Need For Expression Of Unpopular Views

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30288, 14 November 1963, Page 10

Need For Expression Of Unpopular Views

A “climate of acceptance” of the presentation of unpopular view's should be allowed to flourish in New Zealand, or it would lose its creative people to those places in the world where such climates did exist, Mr A. de Malmanche told the Canterbury branch of the Royal Commonwealth Society . Mr de Malmanche recently returned from Canada where he was artistic director to a theatre company. "A vast social upheaval is taking place in Great Britain, for example,’’ Mr de Malmanche said. “The Profumo affair only served to focus world-wide attention on conditions that have been evolving for some time, and which British writers and performers have been faithfully presenting in their works for a number of years. “Time-honoured customs are being turned upside-down and given a thorough, often brutal, re-examination. Nothing is sacrosanct —class structure, religion, politics, the monarchy. “That the public was more than ready and willing to witness such presentations can easily be proved by the great number of commercial successes like ’Look Back In Anger’, ‘Room at the Top’, ‘Beyond the Fringe’, and ‘The Establishment’.” There was a need for unpopular view's to be expressed in Western society generally, Mr de Malmanche said. Against those who advanced these views were selfappointed protectors of the public good who tried to suppress unpopular ot controversial utterances.

“These do-gooders would probably cry the loudest were they subjected to a dictatorship, yet their efforts at suppression are unwittingly a step in that direction,” he said. "Surely the measure of our democracy is how wide a spectrum of opinion we can span—how much we are willing to hear of viewpoints differing from our own, and how rational we can be in our judgments when exposed to these differences- , . . “Here in our country, there

are a few fearless souls willing to pull about our own ways. What’s ahead then? The answer depends entirely on whether or not we are willing to hear and examine the unpalatable, the difficult and the painful, and so learn and change. A climate of acceptance should be allowed to flourish here, or we will lose our creative people to those places in the world where such climates do exist,” he said.