SIR - I wish to close my contributions to the mini-debate on the EU issue, by clarifying some points in Ian Parsons's letter (T&A, April 23).

1. An MP is, primarily, a representative of all the people in his constituency. To those MPs of honour - and some still exist - party obsequiousness is a secondary consideration.

2. The inference that the Tamworth Manifesto (1834) introduced MPs to party obedience is mischievously misleading. It is simply the forerunner of the now standard practice of a party leader declaring his party's priorities ahead of a parliamentary session.

3. The 1975 referendum occurred on June 5, not June 6. On that day some of us were commemorating the heroic Allied Normandy landing that led to the freeing of Europe from the tyrant within and the restoration of peace and democracy for the European people.

4. The 1975 referendum dealt with membership of the Economic Community (Common Market) not the EU, which was created 18 years later by the Treaty of Maastricht.

D A Moncaster Fyfe Grove Baildon