• IN response to John Stratton’s letter, it is true that a fairly large proportion of the population, for some reason, admired and respected the late Queen, (Elizabeth II so admired, September 29).

It is also true that a significant proportion of people knew it was not worth the effort to raise any objections to the monarchy, due to the inevitable backlash it would cause.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading that apparently the Queen herself “was unable to air her views in public” just weeks after arrests and police cautions of ordinary citizens for simple statements of opposition to her reign and the monarchy in general. Truly we must spare a thought for those deprived royals, being silenced by the state.

If we had a republic, John Stratton writes, what is to stop a Thatcher taking over? Well thank the lord we had the Queen in place in 1979 to stop her.

The arguments about the revenue the monarchy bring in are completely correct of course. But you do have to balance all of that out with the – albeit hard to measure – pernicious effects that it has on the entrenched system of inequality and classism in this country.

FELIX TASKER, NW3