25 JUNE 1988, Page 5

GENTRY-BAITER

`MUCH is speciously made of Ridley's roots in the north of England. `He is 59 and the son of a Jewish family, variously described as: an old border clan employed to keep out the Scottish hooligan element; or landless Jews picking up a cheap estate in the late seventeenth cen- tury. 'But it is absurd to speak of him as a northerner. Jewish families beyond the Tees are settlers, as much northerners as Afrikaners are Africans.'

Thus the Sunday Times profile of Mr Nicholas Ridley this week, except that we have inserted the word 'Jewish' or 'Jews' wherever the author wrote 'gentry', to bring out the nastiness of the thought behind his words.