BRITISH RESTAURANTS AND FEES
SIR,--1 have recently learnt that the Performing Rights Society proposes, with the approval of the Ministry of Food, to demand fees from Local Authorities who have installed and ust wireless receiving sets in their British Restaurants. In the Borough of Ramsgate- we have three of them, and the annual fee required is £14 zs 6d.—four and a half guineas each. This is the minimum fee in the scale—for " restaurants " the seating capacity of which does not exceed too. For every additional 5o seats there is an additional charge of one guinea. If proportionate demands are paid by every Local Authority in the country which has wireless in its British Restaurants, the total fees received by the society will amount to a very large sum. The British Restaurants were created -and are kept up, with the aid of many unpaid volunteers, to meet a vital war need, and wireless receiving sets are kept in them because it is con- sidered that the dissemination of news might be vital in an emergency,
• and also because where the British Restaurants operate as rest centres for bombed-out people the entertainment provided helps to reduce shock and to restore a normal outlook.
In view of these facts, it seems to me wrong that private gain on such a large scale should accrue to a commercial organisation from a national effort and at the public expense. Is the society in any better position than the speculator in land, who buys up property which he knows is going to be improved by public works and sells afterwards at the enhanced value such works have created? My own feeling against both these activities is based on the same argument—namely, that it is a social wrong to permit private gain out of improvements made, at the public expense and effort, in the value of private rights and property. The present situation is a pure gift to the Performing Rights Society, which has, solely because of a national crisis, stumbled on a rich new source of income. It seems that the Ministry of Food seeks to forestall objec- tions from Local Authorities affected by assuring them that the new expense will be repaid by the Government, myway. by my of grant. So why worry? A bad situation is made worse by the fact that the Ministry of Food itself made this unbusinesslike bargain with the society, without (as far as I know) consulting Local Authorities, and then advocates its adoption at the expense of the public.
In negotiating these bargains with the Performing Rights Society the individual or Local Authority affected is, and always has been, hampered by the knowledge that if he is stubborn in resisting what he feels to be an exorbitant demand he may be sued by the society, and have to pay heavy court costs which would be far greater in amount than the fee demanded. This is a form of coercion, whether consciously exercised or not, which is infuriating in the extreme. and which tends to obscure in my own mied the good work which I believe the Per- forming Rights Society does lot authors and composers.
I should like to see all Local Authorities demand a revision of this scheme, on the grounds that it is against the public interest and the profit demanded is extortionate.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
28 Cavendish Street, Ramsgate, Kent. A. R. YOUNG.
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