31 OCTOBER 1992, Page 29

Sir: I agree with much of what Tony Par- sons

said about the degradation of the working class (to which I belong myself) as compared with what we were like some decades ago. But this degradation has to a considerable extent to be blamed upon th middle classes, at the cultural level anyway, for they have brought about these evils: the total abolition of capital punishment; the spread of pornography by books, maga- zines, films and videos; the demythologising of the Gospels; the intelligentsia's assaults on propriety, morals, good behaviour dress and manners; the propagation of homosex- uality — all this libertarianism has filtered down somehow from the middle-class elite to the lower levels.

Thomas W. Gadd

45 Lever Road, Rugby, Warwickshire