REGARDING the demise of Royal Ordnance at Blackburn (LET, July 27), three events are responsible for this.

First is the greed of one man placing orders abroad illegally, with them never to return.

Secondly, a socialist government is always committed to reducing expenditure on its armed forces. If I had worked in a defence factory, I would always wonder.

Third, we have the Foreign Secretary with his ethical policy on land mines who will find out that other countries will only pay lip service to this policy.

W CAMPBELL, Maple Street, Great Harwood.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.