John Bentley
Sir: In his City column (13 March) Nicholas Davenport chides the Man Alive Report (BBC-2) for failing to call 'one single witness in defence' of Mr John Bentley, the victim of 'blatant character assassination'. Perhaps fuller knowledge of the arrangements leading up to the programme would set his mind at rest?
Mr Bentley, who at the height of his career attracted the wrath of trade unions, the City and Parliament alike, eagerly accepted the invitation to face and answer just a few of his critics. Indeed, he appeared doubly eager because the Man Alive Report was to be transmitted 'live' with no possibility of editing any of the contributions before transmission. With this in mind, the structure of the programme with its emphasis on the Triang affair was worked out with the approval of Mr Bentley himself. It was Mr Bentley who asked his former wife to take part in the programme. He also suggested that at least one of the names put forward to appear with him was 'too weak' as an adversary and his advice was taken in the matter. Naturally, it was Mr Bentley's wish to have the maximum time possible to answer criticisms personally, which was why he agreed to appear alone with no one by his side.
Mr Bentley himself seems not to share Mr Davenport's view. The day after the programme was transmitted he declared himself to me to be 'not unhappy', indeed 'satisfied'. Later on a radio programme he went out of his way to insist that he had not been 'hard done by'. Nor, in truth, was he. Michael Latham Editor, Man Alive Report, BBC TV, Kensington House, London W14 (Letters 13 March) that Israel is a democracy: surely it is a theocracy?
No democracy in the world exercises such a purely racist law as the Israeli Law of Return, for instance, under which any Jew from any country is entitled to automatic citizenship of Israel as a right, whereas an Arab whose family has lived in that land for many centuries has no such right.
Dr Shahak is a very compassionate and courageous man. While being proud of his own racial origins, he believes that repression and racism are evils—whoever practises them—for which there can be no justification. He has the courage to speak out about what he sees.
Anne Connell 6 Vanburgh Close, Orpington, Kent
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