Nick Cohen’s excoriating analysis of the government’s unforgivably cold-hearted response to Ukrainian refugees nails it precisely: Boris Johnson and Priti Patel demean us all in their assumption that most of us are racist and xenophobic (“The Tories claim we are worse than we are – and it’s the Ukrainians who suffer”, Comment). They are wrong. Even before the tragedy of Ukraine, poll after poll showed that most people want to be kind and decent to those seeking refuge. But Johnson and Patel pay attention only to that minority who don’t. And whip them up.
In my own small town of Hastings, local refugee support groups have a strong presence, and collectively many thousands of followers on social media. When tiny boats crammed with desperate refugees arrived on our beaches a few months ago, there was an outpouring of support, including over £34,000 collected in a few days in hundreds of donations by local people. The response to the people now fleeing the tragedy in Ukraine is similarly powerful. Over 1,260 have signed a petition to our MP urging her to oppose the nationality and borders bill and vote for the Lords’ amendments which threw out so many of its iniquities. On the streets, in the pubs, the cafes, the churches, we find an empathy that far outweighs the repulsive narrative so mendaciously claimed as what “the British people want”.
A few days ago, a local fisherman told me that he had been instructed by Border Force to report any dinghies in the Channel but to let them drift. “I’m not doing that!” he declared. “On sea, no matter who it is, no matter where they come from or why, everyone is my responsibility – let them drift? Hah!”
We are desperate to be listened to by our own parliamentary representative, a fellow party member with Patel and Johnson. Patel and Johnson may lack any smidgen of the imaginative capacity needed to empathise with our fellow humans who are fleeing for their lives – but most of the rest of us are better than that.
Felicity Laurence
Hastings, East Sussex
Why museums matter
The headline of your article gave the impression that museums are failing to make any difference to the lives of pupils (“Why a day out at the museum won’t result in better exam grades”, News). Nothing could be further from the truth – museums across the UK worked hard throughout the pandemic to ensure that children had access to engaging experiences of culture, art, science and history. These experiences are not designed to help children pass specific exams, but to contribute to their wider development and understanding of the world.
As your article recognises, there are numerous other recent studies that demonstrate the broader development and wellbeing benefits that museum visits can bring. Museums are brilliant places for discovering who we are, where we have come from and what we might become. There is no exam for that.
Maria Balshaw, chair, National Museum Directors’ Council; Sharon Heal, director, Museums Association; Andrew Lovett, chair, Association of Independent Museums; Jenny Waldman, director, Art Fund
Reframing Corbyn ‘disaster’
I must take issue with the framing of some of Rachel Cooke’s assertions and questions in her interview with Ed Miliband (the New Review). It is irritating to read that “the Jeremy Corbyn years (were) a disastrous period for the Labour party”, with no qualification or analysis of whether that was actually the case.
In 2017, Theresa May was expected to increase her majority; instead, Labour demolished it, winning over 40% of the vote for the first time in decades. Corbyn was able to communicate Labour’s optimistic and transformative agenda precisely because so few figures in the mainstream press believed he was a serious contender.
The result appeared to terrify liberal and conservative journalists alike, who spent the next two years recasting Corbyn as some sort of folk devil, even as Labour party membership rose to over 560,000 and its MPs enjoyed the fruits of their – temporarily – vastly increased majorities. Their efforts made a substantive contribution to the genuine disaster of the 2019 election.
I was and remain agnostic about Corbyn himself, believing him to be temperamentally unsuited to the role of party leader. What his leadership represented, however, was something entirely different: a genuine belief in the capacities and capabilities of ordinary people, to which millions of voters responded in kind. If that’s a disaster, I don’t know what success is.
Lynsey Hanley
Liverpool
Sustainability, not shiny toys
While I agree with Will Hutton on the need for a swift transition to renewables, having spent the last 20 years working as an engineer in the space sector, I have my doubts that beaming microwave solar power to Earth from space can ever be part of the solution (“Warmed-up Thatcherism was never going to be the answer. Now it would be a disaster”, Comment). Can you imagine the planning process? How does “Residents object to plans for death ray from the skies” sound as a headline in the local paper? And that’s before we get to energy security: what exactly will we do when a hostile power’s satellite “accidentally” collides with our orbiting power station, and how to fix it when it goes wrong?
But what is most frustrating is the unchallenged techno-utopianism underpinning much of the talk of net zero. We are constantly grasping for the next shiny toy, betting the farm (and our children’s futures) on the off-chance that yet more marginal gains and elaborate schemes will keep pace with our ever-growing appetites. Where in all this is the discussion of reducing demand, or an honest appraisal of how to live sustainably on a single planet with finite resources too much for us to face?
Kevin Middleton
Stanford in the Vale, Faringdon, Berkshire
Don’t focus on phones
It is astonishing to see the chair of the social mobility commission, Katharine Birbalsingh, claim “it all starts with smartphones” (“Take away children’s phones to boost social mobility”, News).
The past decade has seen the devastation of Sure Start children’s centres, a squeeze on education spending that has hit the most disadvantaged areas hardest, and steep cuts to social security benefits that have increased child poverty. Each of these factors will have damaged social mobility. Focusing on smartphones falls into a long tradition of blaming individual behaviour to distract attention from deep structural inequalities. The commission is supposed to hold government to account on its actions. It is not hard to see why Birbalsingh was the government’s choice as chair.
Dr Kitty Stewart
Associate professor, Department of Social Policy, Associate Director, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2
All Russians are not Putin
Hans Kundnani’s article makes the crucial distinction between Vladimir Putin and the Russian people (“First, we did too little to oppose Russia. Now do we risk going too far the other way?”, Comment).
We must not make the mistake a second time of failing to respect and work with the Russian people after Putin’s inevitable fall. The “west” – including particularly the United States – erred the first time by failing to support Mikhail Gorbachev and thus enabling him to achieve a far more gentle and constructive breakup of the Soviet Union. The cataclysmic implosion it suffered fatally destroyed Gorbachev’s credibility and contributed significantly to the estrangement of Russia from the west.
Disastrously, the United States, abetted by other western governments, encouraged exploitative capitalism to feed off the fall of the Soviet Union and it was this that produced the oligarchs who quickly grasped the sale of state assets. The collapse of the rouble in 1998 was the final straw, not least as it caused increased poverty among millions of Russians. They blamed Gorbachev and his successor Boris Yeltsin and, instead of following democracy, they looked for a strong nationalist leader – and there was Putin waiting in the wings. Putin is very much the collateral damage of the west’s mistakes. The Russian people rightly have great pride in their culture, much of which in its music, its opera, its ballet and even its literature, is European. We must constantly make the point that we also recognise Russian culture and draw Russia after Putin into a closer relationship.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
Your news article states that “Russians over 65 are 51% more likely to watch television than under-25s” (“Moscow’s family divide”). This still leaves 49% of over-65s who aren’t more likely to watch television, and not all of the 51% are swallowing the propaganda. Russian blogger Ilya Krasilshchik’s 110,000 followers does not constitute a major proportional ratio of a vast country to endorse the impression in your article that older Russians are pro-war in the Ukraine. Is it the over-65s who massacre, mutilate and rape civilians in war?
Liana Marletta
Glasgow
