THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

[Friday 4 October, 1957]

Sir,
On April 2 of this year you accorded us the hospitality of your columns to express our deep concern at the new trend of policy in sound broadcasting on the part of the B.B.C.  A week later Sir Alexander Cadogan replied on behalf of the Corporation, asking us to consider the new policy as a “total plan”.
Now, five months later, details of that plan have at last become available.  They do nothing to remove our misgivings and the situation remains profoundly disturbing.  It is clear that the Home Service will undergo a considerable change of character and that the Third Programme will be unable, in the restricted time henceforth available to it, to give the same broad coverage which it has so meritoriously given for more than 10 years since its inception.  Network Three will, as we predicted, do nothing to make good these losses.
The B.B.C. has made certain concessions in answer to the case put before it by those of us who called on Sir Alexander Cadogan and some of his colleagues on July 18.  In our view, these do not go far enough.  We would therefore again urge the Corporation to reconsider its policy before irreparable damage is done to the traditional high quality of British broadcasting, and in so doing to take into account the case which has now been clearly put before it by responsible and informed public opinion: a case which, throughout this debate, it has been unable to answer with any cogency.
Yours, &c.
Beveridge, Adrian C. Boult, George Cicestr, E.M. Forster, Christopher Fry, John Gielgud, Victor Gollanz, John Masefield, Harold Nicolson, Russell, V. Sackville-West, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Peter Laslett.