Inquire Within
THE replies given in the House of Commons on Monday to further questions on the state of affairs in the BBC Yugoslav service revealed by the Spectator would have been totally inade- quate even if they had not been misleading. Mr. Allan, answering for the Foreign Office a request to say how many British and Yugoslav citizens, respectively, had taken part in the 'scheme for exchange of broadcasting staff between the two countries,' said that no such scheme exists, though 'for professional reasons the Corporation recruits a small proportion of the staff of its Yugoslav Section from Yugoslavia.' Apart from the charm- ing breadth of the phrase 'for professional rea- sons,' Mr. Allan's statement is directly contradic- tory to the BBC's Memorandum to the Spectator (published in our issue of April 1), which states quite definitely that such exchange arrangements exist On fact the Yugoslav Radiois always eager for such exchanges. . . . But the BBC is rarely able to reciprocate owing to the shoitage of Serbo-Croat-speaking staff').
Worse, however, was to follow. Asked what further inquiries had been made by the Foreign Office, Mr. Allan pompously and quite inaccur- ately replied . . the criticism which has been made of the . . . Yugoslav Service is based in general on imputations of motive which are entirely unjustified. The great majority of the detailed accusations . . have been publicly refuted by the BBC.' Since the only public state- ments by the BBC in this business have been those published in the Spectator, Mr. Allan has no excuse for this reply. The great majority of the accusations were not refuted by the BBC; to some of them no attempt at an answer was made, and to others the reply was obviously unsatisfactory. And even if Mr. Allan's statement had been true, that would still have left a minority of the charges unrefuted, and the case for an inquiry would have remained. Remarks like `the best answer to Coin• munism is not to abuse it but to show that our system is better, and that is what the BBC tries to do' can be regarded as mere beating of the air by a Minister who is not aware of the facts on which his brief is based, but Mr. Allan ended with a remarkable statement to the effect that . . it would be much more profitable if those who criticise brought fresh minds to bear instead of harping on events which took place fifteen years ago.' It is not easy--indeed it is impossible —to discover what Mr. Allan was talking about. let alone what he thought he was talking about. None of the cases cited by the Spectator referred to anything that happened fifteen years ago; one incident took place seven years ago, but the over' whelming majority were considerably more recent —indeed contemporary and continuing. NI r. Allan's performance merely emphasised the need for an inquiry.
Previous page
