Letter: Liverpool and the slave trade: when a black child was a fashionable gift

Sir: Fritz Spiegl is right to criticise any adherence to orthodoxy that may obscure the truth of the universal capacity for human cruelty. As he rightly observes, black people in Africa are as capable as white people in Europe of barbaric behaviour.

His intellectual approach, however, suggests inconsistency in his use of the term 'black on black' to describe violence in Angola, Somalia and Rwanda, unless he is also ready to describe European wars and sectarian violence in Bosnia and Ireland as 'white on white'

Yours faithfully,

PAUL COOPER

School of Law

John Moores University

Liverpool

17 August