other than the blind hope that the training of Afghan National Security Forces will somehow lead to the creation of a single institutional pillar that can in and of itself sustain a stable Afghanistan post-2014.  Forces the paper expansion of which has been so fast that there are clear signs of infiltration by the Taliban and other elements;

3. Some progress has been made on the ground in support of the Afghan people but there is no longer any real chance that legitimate governance, just rule of law and a stable society will be realised in Afghanistan. Far from it – Afghanistan’s venal political class under President Karzai show no signs of getting to grips with the rampant corruption and above-the-law warlords that so corrode Afghanistan’s present and future;

4. With Bin Laden now dead the use of drone strikes is further undermining a failing Pakistan not only critical to the US-led coalition strategy but which is now working to defeat it. And, there is very little meaningful support from the rest of the so-called international community;

5. There is little or no political or popular will back in Western capitals to sustain such an effort. The two key actors, the US and UK, have both made it clear that they need to retrench to fix their ailing economies. The other European members of the coalition never believed in the mission, doing just enough as they saw it to keep the US engaged and paying for much of their own security. All-important unity of effort and purpose is thus a myth. Indeed, the suggestion that some Coalition forces may stay on beyond the end of 2014 is at best fanciful and at worst dangerously misguided; and

6. The gap between the resources available, the use of those resources and strategy-friendly outcomes it generates is now beyond closure.

Therefore, very little that will be done between now and the end of 2014 will make any real difference to the situation in Afghanistan. President Karzai is already doing deals with key Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik and Uzbek ‘politicians’ over a dark future. Afghanistan’s neighbours sit on the periphery like vultures waiting to pick over the bones of a shattered, resource-rich country. Meanwhile, military commanders and their civilian counterparts tick their boxes and file their optimistic command chain reports deluding themselves that they are making real progress. There comes a point when ‘can do’ simply becomes ridiculous.  The peace process?  What peace process?

And with at least two years to go before all major combat and stability operations end it is likely that hundreds will die and thousands maimed, not to mention the many Afghan and Pakistani civilians who will die alongside them. The Taliban and Al Qaeda? There are other ways to skin those cats.

Afghanistan was always a risk but the essential failing from the outset was to equate ridding the space quickly of Al Qaeda (achieved relatively quickly) with ‘doing good’ by Western liberal criteria and then to organise poorly both the effort and the resources.

Therefore, unless there is a clear reinjection of political capital and resources at the highest levels in Washington and London (forget the rest) to afford our forces all-important mission momentum I can no longer defend the killing or maiming of one more American, British or Coalition soldier.

Failing such a commitment pull our forces out now, politicians. And watch Beaufort. You owe it you our young men and women who have made the supreme sacrifice on your behalf.

Julian Lindley-French

Leaner, Meaner and Weaker. The New US Defence Strategy

Alphen, the Netherlands. 6 January. Reality dawned cold yesterday on a grey January Washington. The Americans have now followed their British allies in conceding that after a decade of extended conflict the first line of defence is and must be the US economy. Indeed, echoing many a past (and not so past) British defence review the rendering weaker of an already hard-pressed US military was explained away as the maintenance of US “…military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats”. Nice try, Mr President.

In his foreword to “Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense”, President Obama pointed to the very hard choices America must now make to credibly defend itself in a world very changed since this difficult century began twelve years ago. ‘Choice ‘in defence strategy always means weakness. Two questions stare out from this review like rabbit eyes in headlights. First, will the world permit America such ‘choices’? Second, what does this cold dawn mean for defence-naked Europeans?

Here are the facts of the matter. The US military will become leaner ('cut' in plain-English) with the aim of “maintaining superiority” where it matters for 21st century America – Asia-Pacific. There will be cuts worth at least $450bn, although given the size of the US deficit this could be the merely the harbinger of much deeper cuts and programme delays. Indeed, the defence budget could lose an immediate additional $500bn this year due to the inability of the US Congress to agree deficit reduction. There will likely be a 10-15% cut in the size of the US Army and Marine Corps over the next decade. Critically, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that with the Iraq War now over and the Afghan War soon to be declared over the US military, “…will no longer need to be sized to support the large-scale, long term stability operations that dominated military priorities and force-generation over the past decade”. Until now US military strategy has held that the US military must be able to fight two medium-to-large scale wars simultaneously. That strategy is now dead.

Will the world permit America the luxury of choosing which wars to fight and how to fight them? The answer is probably no IF the US still wishes to remain THE superpower. The simple truth is that implicit in this review is a very hard grand strategic realisation by the Americans that they will in time lose their superpower status. Indeed, the President explicitly suggests in the review that the economic is the true font of power.  This implicitly suggests an acceptance by the US that China will in time emerge as the balancer of American power. This explains the shift away from Europe to Asia-Pacific and the need for Asian and Australasian allies.

The military-strategic implications of the review reflect that grand strategic judgement and are no less profound. In essence the US is resorting back to a strike and punish posture and away from the grand stabilisation strategy which was the essence of America’s post-Cold War engagement. Partly driven by the nature of post-911 counterinsurgency operations and partly driven by the sensibilities of European allies who can never go anywhere beyond Europe unless they leave a place looking like Europe, the US military was sucked into stabilisation operations for which the US military was not best suited or prepared. The dangerous inference in the new strategy is that henceforth the US will only fight nice, neat and ‘clean’ wars. Oh that the world was so accommodating.

For Europeans this should really be a wakeup call. Sadly Europe’s strategic sleeping Rip van Winkles are far too gone for that. Indeed, the link between defence strategy and military capability was long ago broken in Europe. Until yesterday the transatlantic relationship involved Europeans pretending to be serious about defence and the Americans pretending to believe them. This has left NATO about as hollowed out and militarily robust as an ice cream cone.  That must now end. 

America will still ‘strategically reassure’ Eastern Europe against those troublesome Russians, military technology permits that and in any case Moscow is not really going to invade any NATO/EU member just yet.  Beyond NATO's frontier is an entirely different question.  However, the choice for Europeans implicit in the 2011 operations over Libya has suddenly become far more pressing.  Either do far more as ‘Europe’ in and around Europe to enable US forces to focus on Asia-Pacific, or in time add some limited capability in support of the US.

My bet that is that as the Eurozone crisis leads inevitably to a tighter core political grouping organised around Germany the EU will become the focus for Franco-German-led ‘European’ security and defence efforts. The British will then join a US-led grouping that includes Australia, Canada, Japan and possibly even India.

NATO? It will be left to focus in its remaining days on maintaining what is called military interoperability (the ability to work together) between forces that increasingly talk a very different strategic language. Indeed, implicit in the new US defence strategy is a world view very different from that of Continental Europeans. Alliances can survive such dissonance for only so long.

Yesterday the world became ever so slightly colder, America ever so slightly weaker and Europeans ever so slightly naked.   A new day has indeed dawned.  It is time for Europe to wake up. 

Julian Lindley-French (Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy)

Another Day, Another Race Row

Alphen, the Netherlands. 5 January. Another day, another race row. Britain really is losing the plot on race. This morning black Labour MP Diane Abbott tweeted that, ''White people love playing 'divide & rule'. We should not play their game''. No sooner had she de-tweeted than the airwaves were full of accusations of racism and calls for her to resign from her position on Labour’s front bench. The country is particularly sensitive to race this week in the wake of the way-too-late sentencing of two racist thugs for the murder of a young, black man almost nineteen years ago, but that does not excuse today's over-reaction. Diane Abbott is an exceptional Labour MP for whom I have a lot of respect, not least because she has the courage of her convictions.

That said, what the latest row has revealed is just how dangerous the elite’s obsession with race is to British democracy and community relations. One cannot turn on British radio or television these days without some worthy lecturing us on the evils of racism and implying that all we white people are racists simply by the fact of ourselves. Sadly, I was never conscious of my colour nor indeed that of others before Britain’s PC madness started. Like many of my 'race' (I find the whole concept awful) I believe all are equal under the law and all and everyone worthy of my respect until they prove otherwise.

Unfortunately, many ordinary, decent white people now believe that race laws only apply to them. And that their just concerns about the changing nature of society due to the hyper-immigration that governments have either encouraged or failed to control are being not just ignored, but suppressed. If a law is perceived by a majority to be unfair not only the law falls into disrepute but the system which created it, especially if that same majority believe government is failing them.

The essential problem is one of political philosophy. I know I have used De Tocqueville’s quote a couple of times but his suggestion that political liberty is easily lost because democratic peoples want equality even if it means losing liberty sums up Britain today. Indeed, Britain’s ever more desperate search for the appearance of absolute equality all the time in all circumstances to mask the failure of policy is slowly but surely eroding liberty. The 500% increase in the number of laws on the statute since 1997 is concrete proof. It is as though the Establishment has been turning slowly Marxist without anyone noticing…until now. 

I do not agree with what Ms Abbott said, nor do I like what it implies about her views, although I still like and respect her. Hers is a voice that needs to be heard.  However, I defend her right to say it. It is called freedom of speech and the whole point of such freedoms is that whilst one has a responsibility to consider what one says within reason one also has the right to say it unless it is directly inciting an act of violence or hatred. Ms Abbott was certainly not doing that. The alternative is the policing of thought. Do we really want to go there? Perhaps we do in which case Britain will no longer be my country.

By the way, the normal PC suspects are strangely quiet on this occasion. Now there’s a surprise! So much for principle.

Get a grip, Britain!

Julian Lindley-French

Welcome to the Twenty-First Century. It Starts Right Now!

Alphen, the Netherlands. 2 January. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. My 2012 started here in my beautiful little Dutch village chatting with my nice Dutch neighbours amid the clatter of many thousands of burning Euros being shot into the sky or exploding in brief, bright and brilliant suns.

On New Year’s Eve Alphen seemed a million miles from reality in that fleeting moment when the New Year illuminates the old and casts it to mature into the giant whisky vat of history. And yet even during the brief truce in reality between Christmas and New Year change was regrouping. And, as the smoke clears the strategic landscape has subtly but most profoundly changed. Ten years late the old century has finally passed and the new one is finally upon us.

On 24 December the second round of voting began in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. These elections are crucial not only because of the importance of Egypt in the Arab world, but also because they illuminate the political direction of travel of the Middle East. Specifically, if the Islamist parties do well, as seems likely, Egypt could become the pioneer of a new twenty-first century phenomenon – the legitimate Arab Islamist state. Critical will be the extent to which Islamism embraces democracy and whether indeed it can. One man (or woman), one vote once would simply mark yet another false Arab dawn. Egypt will be central to the stability of the Middle East and its political identity.

On 25 December German President Christian Wulff said that Germany would offer “solidarity to Europe” in “a spirit of unity” to point the way out of the Eurozone crisis. A close ally of Chancellor Merkel President Wulff said that Europe is “our common home,” the values of which must be defended jointly. 2012 will indeed be the true test of German leadership in Europe as Berlin grapples with the Eurozone crisis…and the British. For Europe much will depend on how much Germany is willing to pay for this ‘spirit of unity’ and the leadership of Europe it confers.

Beijing announced on 27 December that the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) would begin looking for oil in Afghanistan’s Amu Darya Basin which is estimated to hold around 87 million barrels of oil. As the West prepares to leave Afghanistan having spent huge amount of treasure and at the cost of many lives China and the neighbours are preparing to exploit Afghanistan’s estimated $1 trillion of mineral and fossil fuel reserves. Much of the first half of the century will be about China’s rapacious search for energy. Indeed, only sustained economic growth will offset the marked absence of political liberty in China. China’s move into Afghanistan also marks another step on the road to a new bipolar world that will be dominated by Beijing and Washington.

On 29 December economists at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) announced that Brazil had overtaken Britain as the world’s 6th largest economy. They also predicted that India and Russia would enjoy surges in growth as the old West stagflates in what the CEBR called Europe’s ‘lost decade’. The only consolation for the British was that the CEBR confidently predicts that by 2020 Britain would have a significantly larger economy than that of France. Here we go again.  In fact Brazil will find it very hard to turn such paper wealth into power but Britain and France really do now need to decide the extent of their strategic ambitions and how on Earth they can act together.

On 1 January Iran announced that it had successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile equipped with the “latest technology” and “intelligent systems”, during military exercises in the Gulf. This followed reports that the West was intending further sanctions against Tehran aimed at Iran’s oil and financial sectors because of Iran’s seeming determination to build nuclear weapons. Ten days of Iranian naval exercises in the Straits of Hormuz signalled Tehran’s response; the closure of the world’s most important oil shipping lane in the event of a future confrontation with the United States and its European allies. Behind all of this posturing lies Persian Iran’s strategic ambitions to dominate its Arab region.

Put simply the power state is back. Unfortunately, the European West in particular seems incapable of thinking big enough to cope with this new/old reality. First, the Eurozone crisis is of such severity that rather like heroin addicts many European leaders would sell their peoples’ futures for a short-term political fix rather than deal with the real problem. As Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker put it over Christmas, “We know how to solve the problem, we just do not know how to get re-elected afterwards”. Oh, for just one truly great leader!  Second, Europe only recognises as much strategy as it can afford…which is not a lot. Third, the foreign and security departments of European states are today brim full of counter-terrorism experts and aid and development specialists who skew the focus of national strategies towards failed states and civil strife.  Such parochial ambitions are funded at the expense of balanced defence efforts. This is old strategy for an old world.

The twenty-first century will be a big power, big state century. Power will be organised either around big states via informal regional groupings or though institutions such as the new European Union with one such state at its core.

Welcome to the twenty-first century. It starts right now!

Julian Lindley-French

In Shadows Deep

Alphen, the Netherlands. 30 December. Just before Christmas I received an email from a friend of mine for whom I have great respect and have known many a year. He is a fifty-something and like me a tired British social democrat and one-time believer in the great idea that was Europe. His email came as a shock. He suggested that I was ‘right’, the Eurozone crisis had parted the waves of Euro-speak to reveal Germany and France for what they have always been, Britain’s natural and irreconcilable enemies. I beg to differ.

My friend had been following closely my strident defence of Britain in the teeth of the Eurozone crisis and my critique of Germany and France for their flawed and self-assumed ‘leadership’ in the name of ‘Europe’. Not a natural ally of mine the Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Junker summed up the flawed strategy perfectly when he said, “we know how to solve the problem, we just do not know how to get re-elected afterwards”. 

French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the nineteenth century that political liberty is easily lost because democratic peoples want equality even if it means losing liberty. Germany and France are trying to achieve something much more ambitious - leadership, equality and democracy in crisis.  That does not make Germany and France enemies. Yes, it is a fairly fundamental squabble about who is in charge of Europe and how it should be organised but my objection has not been in principle to the leadership of Berlin and Paris, but rather their attempts to exclude London.

My friend's email also touched on much deeper issues that all of us in our fifties and beyond are forced to consider. None of us can expect to die from the land into which we were born. Change happens. However, since my 1958 birth the change that has taken place in my land of Europe has been so revolutionary – for better and for worse. Like him and millions of my fellow time-travellers I do indeed feel alienated not least because much of the change has been imposed upon me.  He is also right that ‘positive’ discrimination does indeed condemn many men in their fifties to the wastes of ‘freelancery’ (unemployment without benefits).  But we are where we are. 

Weak governments Europe-wide are now forced to make difficult choices  to manage the dangerous consequences of their previous inactions.  Youth unemployment is soaring, populations are rising seemingly uncontrollably and social and cultural diversity now challenges old concepts of society. Britain is a case in point. One only has to look at the place to realise that the London-elite are utterly detached from the everyday reality of ordinary Britons. 

So why do I persevere sending out blogs into the unfathomable ether? It is precisely because I do feel alienated from the political process however futile my blogging may on occasions seem. Far from retreating from politics now is the moment to engage.  Indeed, if I do not engage liberty in Europe will slowly die. And, strangely, being a fifties-something man I have earned the liberty not to cow-tow to anyone, however powerful or important they believe themselves to be. 

Irish poet W.B. Yeats once wrote; “When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look, your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”.

So, my friend, I am sorry you misunderstood my meaning but Germany and France are not Britain’s enemies, they are not even friends, they are family.  The shadows are indeed deep but there is always hope and you too must engage for the sake of our Europe.

Happy New Year!

Julian Lindley-French

Is Britain Going Mad?

Alphen, the Netherlands.  22 December.  Is Britain going mad?  Please someone tell me it is not so.  Sitting here on this side of the Channel I have been following over the past couple of days what passes for a debate on racism in English football.

On Tuesday Mr Luis Suarez of Liverpool Football Club was found by the Football Association to have used language against an opponent that may have had racist overtones.  He was banned for eight games.  If he did indeed use racist language then the sanction is just as such language does indeed have no place in modern society.  However, what is dangerous about this incident is that it appears that it is simply the word of Mr Suarez against that of his accuser Mr Patrice Evra of Manchester United.  There are no other witnesses. 

If that is the case then it would appear to mean that a black person can now make a career-damaging accusation and all that matters is that the accusation is made.  That would go against all tenets of natural justice.   

On Wednesday formal charges of racist abuse were laid against the England Football Captain Mr John Terry by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).  I will not comment on that case as it is sub-judice but the way in which the press reacted had all the hallmarks of a witch-hunt.  Sadly, the CPS seems increasingly political  and politicised and I really do hope Mr Terry gets a fair trial.  

Today, Mr Alan Hansen, a football pundit, is being hunted down by the PC wolves.  Last night he referred to black people as 'coloured' on the BBC's Match of the Day, a soccer programme, although clearly no offence was intended. Mr Hansen was clear in his message that racism is wrong even if his use of language was perhaps out-dated. 

What is behind all of this?  First, the derided media are trying to prove their PC credentials by attacking individuals for what are in many cases the slightest infringement of race rules and laws that have become now so draconian that ancient liberties are at stake.  Second, the London elite seem determined to ram this issue down the throats of Britons as a warning and because of profound failures of policy.  Indeed, these witch-hunts are becoming so shrill that they reflect the steady and dangerous shift of hitherto irritating political correctness into something far more sinister; socio-fascism. 

Sadly, this PC madness will only make community relations more tense, not less so as a non-racist but nevertheless fed up English majority feel that implicit in this frenzy is the suggestion that a) they are all racist by association; and b) a precedent is being established by which the law will be applied in favour of one section of society against the rest. In recent polls 85% of the population object to the Establishment obsession over race and racism believing it to be over-reacting.

Racism is wrong and must be dealt with but in a patient and common sense way, not the kind of public show trials that now seem to be the norm and which seem to be taking place almost weekly.  Remember, I know what damage discrimination can do to a person and a career and I oppose all forms of such behaviour as I have myself suffered from it.  The real danger is not that people will stop saying racist things, but that they will stop saying anything anymore for fear of being accused of racism.  If that happens they will join the many millions of Britons who have retreated into sullen silence at work and elsewhere for the very same fear.

Where are the British going with all of this? Maoist-style re-education classes? Thought police?  The Dutch think the British are going mad over this issue.

Britain used to be renowned for common sense, tolerance and balanced thinking.  On issues of race and racism that is clearly no longer the case.

Julian Lindley-French