Blame Maggie, not Enoch

Peter Hitchens is rarely wrong but his article last week on Enoch Powell cannot go unanswered.

Powell may have advocated care in the community in 1961 but it was Margaret Thatcher who laid waste to mental hospitals. In the hospitals, patients, especially schizophrenics, took their medication under supervision. But left to their own devices they failed to self-medicate in large numbers, with tragic and often criminal consequences.

David Thomas, Brynna, Mid Glamorgan

While Powell advocated the closure of mental hospitals in the early 1960s, most

were closed in the late 1980s or early 1990s. John Newcombe, Marldon, Devon