Sir, – The letter from Cllr Bernard Borman of UKIP (D&S Times, Oct 31) on the payments demand from the EU provides an opportunity to debate this important subject. The letter deals with the high cost of membership of this union, but omits the benefits and the compelling historical reasons for membership.

Remembrance Day has allowed us to focus on the reason for two world wars – national rivalries and economic crisis leading to social and political instability. During my visit to the D Day celebrations this year, I noticed in cemeteries that the Allied Forces included men from 11 countries, not just Britain.

We were in a battle against two extreme modes of nationalism Nazism and Fascism – which highlighted xenophobia, racism, homophobia and many other forms of intolerance. Like all nationalists, their plausibility arose from the popular myth that "other peoples" were the cause of the crisis and that expulsion or liquidation of them will solve the problem.

The Allies, NATO, the UN, EEC and EU were built after 1945 to ensure no recurrence of such events through co-ordinated efforts of many members who supported democracy, freedom, justice and tolerance. Together these federalist organisations have created 70 years of peaceful progress in the West, that we would not endanger by withdrawal.

British history is bound up with that of our nearest neighbours – either in conflict or cooperation – there is a Western European culture, values and institutions that stem for Ancient Greece, through the Roman Empire to our age. The British are now composed of many peoples, races, religions and identities.

Additional benefits to the peaceful provision of conditions for civilized life include economic ones such massive financial subsidies to our farmers and industries which the CBI estimate would cost us 3.3 million jobs if we withdrew. Production of the 85 per cent of Ford's two million diesel engines exported to Europe would be lost.

Legitimate grievances, such as falling real wages, a broken banking system, and unfair treatment of peoples in areas peripheral to London, can be dealt with by regulating the real causes of our difficulties, such as a multi-national corporation which pay no taxes here; employers who exploit employees; low wages; inadequate housing; and removing a government that prioritises oligarchs and refuses to protect its own citizens in the face of such exploitation.

In a world where recovered fundamentalisms threaten us, it's better to stick with the UK and with friends made in 1945 in our European Union, rather than invite the sort of fundamentalist nationalist hatreds, conflicts and economic recessions, witnessed on the battlefields of today's Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Iraq.

Dr JOHN R GIBBINS

Sowerby, Thirsk .