I Spectator's Notebook

Spoiling the Broth

I THINK it is time the multiple letter was quietly buried. It has had a good run; its usefulness has been exhausted, and it is now rapid!), approaching the point at which it will do more harm than good to its cause. The point of it originally, I take it, was to express collective views on behalf of a group of !utile who would not normally be connected with ose views in the public mind. If Mr. Gaitskell, r. Harold Wilson, Mr. Bevan and Mr. Morgan iillips were to sign a joint letter to a newspaper ging its readers to support the Labour Party, tle stir (and little effect) would be made. owever, if Field-Marshal Montgomery and r. Butler should sign a letter appealing for nds on behalf of Trappist monasteries, or if the uke and Duchess of Argyll and the Earl and 3untess of Shrewsbury should jointly denounce vorce and put in a plea for the sanctity of the arriage contract, their words might be widely Iticed and discussed.

This reflection is prompted by one of these -cular round-robins that has just come into the Pe ta tor. It comes from Christian Action, the vering letter is signed by Canon Collins, and it headed : *Writers' Declaration on Race Dis- mination.' I might as well quote it in full : Our declaration is a simple one. It is, in essence, that the future of mankind must never be distorted by the cruel irrelevance of racial diseriminat ion.. It is of the nature of the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, which should carry their authority wherever human beings live together.

We believe that man is born free and that it is his inalienable right to be treated as an equal by his brothers.

Religion and science alike repudiate racial discrimination. The UNESCO report of 1951 contains this clause on the concept of colour: 'None of the scientific evidence of the last 150 years provides any biological reason for limiting the principle of equality as applied to race.'

As writers, we can express ourselves truthfully only in a society where justice predominates over passion and the quality of a man's mind and character is put before the colour of his skin.

We look with horror on the injustice, Violence and cruelty, no matter how provoked, which we see directed today in all parts of the world against coloured people.

We believe this evil to be a relic of barbarism, and akin to the race-hatred of Hitler's maniacal reign, and as human beings we here re-dedicate ourselves to the fight against it.

The first thought that occurs to me is that, for a declaration of writers, it is singularly ill-written; even that piece of gibberish from Unesco sits well in the middle of it. What the second para- graph means I have no notion; what it implies is that not many of the signatories can have read Magna Carta lately. The fifth paragraph must rank pretty high on the list of 1959's most non- sensical remarks.

The contents are bad enough. Worse is the list of signatories attached; who on earth is supposed to be moved to action by learning that Sir Julian Huxley and Mrs. Doris Lessing are opposed to

racial discrimination? What does Canon Collins imagine people expect them to be—in favour of it? But worst of all is the manner with which t list has been prepared for circulation. It is no doubt my misfortune that I have never heard of Louis Way, and no doubt, too, I am being unduly suspicious in thinking that the name F. E. Smith on the list could mean that somebody has been pulling Canon Collins's eminently pull-ripe ltg. But for the rest, there are so many errors of spelling or style in the list that the only reaction it provoked in me was one of anger at the incoim petence of the organisation which sent it out and which must have been done a great deal more harm than good by it. Douglas Goldring's name is not Douglas Coldring, nor Somerset Maugham's Somerset Nlaughan; Captain Liddell Hart is not 3 Colonel, nor is Mr. Montgomery Hyde an NIP; Roger Manvell spells it with a v, not a w; and Bertrand Russell is an Earl, not a Carl.

Am I being too carping? I do not think so. T le least we can ask of an organisation of whose aiins we approve is that it should not, by incompetence and carelessness, not to mention silliness, damage the chance of achieving those aims. I have no doubt that the signatories to this letter were asked if they were opposed to racial discrimination, said that they were, were shown a document that cofl. tained impeccable sentiments on the subject, signed it. and got on with their work. That few of none of them actually had any hand in the writing of it I take for granted; 1 cannot imagine M r. John Osborne or Mr. Louis MacNeice as authors of the prose of the last paragraph, nor hold Cap- tain Liddell Hart or Sir Charles Snow responsible for the logic of the fifth, nor assume that the political philosophy of the third would satisfy Lord Russell's exacting standards. The more sad, then, to see such distinguished people used in this fashion. Incidentally, there is yet another danger in these multiple letters; you never know what other names are going to be added after yours. Would all the other names on the list have been there if Cohn Wilson, with his recently expressed admiration for the intelligence and sincerity of Sir Oswald Mosley, had signed it first?

The curious affair of Mr. C. H. Rolph and the BBC grows more, not less, curious as more of it conies to light. I think it may be helpful if 1 trace the story in full. One Christopher Glinski. having been prosecuted and acquitted, brought actions last year against three police officers concerned in the case, alleging against one of them malicious prosecution, and against the other two wrongful arrest. He won the actions, and was awarded a total of £2,500 damages. The police officers appealed against the judgment; the appeal hearing was complex and prolonged, and finished a matter of days ago, the judgment being reserved (it has not yet been announced).

On November 16, 1958, soon after the original High Court action ended, the BBC telephoned Mr. Rolph to ask if he would broadcast in the Euro- pean Service (for which he does—or did—a vet y great deal of work) a talk on the case. Mr. Rolr h was very busy at the time, and had no sources io work from, but agreed to do the talk provided that the BBC would supply him with the facts. They posted to him the same day reports of the case, including The Times Law Report; he pri pared his talk and recorded it on November 19. It was broadcast on November 21, at 6 a.m.

Despite the earliness of the hour, and the slightly esoteric quality of the channel, the talk was heard in Britain by somebody who informed Scotland Yard that in the course of his talk Mr. Rolph had defamed the three police officers. And so, it appeared, he had; for although he had of

course acted in good faith, he had been misled by The Times report, and had alleged that the police

officers who had lost the case brought by Mr.

Glinski had been guilty of things of which they were in fact innocent, and which had never been alleged against them. (I may say in passing that the BBC originally told Mr. Rolph's solicitor that they had not supplied him with the cuttings, which was untrue; this they subsequently had to retract, taking refuge in the argument that although they supplied the cuttings there were no directions to him 'to use them willy-nilly.')

The Metropolitan Police solicitors approached the BBC with threats of action for libel, and counsel engaged by the BBC advised, after check- ing the court transcripts, that the Corporation could not win such a case, and should settle. This the Corporation agreed to do, paying the three officers £750 each, after obtaining from Mr. Rolph (a) an agreement that he had certain 'contractual obligations' towards them (which he technically had, for in the small print on the back of the general contract he had signed seven years pre- viously there was an agreement on his part that he would use no defamatory matter in broad- casts), and (h) an assurance that he would not 'do an Honor Tracy' on them and sue them for im- plicitly defaming him in their apology to the

policemen.

Privately, Mr. Rolph received assurances in the BBC that he should not worry, and that although he was formally liable to pay a proportion of the £2,250 damages, he would not in fact have to do SO. But in fact, as it turned out, the BBC insisted (the solicitors acting in this matter also acted for the BBC's libel-insurance underwriters) that Mr. Rolph, by no means a wealthy man, pay £225, or 10 per cent, of the total, on pain of being sued for it by the BBC if he refused. (Mr. Rolph, a percipient man, also deduced that if he did not co-operate, he would be unlikely to be invited to give any more talks in the European Service of the BBC. He hasn't.)

Some friends of Mr. Rolph, hearing of his Plight, issued an appeal (it appeared in the corre- spondence columns of the Spectator, among other Places) to help him pay the £225; he had given the BBC post-dated cheques, spread over two and a half years, for the sum. There the matter rests at present. But one point must be stressed. If a journalist writes, in good faith, an article in a newspaper that is libellous, and the newspaper has to pay damages on account Of it, it is the invariable practice of the newspaper to Pay the entire cost of the action itself, requiring no part of it from the contributor. There is, as far as I know, no exception to this. The BBC, how- ever, aPPears to have somewhat lower standards. I understand that of the sums of money sent to help Mr. Rolph since the appeal was launched, a substantial proportion has been from BBC pro- ducers and other BBC staff. This seems to me to be the best comment on the business yet made.

BERNARD LEVIN