NEWSPAPER ESTIMATES of what their readers most want to know
about people in the news are nearly always odd. The commonest description of Lord Altrincham, who this week resigned from two committees of the Victoria League in protest against the colour bar in force at the League's Student Hostel, was that he was thirty-two and an Old Etonian. (A more enlightening description might have been that he stood as a Tory at the last two elections and is editor of the National Review.) Considering that it has long known what was going to happen, the League's reaction to his resignation was not very astute. Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt, its chairman, said : 'The club is not a suitable building to accommodate mixed races. They have different habits. If mothers in Austra- lia, for example, think their sons or daughters are living alongside Africans they will not be awfully happy about it.' This is just like a Paddington landlady turning away coloured people with the words : 'The other lodgers would not like it.' And what sort of building, I wonder, does Sir Cecil think is 'suitable' for mixed races? One where everyone is allowed in but where there is complete segregation inside? It might have been better if Sir Cecil had clarified this point instead of making explosive noises about Lord Altrincham being `wicked' and 'definitely offside' in expressing con- cern in his letter of resignation that members of the Royal Family 'should be associated—even nominally and unintentionally—with a hostel based on the principle of apartheid.'
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