Letter: No Nazis on the Liverpool dockers' picket line

SSir: As might be expected, Eric Leatherbarrow of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company thinks scabs have the right to cheat on their fellow workers, stealing their jobs. In his view, a scab is just an "outsider" - someone who chooses to "follow a different route from the group".

The 500 sacked Liverpool dockers have paid a heavy price for refusing to cross a picket line - refusing to cheat on their brothers and sisters, regardless of the financial inducements to do so. While the dockers steadfastly defend basic human morality, Leatherbarrow's defence of cheating lines him up with all those rogues in high places caught recently with their pants down and their fingers in the till - Tory sleaze-mongers who cheat on their wives, their party colleagues and their constituents.

So intoxicated are these cheats with the "me first" ethic that, like any scab, they cannot tell right from wrong.

Dr C D KNIGHT

Department of Sociology

University of East London

Dagenham, Essex