When we moved to Watford 40 years ago, there were several major industrial employers: printing, paper mills, truck parts, construction equipment, even a Rolls-Royce plant and aerodrome. All had social clubs and some had sports facilities. Only the last survives as the “Harry Potter Experience”.
Watford is no different to other towns and cities and John Harris is right (Brexit is the act of a country that is blind to its own history, 3 June). The 1980s upheaval has been erased from our shared memories. Freeview channels are certain to be carrying, on any given day, several programmes on wartime experiences but little or nothing on social history since 1945, with the possible exception of the NHS.
I cannot explain this, as I understand that such programmes are watched and well received, and they cannot be expensive as the film footage is there in archives.
I now volunteer with my local heritage trust. We are addressing hidden histories this year with exhibitions and events on Kodak, which had a major presence over decades in Hemel Hempstead.
Television has never embraced localism. I think the broadcasters are mistaken if they believe there is not the interest.
John Byrne
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
• Identifying leave voters (and, increasingly, even remain voters who hold to Labour’s manifesto and accept the referendum result) with Nigel Farage is indeed as absurd as it is easy: follow-the-leader politics plays well within our toxic media celebrity culture and online side-taking, but it does not reflect reality.
Caricatures of an uneducated and racist working class, such as Paul Mason’s, sadly abound in a “Labour” party whose membership is now 77% middle class.
This gulf between the membership and the traditional voting base is dangerous: it potentially cedes territory to the far right, not least because the latter offers change in the form of radical economic policies (often including nationalisation and anti-globalisation) alongside noxious racism. All the “remain hardcore” offers is business as usual.
Peter McKenna
Liverpool
• Reflecting on John Harris’s article, I found a point to disagree with in an otherwise excellent if troubling piece. He writes of failures, particularly of the education system, resulting in ignorance about our country. I think that ignorance speaks of the success of our education system in raising us to be unquestioning. I am always struck by the fact that US students I teach all know who Thomas Paine is, while British students hardly ever do. The ignorance extends to our knowledge of the EU. I wonder how many people think that the European court of human rights is part of the EU, and that Brexit will free us of it?
Bill Gabbett
London
• As a redundant miner who campaigned before, during and after the 1984-85 strike for both economic and social investment, I, far more than Mr Harris, am aware of the depth of betrayal, loss and anger in previously strong working-class communities.
However, there is absolutely no alternative but to take on the Brexit party, Farage, the ERG and the Tory party both in and outside of parliament, in the interests of working people throughout Britain.
The incoherent decision-making by the Labour party’s national executive committee that flies in the face of an annual conference decision does not in any way give the lead the nation is desperate for. The way out is a binary choice, starkly in or out. The May-negotiated EU agreement shows that any form of compromise cannot succeed.
Lawrence Knight
(Former president, Kent Area NUM), Aylesham, Kent
• Thank you, Larry Elliott, for putting the case for a Brexit compromise so lucidly (Corbyn is right. Labour needs both leavers and remainers, 6 June). This surely is the only way forward if the UK is to avoid a civil war between two inflexible, extreme views on Europe.
Catharine Sadler
Little Birch, Herefordshire
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