MRA
SIR,--There has recently been shown it) Birmingham a play entitled The Boss. prey duced and played by the adherents to Moral Re-Armament, This play, one was told on the programme, had achieved immense and influential success in other lands where it had been shown. This may have been so, but it certainly depicts a travesty of the industrial scene in this country, and, if taken seriously, might be regarded as harmfully misleading. To say that the author, Mr. Peter Howard, has much to learn of industrial relations in this country is a polite understatement, and his portrait of Mr( Ironbank, unlikely employer of thousands, ig nothing less than an insult to our industrial leaders.
The play, at its very end, points to the necessity for a change of heart and attitude in employer-employee relations—which may, well still be true in some instances—and seems to suggest that MRA has ' got something which the Bible has not. Its slogan, how. ever, might be taken to be ' The employee is always right; the employer never,' and this is a whim, the basis of which is at least debatable. Moreover, in the bulk of the play, before ' the point' is reached, every reference to industrial leaders is offensive and deroga- tory. If one assumes that one of the aims of MRA is the creation of an industrial Utopia, one seriously wonders if their methods are not badly misfiring. The fact is that the caricature of the industrialist in The Bose is so irresponsible that it could easily be used as propaganda by the very forces against which MRA purports to fight. But it was presumably to the industrialists amongst others in the invited audience that an appeal for financial support was made during an interval of the play. Support to enable the protagonists of MRA to do what ? Bite the hand they wOuld have feed them ?—Yours faithfully,
Previous page
