The boat people
Sir: Alexander Chancellor really cannot be allowed to get away with so many misleading statements in his Notebook for 30 June.
Why does he say the refugee problem is a 'legacy' of the Vietnam war? The government in Hanoi has been saying, since the fall of Saigon, that the Vietcong and its allies won a people's war, drove the Americans from the country, destroyed their puppet government and eitablished a just society throughout Vietnam. Why, then, should anyone wish to leave? One could more reasonably argue that the flood of refugees results from the Americans abandoning the whole country to a cruel and totalitarian regime, instead of pursuing the war. No, the fact is that cruelty and repression are in the nature of most communist societies: why are so many leaving China for Hong Kong? Why do the East German leaders have to line their border with barbed wire, electric fences and mines? It is a mockery of the truth to say that the Americans caused the refugees to leave Vietnam.
Why does he say that the admission of 730, 000 immigrants in thelast ten years to the UK, one of the world's most densely populated nations, is irrelevant? Dragging in the National Front is thoroughly dishonest — an attempt to blackmail into silence anyone holding a different view. The admission of thousands more people into this country, whatever their colour or nationality, is extremely relevant to those who already live in it, particularly the unemployed and others not fortunate enough to enjoy the material advantages of Mr Chancellor.
Why does he say our population is falling? Is he not aware that the latest statistics show an increase in the birth rate? How does he know that is not the beginning of an upward fiend? In any event, most people would say that a reduction in our population would be highly desirable.
If he were to say that we should admit any number of needy refugees, whether from Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan or anywhere else, one could respect him for practising Christianity in its pure form. But he does not have the courage' to say that. Instead, he resorts to a miserable piece of materialism in suggesting that refugees from Vietnam will 'keep shops open at all hours and conduct themselves in a generally Thatcherite manner'. So our resources and our environment are to be subjected to yet more pressure of population, in order that Mr Chancellor may be able to nip out and buy his fish fingers at ten o'clock in the evening. And we are not even going to be able to say we are proper Christians! George Heygate Willow Grange, Wissett, Hale sworth, Suffolk
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