Paul Foot addressing a crowd in Newcastle-upon-Tyne during the 1984 miners’ strike [RIK Walton]

• YOU reviewed Margaret Renn’s Paul Foot: A Life in Politics, (Foot notes, July 25).

“When there is no difference between two big political machines paid for by big business, ordinary people’s interests in and involvement in politics collapses. Less people vote and less people care. All politics becomes contemptible, and the way is open for the racialist…” – Paul Foot, foreword, David Osler, Labour Party PLC: New Labour as a Party of Business.

MIKE BOR, W2