LETTERS
From Yvonne C. R. Brock, David Atten- borough, John W. Beveridge, Peter Stein, Charmaine C. Goodyear, P. L. Rees, C. M. Woodhouse, C. E. Baron, Philip Skelsey, Sir Godfrey Nicholson.
The dwarfs of Lime Grove
Sir: I read your editorial 'The dwarfs of Lime Grove' (11 April) with something approaching despair. That a periodical of the SPECTATOR'S standing should churn out such cliché-laden 'reds under the bed' propaganda strikes me as appalling. All I can hope is that your readers are intelligent and unpre- judiced enough to spot most of the errols and inconsistencies contained in the article and therefore it will have little effect.
I have little doubt that the present Tory tactics—accusations of left wing bias and 'smuttiness' at the snc—are designed to dis- credit public service broadcasting and soften up the electorate for commercial radio. You may state loftily that the politics of 'Radio Scunthorpe' are of no interest and that 'whether local radio is publicly or privately owned is irrelevant'; on the contrary, it is extremely relevant to those with heavy stakes in commercial radio.
And now let us look once more at what you term the 'ideological bias' of the stic. Political bias is hard to assess objectively; it depends largely on the viewpoint of the listener (or reader). To a member of the Monday Club I imagine Mr Norman St John-Stevas would seem a dangerous radical; equally a militant left wing socialist might detect elements of fascism in Mr Edward Heath. In other words, if we all sat down in front of our radio or TV sets with a chart on which we marked programmes for left or right bias some widely differing results would be produced.
But what a dreary and pointless occupa- tion! According to your article such a wide range of programmes are suspect—even Line-Up! Not having a colour TV set I am unable to say whether Joan Bakewell ever wears a pink dress, but I concede that this is possible. And what about the News? If Robert Dougall votes Labour (and I only say if—we should know these things) may he not place favourable emphasis on items relating to the Government? Can one detect a sneer as Richard Baker mentions the Springboks? With a little use of the imagina- tion no doubt one can.
Far be it from me to offer helpful advice to the Tories, but I would suggest that to play Mr Wilson's game of attacking specific programmes will help them no more than it has helped him. Moanings of a vague and general nature are much more likely to com- mand support from the unthinking—and here one might draw a parallel with the sex 'n violence campaigners. What matters in broadcasting is not whether programmes are left, right or centre or 'clean' or 'dirty'; these are wholly inadequate criteria. What matters is that the broadcasting authority in its search for the truth remains independent and impervious to political or commercial pres- sures, and that it stimulates the imagination of its public by producing genuinely creative programmes. I believe that the second of these conditions cannot exist in the absence
Yvonne C. R. Brock
(Member of a Bilic Advisor i Council), Montacute House, Montaeute, Somerset
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