LETTER: UKIP comments seem to have ‘rattled a few cages’

New Labour were not the same political party that the working class of this country voted in.

Don’t take my word for it.

Margaret Thatcher famously made a speech in 2002 saying: ‘Our greatest achievement was Tony Blair’.

If that is not an indictment on new Labour I don’t know what is.

A more balanced assessment of the immigration situation stems back to 1945. Millions returning from war were being promised by the Tories ‘A land fit for heroes’ - just as they were promised in 1918.

But after WW1 all they got was the Great Depression, huge poverty and mass unemployment.

In 1945 they did not fall for the same trick and Labour won a landslide victory, introducing social policies such as the NHS, bringing into common ownership the utilities, mines, steel and the railways.

A massive house building programme was underway by the early 1950s, allowing a decent affordable house for everyone.

Problem was, they put capitalists in charge, and over the years undermined these policies and then duped the public into selling our assets on the cheap, ending up in the hands of greedy profiteers in the City.

After WW2 the workforce was not big enough to tackle the modernisation of Britain and we had to appeal to the commonwealth to help run the railways and the NHS.

They duly obliged and our society became richer for it.

Meanwhile, millions of workers throughout western Europe had also suffered from fascism and were determined not to allow it to grow and fester again.

So the Common Market was formed.

I must add at this point that I have many reservations about the EU, for example the ‘sovereignty’ issue, and with capitalism in charge in the EU there will always be high unemployment and poverty in European countries.

Those such as Tory Euro-sceptics , UKIP and others who wish to dismantle the EU threaten to return us to the laissez faire politics of the 1980s, which is one reason for the problems we have.

Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.