Black and white
THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY
What are leading articles for? If, like a lot of people, you think they are just to keep leader writers employed, you can kindly leave the stage. If you think they are to make people feel good without actually requiring them to do anything, like 'It is a moral issue,' of blessed memory, then you are not alone. But if you think that leading articles should do what their name suggests, and actually lead, then you are likely to suffer frequent disappointment.
Take this Sunday as a case in point. If the events of the last week in America have any significance for us it is that they have demon- strated the immense importance of the colour question. Agreed? Nothing controversial about that, surely? The importance derives from the fact that it is a difficult question. Still agreed? So that the more discussion there is of the diffi- culties, and of suggested ways of getting over or round them, the better? Good. Quite clearly a subject where leadership would be helpful.
Every Sunday paper in the country, you might have thought, should therefore have jumped at the chance to lead, to let its editorial voice trumpet through the land. Did they? Not a bit of it. Out of the seven national newspapers I read on Sunday only two had a leading article on the subject. Those two—just in case you want to take out, or cancel, a subscription— were, of course, the Sunday Times and the Observer. The others, like Dad, kept mum.
Why? Did they not know there was a Race Relations Bill in tha offing? The Sunday Tele- graph clearly did, because they went to the trouble of commissioning Mr Geoffrey Howe, QC, to argue the merits and demerits of the pro- posals. Presumably they thought that his musings were preferable to one of their lead- ing articles. Bearing in mind the quality of most Sunday Telegraph leaders, they could be right. So they are excused parade.
The News of the World is also dismissed, on the ground that you wouldn't expect them to know anyway. In any case, as there wasn't a word about the Bill in my edition, you couldn't expect them to start confusing me with leading articles on the subject, even if they did know Parliament is soon going to get het up about it.
The People is rather different. They definitely knew. Or at least one member of their staff did—Mr Terence Lancaster, whose admirable Political Notes suggested that the Tories in general, and Mr Heath in particular, are being less than honest in their handling of this political hot potato. Well, as it happens, I think they are too. But if they are, what about the People? Especially as in its stirring sub-
stitute for a leader column, Voice of the People, we are asked if we have felt 'sullied and de- graded' by `man's well-known, much-demon- strated inhumanity to man?' But, sad to say, Voice of the People was talking about the stewardess who died in the 707 crash at Lon- don Airport, not about the problems arising from (white) man's well-known, much-demon- strated inhumanity to (black) man.
To be sure, the People's attitude is not really all that important; it seldom is. And at least Mr Robert Edwards could argue that his paper's opinion is deducible from Mr Lancaster's piece. Which may very well be true.
So, as far as the People is concerned, let's for- get, and forgive. I wish we could do the same with the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Ex- press. The Mirror, as far as I could see, contained nothing whatever about race except for an article by their reporter Mr Ronald Maxwell. It was an investigation into how those famous smuggled Pakistanis got into Britain. It seems to be a good professional job that Mr Maxwell has done and it is a pity that the main impression it leaves is an anti-immi- grant one. It is also a pity that Yer Alf Garnett Column, which mercilessly satirises racism among others things (so they tell us), didn't have a word on the subject this week.
But curious as the Mirror's behaviour is, that of the Sunday Express is far curiouser. Not only did their well-known Old Testament prophets find they were struck dumb on the subject of the Race Relations Bill : but on the same page as their pronouncements on other, less dumb- striking matters, there appeared these words from the pen of the Sunday Express's Editor-in- Chief, Mr John Gordon : 'Eleven Pakistanis, smuggled across the Channel, and found wandering with their boots and clothes wet, cannot be deported—the High Court rules—be- cause the law made an ass of itself in its rules. So here they stay. With no money and no jobs, Able to bring in their wives (plural or singular) whenever they wish. And plant the lot on our comfy Welfare State. Wise men, you may say, come out of the East.'
Not bad for an opening paragraph. Question- able taste, not far short of racial incitement, and a touch of near-blasphemy for Easter Sun- day. But read on: 'Sentimentally I regard all men as equals whether they be white, black, brown or yellow.' (Which seems to mean that it's sentimental to regard all men etc.) 'But I pre- fer to live among my own kind.' For 'kind' read 'colour,' and if my kind are all like Mr Gordon, then I don't prefer to live among them, thank you very much.
But Mr Gordon isn't finished yet (who'd have thought the old man would have so much bad blood in him?). His last paragraph is posi- tively hair-raising: 'The effect of that Bill seems to me to confer new privileges upon the coloured newcomers.
'Not only are they to have, as at present, the right to practise polygamy while here because their own countries allow it, and, if married, sexual intercourse at ages prohibited here, as the case of the Nigerian student disclosed, but any Briton who denies them a house or 'a job which they think they ought to have lays him- self open to punishment.'
Mr Gordon, you know that isn't true. The Bill doesn't say that at all. At least, I presume you know it isn't true. And if you don't, then you shouldn't be writing about the Bill. Because if there's one thing worse than not writing about something, it's writing something that's wrong about it.
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