Smoking ban deals a cruel blow

I HATE to dash Jim Dymond's hopes (M Star May 6), but I certainly am the Terry Liddle who has advocated alcohol prohibition in the Morning Star and other socialist publications.

I signed the letter published on May Day at the invitation of Mat Coward.

While I saw it as having some errors, which Jim has pointed out, I signed it because of my concern for the decline of working-class culture.

Places like the West London Trade Union Club (M Star May 6) are rare indeed. The Plumstead Radical Club, where I went with my family as a child, and the Lewisham Labour Club, of which I was a member, have long ago closed.

Gastropubs and US-style bars are poor substitutes for places run by working-class people for themselves.

More importantly, I signed because of my concern with mental patients.

I have spent some time in a mental hospital and once chaired the management committee of an unemployed centre many of whose users had mental health problems.

Being a mental patient is a stressful, at times frightening, experience.

Many patients try to cope with this by heavy smoking. To deprive them of this small comfort and pump them full of more drugs, which often have serious side effects, is in no way helpful. The smoking rooms, as advocated in the letter, would seem to be a solution.

Having seen the negative effect that alcohol abuse has had on my neighbours, I think that there is a problem which demands a solution, hopefully a non-totalitarian one.

Prohibition of all addictive substances would be one solution, but it would require mass public support and an extensive programme to wean the addicts off their addiction. Anything which aims at improving the quality of life for working people needs to be discussed in a comradely way.

TERRY LIDDLE
Eltham