YOUR correspondent Jo Jones (Letters, April 11) asks if he/she is "missing something: in the debate about UK ethnic make-up, claiming 80 per cent of European-race English are "Anglo-Saxon" and the "vast majority of towns and villages don't have a racist problem because most of them are 90 per cent Anglo-Saxon".

The non-English parts of the UK have ten million Gaels, Celts, Picts, Irish, Scots and Vikings. The 50 million or so English include at least 20 million city dwellers (40 per cent of the population), the vast majority of whom are extremely mixed. For example I was born in London of English parents, who were of English, Scot-Norman, Irish, Ulster and Welsh ancestry. To these Anglo-Celts add the Polish, Italian, Jewish, German, French, Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi, African, West Indian, American, Arab, Turkish and white commonwealth citizens, and it seems there are very few "Anglo-Saxon" in most English cities, even outside so-called "ghettos".

The Angles, Saxons, Danes, Frisians and other invaders intermarried with the existing Romano-British Celts, Romans, Jutes, Gauls, Greeks and Lombards. Thus England evolved into an "Anglo-Saxon" country in culture and language between the fifth and ninth centuries until the Normans, a Viking tribe, conquered and diluted it.

Therefore they were a complex mix, even before imperialism.

As a result of post-war immigration about 20 per cent of British births are now of mixed parentage, right across the social spectrum. My wife is a Kenyan Asian and we do not live in a "ghetto", nor do any of the coloured people we know. Our daughter has just become engaged to a Yorkshireman with a Welsh surname (like Jo's). This is what Jo is missing.

As for the comments that the majority of towns don't have a racist problem, can I point out that within a week of us moving to Pocklington my ten-year-old son was called a "Paki" and knocked off his bike by a gang of yobs. That is the "racist problem" missed by Jo, viz. colour prejudice.

The racists on both sides should try to be more tolerant, and control their phobias.

Who knows, maybe we'll have a football team to equal Brazil's one day!

Mr John Simpson,

Geldof Road,

Huntington,York.

...THE claim was made by Jo Jones that the only parts of this country which can be described as multi-cultural are ghettos in inner cities.

Ghetto is an Italian word which identified the quarters in Venice and other cities where Jews were confined and which they were not allowed to leave outside certain hours.

Happily no such restrictions has prevented people of non-European descent from moving around in our towns and cities. I guess that the religious, musical, sporting and economic life of most districts in our cities has been enriched by their presence. This was already the case in Manchester when I left there more than 25 years ago.

The people of East Yorkshire had good reason to fear the arrival of the Danes in the eighth and ninth centuries, but Mr Townend can rest assured that today's non-Anglo-Saxon do not come to burn and pillage, but to bring a refreshing diversity, along with their cuisine and their capacity for hard work.

Mary Machen,

St John's Crescent,

York.

... I have to respond to the nonsense written by Jo Jones in support of Tory MP John Townend. If Britain is an 'Anglo-Saxon' country, what about us dark-haired brown-eyed Norman types?

Should we be 'sent back' to France? What about the millions of Britons with roots in Scandanavia or Ireland? Unwelcome intruders all? Or is the real question whether we're black or white?

Jo Jones gives the game away with her offhand comment about "inner city ghettos".

This is the language of the fascist parties, of fear, hatred, and division.

It's true that most "towns and villages don't have a racist problem"; not because they're "90 per cent Anglo-Saxon", but because most people have more sense and decency.

Ben Drake,

Danum Road,

Fulford.

Updated: 10:22 Monday, April 16, 2001