Cricket, lovely cricket
Sir: Mr Hodcroft (Letters, 23 May) seems to have missed the point of my earlier letter which was that you unreasonably claimed to be unique in applying reason to the question of the South African tour. I claimed that neither reason nor charity is completely on the side of your opinion.
I am not sure that I see the connection between that and Mr flodcroft's point about the attitude of Jesus to the Romans. Neither do I make a distinction between good or bad Christianity. People are either Christians or they are not. Christians may then have different views about the tour and many other subjects.
Theology is a different matter. It is a system of ideas which can be good or bad and the criteria for judging are well known. Good theology tells us that we have to concede to Mr Hodcroft that there is no evidence to suggest that Jesus opposed the Romans. No one claimed that he did. Jesus was, however, opposed to the Jewish authorities. He had plenty to say about them. Perhaps this is why many people are not so much opposed to the South Africans as to our own Cricket Council who have bungled this affair from the beginning.
But this sort of argument is sterile. My opposition to the Tour is based on the fact that South Africa has a policy which dis- tinguishes people's merits on the basis of their skin colour and they apply this to inter- national sport. Furthermore they refused to accept an mcc player on these grounds. This is manifestly not a Christian-attitude nor is -it humane. The Cricket Council have now belatedly acknowledged this with their ban on further tours. Illogically they stopped short at this one.
Ronald Nevin The Rectory, Cockfield, Bishop Auckland, Co Durham
Sir: Those ministers of the cloth who ob- jected to the South African cricket tour on religious grounds (the Bishops of Woolwich and Stepney, the Rev R. Nevin, among others) should read their Bible. In Matthew,
Chapter vii, is written, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged . . . thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam in thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye'. In Matthew, Chapter xxiii, 28 we read, 'Even so ye also appear righteous
unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.' Christ's condemnation of hypocrisy is very appropriate to the anti- apartheid movement, for two reasons.
First, the anti-apartheid crowd claims an absolute monopoly of moral virtue. It is never admitted that the South Africans are stupid, or mistaken, or sincerely deluded—they are 'Fascists', 'racialists' and even, according to the Edinburgh demonstrators, 'pigs'.
Secondly, while claiming this moral con-
cern, anti-apartheid campaigners never raise the slightest objection to the terrible atrocities in other parts of the world. There have been more Africans killed in Nigeria in the past few months as a result of the Biafran war than have ever been killed as a result of apartheid in the entire history of South Africa, and the number of people killed for political reasons in the Soviet Union exceeds the entire South African population. Not only do the anti-apartheid campaigners refuse to condemn these atrocities, but they actually co-operate with communists and African nationalists against South Africa. Please, I beg of any anti- apartheid campaigner, tell the world why you indulge in special pleading and maintain a rigid double standard in your campaign.
The last word on the anti-apartheid cam- paign in general and the banning of the cricket tour in particular can be found in Matthew, xxiii, 15: 'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.'
Donald M. Bowers
13, Kerr Crescent, Sedgefield, Co. Durham •
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