To Indira, with love...

Press, 26 August 1980, Page 16

To Indira, with love...

By

A. K. GRANT

Prime Minister Rob Muldoon will haye to appeal to the Indian Government if he is to carry out his unprecedented threat to ban “Listener” journalist Tom Scott from next month’s Commonwealth regional summit . . . Asked if he was going to write to the Government (of India) to ban the accreditation of Mr Scott,; Mr Muldoon said “I think I will. I haven’t done so.” — “Sunday Times,” August 24, 1980.

Vogel House, Wellington, 25.8.80. To: Mrs Indira Ghandiperson Fellow Prime Minister New Delhi Dear Mrs Ghandiperson, As a Commonwealth Prime Minister who knows more about suppressing political opposition and stifling the press than I have had hot dinners, (by the way, I gather the dinners are pretty hot in your, .part of the world, -could you tell the caterers to go easy on the Vindaloo, otherwise I will be spending all night on the Indialoo, get it?), you will appreciate my . desire to travel to your mystic subcontinent unaccompanied by a socalled Tom Scott who passes himself off as a journalist but is in fact no more a journalist than I am a democrat. . This so-called Scott writes for a publication caller .the “Listener," if you can- call the sort of typing he goes in for “writing,” and not content with publishing material defamatory of myself . and my colleagues, he also draws cartoons which distort our features in a manner which would be all-too-familiar to you if you had not put all your own cartoonists behind bars during your “Emergency” of a year or so ago. (By the way, allow me to congratulate you on your “Emergency”; a nice idea and I thought of having one here until I real-

ised. there was no need because. New Zealanders would keep quiet and do what they were told without any necessity to suspend a Constitution which doesn’t exist or deprive them of rights which only worry and upset them on the rare occasions when they think about them.) This so-called Scott is not what I would call a “real” journalist: all the “real” journalists in this country treat me with respect, or better still, fear me, whereas Scott does neither, which merely goes to prove that he is not a “real” journalist. Because he is not a “real” journalist I have had him banned from my press conferences in Wellington, and having thus excluded him from my conferences at home, you will well understand that the last thing I need is to find him popping up at press conferences when you and I are expressing the timeless wisdom of the Orient in New Delhi. His presence would be. to me. like a red rag to a bull, and I am reliably informed that in your country the bull is a sacred, cow. Need I say more? Well, perhaps I had better, to be on the safe side. Talking, as I was a moment ago, of red rags, reminds me that I should point out to .you that the so-called “Listener” for which Scott writes is a Red rag of the deepest dye, .despite the fact that it is an organ of a State corporation.

Your ladypersonliness prevents me from telling you which organ it is; all I will say is that, given that it is the particular organ it is, I am not surprised to find another organ like Scott in it. I know I need say no more, and can leave it to you to prevent the alleged Scott from bringing down the Commonwealth while getting up my nose. I remain, Madam, Your twin Cornerstone of '. the Free World, Rt Hon. R. D. Muldoon. (You may call me “Right,” if you like.)