MR Lucas's comments on the minor rioting in London in connection with the May Day anti-capitalist demonstration (BEN May 8) were not, fortunately, as overheated as some of those that appeared in the national press. But their thrust was the same.

However, it was, after all, Tony Blair who set the tone. Comparatively fresh from an 11-week attempt to smash up Belgrade, he affected to be shocked by violence which was piffling compared to that for which he was responsible.

Here are a few points in an endeavour to infuse some rationality into the discussion:

1. The Paddington Rail Disaster Inquiry has given yet another instance of just what is wrong with capitalism: that in the last analysis it puts profits before people (over 30 of them in this instance).

It is understandable that people should want to demonstrate against such an economic system, and the regrettable actions of a minority cannot bring such a reasonable purpose into discredit.

2. The message written on the Cenotaph 'Why Glorify War' should have provided people with an opportunity to consider whether the cult of the Cenotaph does not lead us to sentimentalise war.

Soldiers who are under military orders, and in the First World War, could be shot for disobeying them, do not give anything. Nor do they merely die for their country, they kill for it too, but that obvious fact is always omitted.

3. Again the sod of earth placed on Churchill's head (a touch that the sculptor, Anthony Gormley thought was creative) should lead people to ask questions about his precise role in the war.

If, at Nuremberg, not merely the war crimes of the defeated had been considered but those of the victorious too, then Churchill could very well have been arraigned as a war criminal for his responsibility for the terror-bombing of civilians in German cities (In Hamburg the working-class area was completely wiped out).

Malcolm Pittock

St James Avenue

Breightmet

Bolton