SIR – Alex Eaton,who died last week, was not only an inspiration musically, and a political comrade, he was also someone I was proud to call my friend. We disagreed on many things but our discussions never degenerated into angry arguments.

He was a man of principle who angered many bureaucrats who saw him as a threat to their desire to rule the way we think. To borrow Tony Benn’s phrase, he was a free radical.

He will be sorely missed, but thankfully the things he pioneered, like the Topic Folk Club, which has survived to be the longest-running folk club in the world, and the people he inspired without many of them even knowing his name, all live on.

One of my favourite stories about Alex is that he set up the Topic with a democratic constitution (under which it still functions, to this day). At its first AGM, he was voted off the club committee. “See, democracy works,” was his comment.

Karl Dallas, Church Green, Bradford