LETTER:Who is a true Englishman?

From Mr Sebastian Payne

Sir: How depressing it is to read the sentiments written by Robert Henderson in Wisden Cricket Monthly. Describing black Englishmen as "foreigners" might incite others to racial hatred, an offence under the Public Order Act 1986. Talk of being "unequivocally English" and referring to "instinct" and "biology" is not so much an exercise in patriotism but an attempt to recycle the dangerous pseudo-science of such 19th-century "thinkers" as Gobineau, on whom the Nazis based their creed. When David Frith, editor of the offending journal, describes the article as an attempt to start a "serious debate", one can only despair at the appalling ignorance, not least when "ethnic cleansing" takes place daily in the Balkans.

Yours faithfully,

Sebastian Payne

Senior Lecturer in Law

University of Westminster

London, WC1

3 July