The Earl of Sandwich's Crew Norman L. Smythe, Francis Beckett,
P. M. T. Sheldon-Williams,
John Antony British Voluntary Service M. McCaw, E. F. G. Haig
Thalidomide Babies Quentin de la Bedoyere The Ideal Editor Frank Singleton The Common Market Oliver Smedley 'Public Odium,' the Press and PROs
Stephen Parkinson, Rene Elvin THE EARL OF SANDWICH'S CREW
is the privilege of journals of opinion to report on issues and events according to their own particular beliefs. This permits considerable latitude of expression, limited only by considerations of ethics, without having recourse to the distortion of basic facts. I refer to your report, in last week's number, of our Albert Hall meeting.
The Anti-Common Market Union, of which I was
chairman, was a coalition of all the groups partici- pating and has no individual members whatsoever. It was organised for the express purpose of the meeting and is now dissolved. All the financing came from contributions from the member organisations and from the sale of tickets. Other reporters ascertained these facts. Your Mr. Fairlie relied, apparently, upon his intuition and it led him astray.
Personally, I think that Mr. Fairlie's most telling comment was that my particular name is not such as to inspire confidence. Shakespeare notwith- standing, this may well be the root cause of my utter failure in all directions. How does Sean Adenauer or Harry MacGaulle sound? I await your comments.
I also object to your representing us as belonging to the lunatic fringe and I cannot have my name, such as it is, associated with such sentiments. Most of my political activity has taken place in the US where I was concerned with one of the many groups that helped to establish Israel as an independent State and various other causes, including rent control, housing, poll-tax and anti-lynching legisla- tion. I think that you would agree that they were hardly lunatic causes. Similarly, I believe that the anti-Common Market movement is a valid one which expresses the sincere wishes of the majority of the British people.
Finally, as chairman of the ACMU and organiser of the meeting, I was not responsible for all the views of the speakers (you didn't report the cogent economic arguments and valid political points). I am not a xenophobe myself, for I even like the English, some of them, anyway.
NORMAN L. SMYTHE
10 River Court, Portsmouth Road, S'urbiton, Surrey
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