LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From: Robin Farquharson, Sir Denis Brogan, Professor William Read, Forrest G. Smith, Doris Bulleis-Povey, G. A. S. Dibley, Calvin Hoffman, Tristan Jones.
The Anti-Whites
SIR,—Though not honoured with a mention in The Puppeteers, perhaps I can add a word to the dis- cussion on it.
I have not yet seen the book's accuracy chal- lenged. Yet at the most trivial level, the names which Messrs. Soref and Greig cannot get right (and it's not just proof-reading) include Yussuf Cachalia, Marion Friedmann, Nana Mahomo, Nda- baningi Sithole, John Vaizey and (1) William Warbey. They suppose that the University of Nigeria is at Lagos (p. 112), and that the Reverend Michael Scott was still, when they wrote, a member of the Com- mittee of 100 (p. 66). Though they have clearly read (p. 101) that Pogo is a single Xhosa word, they write it throughout as `P.O.Q.0.' (do they believe it is short for 'People's Organisation for Quarantining Oppression'?). What is more grave, they casually name as 'another well-known South African Com- munist' (p. 94) someone who 1 well know is not. These are just a few points which I happen to have been able to check.
The book's technique, however, relies not on such inaccuracies (which must be unintentional), but rather on carefully marshalled irrelevancies. For instance: (a) 'The headquarters of the Africa Bureau are at 65 Denison House, 296 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SWI. Denison House was also, at one time, the home of the Movement for Colonial Freedom' (p. 63).
(b) The offices and headquarters of the MCF are now situated at 374 Gray's Inn Road, WC1. . . . Next door, at 376 Grays Inn Road, arc located the offices of the League for Democracy in Greece, one of the several "front" organisations under the Chairmanship of Mr. D. N. Pritt, QC, a former MP of the extreme Left with close Communist ties, who . . . is a member of . . etc. etc. (p. 43).
(c) [The Union of Democratic Control] 'shares a large house in Prince of Wales Terrace, Kensington, with the Euthanasia Society, The Progressive League,
the Socialist Medical Association, the British Humanist Association and the Ethical Union. From
this Prince of Wales Terrace headquarters of pro-
gressive thought, and action, a classified advertise- ment recently appeared in the New Statesman an-
nouncing "The Love Force" and "A group Marriage Talk." The lecturer at the "talk," Mr. Emanuel Petrakis, who runs the Sexual Emancipation Move- ment, declared that the family as at present con- stituted was completely out of date' (p. 82).
One might search long and far before finding ex- amples more suitable for a textbook on The Smear.
The book is concerned with those organisations which 'have in common a belief that the present political systems in Southern Africa should be changed' (p. 9). By the back cover this has become 'those organisations working against Parliamentary government in the ultimate interest of the com- munist bloc.' If the authors are serious in so asserting that opposition to the Parliament of a racial oligarchy is 'working against Parliamentary government,' and that all the organisations they dis- cuss are doing so, then I would have thought that parliamentary government was better off without such defenders as Soref and Greig. If defenders they are.
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