It seems that my letter printed two weeks ago regarding immigration stirred up a passionate response amongst some of your readers. Indeed immigration is a passionate issue that many feel strongly about and I would agree with UKIP representatives that it is something that must be discussed with great thought.

My original letter posed the question: "What would we in the Forest know about immigrants and immigration?" because we are largely unaffected by this issue. It, therefore seems odd to me that we would cast our vote with the issue of immigration in mind when there are so many other issues that are more pressing.

I also wanted people to think whether being independent from Europe would necessarily be better for us. Non EU, Norway and Switzerland are extremely expensive countries to live in and cannot be cited as ideal role models because it could possibly mean the exclusion of the poor.

At no point in my letter did I raise the issue of ethnicity in the UK. UKIP in their reply have decided that this is an issue they are concerned about and so it should be discussed.

What I personally find alarming is that Mr Leppington of UKIP thinks that the UK before the 1950s "...was of Northern European origin primarily Saxon, Norse and Celt..." in other words white but of foreign origin (the exception being the Celts), and to him that was acceptable.

He goes on in his letter to allude to non white Asian and Black communities in the UK who he believes (although it must be hard to tell from a writing desk in Bream) are changing the UK "into a patchwork of disparate ethnic groups that do not integrate or assimilate into the host population."

I'm sure the Spanish say something similar about the British in Benidorm etc. Nevertheless, even if this were true do they not have that right? Isn't this the basis of British tolerance. Do they have to do what the white man tells them?

These are fundamental  rights laid down in the Magna Carta, fought for on the battle fields of the English Civil War and on the beaches of Normandy. They must hold true today. We must honour them because we are British.

What UKIP seem to be saying is that some kind of ethnic cleansing is acceptable because our

infrastructure cannot sus­tain our population. Then I ask you to go to our hospitals and our universities, schools and com­munity groups, bus stations and taxi ranks and find out what the face of our infrastructure looks like.

The chances are you will see non white people. If you find this unpalatable, then ask yourself what you would do without them.

In 1939 Adolf Hitler said, "...the notion that the Jewish people were chosen by God to live off the productivity of others will finally have to go. Jews will have to get used to the idea of performing some respectable constructive activity as other people do, or sooner or later they'll face trouble they never dreamed of,"

Now think about everything you've heard about immigrants coming here for benefits, for housing, for the NHS, for a free ride. An assumed and not official number of "...illegal immigrants cannot be contributing anything to the economy. All they do is cause an extra strain on our resources."

UKIP complain of being accused of being Fascists and Nazis. Perhaps its because they sound like them.

Times are hard. There is no let up in the fear and uncertainty of our present time. But we are British. We can do it together. We've done it before . We will get through it with our heads high. Let's not slip into something that will haunt other nations forever.

– Gordon Els­more, Bream.