For personal reasons, I shall not broadcast on the matches of the South African cricket tour of England arranged for 1970. The B.B.C. has accepted my decision with understanding and an undertaking that my standing with them will not be affected by it.
This course of action has not been dictated by mass influences. Apartheid is detestable to me, and I would always oppose it. On the other hand, I am not satisfied that the cricket tour is the aspect of apartheid which should have been selected as the major target for attack. It would have seemed to me more justifiable, more tactically simple, and more effective, to mount a trade embargo or to picket South Africa House. Surely the Nationalist South African Ambassador is a thousand times more guilty of the inhuman crime of apartheid than Graeme Pollock who, throughout the English summer of 1969, played cricket for the International Cavaliers XI with eight or nine West Indians and, before he went home said: ╥What great chaps ╤ there couldn╒t have been a better bunch to play with.╙
Jack Plimsoll, the manager of this touring team, was an intimate friend of mine on the South African tour of England in 1947, before the election of the first ╤ Malan ╤ Nationalist Government and the introduction of apartheid. Every one of the South African players of my acquaintance has already played with, and against, non-white cricketers. Indeed, only a multi-racial match, played in South Africa before the Vorster (Verwoerd) Government banned such fixtures for ever, provided the expert assessment of Basil D╒Oliveira╒s ability which enabled me to persuade Middleton to give him a contract to play in England. Not all South Africans are pro-apartheid
Crucially, though, a successful tour would offer comfort and confirmation to a completely evil regime. To my mind, the Cricket Council, acting on behalf of British cricket, has failed fairly to represent those British people ╤ especially cricketers ╤ who genuinely abominate apartheid. The council might have determined ╤ and been granted ╤ terms which would have demonstrated its declared disapproval of apartheid. It did not do so; nor give the slightest indication of a will to do so. To persist with the tour seems to me a social, political, and cricketing error. If I were a supporter of apartheid I would feel the same. It seems to me destined to failure on all levels, with the game of cricket the ultimate and inevitable sufferer. If it should ╥succeed╙ to the extent of being completed, what is the outcome to be ╤ a similarly contentious tour four years hence?
It is my limitation, and advantage, that I can only broadcast as I feel. Commentary on any game is pleasure; it can only be satisfactorily broadcast in terms of shared enjoyment. This series cannot, to my mind, be enjoyable. There are three justifiable reasons for playing cricket ╤ performance, pleasure, and profit ╤ and I do not believe that this tour will produce any of them.
The terms of the B.B.C.╒s charter do not permit expression of editorial opinion. It would not be professional or polite to disagree with my fellow commentators on the significance of the tour within the hearing of listeners. It therefore seems to me unfair, on both sides, for me to broadcast about the tour in a manner uncritical of its major issues, while retaining the right to be critical of them in this newspaper.
It is my hope to write and talk about cricket in which the minor issue of a game
is not overshadowed by the major issue of principle.
