MR L A O’BEE’s last two letters (April 1 and April 2), is but a continuation of the tiresome pejorative opinions he has of our fellow members of the EU.

His exaltation of UKIP is quite enigmatic, seeing that their intentions, should we be so foolish to support them, are entirely nebulous, mainly stating what they are against, not what they are for.

Such policies that they have, are even more right wing than the present Government, who are doing their utmost to wreck a welfare society that was created to protect the disadvantaged.

Comparing the EU to Hitler’s Reich is appalling and being “trapped in the EU clutches”, pure tripe. We have been full members of the EU for over 40 years, decisions made, we have been party to.

Over four million jobs in this country are linked to our membership. The employment would be gleefully wiped if we left. Already the right of appeal to an industrial tribunal has a £1000 price tag put on it by this Government, and redundancy rights are under threat.

As Brenda Knopf asserts we fought to defeat a tyranny, and it is certainly not a case of us being ruled by a foreign state.

His analogy of being ruled by a foreign power, based on his post war occupation experience, is also a great distortion of what pertains.

That was 70 years ago, times and people have changed, we have all moved on, we live in a globalised world.

Mr. O’Bee would gladly give away all that we have for a mystical something we haven’t got, and probably never will have. To break our association with Europe, our near neighbours, will leave us having to build a new agreement, and trade partnerships with those countries much further afield.

Contrary to what Mr O’Bee thinks, all the former members of the old “empire preference” days have also moved on.

They have other partners, they have not been sitting, just waiting for our return. UKIP’s position is based on nothing more than an unwillingness to belong to any association, unless everyone conforms to what Britain wants, and dictates.

Leaving Europe will not create one single job opportunity that does not already exist, and that is being fought for worldwide.

To imagine as Mr. O’Bee seems to, that belonging to an association is OK as long as it operates, as we dictate, is a contradiction in terms, based most likely on the faint echoes of the distant drums of empire, when everyone jumped to our command, or else!

His assertion that free speech disappeared years ago is quite simply confounded by the xenophobic rhetoric he perpetually puts into print in regard to the EU. Most people have come to accept that cooperation is better than confrontation. Members of associations continually work to make them better, not leave in a fit of petty chagrin.

MR D R SMITH, Southampton.