The case for law and order
Sir: Quite apart from any other points of disgruntlement with Giles Playfair, I must take up the wholly false antithesis in his letter in your issue for 18 July.
As he perfectly well knows, the dinner at Cambridge, which is alleged to have given rise to the student riot with serious conse- quential damage. was not held to offer aid and comfort to the Greek colonels but to stimulate travel in Greece which no more implies in any way support for the current regime there than would travel in any eastern European country be justifiably held to be in support of any one of the stooge Com- munist governments at present there in power.
Mr Playfair is also surely trying to argue that the end justifies the means.
B. Engert Vansghyll House, Peasmarsh, Rye. Sussex
Sir: Mr Giles Playfair, in his wholly uncon- vincing criticism (Letters, 18 July) of your excellent commentary on the sentences passed recently on several Cambridge students for their part in the recent, local anti-Greek riot- ing, has evolved a new dimension in double- standard political thinking. First of all adopt- ing false premises and then adducing false analogies from them, Mr Playfair poses the question of what would have been the judicial penalties inflicted on these same students if their violence had been directed against a Russian festive occasion celebrating the rape of Prague. I do not know. I do know that the present Greek government, however much one may disapprove of its internal adminis- tration, has not committed brutal aggression upon a smaller peaceful neighbouring foreign state; and the occasion which provided the excuse for the students' violence was a cul- tural one.
If Mr Playfair cares to find an actual rather than a hypothetical left-wing com- parison the nearest parallel would be the Red Choir's visit to the UK. Their appearances here, it is true, did not lead to any convic- tions of, and sentences on. rioting students, harsh or lenient: only because, of course, there were no manifestations of that alleged moral fervour that led to the anti-Greek outrages. I wonder why not?
Frederic Bennett House of Commons, London swl
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