WHENEVER one considers the long and chequered history of Worcester, there appears to be just a single factor that has to be considered.

It's not, as you might think, a case of wondering if the period in question is Anglo-Saxon, pre- or post-Norman, AD or BC.

I think we can safely leave such conventional demarcation lines to the official historians.

No, the yardstick seems to be whether the events in question took place before the fabled Lich Gate was destroyed - or after the dirty deed was done.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see the dreadful folly of that whole sorry period in the city's recent past.

The demolition of the finest architectural example of its kind in Britain was truly an act of madness and official vandalism that persists like an indelible stain on the face of the Faithful City.

We know this only too well. For people's sensibilities are still in torment, the hand-wringing continuing unabated. This is why the subject is never far away from the letters pages of the Evening News.

The story of the Lich Gate - and the fears surrounding the new development currently taking place in the High Street - are indeed well-founded and perfectly understandable.

Readers - not least of whom has been the eloquent and articulate John Hinton of Victoria Avenue - have been pouring their hearts out, apprehensive of what the future may hold, especially with regard to the preservation of the Lychgate name.

No one should blame them, either. There has been no shortage of disastrous precedents. Anyone can be forgiven for being fearful.

But we should exercise some sense of proportion here. The current development taking place, no matter what its detractors say, will not repeat the awful mistakes of 40 years ago.

Yes, it will not be to everyone's liking, but we have to face up to the fact that the real damage was done a long time ago. The only way is up. Literally, anything will be an improvement.

For whatever is to come cannot be anything but an oil painting compared to the existing situation. And rest assured - in years to come, the incongruously crass "Cathedral Plaza" will be seen for what it was - a planner's brainstorm and nothing more sinister, just proof of the abiding sterility of official thought processes.

As it happens, the infamous Rape of Worcester could not happen today, for a number of reasons.

It should be remembered that in those days, a far more compliant public allowed its representatives to do more or less what they liked without question or proper scrutiny.

In those days, councillors - and certainly those elevated to the position of aldermen - were regarded with awe by the electorate. The mood was undoubtedly one of "well, if our betters have decided this is what should be done, then we'll go along with it".

Nowadays such sentiments have gone the way of the touched forelock. As Worcester's Labour establishment found out to its electoral cost over the Cripplegate Park farce and numerous other fiascos, the people of Worcester are no longer anyone's dupes.

Unhappily for officialdom everywhere, the population just doesn't sit back and swallow the nonsense any more. Cynics call it troublemaking or nimbyism, but the plain fact is that only fools or cowards shrink from defending their own back yards.

And, more importantly, people increasingly vote with their feet.

There is another ingredient, too. The Press in Worcester did absolutely nothing to oppose the destruction of the 1950s and 60s. Phrases like "a far-sighted vision of the Faithful City's future" and "developments taking Worcester into the 21st Century" were no doubt among the favoured clichs in the armouries of yesterday's hacks.

Today, the Evening News is far less deferential to those in power. And that's how it should be - although it has to be said that I never cease to be amazed how many prominent so-called "democrats" still loathe the very idea of free speech.

There have been plenty of attempts over the years to gag The Phillpott File, believe me.

However, this whole issue of urban regeneration spawns its own myths. For example, one of our correspondents recently referred to the experience of other British major centres of population, citing the case of those two chronically bomb-damaged cities, Birmingham and Coventry.

The writer seemed to imply that the populace of these places was more than happy with the post-war building that had taken place. But let me assure you that the reverse is true - apart from the rebuilt cathedral, the people of Coventry mourn the depredations of the developers even more than they revile Goering's Luftwaffe.

Ask any Coventrian what he or she thinks of the garish mish-mashes of glass and concrete that sprouted like mushrooms in the 1950s, and the reply will be delivered in no uncertain terms.

Prior to that fateful night of November 14, 1940, Coventry was a beautiful half-timbered mediaeval city. But within 15 years, Godiva's town was unrecognisable, doubly defiled, a testimony to Hitler and the planners' vanity and excesses.

The same applies to Birmingham. Coincidentally, my wife and I both had grandfathers who lost their shops in the Midlands Blitz - a grocer's and watchmaker's premises, respectively.

But many people now regard the brave new world that came after the conflict as something done in haste to be repented at leisure.

Worcester's tragedy is, of course, made all the worse by virtue of having no initial destructive impetus for change. In the absence of any bomber fleets to blame for the initial carnage, the bogeymen became the planners, developers and their willing accomplices in the city's Guildhall.

And it is for this reason why the Faithful City's weeping wound has so much difficulty healing. For much of Worcester still resembles a bombsite development, thrown up overnight, lacking in taste and scale - the irony being that the city escaped the Second World War almost unscathed.

A single bomb on the Meco, terrible as it was for the individuals concerned, nevertheless did relatively little damage. Let us also not forget that Worcester escaped the infamous Baedeker raids that were deliberately unleashed to devastate Britain's famous cathedral cities.

Such appalling irony is probably a major factor why many of Worcester's older citizens are still in mourning for the loss of the Lich Gate, various High Street buildings and the much-lamented Public Hall.

As an immigrant to this city, it utterly amazes me how such madness could have been allowed to happen. Even by the lunatic standards of four decades ago, that piece of desecration must surely rank as being the worst example of the bulldozer frenzy that seems to have afflicted those who were then in power.

Admittedly, it may not be any great consolation, but I have this feeling that whatever happens to Worcester's city centre in the years to come can only help the healing process.

The threats to this city's infrastructure and social cohesion now lurk on the periphery, not in its historic heart.

For we must accept that what's gone is lost forever. And that is why the time has come to move on and allow the past to rest in peace.