I see that relations between the pro and anti-European wings of the Tory party have deteriorated to the extent that one side wishes to airbrush the other out of history.

Media coverage of the election of Neil Parrish MEP as Chairman of the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee has been accompanied by the comment that this is "the first time that this important Chair has gone to a UK member" (comments by a Conservative MEP in the Western Mail, 27th February).

Yet this very same post was previously held by Sir Henry Plumb MEP (later Lord Plumb), former President of the National Farmers Union and David Curry MEP, later to become a UK Minister for Agriculture. These two were, of course, strongly pro-European. It seems that some of the new generation of Conservative MEPs would prefer that they had never existed.