SOME say the days of the British Empire are over, but we have seen another reminder that its spirit still shines bright. The United States is effectively the Western British Empire, thriving to this day, and looking to the east we see the best of our country’s traditions being fought for by the people of Hong Kong.

So remote from these shores and yet its population are rising up to resist the tightening grip of tyranny, not a British invention by any means but a British export of ideas.

Did Britain’s colony on that island plant the democratic seed which will one day spread into mainland China and liberate its people from communist dictatorship, or did we set millions of people up to be brutally crushed by handing the territory back? Let’s hope they retain their British cultural inheritance lest we need them to remind ourselves of it one day.

Dr Scott Marmion,

Woodthorpe, York

We did the Hong Kong Chinese few favours

I FEAR we did the people of Hong Kong few favours teaching them democracy before returning the colony to China. Over millennia, Chinese Emperors learned that any relaxation of their iron grip led to chaos, civil war, rule by local warlords and land grab by opportunistic foreigners [like us]. Hence the Tiananmen Square massacre.

When a western liberal once stated “it is better that five guilty men go free than one innocent man is unjustly condemned” the Chinese response was “better for whom?”.

A V Martin,

Wigginton, York