There are times in this life when we need to stand up to be counted. And this is one such time. I appreciate that you may well not agree with me over this, but we each have the right to our own opinions and to the opportunity to express them in a reasonable manner.
This is the text of a letter published over my name in today's ILFORD RECORDER. Mike is MP for ILFORD SOUTH.Since writing this on Tuesday (the letter pages deadline) we now know that there is to be a debate on 20th February in the House of Commons following the petition. (I sent a similar - but shorter - letter to the GUARDIAN, but it did not appear!)
Text of letter to the Editor, ILFORD RECORDER
Congratulations to Mike Gapes MP for speaking up in the debate on Monday. History records the appeasing of the 1930s.
Like many of your readers and MPs who spoke, my childhood was blighted by months eating my dinner and sleeping in a damp, draughty and unheated Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden at my Newbury Park home during the Blitz. Later it was the same during the doodle-bugs, but in a Morrison shelter in the dining room with sandbags blocking out the light and air. I pray that those days will not be repeated for my children and grandchildren.
I do not need anyone to lecture me about not making comparison with fascism and the Nazis - especially so near Holocaust Memorial Day. With over a million and a half others (to date - and growing every day) I have signed the petition calling on the Government to withdraw the invitation for a State visit to the fellow across the pond who, I am given to understand, is now President (although I hope this is just a bad dream and I will wake soon!). I am just sad that I did not feel up to taking part in the demonstration on Monday evening outside Downing Street.
