A more murderous harvest
Sir : You have said in unequivocal language what others, and not least the Church of Scot- land with no ready-made public platform, have been trying to get through to the people of Great Britain about Biafra for a long time (31 May).
There has been a disgraceful conspiracy of silence on the part of the Government, the main opposition party, the press and the mass media. This has only occasionally been broken by `dusty ministerial answers' to 'dusty' parlia- mentary questions, a few pontifical quasi-judi- cial but 'slanted' articles in the London 'heavies,' some `straight' on-the-spot reporting of the adventure-story sporting may-the-best-man-win type by press and television and, as far as I remember, one horrible bullying interview of a distinguished Ibo by a Bac interviewer on Twenty-four Hours.
This general attitude was well exemplified by Mr Harold Wilson when he, officially un- heralded, addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh last month. He treated the 'Commissioners' to a sanctimoniously wrapped-up party political broadcast making great play with the Govern- ment's unremitting endeavours over Rhodesia and Vietnam, but, of course, rapidly side- stepping, in one sentence and naming no names, the war in Nigeria. Unfortunately for Mr Wilson the Assembly had, the preceding day, been listening to first- hand accounts of massacre and of the virtual destruction of, the Kirk's hundred year old mission in Iboland from newly returned medi- cal missionaries. Speaker after speaker had expressed his horror and passionate concern on the lines you now so ably voice.
I have no doubt that the acceptance of a 'deliverance' by an overwhelming majority, in a proportion of nearly twenty to one, early the following week was in part influenced by this public and apparently general attitude else- where towards affairs in Nigeria. A representa- tive body of the Scottish people dissociated itself from a government, a Parliament and a press which have fallen so low.
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