Humberside
Sir: I wonder whether you would have allowed an English writer to use your space to vilify West Indians in the way in which Mr Naipaul vilified the people of Humberside in your issue of 18 February? Would you not at least have checked the accuracyof his reporting? By his own admission, Mr Naipaul came to Humberside ignorant and prejudiced about the area: he evidently left with both ignorance and prejudice intact.
Much might be said in reply to him, but may I at least correct his false picture of my own school, Newland High School in Hull? He met here a groupof thirty-four intelligent sixteen-year-old girls who had been prepared for his visit by their teacher, not by being shown a map of the West Indies—they already knew where Trinidad is — but by being told something about his work. I am not surprised that, at their age, they had not read this —they are fully occupied at present with the work of major writers. Mr Naipaul had not, apparently, given much thought to his own preparation: for more than half an hour he read the girls a story which was so long that he found he had to abridge it as he went. Although this process robbed them of some of their usual effervescence, his audience recovered sufficiently to ask him a wide range of intelligent questions which fully occupied a further half-hour or so. He commented afterwards, in fact, on their good literary background. The 'rumour' that 'somewhere in the school there is a girl who might actually go to university' is sheer fabrication: he was in fact told that many members of his audience were potential university candidates. If he had bothered to inquire, he could have learned that many girls from the school go into higher education every year, and that recent pupils are at present studying in Oxford, Cambridge and a high proportion of the other universities between Edinburgh and Southampton.
As Newland, like the other schools in the city, is comprehensive, some of our pupils will indeed go into factories, but Hull schools do not regard any of their pupils as 'fodder' for anything, and we do our best to offer them all as rich an education as possible. If Mr Naipaul had been interested, he could
have discovered, for example, that the end' of-term productions on the stocks in Hull comprehensive schools include Twelfth Night, lolanthe, Oliver, The Pirates of Pen. zance and our own Orpheus in the Under' world, and that next week Hull's Youth Orchestra will give a concert of music by Tchaikovsky, Bruckner and RimskyKorsakov. And from somewhere amongst the 'frightening' darkness of mind', the people 'turned into barbarians', will come audiences for all of them.
I am not a native of Hull: I have for manY years lived and worked in other parts of the country; including London. I am keenlY aware that neither the Arts Council nor allY other organisation is flooding this area with largesse, and that much could be done 10 improve our opportunities. The city has, however, a lively cultural life, generously contributed to by the 'self-effacing' unv versity that Mr Naipaul mentions. It is a verY different place from the bleak desert that he describes, and has much to offer an alert and open-minded visitor. And if one can broadlY characterise the people of an area, I would say that, compared with those I have met elsewhere, the people of Hull and Huar berside are unusually kind, generousminded, self-critical, and warmly friendlY. There are, of course, some uncivilised boors amongst them, as apparently among the people of Trinidad, but they are a small minority. I find it regrettable that Mr Naipaul, having been well paid already hY the Arts Council to come amongst us, chos.e to earn his weekly wage by savaging a civt ised and gentle groupof people whom he hau not truly observed at all.
(Miss) D. M. Nicholson Headmistress, Newland High School, Cottingham Road, Kingston upon Hull
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