Right-minded
Sir: How -right your contributors Messrs Raven and Waugh are to protest about the erosion of our liberties under this Government (29 December). From the far left, interfering Mr Heifer proposes to deprive me of the liberty to watch live hare coursing. This is something I have never seen, and now it's almost too late. I understand from an RSPCA report that the longest recorded screams of a hare amount to two and a half minutes. What a spectacle this must be!
Busybodies in the past stopped such harmless pastimes as bear-baiting and cock-fighting. Come to think of it, they also stopped public executions, and now this damned lot have stopped hanging altogether. Also, every right-minded person knows that prison is the proper place for homosexuals (consenting adults, my foot), but this authoritarian
Government has stopped even that. What is the country coming to?
It is a relief to turn from such flabbiness mas- querading as compassion (odious word!) to the activities of right-wing politicians. From the far right, public-spirited Sir Cyril Black very properly decides to prevent ordinary people like myself from reading Last Exit to Brooklyn for fear we should be corrupted. How absolutely right he is 'to be so confident that he knows what is best for other people, and how wise not to be swayed from his course by any irrelevant considerations of literary merit. I'm sure he could even explain to me the precise nature of the corruption which would have ensued, had I read the book.
Of course, what this country really needs is the sort of freedom which exists in South Africa and Rhodesia under liberal-minded Messrs Vorster and Smith. Naturally they won't stand for any argu- ment or disagreement with their policies, but as these are invariably right what sensible person would wish to disagree? Silly Mrs Helen Joseph, now beginning her second five-year term of house arrest for opposing apartheid, has only herself to blame. A government-controlled press and plenty of censorship should ensure that all think alike.
Yes, in 1968 let us dispose of such tiresome left-wing notions as caring for the old, ill and indigent Let the Sir Cyrils have the freedom to impose what literary censorship they think fit. Let the profit motive reign supreme, and let us sell arms to South Africa—or our grandmothers to the gipsies, if the end-product is personal gain.
Previous page
