Subscribe Thirty-six constituencies with all but one voluntarily agreeing to help achieve Labour's aim of increasing Labour women's representation in Parliament selecting from all-women short-
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Thirty-six constituencies, with all but one, voluntarily agreeing to help achieve Labour's aim of increasing Labour women's representation in Parliament selecting from all-women short- lists dumps the imposition argument surrounding women candidates.Another myth in Mr Livingstone's article concerns exclusion of Muslims from the Manchester Gorton selection, and two investigations concluding that some Asians were wrongly excluded. The only difference a lower exposure rate will make is in the ease with which they find their victims.We need to be able to identify the people with these compulsions before they commit crimes - at which time there will still be public sympathy for them - and then find methods to restrain and change their abusive obsessions.Yours faithfully,Hilarie BowmanHam, Surrey. From Mr Peter Coleman Sir: How easy it seems to write articles such as Ken Livingstone's Another View ("Asians won't go away, Tony", 3 August, which claims knowledge of "scandal", "racism" and "imposed white candidates". If these people experience a compulsion to abuse and murder children, then they will seek out their victims anyway.
However the next step in the argument about statistics on child safety is whether exposure rates have any bearing on the incidence of strangers murdering children. It could be the case that the people who do these things are a tiny, but fairly constant, proportion of the general population. From Ms H J. Bowman Sir: It is true that exposure rates of children are probably much lower nowadays, as suggested by Professor O'Carroll (letter, 3 August). Just because he has seen stone circles in the Gambia, then stone circles everywhere else must have been constructed by black Africans. Surely quite distinct ethnic groups can produce apparently similar patterns of belief and culture.If it was wrong for 19th-century European imperialists to assert that the prehistoric remains of Zimbabwe must have been constructed by white settlers in antiquity, then it is also wrong for 20th-century multi-culturalists to invent a spurious history for black settlement in Britain before the Fifties and Sixties.Is it so difficult to find positive role models since the post-war immigrations that we have to fantasise about a prehistoric black presence?Yours sincerely,Geoffrey LittlejohnsThurmaston,Leicestershire. Surely this is but an example of cultural imperialism, this time on behalf of blacks.
Why should Berbers be labelled "black" just because they inhabit North Africa? I have met Berbers who look anything but black, individuals with blue eyes and light skins. Mr Hyland also makes the assumption that cultural similarities must prove that ethnic background is identical. From Mr Geoffrey Littlejohns Sir: A.D.C. Hyland (letter, 2 August) backs up his claim that "Blacks have been players in the stage of British history for thousands of years" by asserting that Stonehenge was built by Berbers. Stone circles have been found in Africa, so Stonehenge was built by blacks. A few years ago at the ultra-conservative Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the audience stopped the third act of Wagner's Lohengrin in mid-stream to applaud the sensational delivery by Eva Marton of Otrud's curse, I imagine Wagner and most composers would be delighted at such spontaneous reaction, especially where the music has come to a halt and there is nothing more natural than accompanying the release of tension (not to mention coughing and the orchestra's re-tuning) with appreciative applause.I was much struck at a kabuki performance in Tokyo by a lone spectator who cried out "Banzai!" at what seemed to me a most inopportune moment: this was a marvellous example of a genuine individual response as opposed to the (Western) convention of waiting until everyone has been given permission to applaud together.It is the ill-natured tut-tutting and shushing of those who object to such responses that should be banned.Yours faithfully,M D Varcoe-CocksLondon, W64 August.
WoberPrincipal LecturerDepartment of Media ProductionPoole, Dorset4 August. From Mr Michael D. Varcoe- Cocks Sir: It is not only between the movements of symphonies that applause for music can break out (Letters; 30 July, 4 August). Not by me.The true interpretation is, surely, that screen violence has a small effect, on some people, in interaction with other influences.