ANTHONY Backhouse demonstrably does not like multicultural Britain, foreigners, refugees, Arabs, or anybody else much (Letters, December 3).

And he does a neat line in personal abuse, in the manner of American shock-jocks.

I have never previously been described as a “liberal sycophant”. The “Liberal” bit I accept, if reluctantly. The charge of sycophancy I reject, rebut, refute and repudiate, if only because I have never ever sought to ingratiate myself to anybody, and to suggest otherwise verges on defamation.

But your correspondent poses a serious problem.

He claims not to wish to re-run the holocaust (or, by extension, any other form of ethnic cleansing), and I believe him. But apart from the atrabilious howl of incoherent protest at the presence of all these pesky foreigners in our midst, it is not at all clear what, if anything, he would wish to do about it.

Perhaps he should tell us.

I do not, as it happens, accept his prophecies of doom to come. Yugoslavia was a reasonably tolerant and well-run society during the reign of Tito.

It was only when Tito died, and Romantic Nationalists like Radovam Karadzic started stirring the cultural pot, that things went rancid.

The other examples he offers are mainly complicated by tribal as well as cultural conflicts.

We have demonstrated already in places like Leicester that multi-cultural, multi-ethnic societies can and do work successfully to the benefit of all concerned.

Perhaps Mr Backhouse should tell us about his preferred alternative.

Peter Johnston Kendal Road Bolton