Import controls - a dangerous diversion Cricket and imperialism

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YOUR paper has documented fully the forms of economic domination, control of capital cash flows, the development of underdevelopment, whereby Western capitalism exploits and oppresses so called "Third World" countries.

However there is a large imbalance in the way you cover the manner in which the West distorts and destroys the indigenous culture and economy of underdeveloped states.

Your coverage is almost solely • economic. You should attempt to highlight the complex fashion by which British imperialism established its sociocultural hegemony over its Empire.

The game of cricket, presently flourishing across most towns of the country, is a classic camoe of the matrix of processes by which Britain dominated India, Pakistan, etc.

We attended the recent England/India Test Match and were greeted to exhibitions of violent racism and chauvinism against ourselves and also the Indian • piayers.

Obviously the Falklands crisis has l to a mini-renaissance Victorian patronage wards former "'members fi the Empire"

Buffoons

Tory MP lan McDonald Sproat, who is also editor of the Cricketers Who's Who said in the latest TCCB programme:

•The halcyon summers of Victorian cricket: those were the days! W.G. I think socialists should be Grace - idol of the British Empire at the peak of its glory - once ran three runs with the ball lodged in his shirt, and refused to remove it in case he was given out for handling the ball. Then there was Victor Trumper of whom it was said 'no-one came near him as a man or à cricket. And lastly the great Raymond R. Attwell of whom it was said 1 ''he can score liberally with both bat and tankard" • The spirit of these trojans of an Empire gone-by, lives on in the work of the Falkby of all known anti-convullands Task Force."

A few years ago such nonsense as this would not have been written without being greeted with jeers of derision. for eccentric buffoons. Yet today it is taken seriously. We ask you to give much more space in your paper to examining the causes and effects of cultural imperialism. It would certainly broaden the appeal of your newspaper.

WASIM ASLAM MOHAMMED MANSOOR HARTAZ AHMED Les Hearn suffering or death. the ISTC annual conference and had been prominent in the campaign against the witch-hunt in the Labour Party. Obviously militancy does not inoculate against the virus of protectionism and nationalism.

Those economists who peddle the formula of import controls as "socialist" panacea for the problems of the British economy should ponder over its warping effects on the consciousness of even the most militant sections of the working class.

IAN McCALMAN more of the anxiety sub-