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Guernica was one of many

In his timely "Cities under siege" (The Back Half, 27 January), Russell Martin perpetuates a common mistake about Guernica. Attacking civilian populations by aerial bombardment was almost a commonplace in the 1920s and 1930s. The British, the French, the Spanish, the Italians, the South Africans and the Japanese all did it. Some of these raids were on the same scale or bigger than Guernica, notably the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1937, the Spanish attack on Chechaouen in Morocco in 1925 and even Durango in Spain, a few months before Guernica. In his splendid A History of Bombing (Granta, 2001), Sven Lindqvist writes: "Of all these bombed cities and villages only Guernica went down in history. Because Guernica lies in Europe. In Guernica, we were the ones who died." Now, our selective outrage is again being used to trigger war.

David Mackenzie

Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire

Wronq about Trevor Phillips

I find it difficult to support Darcus Howe's endorsement of Trevor Phillips (27 January). While numerous new Labour policies have damaged the black and Asian communities, Phillips has been conspicuous by his silence. While the erosion of trial by jury and legal aid have helped to criminalise our over-scrutinised communities, the welfare-cutting New Deal and the abolition of student funding have caused significant social deprivation. "Race riots" and the growth of gangsterism are the results. Ministers have scapegoated black musical genres and the Asian community "for not being culturally white enough". Yet the only time Phillips complained of new Labour's institutional racism was when he feared he would not be selected for the London mayoral ticket.

Gavin Lewis

Manchester

Russia's fear of openness

The recent release on parole of the investigative journalist Grigory Pasko from a Russian labour camp perfectly illustrates John Lloyd's contention that "nothing goes forward in this country without simultaneously going back" ("Is Russia closing in on itself again?", 27 January). Pasko was jailed on treason charges for four years on 25 December 2001. But his only "crime" was to have exposed the ecological danger posed by Russia's ageing submarine fleet dumping nuclear waste and ammunition into the Sea of Japan in 1993, and to have highlighted the irresponsibility and corruption of its naval top brass. He was put under surveillance by the security forces in the mid-1990s, arrested in 1997 and held in pre-trial detention for nearly two years; although acquitted in 1999, he was tried again in a closed military court in Vladivostok and sent to a labour camp in Russia's far east. Russia, it seems, still fears openness.

Stephen Bowen

Campaigns director

Amnesty International UK

London EC1

In defence of the volunteer

Richard Sennett (Essay, 27 January) argues that volunteering is a poor way to bind strangers and deal with social complexities, and that the very celebrating of volunteering denigrates (paid) public service. But volunteering was never supposed to be a complete social panacea; and nor was the employment of professionals. The two are different but complementary. Volunteering does, however, involve people giving their time to help children learn to read in schools, to be magistrates and to mentor young offenders, thus adding value to their own public services and making up part of the armoury that improves society.

Volunteers are also free to speak out when the state system fails. Research and statistics gathered by Citizens Advice Bureau volunteers have been powerful agents for change.

Elisabeth Hoodless

Executive director

Community Service Volunteers

London N1

On your bike, Ivan

Poor Ivan Massow and his little moped (Diary, 27 January). Not only won't the beastly traffic wardens let him park it (illegally) outside his favourite posh restaurant, but they have the cheek to be "of foreign origin" as well. Tell you what, matey boy. Why don't you put-put back to your "modest country place" in Somerset, where you can break the law in peace and quiet without a nasty nonwhite face in sight.

David Meek

London N8

Train-spotting

Andrew Martin's enjoyable if nostalgic trip on the GNER (Northside, 27 January) misses some of the most interesting points. At the time of Mallard's speed record in September 1938, our rival, as so often, was Germany. The Deutsche Reichsbahn's Fliegende Hamburger express had already attained 125mph. The LMS, with one of Sir William Stanier's new Coronation Class Pacifics, tried between Stafford and Crewe, but managed only 114mph.

That left the LNER. Sir Nigel Gresley's beautiful machine beat the German record by a whisker, but the driver, Joseph Duddington, so drove (some would say "thrashed") the locomotive that it had to be withdrawn from service.

Present-day speeds are 125mph maximum only because that was the design speed for signal spacing, sighting and braking distances adopted when the line was electrified "on the cheap" in the early 1980s.

Of the traction presently working the line, the HST 125 diesels serving destinations north of Edinburgh have notched up over 140mph under test conditions; the Class 91 electrics, which are the mainstay of the GNER fleet, were designed to do 140mph; and the three surplus Eurostar sets currently working the GNER's "White Rose" service to Leeds were designed to do 186mph, and would doubtless do at least 200mph, since 10 per cent overspeed design capacity is now common practice.

Peter Johnston

Bolton

A doctor, not a journalist

Contrary to John A Stotesbury (Letters, 27 January), John Howard Griffin, who disguised himself to experience life on the other side of the racial divide, was not a journalist (although he may have become an amateur one) but a doctor. Moreover, he suffered from diabetes. I used his book widely in the 1960s and 1970s when tutoring Workers' Educational Association courses on American history, particularly on racism, which was beginning to rear its head here from the 1950s onwards.

Elizabeth Whittome

Henfield, West Sussex

Noddy by another name

No international appraisal of Noddy (The Back Half, 27 January) should omit the very acceptable fact that his name in France is "Oui Oui".

Jonathan Austin

Birchington, Kent

Letters should be as short as possible and should give a full postal address. We reserve the right to cut or edit letters

letter of the week

In endorsing top-up fees, your Leader (27 January) fails to consider the indirect effects of economic policy on a community. It is inevitable that top-up fees will discourage graduates of the best universities from pursuing careers that benefit society, but which are badly paid: teaching, social work, lobs in non-profit organisations (not to mention careers that provide more abstract benefits to society: academic research, museum work, art). Part of the motivation for pursuing such careers is a desire to help others to whom you have no personal obligation. Thus, top-up fees will erode that social solidarity to which you refer. Social solidarity goes beyond subsidising those public goods that everyone uses regularly. It includes the encouragement of a sense of community. Within a community, people rely mutually on support. Students from all but the richest backgrounds are financially vulnerable, and need such support. Restrict that support to a loan, and it's true that they will probably earn enough to pay it off in future. But only if they pursue a well-paid career. The best graduates will head for the City, unable and unwilling to pursue an altruistic career. The underprivileged and vulnerable will have to look after themselves, as students must in paying top-up fees. Tax income. Don't tax education. The social cost, in the long run, will be too high.

Katharine Hibbert

Clare College, Cambridge