Letter: Why we should hail Swampy and friends as patriotic heroes

Sir: Your brief editorial nod (30 January) to the underground protests on the route of the A30, with its grudging admiration, fails to give proper recognition to the issues involved.

Swampy and his fellow tunnellers would be hailed as heroes if their passive and ingenious resistance to the road-building sickness were seen not as anarchic mischief but as a spirited defence of our land, our country. They have been putting their lives in danger to protect a strip of ordinary England from being lost for ever to tarmac, exhaust fumes and the inescapable roar of traffic.

BEN BYDAWELL

Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire