SO Richard Buttery has access to a time machine but chooses to use it merely to go back to 1970 and castigate a character created and then vilified by the right wing press (Warrington Guardian, June 15).

What a pity; with a little more imagination Richard could have travelled back to 1819 and witnessed the Peterloo Massacre where 13 men, four women and a child died for attending a peaceful anti poverty/pro democracy demonstration.

He could have visited 1834 and stood on the shores of Dorset as the Tolpuddle Martyrs were torn from their families and sentenced to serve seven years of slavery in Australia. Their crime was trying to form a union to stave off repeated wage cuts that prevented them from feeding their families.

How many people anywhere would disagree with that?

Or maybe Richard would enjoy a trip to the Victorian times, so treasured by Thatcher, when children, boys and girls as young as five, were encouraged to go up chimneys by having their feet pricked or hay set alight beneath them if they wavered.

Moving into the 20th century in 1913 Richard, in his time machine, could visit the Welsh village of Senghenydd and on witnessing a mining disaster that killed 439 men and boys, watch as the mine owners rushed, not to help the 205 widows with 542 fatherless children, but to ensure those underground were ‘clocked off ’ at the time the disaster struck and therefore receive, dead or alive, no further pay. The same situation had befallen the crew of RMS Titanic a year earlier.

On a personal note I take great comfort from knowing that the Senghenydd community as a whole received financial and moral support from their trade union.

I consider myself fortunate that having been born in 1950 and only ever knowing a 40-hour, five-day week with paid holidays, sick pay, health and safety laws and a minimum wage, which were all won democratically by the unions, I don’t need a time machine to know how lucky I am.

I certainly hope Richard Buttery takes full advantage of his.

GRAHAM BRINKSMAN Orford Avenue