Tolerance. (Letter - Daily Telegraph)

Sir - Wide use of the term "toleration" came in the 17th century. The circumstances of John Locke's famous tract, Letter Concerning Toleration, was religious repression following the bitter Civil War. The context was specific to religious differences, but all Christian.

Locke would not have meant "anything goes", in manners and morals - the tendency in using the word today.

Toleration in today's Britain means, in practice, turning away from difficulty, reluctance to confront a problem, refusal to think out implication, contentment with ignorance, silence before conspicuous fact.

It is mass immigration/asylum-seeking rather than sporadic, though vicious, violence, that is the long-term threat to the nation.

John Gillman, Bristol