CITY AND SUBURBAN
Telecom, beware the Oxford philosopher with the box of matches
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Iadvise Lain Valiance and his board at British Telecom to buy themselves asbes- tos trousers. John Lucas is lighting a fire under them. He seeks the support of the major institutional shareholders for elect- ing a new director, to be specifically responsible for customer relations and dealing with complaints. Mr Lucas is a philosopher, a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a firelighter of distinction. It was he who stood up at the annual meeting of the British Motor Corporation (not yet, I think, Leyland) and politely pointed out that the guarantee it gave to its customers was a swindle. By accepting it, customers forfeited legal rights of redress which would have been worth much more to them — and by the same token more expensive to the company. The directors hummed and hawed, the publicity depart- ment puffed out soft soap, but Mr Lucas won. The guarantee was rewritten, and later the law itself was changed, so that customers could not, by accepting pur- ported guarantees, sign away their rights. Now Mr Lucas has moved on to Telecom, and, weary of humming and hawing and soft soap, proposes action. His concern began with a complaint of his own, after a telegram, sent to him on the Wednesday of one week, was delivered by post during the next week. He spent a year, he says, corresponding with Telecom about it: 'I got vexed at the sense of not being bothered — the automatic letter which misses your point and tells you between the lines you're an awful fool.' This was the wrong kind of letter to send to a philo- sopher. Once again Mr Lucas stood up politely at an annual meeting. He was received with expressions of interest in his ideas, which finally and predictably stop- ped short of doing anything about them. If Telecom thought that it had brushed this irritant off, it misjudged its man. Mr Lucas wrote to Telecom's registrars, extracted the names of the biggest shareholders, and has sent them an appeal perfectly designed to touch them in their most sensitive place, their wallets: 'I am informed by friends in financial circles in London that Telecom is not really bothered about relations with private customers. I think this is a short- sighted policy. At present Telecom is protected from the immediate economic consequences of this by the statutory abs- ence of competition in many fields, but that will not be continued if it is seen to be
abusing its monopoly position. Parliament can, and will if the public are dissatisfied, change the rules under which Telecom operates. Such a change is unlikely to increase its profits.' Mr Lucas writes as a small shareholder who demurely professes himself inexpert in financial matters. Not so inexpert as all that — witness his conclusion: 'I have some reason to believe that the big institutional shareholders are not all entirely happy with the way Tele- com is being managed, and am therefore writing to a number of them to start the ball rolling towards a concerted action to bring about change.'
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