It is clear that some of your readers are vehemently opposed to the concept of a common European identity.

What is less clear is what they expect anyone they elect to achieve?

Simply being against greater co-operation and closer ties, when the majority of the people in Europe are for it, results in nationalists in the European parliament being isolated and impotent - as the British Conservative Party has demonstrated.

The public rejection across the European Union of things as different as capital punishment and genetically modified food serve to show that we have a common European identity.

Throughout Europe there is a public determination, echoed at government level, to resist commercial pressure for activities that compromise the quality of life and harm the environment.

A strong European voice in world affairs has never been more vital.

It is essential that the British be fully engaged in Europe.

All those who share, and hold dear, the ideals that are common to most people in Europe should vote for candidates who are fully committed to those ideals and to enshrining them in common laws.

Maurice Vassie,

Deighton,

York.

...Like Mr Clark (Letters, May 31), and many others, I am pondering how to express my strong objections to the new method of voting in the European elections. He says he may vote for an extreme party of either right or left.

I strongly urge him not to vote for the British National Party.

Though there is virtually nothing to indicate this in the leaflets they have had delivered to every house, they are the direct descendants of Mosley's fascists, who, in the 1930s, we used to see parading through the streets in imitation of Hitler's and Mussolini's thugs. If Britain had been invaded during the Second World War they would have been the traitors who helped the Nazis.

It will be a sad day for Britain if a fascist of the BNP gets elected.

Name and address supplied.

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