Dear Editor,

I am a white person, and my parents were immigrants to Harlow from London. I was born in the town in the late 1950s, but most of my classmates in school were born in London.

I have seen the social and the physical fabric of Harlow decline over the past 50 years. Public services have been cut, jobs have been lost, workers forced to take insecure jobs with zero-hours contracts, homelessness has risen to unimagined levels, and there have been massive increases in the prevalence of social pathologies such as addiction and obesity.

The masked men who attach flags to street furniture in the hours of darkness are not doing so in an attempt to address these problems. They are louts, if not thugs. The placing of flags on lampposts and the painting of red crosses on mini roundabouts and church walls in the town is an attempt to intimidate immigrants from abroad and British-born people with a different skin colour or religion. Those who justify the actions of these anti-social lawbreaking fear mongers ought to be ashamed of themselves.

The decline of Harlow was not caused by immigrants to the town, whether from London, Lahore, or Lagos. It is the product of the form of deregulated unfettered capitalism introduced by the Thatcher government and continued under subsequent Prime Ministers. It is a symptom of a loss of power of the working class and an increase in power of the capitalist class.

It is a disgrace that the police ignored the call for help from those being intimidated by masked flag planters outside Passmores Academy recently. Members of the public need to feel safe from harassment by such people.

I must say as a white person born in Harlow that these be-flagged lampposts make me feel uneasy. They make my home town appear to be a hostile and alien environment. They damage the image of the town in the eyes of visitors. I know that many other residents feel the same, and Harlow Council ought to address this problem, not implicitly encourage those causing it.

Yours sincerely

George Knight