Letters: There has been a depressing lack of progress in race relations in Britain

What we have been witnessing with UK Governments, both Labour and Conservative, is deeply concerning, latching onto the issue of immigration not for the benefits that it brings, but as being something to be “controlled”, akin to a disease.

The creation of a “hostile environment” by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, didn’t just affect the 50,000 or so Windrush generation individuals, a number of whom have been deported already or threatened with deportation. “Go Home” vans demonised not just illegal immigrants, but landlords became responsible for checking the status of renters and employers. It meant discrimination not just against foreigners, but specifically those of colour who were more easily identified.

Under Prime Minister David Cameron immigration was famously to be cut down to the tens of thousands, and the main political parties pandered to an anti-immigration agenda, very rarely if ever advocating the considerable positive benefits that immigration brings to the UK. This of course was further compounded by Brexit, where immigration was “weaponised” and deployed effectively by the Leave campaign.

We recently marked the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech. Thankfully none of his predictions of widespread civil disobedience came to pass and we live in a largely diverse and tolerant society. However, the ghost of Powell is still alive and well, and indeed thriving, in the corridors of Whitehall.

Alex Orr,

Flat 2, 77 Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh.

IN the light of the Windrush Generation controversy and events such as the Grenfell disaster, it is time to realise that there is no such thing as “compassionate Conservatism”. It does not exist.

In the early 1990s I had a friend whose parents were Asian but my friend and her siblings were born in Glasgow. My friend had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalised because she was terrified people would think she was an “illegal alien”. It is time to realise that, in the words of Jo Cox, “there is more that unites us than divides us”.

The Windrush Generation were invited to Britain to rebuild the country after the Second World War. A lot of EU nationals were invited to Britain to fill jobs that weren’t being done by anybody else.

It is time to bring back respect for all people, irrespective of nationality.

Margaret Forbes,

Corlic Way, Kilmacolm.

THERE are some outstanding features of our post-Thatcher economy: massive wage gaps, austerity for ordinary people, poverty and homelessness, tax avoidance; hedge funds and so on. It looks unlikely that human beings will get priority if automation means more profits. There is certainly no indication that people matter going by previous policies.

Brian McKenna,

Overton Avenue, Dumbarton.

OWEN Kelly (Letters, April 21) could have saved himself time in his blast of the fiery trumpet against the monstrous regiment of Jacob Rees-Mogg when the first line of my offending letter qualified “Whatever one may think about Jacob Rees-Mogg and his politics”.

Mr Kelly has fallen into the trap of all too many these days in seeing politics in terms of crude caricatures. Such tabloid neanderthalism results in Mr Rees-Mogg transmogrified (pun intended) into the Lord Snooty cartoon figure of hate he’s been happy to play up to (dropping mentions of “nanny” in for maximum effect), in much the same way my own MP Mhairi Black revels in taking over the vanquished Tommy Sheridan’s mantle as The Thinking Man’s Ned. That they are good friends in the Commons says it all: the heroes that fatuous Generation Tweet deserves. That Tinfoil Theresa May and Comrade Jeremy Corbyn believe mimicking their own caricatures is a good idea meanwhile is beyond tragic.

As for Mr Kelly’s claim that criticising Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech and Theresa May’s brutal backstab (or rather attempted) on the Windrush émigrés amounts to “decency”, what decency demands is restitution to those forced over here in 1948 because Britain signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) leaving our Caribbean colonies destitute so the United States to which we were heavily in debt could fatten its Mafia-run colonies like Cuba. Such is how the world repaid the Jamaicans, Trinidadians and Tobagonians who gave their lives for freedom three years before, and an outrage hidden in the maelstrom of political correctness and Alf Garnett prejudice resultant.

Mark Boyle,

15 Linn Park Gardens, Johnstone.

I HAVE no right to a special opinion about the appalling anxiety caused to some members of the “Windrush people”, though some are friends of mine and I can only hang my head in shame at this thoughtless treatment of such a group where so many have made major lifetime contributions to our society. However I also feel shame about the way relatives of the Lockerbie dead have been treated by aspects of Scottish behaviour.

There has been momentous opposition to our quest simply for the truth as to who murdered our families that dreadful night. The ensuing supposedly Scotland-led criminal investigation was overrun initially by American investigators at the crash site. But who ordered the destruction of the notebooks kept by so many non-US- based but dedicated searchers and what was the motive for doing so?

When Scotland does finally decide that action must be taken to re-examine the Megrahi verdict, the process is likely to be severely hampered by the absence of those notebooks.

Who ordered their destruction and why? It was a monstrously unwise decision, from deep within a huge international criminal inquiry, almost on a par with the decision by Scotland’s High Court that we UK relatives have no locus to request a further appeal against the Zeist verdict. I have met a number of searchers who are most unhappy as to how their findings have been treated: they are left without a key route to verify their concerns.

Dr Jim Swire,

Rowans Corner, Calf Lane, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire.