WHY should people who express a fear of immigration in the EU referendum campaign be accused of scaremongering when they are in fact being realistic?

The indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand and the Americas had no reason to fear immigration? Aye right. Throughout history, mass immigration has caused problems for the indigenous population of whatever country it affects.

“If you wish to know the future look to the past”. In England in 450AD, after the last Roman legion had left, the Romanised British invited the Angles and Saxons to come and protect them from the rampaging hoards from the north (Scotland).

The warriors who arrived to protect them were in the beginning few in number but soon became a flood. The native British were pushed west into what is now Wales and south into Cornwall, their country lost for ever. In Scotland, the same fate would befall the Picts. As the Scoti [the name late Romans used for the Irish] expanded from their stronghold in the south-west of Scotland they assimilated or destroyed the Pictish indigenous population.

In Ireland, as a counter to the problematic Catholic population, it was decided to settle Scottish Protestants in the north of the country, and we all know how brilliant that decision was, hundreds of years of killings and the eventual partitioning of Ireland, and the hatred between two branches of the Christian faith still shame us all.

Cyprus was Greek with a high Turkish population and with the help of Turkey the island was partitioned, divided between Greek Orthodox Christians and Muslim Turks.

India, after independence from the British, the country was partitioned, east and west Pakistan (Bangladesh) were formed, separating Hindu from Muslim. It wasn’t achieved without bloodshed and violence, Now both countries are permanently on a war footing in an atmosphere of hate and mistrust.

After the Second World War thousands of disenfranchised Jews headed for Palestine, to their ancient biblical homeland to create a new Israel. The only problem was that there was an indigenous population already in residence. As more Jewish settlers arrived more Muslim Palestinians were moved out. Wars were fought with neighbouring Muslim counties to decide Israel’s right to exist. Israel exists through the right of conquest? The Balkans, after Russia moved out: war, atrocities, displaced populations.

In Sri Lanka, immigrants from India, the Tamils in the north, want the right to self-determination. The indigenous Sri Lankans have been fighting the Tamil Tigers for years trying to prevent the island from being partitioned.

Millions of immigrants who have their own culture, religion, language and laws will, as their population grows within the host nation, demand the right for self-determination, the right to govern themselves. We in Britain live in a democracy. If at the ballot box the majority of the population in, say, the West Midlands return MPs who were voted in on a platform for separation from England – would they be given the right to self-determination? All over the world there are people who want independence, the Catalans in Spain, the Walloons and Flemish in Belgium, Italy north from the south, Scotland from England to name but a few.

Since Homo sapiens became self-aware, we have destroyed everything that is not a member of our tribe. We started with Neanderthal man and the other half-dozen or so hominids that had the misfortune to cross our path. And we’re still at it. It’s not rocket science trying to predict what’s happening. Look to the past and the present.
David Mckeen,
Methilhill, Leven

Hysteria from the Leave campaign is the real disgrace to democracy

OUR democratic rights are the most important issue in the EU referendum. For four decades we in the West have been controlled by neo-liberal policies (no wonder some on the left can’t decide if we are better out than in). A definition of neoliberalism is the promotion of the rule of markets.

Does the word "rule" suggest that neoliberalism is democratic? Does the behaviour of the Tory-supporting, hysterical, proprietor-dominated press, and the Government’s wholesale changes in health, education and industrial policy – based only on a slim majority – suggest that we today have a more democratic ethos here than we get in Europe?

EU Commissioners’ proposals do not become law unless they are approved by a majority – in the elected Parliament and in the Council of Ministers. From Europe we have gained the EU Working Time Directive in 1998 (before 1998, two million British employees did not receive paid holiday leave). Europe is now looking at what can be done to stop foreign workers undercutting local workers. Is immigration out of control by us staying in Europe? Well the fact we get around 200,000 immigrants from outside Europe shows that the complex needs of industry and the health service have shaped government policy.

If we didn’t need these workers our Government could easily have stopped them (Gove have you been sleeping on the job?). If we want to consider our democratic values as being the central issue then perhaps we should conclude with the argument that Leave’s campaign has often been so full of hysterical propaganda that they (not Europe) are the real disgrace to democracy.
Andrew Vass
Edinburgh

THE emergence of two types of Tory has been the most absurd outcome from the EU referendum campaign, cuddly Cameron versus extreme Boris. For all UK workers currently surviving on zero-hour contracts, the only difference is the Eton dormitory these Tories slept in. The ultimate guarantor of workers’ rights in Scotland is not Westminster or Brussels bureaucrats but rather organised labour and a vibrant job market, both now under threat from the same Conservative Party.
Calum Miller
Prestonpans

ONCE, a dreadfully divisive referendum was horribly sullied by an MP, regularly engaged in shouting in the street, being egged in the back. This was foul, an outrage, evidence of a criminally culpable campaign. Then an MP was shot and stabbed in another referendum campaign. Compare and contrast the establishment reaction.
Donald Gillies
Glasgow

DURING the EU referendum debate there has been much talk about freedom. This is a natural human desire: the freedom to control our lives in the best way we can to give us the most benefit. But aren’t we all constrained by the economic and political system we are born to: a piecemeal system developed, mainly by accident, over the last thousand years? A system that has not been planned to provide complete sustenance for the people; an inherited and unwieldy system that provides more than enough for the few and not enough for the many. This needs to change, whatever the outcome.
Geoff Naylor
Winchester

THE report on the use of DNA evidence to settle a legal dispute over an aristocratic title was very interesting as it ties in with something I have argued for many times over the years. (DNA ruling could expose bed-hopping artistocracy, The National, June 21). The Act of Settlement states that only direct descendants of the Electress Sophia of Hanover (granddaughter of King James VI) may become monarchs in the UK. As this is a legal requirement which all claimants to the Crown must meet, surely it is only right that we use the best methods available to ensure that the law is upheld?

For this reason, I believe anyone who wishes to become king or queen in future should be required to submit to a DNA test which could be compared with a sample extracted from the remains of Sophia.
Neil Caple
Tarland, Aboyne