At my last seminar an Iraqi lady commented that the way we had been treated sounded like what happened in an authoritarian regime, only where she came from they would shoot you for expressing any criticism of the system, not merely suppress you. Later she asked, ‘What are they threatened by?’
I wrote her the following letter after the seminar.
Dear ...
When we met, you seemed to feel that we should be able to express our critical views of modern society and ideology. We believe that our best chance of building up personnel to enable us to be productive is probably from immigrants who were not brought up in the ideology now prevalent in this country. If you know of any other Iraqis in this country we would like to meet them so that this section of the population knows something about us and about our ability to support and subsidise temporary and part-time workers of all kinds, especially for work not requiring too much knowledge of English.
We would be happy to entertain you and/or any Iraqi friends for lunch at the Bat and Ball pub in Cuddesdon, up to a total of three people at a time. We would of course pay for you, as our guests.
If you or anyone else would like to come any time, it would be helpful if you could let us know the day before so we could book a table, and arrive about 11 or 11.30, in preparation for lunch at 12.30. If you let me have the names and addresses of any friends who might be interested in our books we could send them complimentary copies.