Stuart Jeffries (The most racist election campaign ever fought in Britain, G2, 15 October) does a disservice to Smethwick, the town where I grew up. The Conservative candidate’s campaign in 1964 was vile, but the remote and patrician Patrick Gordon Walker did not lose the seat for Labour because the electors suddenly went racist. He lost because a Liberal candidate intervened and took more votes from Labour than from the Conservatives. Indeed, the Conservative vote actually went down, despite a higher turnout. Such racist activity as there was at that time was largely carried out by neo-Nazi agitators from surrounding areas.
Emeritus professor Keith Graham
Bristol University
• I was 10 in 1964. I remember racist Tory MP Peter Griffiths’s victory tour stopping outside our council house. Stuart Jeffries catches the flavour of a time when casual and overt racism was ingrained in many Britons. However, he underplays the role of the white working-class Labour activists (like my father, Ron, a Smethwick councillor from 1966) who, working with people of goodwill from all races, helped rescue Smethwick from the racists. There is also no tribute paid to Andrew Faulds, the MP to 1997, who defeated Griffiths in the 1966 election. Faulds was uncompromisingly anti-racist and his campaign and victory put Smethwick on course to a wiser, more inclusive politics.
As we know from UKIP’s rise, 50 years on, the context and language changes, but these are battles we still need to fight.
Cllr Phil Davis
Birmingham
• Peter Griffiths ran a racist campaign but, leafletting for Labour, the complaint I heard was of Harold Wilson assuming Smethwick was a safe seat for Patrick Gordon Walker as he wanted him for his cabinet and ignoring more local candidates. Only two years later Labour won back Smethwick with Andrew Faulds and it has remained Labour since, with both Faulds and later John Spellar bucking the trend through majority Tory governments.
Rob Morrish
Oldbury, West Midlands
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