I AM afraid that Mr Asquith must be wearing rose-tinted glasses when he wrote his letter on immigration.

Mass immigration in the past has often been to a country with spare landbut the Romans went home (after trying Northumberland in winter), the French learnt English, the smaller groups got on with their trades, the religious often quietly got on with their devotions.

But now England is full and we have foreign enclaves in all the major cities in which English is not often heard and mediaeval rules are aggressively preferred.

Unfortunately we have a naive support for the advantages of immigration based on past history which are now not entirely relevant.

The need for youthful labour is not an excuse for permanent immigrants because, in their turn, they will grow older – do we then import another five million and so on?

GEOFFREY BISHOP Malvern Wells