Letters: Corbyn’s henchmen must accept collective failure over anti-Semitism

SIR – If a company was sanctioned to the same degree as the Labour Party over its illegal racist actions, the Labour Party would be clamouring for the whole board to resign.

When will all the MPs who served in Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and all those on the Labour NEC resign over what the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report calls a “collective failure of leadership”?

Sir Keir Starmer was in the shadow cabinet, and as a lawyer has a duty to uphold the law. It seems he has not. Will he resign as an MP?

Will Baroness Chakrabarti be stripped of her peerage?

Suspending one person, Jeremy Corbyn, as a scapegoat is risible when the whole Labour Party leadership were either active in the illegality or so supine as to fail to stop it.

Andrew Keith
Godstone, Surrey

SIR – Jeremy Corbyn has rightly been suspended from the party. Almost immediately Len McCluskey, the general secretary of the union Unite, jumps up demanding his reinstatement on the grounds that the suspension will split the party.

Will this dinosaur never learn?

David Muir
Stoke Gifford, Gloucestershire

SIR – Having sorted out the figurehead of anti-Semitism in the party, Sir Keir must salvage its historically progressive and pioneering role in our society by dealing with the ragbag of Trotskyists, communists, and Momentum extreme-Left activists who infiltrated it in order to install Mr Corbyn as their puppet.

Ron Giddens
Caterham, Surrey

SIR – The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report makes disturbing reading. Unlawful discrimination is a nasty tag, and even a tag of discrimination is unpleasant.

Let there be civil war in the Labour Party. Mr Corbyn and his acolytes had made the party unelectable. With no serious opposition, the Government was able to let the country drift into a perfect storm. Lack of leadership, ability, planning and policy leaves Britain on a lee shore, with no one on the bridge with any seamanship skills.

Sir Keir needs to forge a proper Labour Party and continue to hold the present Government to account.

James Bishop
Wincanton, Somerset

SIR – Sir Keir Starmer has been quick to act and suspend Jeremy Corbyn from the party. But do not forget that before the last election Sir Keir was actively presenting Mr Corbyn as a potential prime minister.

Charles Penfold
Ulverston, Cumbria

SIR – I challenge the BBC, in the spirit of impartiality, to produce a dramatisation of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Chris Winter
Tiverton, Devon

Cut off in a crisis

SIR – My 81-year-old brother suffered severe psychiatric problems caused by lockdown, and 13 weeks ago was moved by mental health authorities to a home for his own safety.

In a week he will return to his flat in the West Country. A nephew went to the flat on Thursday and found that my brother’s phone was cut off. He also found a bill from the Post Office for broadband and phone payable by October 16.

I rang the Post Office to arrange a reconnection and was told that this was impossible because my brother had defaulted on the payment. I explained the circumstances and offered to pay the bill immediately, but this was not accepted. I asked to speak to a manager, but none was available.

If this persists, my brother will come home to find that he has no means of communicating with his family. This is hardly likely to help his recovery.

Such intransigence is unbelievable in this time of crisis. I shall certainly advise my brother to change supplier.

John Strange
Mountsorrel, Leicestershire

Tackling fly-tipping

SIR – Julia Hartley-Brewer (Features, October 29) is right that fly-tipping is a growing problem. But she and Jeremy Paxman (report, October 27) are wrong to blame the Environment Agency.

The people responsible for fly-tipping are the selfish individuals who do it. Tackling fly-tipping is the responsibility of local authorities, not the Environment Agency. But we do investigate fly-tipping and illegal dumpings that are large, hazardous or linked to organised crime. We close down two high-risk illegal waste sites daily. We put the worst offenders in jail, seize and crush their vehicles, and confiscate the proceeds of their crimes.

Emma Howard Boyd
Chair, Environment Agency
London SW1

SIR – We have a four-door sports utility vehicle at our home in Cumbria. I can’t visit a recycling centre in this without permission, because Cumbria County Council won’t accept that it is our “private car”. I therefore have to apply for a permit for recyclables, valid for 12 months, and a permit for landfill rubbish, for use once a month. I then learn that, “owing to Covid-19”, permits are not being issued and we can’t visit any recycling centre in Cumbria.

Fortunately, Surrey County Council accepts the rubbish – after being transported more than 300 miles.

Peter Froggatt
Dorking, Surrey

Islamist terrorism

SIR – Once again Nice and its citizens have become the victims of savage terrorism – eloquently termed by the city’s mayor “Islamo-fascism”.

It is time for Britain to stand beside France and other democracies and call out the hateful nonsense coming from the likes of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistan’s Imran Khan.

The idea that France encourages anti-Islamic propaganda is fanciful.

We must recognise – and our leaders must be able to state aloud – the fact that murderous attacks on innocents in Manchester and London, in Paris and Nice have been perpetrated in the name of Islam.

It is not the time to hide behind our British politeness. We must stand up for our values, support our allies and fight this evil.

Chris Savins
Eastbourne, East Sussex

SIR – Rakib Ehsan (“The vilification of Macron by Muslim countries is disturbing”, telegraph.co.uk) is wrong to defend Emmanuel Macron’s “bold stance against Islamic separatism”.

The crackdown Mr Macron has ordered – closing mosques, searching individuals' homes and shutting down associations in an attempt to make “fear change sides” – has ramped up tension and inflamed moderate Muslims around the world.

Religious tolerance is a cardinal indicator of a civilised society, as I know as a Christian and ethnic Armenian who grew up in Baghdad, where I never experienced persecution, and as a member of the Labour Party, from which I resigned over its failure to tackle anti-Semitism.

Europeans have spent centuries telling others how to live, or interpret, their religion. President Macron stigmatises an entire faith based on the actions of a few violent extremists. It can have only one result – to fuel rage.

Professor Lord Darzi of Denham
Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation
Imperial College, London

Lost Trust

SIR – The National Trust (Letters, October 29), in a “cost-cutting” exercise at Portland House, Weymouth, has dismissed a team of 15 volunteer gardeners, to be replaced by a contractor. The Trust is a wonderful organisation that has lost its way.

Julie Bowen
Weymouth, Dorset

Guising and mischief

SIR – I was interested in your article on the origins of Hallowe’en (telegraph.co.uk). As children in Scotland 60 years ago, we went guising in masks or old sheets. In return for fruit and sweets, we recited or sang to neighbours. We had turnip (not pumpkin) lanterns – hard to carve out but portable. There was no “trick” here, only treats.

In the mid-Sixties, we moved to Cumbria. No one had heard of guising there, but they had Mischief Night, when children would take neighbours' gates off their hinges and carry them down the road. Tricks but no treats…

It seems the two customs have been combined in the United States and then re-imported here.

Katharine Lee
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire

Well crumbled

SIR – After making damson gin (Letters, October 29), a good use for the damsons removed from the gin is to make damson gin crumble with custard. For health and safety reasons it is best not to drive for several hours after partaking of the dish.

John P Leefe
Barleythorpe, Rutland

Plans to leave street performers out in the cold

SIR – Westminster City Council’s intention to reduce street performing to a handful of pitches with heavily rationed timetables (report, October 25) is surely at odds with Conservative principles.

We should be de-regulating to help get the performing arts economy going, not putting friction on of one of the few ways left for musicians and other artists to earn a crust during the pandemic. Let’s use the performing arts to attract people back to high streets and bring them the joy of live performance. It helps the wider economy, impoverished artists and the nation’s mental health – all good sound Conservative principles.

Stuart Barr
Founder, Out To Perform
London SW9

When women are allowed to inherit a peerage

SIR – In her column making the case for women having equal rights to inherit peerages (Comment, October 29), Kinvara Balfour could have strengthened her cause by mentioning that a number of peerages, particularly Scottish, do go through the female line without causing any outrage. Some of the most ancient titles have survived so long for this reason.

If the eldest daughter automatically succeeded this would also prevent titles going into abeyance where there is more than one daughter (because, to add insult to injury, women not only take precedence behind men, they have none between each other).

Some peerages, though – for example, Mountbatten – were created with a special remainder enabling succession through the elder daughter.

The recent death of the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (Obituaries, October 28) reminds us that when her husband died without a male heir in 1988, the marquisate, two earldoms, one viscountcy and a barony were all extinguished.

David Vaudrey
Doynton, Gloucestershire

SIR – Audley End House, to which Kinvara Balfour refers, is owned by English Heritage and open to the public. This has been the case since 1948, when it was sold to the Ministry of Works. As such, it can hardly be inherited by the 11th Baron Braybrooke as the author asserts.

Having visited several times to admire the house and gardens, I can thoroughly recommend it.

Richard Braybrooke
Richmond, Surrey

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