The press
Epistolary dons
Paul Johnson
As a careful student of Letters to the Editor, 1 have become increasingly aware of a growing and reprehensible tendency of readers to write not from their home address but from the place where they work, There ought to be rules about this sort of thing, and editors ought to enforce them. Obviously, many letters have to be written from an official address. When the General Secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation writes to the Times, as he did on 28 October, describing low morale among the taxmen, he naturally writes from `Douglas Houghton House', his Fetlera- tion's HQ. Ken Livingstone, telling Times readers on 31 October about the disadvan- tages of abolishing the GLC, is equally en- titled to write from 'The County Hall, SEI'. Such people are writing ex officio; granted that the topic is fairly closely related to their job, they are to some extent authorised by the people who put them there to spout their views from official premises.
There are many marginal cases too, when the topic is not a matter of acute public, still less party-political, controversy, where an official address is relevant and legitimate. I would say, for instance, that Nicholas /VIcKemey, writing to the Times on 28 Oc- tober about 'the role of arts and crafts in the lives of the general public', was justified m subsigning himself 'Principal, Blackheath School of Art'.
But if people are going to express strong views about public rows, they should not drag their workplace into it. Academics, especially left-wing ones, are by far the worst offenders in this respect. Why is this? Are some dons so poor (because of 'the cuts') that they actually doss down in their offices, like the solicitor in John Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence? Can't they afford their own writing-paper and so are driven to use the college's stuff? Or is it that they are so underemployed that, as they sit idle at their desks, they are driven by sheer boredom to write to the papers?
On 30 October the Sunday Times published no fewer than three angry academical letters supporting CND, signed by `Dr John Lucas, University of Not- tingham', 'Dr Paul Baker, Ripon College, Oxford' and 'Professor Martin Rees, King's College, Cambridge'. Did Not- tingham University authorise Dr Lucas to make this protest? Is unilateralism now the official policy of Ripon College? Did the Fellows of King's nobble the Professor in the SCR and say: 'Don't forget, Rees, to bung off that letter to the Sunday Times? Because that is the implication of the of- ficial addresses. When one Edward Coun- tryman wrote to the Guardian on 4 November comparing the Greenham Women to the patriots who staged the Boston Tea Party, he appeared to express the collective view of the 'Joint School of Comparative American Studies, Warwick University,' since that is the address given.
Again, writing to the Times on 9 November, D.R. Pitcher committed the Department of Psychiatry at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School to supporting Reagan on Grenada, while John Hartnell (Times, 1 November) acting as self- appointed spokesman for the North East London Polytechnic, denounced him as one of those 'who clearly regard aggression as preferable to international law'. In the Guardian, Robert Behrens recently iden- tified Coventry Polytechnic with the view that Lord Hailsham is guilty of 'patronising rambling' and 'barefaced hypocrisy', just as Professor D. Bryce-Smith, writing to the same newspaper on lead-poisoning, lined up the entire University of Reading behind the accusation that a petrol company is try- ing `to stick a finger in the cracking dyke of the oil industry's credibility'.
It is no defence to say that it is obvious such letters do not represent the collective opinion of the institutions concerned. A let- ter to the Guardian on 3 November denoun- cing the Government's attempts to curb local authority spending as 'a fundamental shift from a dispersal of government power to a massive concentration in central government' was signed by `(Prof) G.W. Jones, London School of Economics and Political Science' and by '(Prof) J.D. Stewart, Institute of` Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham'. It's hard to believe that the entire LSE has authorised 'Prof' Jones to communicate to the Guardian its official view on rate- capping, but it's certainly conceivable that the Institute of Local Government Studies might have done so for 'Prof' Stewart. Of course the truth is that these
academics use their official titles and writing paper simply because they know that they thereby increase the chances both that their letters will be published and that they will impress readers. Writers with names editors recognise do not need to pull titular weight. When Guardian cor- respondents ganged up recently to attack its best writer, Terry Coleman, one Doug Thompson, denouncing Coleman's 'diffuse malevolence', had to drag in the entire University of Hull as address. His namesake, E.P. Thompson, being famous, addressed his jibe about Coleman's 'blood- shot, self-regarding eye' from his own pad in Worcester. Again, writing to the Guar- dian on 2 November about the Labour Par- ty's future strategy, Eric Hobsbawm, another celebrity, did not use the writing- paper of Birkbeck College, University of London, where he holds a chair; he very properly wrote from his home address in Hampstead.
Not so long ago, a don employed by a college of the University of London, say, who published a letter in the Times or Guardian expressing strong views on a mat- ter of current controversy, and using the address of the college, would have received a sharp letter of rebuke from its Principal, and a threat of punishment if the offence were repeated. Large private firms, especially those which care about their public image, are still very sensitive about such behaviour and just will not tolerate employees, even quite senior ones, writing to the press from the office without authority. Use of an official address for a private view is, in my opinion, a form of moral theft: the writer is making personal use of the good name, reputation and authority of the institution where he works without getting its permission. Vice- chancellors, heads of colleges, polytechnics and the like should crack down on such behaviour and insist that academics write from their homes. It is in everyone's interest that such writers commit themselves and no one else, especially since so many of their letters are badly written. Why, for instance, should King's College be saddled with a sentence like this: 'It is dismaying that patriotic politicians should divide the coun- try and erode its sovereignty by persisting to advocate Cruise deployment'?
`Pre-feminist women, sir.'
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