I HAD to smile wryly at Bill Kerr’s letter (May 15) on the difference between nationalisms.

I remember, from many years ago, my mother telling me about the Saturday night happenings in the Lancashire town where her family lived. It was just after the end of the First World War, soldiers were back from the front, her father amongst them, and settling into civilian life. Her father, my English grandfather, had started his own little business of clog-making and boot-repairing and was doing nicely.

On Saturday nights he repaired up the steep cobbled alley to the pub at the top; called aptly The Long Pull. There the one-time comrades-in-arms who fought together on the battlefields of Europe, would set about sorting each other out when the pub closed its doors. Mother informed me that as I was of one religious creed (Protestant and English) I would have been known as a "proddy" and the "other lot" (Roman Catholic and mostly Irish) were either called "gillicks" or "red-necks". So the fighting got under way and a great time was had by all, and by the next day they had forgotten all about it as they trooped off to their respective churches and chapels. Giving readers permission to substitute whichever vowels and consonants they feel appropriate, I report that my grandmother said, according to my mother, “the stupid b****rs have only just sorted out the Kaiser’s lot and now they are at each other”.

I wonder will the words of the bard ever bear fruit, “that man to man the world o’er shall brothers be for a’ that”. Going on all the evidence at present it looks rather doubtful.

Thelma Edwards,

Old Comrades Hall,

Hume, Kelso.