30 November 1999

Dear Mr Howgate,

Thank you for your letter of 19^th October, which I apologize for answering so late, owing to my absence abroad.

I did not, as you tendentiously suggest, misinterpret your letter to Mrs Polanska- Palmer. As a survivor of atrocities perpetrated by British troops in Peggetz Camp on 1 June 1945, she wrote to protest against the Foreign Office's assertion that no such events occurred. Though she has lived in Scotland for many years, you undoubtedly appreciated that English is not her first language, and that her passing reference to current 'Ministers of the day [claiming they] are not aware of any evidence of the forcible repatriation of Russian refugees at the end of the Second World war' represented a trifling misunderstanding irrelevant to the purport of her letter. Like the Judge at the 1989 Aldington war crimes trial (in which the Foreign Office played so extensive a covert role), you doubtless felt very superior in being able to mock a non- native English speaker in this crude manner. Whether you have anything else to feel superior about you will doubtless assess for yourself.

The burden of her letter, which you carefully chose to ignore, was her authoritative response to your cynical and cold-blooded denial that any crimes were perpetrated on the occasion in which she herself suffered terrible injuries, and that by implication she is lying in asserting the contrary. Your arrogant and insulting attitude is regrettably characteristic of the Foreign Office generally, which since 1938 has been characterized by abject subservience to aggressive totalitarian powers - most recently attested by the pressure on police to maltreat protestors during the visit of the Chinese dictator.