Why Dutschke?
Sir: It would appear that even the usually balanced SPECTATOR has allowed partisanship not just to obscure the facts, but worse, to mis-represent them. At the start of your main leader column you de- tail on your first page (14 Novem- ber) under the title 'The Right to Strike' a list of freedoms the British people still enjoy. Inter alia 'Many of us also are eager (although not unhappily the Home Secretary) that this country's reputation as a place of sanctuary should be preserved'. That you should make this snide remark about one of the most fair- minded and tolerant men in British public life can only be presumably because you disapprove of his action in the Rudi Dutschke case. That of course is your right; but there is no element at all of re- fusing `sanctuary' to this young man. He came to this country not fleeing from his homeland, Ger- many, but from Italy in order to recover medically from wounds inflicted on him by another such political extremist albeit one be- lieving in an opposite ideology. There are two main reasons why he is now to leave England, neither of which has anything to do with his seeking 'sanctuary'. Indeed Mr Dutschke. although objecting to having to leave, has never, to his credit. made any pretence of being a political refugee.
Since I first entered Parliament in 1951 it has been my duty on scores of occasions to seek to get a permitted stay in this country ex- tended on other grounds than those on which the individual concerned first came here. Even when the applicants were of impeccable be- haviour and repute and with close family connections here (notably Australians and Canadians), I can- not recall. under successive Labour and Conservative administrations, a single occasion on which my plea has been granted. Why then should -Rudi Dutschke be made an excep- tion?
There may of course be addi- _ tional valid grounds for asking him to leave. Irrespective of whether this is shown to be so or not, certainly to talk of sanctuary not being afforded is nonsense :.Mr Dutschke is free to return to Ger- many whenever he wishes to do so. Frederic Bennett House of Commons, London swl
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