20 MARCH 1971, Page 5

Ford talks bunk

Henry Ford n's views are in part very salutary and welcome, but he talks rubbish when he asserts: 'There is nothing wrong with Fords of Britain—but with the coun- try'. This is—at best—shocking com- placency coming from one of the world's great international industrialists. If Henry Ford ti really thinks that there is nothing wrong with Fords of Britain despite its pro- longed strike and its long and deteriorating record of industrial relations, but that the fault lies entirely elsewhere, he must be a fool. If he doesn't think that, but just says it, he is mischievous. There are certainly many things wrong with this country (and indeed there are many things wrong with all coun- tries), and among the things that are wrong with this country are the things that arc wrong with Fords of Britain, managerial faults by no means excluded. Henry Ford it, together with his man in Dagenham. Mr Batty—who was also sounding off lately— should heed the famous proverb from St Luke, 'And why beholdest thou the mote that it is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?' They are the traditional words of the Authorised Version. I looked them up in the late Hugh J. Shonfield's translation, The Authentic New Testament (which ever since I read it I have thought to be the best. the most authentic, version available in English and a very great work of scholarship indeed, , much the better for having been done by a Jew and not by a committee of Christians):

'How is it you can see the splinter in your brother's eye, but cannot detect the shaft in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, "Allow me to extract the splinter from your own eye," when you fail to see the shaft in your own? Hypocrite! First extract the shaft from your own eye, and then you 'Reflation, reflation!: will see clearly to extract the splinter from your brother's eye.'