Like many Conservatives, Jonathan Sheppard (Letters, July 5) assumes the people have little or no memory of what Britain was like under Margaret Thatcher.

They are wrong. People remember mass unemployment, the decimation of industry and public services, the Poll Tax and the numerous privatisations that made a few people very rich at the expense of the rest of us.

Many people will also remember Mrs Thatcher saying: "There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

Contrary to what Mr Sheppard claims, this is a simple statement of what many neo-conservatives believe, that the concept of a society is a myth and all that exists is a collection of individuals with different interests.

The hideous results of this philosophy are visible in the mass misery of the Eighties - something most of us would not want to have to live through again.

-Jez Macdonald, Carlyle Street, Brighton