THE CIVIL SERVICE
Snt,—A rather remarkable letter appeared in your issue of last week under the title of Mr. Isaacs' Yoke, and signed by Mr. H. L. Hornsby, Director of Public Relations, Ministry of Labour. It is nothing new, of course, to see a letter from a public relations officer accredited to one of the Ministries, but many of your readers, I am sure, will feel that this established a new level of discourtesy in official communications of this kind and thereby raises an issue of no little importance. Many agree that there is a place—and an important place—for the official public relations officer. My present intention is not to question the usefulness of official public relations officers, but rather to call attention to what seems to me their deteriorating manners in their communications regarding members of the public.
In my view, an official public relations officer should confine himself to questions of fact. If any comment on his department contains a serious mis-statement of fact, most of us will agree that he is entitled to put the matter in proper perspective. If, however, the political head of the department considers a letter to require any combination of humour—I hesitate to say " so-called humour "—with browbeating or resort to any of the coarser arts of the seamier side of politics, then surely the Minister himself should sponsor any composition of this sort. One had thought that the civil servant was indeed civil, and in fact the servant of the community. The type of letters which are now beginning to appear from public relations officers, however, gives one furiously to think. If this seems small in itself, it is not negligible as a symptom. In recent articles on the Oxford and Cambridge Unions there has been a tendency to deplore the decay of political invective ; it would almost seem that the art has passed from the politicians to the public relations officers, except that the original exponents usually contrived to use their invective without suggesting (to quote Mr. Harold Nicolson from the same issue) that " the milk of human kindness (had) turned quite sour." To return to the letter under consideration: nowhere does Mr. Hornsby say, "I am desired by the Minister to point out. . . ." I am quite sure that the journalists whom he twits with having entirely lost their sense of humour will be able to take care of themselves ; so, too, will Janus himself. I write merely to protest against a tendency which is becoming increasingly
intolerable.—Yours faithfully, HAROLD BELLMAN. Priory Close, Common Road, Stanmore.
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