The death of Harry Leslie Smith is a great loss to the left-wing movement fighting the Tories’ cruelty

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As someone whose earliest years were spent struggling with desperate poverty, Harry Leslie Smith warned us not to let his past become our future (Rex Features)

I was very sad to learn of the death of the committed socialist Harry Leslie Smith today.

He was a giant of the Labour movement and an example to everyone struggling for a better world. He lived through the depression and the Second World War and learned the lessons of history. He found love with a German woman in the rubble of post-war Cologne.

He sympathised with the hundreds of thousands of refugees he saw on the roads of post-war Europe. He saw today’s politics through those experiences and refused to hate those targeted by the mainstream media. To the last he stood in solidarity with refugees and immigrants. He knew the Tories and their profit-based system are the enemy.

As someone whose earliest years were spent struggling with desperate poverty, he warned us not to let his past become our future. He is now with his beloved Friede and we are left with his legacy. #IstandwithHarry

Sasha Simic
London N16

Nicola Sturgeon has no place in the Brexit debate

That Nicola Sturgeon seeks to join Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in a UK-wide televised Brexit debate is beyond risible.

Let’s remember the nationalist leader has an exclusively domestic role – international relations, overseas trade and foreign affairs are explicitly beyond the scope of Holyrood’s authority. Though it’s arguably difficult to tell, Sturgeon’s remit is the effective management of education, the NHS and other public services.

With international matters reserved to Westminster, if the SNP leader seeks a valid international role, she should resign as first minister and become an MP. Or is she too preoccupied with using Holyrood as a campaigning platform for her independence dreams?

Martin Redfern
Edinburgh

Perhaps Theresa May would like to talk to the people really affected by Brexit

Theresa May’s recent and rare apology regarding her comments about “queue-jumping Europeans” (“I should not have used that language in that speech.”) is a non-apology.

Which speech should she have used it in? She should not have used such language in any speech.

She has now taken to touring Britain to muster support from the public, which will undoubtedly include mentioning over and over again that Britain will regain control of its own borders and immigration.

I have a challenge for her: come to Germany and talk to some of the tens of thousands of expats including ex-service personnel who live here with their European spouses and children, and try and justify to them that after Brexit and any implementation period their current inalienable right to return and live in Britain without conditions will be stripped away.

Because don’t forget everyone (EU and non-EU) will be treated equally after Brexit, meaning everyone will face the same hostile environment if they try to return to the UK.

I doubt even she has that much barefaced nerve. and will continue to visit carefully selected areas of Britain with probably carefully screened audiences.

To use a very old mantra: “A government for all the people”? I don’t think so.

Robert Greasley
Germany

Borders should not be such an endless source of conflict

In response to Oliver Carroll’s article on the Ukraine digesting what martial law will mean, I would like to suggest that although it is a tricky situation, don’t you think that Brexit is enough for Europe at the moment? I am not surprised at your declaration that some parts of the country have “bordered on panic mode” – I would as well if we were at the brink of world war three.

I have been taught that international borders and boundaries are a human-made construct, so why on earth can peple not, for once, agree on the borders they have already set?

Katharine Tompkins
Newcastle

When will we stop allowing companies to exploit vulnerable people?

Like many of your readers, I am sure, I was shocked, but perhaps not surprised to learn that 118 calls to directory enquiries could cost up to £20. The immorality of the actions of some of these companies seem to know no bounds, as we’ve seen with payday loan companies and PPI sellers.

While admitting that a large proportion of users of 118 numbers are elderly, Ofcom has decided to cap the charge at a level they declared most people would expect to pay. I would suggest that if they were forced – like the operators of many 0800 numbers are – to warn users of the possible cost of calls were they to continue, then most people would hang up immediately.

G Forward
Stirling

Enid Blyton didn’t make me feel deprived, she inspired me to dream

I just read your piece on revisiting Enid Blyton’s books in the context of “unkindness”.

I am of the generation that lapped up these types of tales. I was from a Jewish, working-class London family, light years away from the children who populated such authors’ stories. My favourites were Just William, Bunter, Little Women and girls’ boarding school tales. They plunged me into a wonderful world that, when I reflect, actually made me aspire. I never felt deprived as a result of reading these marvellous stories – you underestimate children’s ability to imagine and differentiate between fiction and reality.

I am now a senior citizen, still working as a mental health social worker, and those wonderful books have not left me with any smugness. I hope I maintain the core values of social work with all its emphasis on anti-discriminatory practice.

I would argue that, today’s cruel world of social media bullying and stories having to be written to compensate all those who feel deprived and underprivileged, create victimhood rather than aspiration.

By the way, Roald Dahl’s stories may be mischievous and “kind” but I’m sure you are aware what an unpleasant, overtly antisemitic man he was.

Sue Cooper
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