Unions led astray
Sir: Leo McKinstry’s article on the current problems in the trade unions (‘Counter-strike’, 11 July) brings back unhappy memories of the last time a similar situation arose. This was probably best known for Arthur Scargill’s attempt to use his position as head of the NUM for his own self-aggrandisment. I lived through that era and remember it well. I knew union members who were frightened of their ‘leaders’, a situation the founders of the trade union movement would have found incredible.
In 1974 I attempted to transfer my union membership to a new location. Two representatives of the local branch came to see me, and were all smiles until I mentioned I wanted to opt out of the political levy. The smiles disappeared and I found myself unable to transfer my membership. All highly illegal, but this didn’t bother them. A few months later, when I could have done with the backing that union membership would have given me, I suffered the consequences and had to change my career plans.
Thanks to Mrs Thatcher the situation improved, but not without major damage to the miners among others. The Labour party, however, paved the way for a resurgence of the union barons’ power grab, hence the current situation. Mrs Thatcher gave the unions back to their members, who failed to change the system of selecting their leaders, and here we are again.
I agree with Leo McKinstry’s suggestions for the Trades Union Bill but his attitude to the unions is wrong. It is not the unions but their ‘leaders’ who need to be brought within the rule of law.
John R. Holliday
Bridge of Allan, Stirling
Infecting or enriching?
Sir: Your diarist Elisa Segrave (20 June) and your correspondent Peter Cardwell (Letters, 27 June) bemoan the ‘infection’ of British English by Americanisms such as ‘I’m good’ instead of ‘I’m well’. But this ‘infection’ has been going on for a considerable amount of time, and indeed many of these Americanisms have already long been part of our language. What about ‘OK’ — an American infection that has been with us for at least 150 years?
Why do we say ‘in the doghouse’ when we keep our dogs in kennels? Why do we say ‘coming out of the closet’ when our stuff is stored in cupboards? These are all infectious Americanisms which infiltrate our stuffy ‘British English’ year by year. Thank goodness they do, as they add colour to our dreary, cliché-ridden prose. What a pity we can’t be more inventive ourselves.
David Bye
Cambridge
Grexodus, surely
Sir: As a classicist, I’m not sure I share everyone’s enthusiasm for the neologism ‘Grexit’ to describe the possible departure by the Greeks from the euro (‘Greece’s crisis turns to tragedy’, 4 July).
Exit is, of course, a word of Latin origin. Yet while educated Romans certainly used Ancient Greek, the Ancient Greeks did not use Latin (or at least not until the later Roman Empire). The Greek word for exit is exodus, so ‘Grexodus’ might be more appropriate a coinage.
The problem with exodus is that its modern usage implies exit by the many. I suspect it is that prospect — together with its whiff of rats and sinking ships — which so terrifies the architects of the single currency.
Henry Stewart
Kingham, Oxfordshire
Maths and creation
Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 11 July) seemed unable to find a response to the question ‘What is mathematics?’ As a maths teacher, I told my students: ‘Mathematics is a search for patterns.’ Once we’ve found a particular pattern, we try to describe it as concisely as possible, in a rule or a formula.
The magic of mathematics is that the patterns, and hence the rules, crop up over and over again, in so many different spheres — from human affairs to the wondrous worlds of science and nature. It is indeed the language with which the universe was created. Whether by the gods, or not, is a question for another day.
Elizabeth Stamp
St Dizant du Gua, France
Cannibal hedgehogs
Sir: It is arguable that badgers have been overly protected, as Sir Simon Day writes (Letters, 11 July), but it may also be that hedgehogs these days are being overly sentimentalised. In the early 1950s I was rambling with my grandfather’s Irish terrier in the meadows bordering Upper Lough Erne. The dog had got well ahead and when I caught up I saw that he had turned a hedgehog on a small hillock. Passing that way some hours later and with the dog on a rope, I could see the spot where the hedgehog had lain. Some five of the departed’s brethren were gathered together. Not in respectful assembly for their fallen brother but with their snouts slurping on his innards.
Robin Robb
Handbridge, Chester
Start apologising
Sir: Following on from Rod Liddle’s article (‘You can’t take the Islam out of Islamic State’, 4 July), will those who proclaim that terrorism has ‘nothing to do with Islam’ take me seriously if I say that the Crusades, witch burnings and Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ had nothing to do with Christianity?
If not, then by their own logic they might demand that Islamic leaders start apologising as profusely for the errors of their still living co-religionists as Christian bishops do for our long dead ones.
The Revd Dr Tom Plant
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
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