We should honour Bishop George Bell rather than Bomber Harris

From the Revd Frank J Gelli SIR – “It is time to honour Bomber Command,” Kevin Heneghan’s letter declares (January 28). But he seems to ignore that those fighter pilots have already been officially “honoured”, in the person of their infamous leader, Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, whose statue was erected in 1992 outside St Clement Danes, the London RAF official church. It is said that Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, was shocked when people jeered the ceremony. Thank God for that.
The truth is that Harris’s role in the British strategy of obliteration bombing of German cities during World War Two remains morally obnoxious. As historian A J P Taylor observes, Harris “believed the German people could be cowed from the air as he had once cowed the tribesmen of Iraq”. His bombing passion “overwhelmed rational calculation”. He opposed precision bombing in favour of indiscriminate bombing which in practice amounted to the direct targeting of innocent civilians. So, in the end, again Taylor points out: “So far as air strategy was concerned, the British outdid German frightfulness first in theory, later in practice, and a nation claiming to be fighting for a moral cause gloried in the extent of its immoral acts.” I suggest that if someone ought to be publicly honoured in this sad and dishonourable connection that is George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, a friend of anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bell is one of the few Anglican dignitaries who spoke out publicly against the terror-bombing of German civilians. They say it cost him the Archbishopric of Canterbury. But Bell was a man of God. He saw that sin is sin, regardless of the side which commits it. Dresden, I have no doubt, was a great sin.
Yours faithfully, FRANK GELLI Brentford, Middx