Letters: Briefly

The Co-op was not founded to provide cheap food for the poor but unadulterated food for their families ("A man in a hurry for his divvy", 20 March). Even when the workers were able to buy enough food they found sand in the sugar, chalk in the flour, water in the milk. No wonder their health suffered.

Helen Stewart

Welwyn Garden City, Herts

Scottish municipal authorities own golf courses where anyone may play ("The sport of the small-minded", 20 April). Golf features on some school curricula. Even the courses at St Andrews are municipally owned.

Prudence A King, Aberdeen

Rian Malan, a South African, ("Where She first trod...", 20 April) should not forget that it was Margaret Thatcher who as Prime Minister said five years before Mandela became president that "anyone who thinks the ANC will ever form the government of South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo- land".

Len Clarke, Uxbridge, Middx

Neal Ascherson, writing on hospital porters (20 April), is right: the unchanging heart of Britain is the mass of people who do their jobs not for wealth or power but from an innate human need to help other people, to be of service to the community.

Maurice Hill, Alicante, Spain