Mark Bonham Carter
Sir: While there is no denying that it is right for the best brains in the country to concentrate upon our economic plight. I sometimes feel there is a danger that that particular subject is exercising them to the exclusion of all else. There are other vital matters which should concern us. May I give an example?
In common with many other people, I regard the role and influence of the BBC in the life of Britain ,as very important and very powerful. It is the one 'Big Brother' — visual or sound — which has access to our homes and our minds at all times. I am sure I am nor alone in finding many of its attitudes and emphases wholly dangerous.
I now learn that Mr Mark Bonham Carter has been appointed Deputy Chairman of the BBC. On the last occasion I read his name in my daily paper, he was defending the publication in a journal of which he has overall control, of a poem openly attacking and uttering, threats against the police. It had been written by an eighteen-year-old coloured girl who (heaven helplus!) 'is taking a full-time course in child care".
Sir Robert Mark had taken a serious view of this publication and had said so. Mr Bonham Carter is reported as saying, "Are you perhaps being unduly serious in feeling threatened by a schoolgirl who is only flexing her poetic muscle".
Is it unreasonable to feel that Mr. Bonham Carter who, after all, is Chairman of the Community Relations Commission, might have shown a greater sense of responsibility if he had sent for the girl and pointed out that violent language and disparagement of the police did nothing at all to promote racial harmony?
It may be tactless to mention that both the chairmanship of the Community Relations Commission and the Deputy-Chairmanship of the BBC come within the province of that much lauded 'moderate', the Home Secretary, Mr Roy Jenkins — who is also responsible (if that is the right word in this context) for the police.
Bee Carthew 7 Park Road, East Twickenham, Middlesex
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