Debate stifled

Allan Massie says immigration "is no longer the property of racists and xenophobes" (Opinion, 4 May). But why was it ever?

Because whenever William Hague or Michael Howard or many others before them raised the subject for public discussion, they were shouted down as racists by the Labour and Lib Dem parties, and their BBC and media allies. Massie says "it's a question of numbers". Was that not Enoch Powell's (regrettably over-dramatised) argument in 1968?

JOHN BIRKETT

Horseleys Park

St Andrews