Dereliction of duty
LETTERS
From: Ewan Milne, Gerald Sparrow, Barbara Cowell, John Braine, R. L. Travers, William Afton, Douglas Woodruff, Lady Kelly, Miss E. M. J. Pleister, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Eric Helfer, MP, and Joel Barnes:, MP, Harry E. Turner, L. E. Weidberg, John Harvey, F. Murdoch, Nicholas Davenport, Surgeon-Conn- milder T. W. Froggatt, RN (Reid).
Sir: Thank heaven for the SPECTATOR. As the drowning man at the straw, so one clutches every week now at it for a decent, honourable,
outspoken word on the Nigeria-Biafra conflict; and for a decent, honourable, compassionate understanding that since it is for the principle of national self-determination and indepen- dence that the Biafrans are fighting, they are deserving of support, as deserving indeed as the Czechs, and with their claim as a separate nation-state recognised by four African coun- tries formally, and informally by some others, including European countries.
So thank you, Mr Editor. I write as an Irish- man—and I have asked that the Irish govern- ment might accord some form of recognition to Biafra, bearing in mind the great contribu- tion in humanitarian aid the whole of the Irish people are giving without stint, and getting the aid through—and one who has lived long here in England. I don't know whether this has any- thing to do with the intensity of my feelings in this matter—my late beloved wife was English, my children are British by birth, in many ways 1, like John Osborne, love England, my father's land. But I . say in all seriousness that over Biafra I would be prepared to go to war with Britain. Do you consider this a terrible thing to say?
It is, but it is necessary somehow to break through the wall of paper, to burst the cosy, cotton-wool cocoon that is being spun around
all of us daily by the BBC, both radio and TV, and by British government spokesmen and sup-
porters—with their intolerable Newspeak of 'humane quick-kills' for the Biafrans—and by and large by the British journalists, and by British editors who edit out practically any reference to Biafra in one's letters, when they do deign to publish them.
Now don't mistake me : I pay my income tax. But I hate like hell paying it when I know that some part of it will go to making arms to kill the very people I want most to support— those Ibos whose enemies began to massacre them in May 1966, and who are still massacring them, now in their last retreat, the lbo heart- land, their Masada. Oh you British, the rotten things you do! Your band-wringing odious sympathy towards the Ibos stinks to high heaven while ever you keep their enemies well supplied with rifles and cannon—not to say those so-aptly named Saracen and Saladin armoured vehicles—and all so that your neo- colonialist Federal government at Lagos can take over the eastern oil regions, through what Baroness Asquith called 'the dirtiest deed in Britain's history.'
But at least there is the SPECTATOR, which detests this dirtiest deed_ as much as the Baroness, or as I do. And if I cannot go to war, at least I shall know what to do when the next general election in this country comes along, as I hope all my fellow countryinen living here will also. We may have to say Hail and Farewell, Biafra. We may have to say
Biafra is dead, long live Biafra! There may be a long guerrilla struggle. But then, long ago Tudor England scattered the Irish until, as Spencer recorded, they were but spectres of famine. Yet Ireland lives today. There will be a future Biafra.
Ewart Milne 46 De Parys Avenue, Bedford
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