Cameron is the real threat to the Union

These letters appear in the 25 April edition of The Independent

David Cameron’s demonisation of the SNP will not only ensure a massive number of SNP MPs, but cause a rethink by the 55 per cent of Scottish voters who voted no in the referendum. By bringing new life to the West Lothian question, and a referendum on Europe, David Cameron is proving to be a bigger threat to the Union than either Nicola Sturgeon or Alex Salmond.

The real stakes for this election may prove to be not who reigns in Westminster, but whether the UK will survive the new parliament.

George D Lewis
Brackley, Northamptonshire

Of course Scottish votes are equal to English votes, Selma Rahman, who complains too how undemocratic it was when a Tory government introduced the poll tax to Scotland in 1989 (Letters, 24 April). While I am every bit as queasy at the thought of another Tory government as the next Scot, I am made even queasier at the thought of a party for which less than 10 per cent of the UK population is eligible to vote holding the reins of power at Westminster. At least in 1989 Scots could choose whether to vote Tory or not. That is not a luxury allowed us vis à vis the SNP.

Charlotte Wathey
Newcastle upon Tyne

I am aghast at the short-sighted political war being waged by David Cameron and his Conservative cohorts. Every major policy announcement has been designed not to unite this country, but to split it apart, all in the name of “England”.

The clear nationalistic emphasis of “English taxes” aligns Cameron with the worst of his Ukip and SNP enemies. He’s scaremongering, as all limited politicians do. He has no overall strategy or policy other than to divide and conquer. This will not create any society worth living in – United Kingdom, Scottish, Welsh, Irish or English. True One Nation Tories such as Macmillan and Douglas Home must be turning in their graves.

Christoph John
Carshalton, Surrey

Prominent in the SNP’s policy wish-list is a demand for a second referendum, despite everyone agreeing last year that it was a once-in-a lifetime event. Anthony Barnes (Letters, 23 April) points out that the entire population of Scotland is 10 per cent that of England (about 9 per cent including the Welsh and Northern Irish). Deducting those ineligible to vote and non-SNP supporters does not leave many people. Who does this small band of Scots expect to pay for their referendum? It would be a thoughtful gesture if those determined on a re-run offered to crowdfund it themselves, and find out the true level of support for separation.

S Lawton
Kirtlington, Oxfordshire

After years of waiting for a political leader who is more concerned with social justice than the deficit, who is not anti-immigrant and will get rid of Trident, along come three all at once. What’s more they are all women and all marvellous.

Eddie Johnson
Long Melford, Suffolk

Justice not served in case of Lord Janner

I am horrified by the attitude of Simon Kelner (23 April) and others to the non-trial of Lord Janner. It is a longstanding principle of English law that a person who is unfit mentally to stand trial will not be tried no matter what he might be charged with. That he is not being tried is not a scandal, it is purely a matter of law. If you don’t like it your only course is to get parliament to change it.

Like many people I am horrified by the sexual-abuse scandals which keep surfacing. But my horror does not extend to wanting what can only be called show trials.

Dudley Dean
Maresfield, East Sussex

Alison Saunders should ask her critics which potentially successful cases she should drop to pursue a show trial against Janner. Prosecutions are not free. Other victims, whose perpetrators may have much longer to live and pose a much greater risk, shouldn’t have their cases delayed by costly and futile stunts.

Samantha Chung
Cambridge

Alison Saunders expresses her frustration that Lord Janner could not be brought to justice (report, 24 April). Clearly her frustration is easily assuaged.

If we allow that his alleged mental condition rules out his appearance in the witness box, it does not rule out a trial, on two counts.

An accused person can be tried even though declining to give evidence, and there are the precedents for trying an accused person in absentia. In both cases a decision can be reached on available facts.

It seems ironic that, when in rude health, Janner himself advocated the former solution for dementia sufferers accused of war crimes.

Eddie Dougall
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

By avoiding prison, Lord Janner has missed the opportunity of a cure for his Alzheimer’s disease. Within weeks of his release, just 10 months into his five-year prison sentence in 1986, convicted fraudster Ernest Saunders was miraculously cured of his Alzheimer’s.

Andrew McLauchlin
Stratford upon Avon

Armenian genocide remembered

A century ago the Armenian genocide by Turkey took place (report, 24 April). We must never forget. Hitler told us why not when he said in 1939, “Who now remembers the Armenian genocide?”.

Turkey still remembers, but in a far more sinister way. Graffiti reads, “You are either a Turk, or a bastard,” near the wall of an Armenian church in Istanbul. In February, banners “celebrating” the Armenian genocide were spotted in several cities throughout Turkey.

Turkey’s dark racism is being openly displayed by its continued hatred of Armenians, its alienation of its dwindling and persecuted Jewish community (institutionally no longer considered Turkish), declining rights for non-Muslims and non-Turks and multiple human rights offences, which include the incarceration of more journalists than any other state on the planet.

Stephen Spencer Ryde
London N12

Terrible as the Armenian genocide was, it probably wasn’t the first of the 20th century. There are at least two other candidates.

During the Herero and Namaqua genocide in German south-west Africa. some 65,000 Herero (80 per cent of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Nama (50 per cent of the total Nama population) perished. The commander of the punitive expedition, General Lothar von Trotha, was eventually reprimanded for his usurpation of orders and the cruelties he inflicted. Sometimes referred to as “the first genocide of the 20th century”, this was officially condemned by the UN in 1985.

Second: in the Congo Free State under Leopold II’s rule, up until 1908, between three and 10 million died. Estimates of the death toll vary considerably, but the figure of 10m deaths was obtained by estimating a 50 per cent decline in the total population during the Congo Free State and applying it to the total population of 10m in 1924.

Lee Dalton
Weymouth

The magnetic Professor Laithwaite

Professor Eric Laithwaite (Editorial, “Magnetic Attraction”, 22 April) was my tutor in St Anselm’s Hall, Manchester University during the early 1960s. This particular hall of residence had an enlightened policy of giving its students a personal tutor from another academic discipline. I was doing a degree in natural sciences (botany and zoology) and was given Eric, a professor of electrical engineering. After enquiries as to my personal welfare, we then engaged in some wonderful discussions with me getting excited over magnetic levitation rail travel and he becoming enthused over the hunting strategies of parasitic wasps. They were truly memorable tutorials which had little or nothing to do with me obtaining a degree, but everything to do with me becoming more educated.

Canon Tony Chesterman
Alnwick, Northumberland

As a 15-year-old in the mid-1960s, I well remember being gripped by a practical display by Professor Eric Laithwaite of his linear motor. On a bench in a Leeds University lecture theatre, he demonstrated to a group of budding scientists how he could make a metal sheet skim across an opened-up electric motor and then enthused about how it would help change transportation forever.

In those days, we were taught to take pride in British sciences and we assumed that inventions like this would make the country rich and successful; yet here we are again seeing another nation develop our genius.

The reasons are obviously complex, but they probably centre on class, ie privilege in general, the banking system, private schools, and the stranglehold of the Oxbridge networking system. Until the rewards of being a scientist and engineer alter dramatically, and privilege is weakened, nothing will change.

Professor Milton Wainwright
Sheffield

Anatomical confusion

Why have people started referring to an MP losing their seat as decapitation? I find this anatomically confusing.

Mark Miller
Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria