Victory for Nosey Parker
SIR,---Alan Williams's letter (September 23), with its impertinent implication of dishonesty, would be
better ignored were it not for the damage such im- plications can inflict amongst those who do not know the facts about our work, and are therefore likely to be influenced by the ill-informed comments of Mr Williams and others like him.
May I deal with the issues he raises one at a time?
(a) The Clean Up TV Campaign is not 'now called' the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association. They are separate bodies, though there is some over- lapping of personnel.
(b) I will not admit, as Mr Williams demands, 'that the Association is a front organisation for Moral Re-Armament.' It isn't. Anyone who studies —objective4t—our patrons, officers and constitution will understand this. My personal loyalty to MRA I have always been glad to state.
(c) Mr Williams's idea about how the proposed Viewers' and Listeners' Council would function is wide of the mark. Had he written for information, it would have been readily supplied. The doctors, teachers, parents, police, and all who serve on such a council would, as we see it, be elected by the asso- ciations and groups which they represent, and would be, therefore, genuinely the voice of the people. `It would not make its own judgments,' but would be a channel through which the opinions, experience and ideas of the whole nation could be made avail- able to the broadcasting authorities.
Since Mr Williams has raised the question of Moral Re-Armament support for our work. I would bring to his notice, and. I trust, to the notice of all your readers, my reply to the suggestion that we are financed, directly or indirectly. by MRA. It is untrue. When this idea was put about—largely, it is significant to note, by the humanists, organised and otherwise, who so bitterly attack us—we examined our books with the utmost care. 1 am now in a position to make the following statement: of those who have supported our work financially, 1.25 per cent are known to be associated with MRA, and these people have between them con- tributed just under 2 per cent of the money sent to us from any source.
In all countries where television operates, moves are being made toward viewer and listener partici- pation in what is. after all, a public service. I find myself intrigued as to why it is that in Britain Intellectuals'—who by definition should be in the vanguard of new thinking—fight with every weapon on which they can lay hand or pen to inhibit the development in this country of an equally en- lightened approach to responsibility for a public service
MARY WHITEHOUSE
National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, The !Vold. Claverley. Wolverhampton
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