YOUR contributors (Letters, January 4, 10 and 18) use common sense and facts when condemning the Racial Equality Council and the Commission for Racial Equality, but Phil Riley (Letters, January 10) seems to view race relations with blinkered vision.

We should be free to judge people, irrespective of their colour, creed, race or sex, on their merit, behaviour and contribution to society, not on rules whose interpretation is enforced by unelected and undemocratic bodies.

When earning that freedom, we called our allies "Aussies, Yanks, Springboks," etc, though they were sacrificing their lives for us.

They called us "Limeys" and "Poms" but the REC and CRE were not needed.

I must admit, however, one "Froggie" went too far and met his Waterloo when he called us a nation of shopkeepers. The REC of the day rightly incarcerated him on Elba.

A SEDGWICK (Mr), Lyndhurst Avenue, Blackburn.

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