The president's nose

Well, this has been a week resounding with declarations and events, any one of which might, in time, come to appear historic.

The move, opposed by the White House, strongly felt in the Congress, to impose economic sanctions against South Africa, new things discovered by the latest space shuttle flight about the sun, the stars and the galaxies, the earth-shattering strike of all the baseball players, the reluctant admission by the White House after a casual statement that the pimple on the president's nose was indeed cancerous. Not least, the hullabaloo – that was given great prominence on the networks' nightly news – over the BBC's yielding to government advice in the matter of the Irish Republican broadcast.

Without going into the rights and wrongs of that cancellation, I think I ought to say something about the American public's understanding, or chronic misunderstanding, of the status and structure of the BBC itself.

About ten years ago, I think, one of the opinion polls asked Americans how they felt about television commercials. Amazingly, there was something over 70 per cent of Americans who disliked or resented them, but a follow-up question revealed the general delusion, namely that the only alternative to a commercial system is a government-controlled system and so to ensure independence of the government, you had better put up with the commercials.

I am not, myself, a man who writes letters to The Times or any other paper, but I'm often tempted to point out that there is at least a second alternative, namely, a public corporation and one stumbling block to the understanding of the BBC in this country is the word 'corporation' which, in America, means a commercial firm – the British phrase being a limited liability company. When the BBC was set up, after a brief run as a company run by the manufacturers of radio sets, the royal commission followed the advice of, I believe, our old friend and guru, John Maynard Keynes, who suggested the analogy of the Port of London Authority – a body, he suggested, that should be neither commercial nor government. The word 'corporation' seemed just right.

Now that would suggest to Americans that the corporation was a commercial undertaking. However, down the years they learned better, but not much. The snag here is the knowledge that Parliament decides the amount of the licence fee and that the fee is collected by the Post Office. Americans, even close friends of mine, for as long as 30 years, look sly and tolerant when I tell them that the BBC is an independent public corporation. They blithely say, 'How can a system that is subsidised by the government, not be under government control?' You then point out that it is not so subsidised, that the collection of the licence fee by the Post Office is no more than a convenience. They doubt it.

Even the New York Times, only a couple of days ago, described the BBC as being 'state-owned and in the charge of the Home Secretary' which is quite different from having the Home Secretary represent the government in its dealings with, not its control over, the BBC. So, since all the American networks and the independent stations take pride in doubting their governments and putting on very many programmes that make the government uncomfortable, I'm afraid Americans will go on believing that their own system, with all its faults and irritations, is the only true bastion of free speech and they'd better stay with it.

Topping the BBC row in the nightly news, for two nights anyway, was the shocking arrival of a baseball strike. At the height of the season, baseball this year has recovered its old-time, huge audiences and it was confidently predicted that if the stadiums all around the country stayed empty for any length of time, the businesses that surround the stadiums, the bars, cafés, restaurants, clubs and so on, would lose something like a hundred or two hundred million dollars. We saw heartbreaking pictures of honest hot-dog vendors padlocking their stands and lunch counters and dropping a tear over their impending bankruptcy. And the most eminent news commentators declared that this would be the end of the season and that in October, for the first time in baseball history, there would be no World Series, no play-off championship between the leaders of the two leagues.

The issues were plain and brutal. The players wanted more money. After all, the average – the average! – big-league baseball player earns a miserable $330,000 a year. The stars, of course, make a livelihood of one or two million dollars.

The players wanted to see their pension fund tripled by the owners so that they could live out their retirement in the style to which they've grown accustomed. They also wanted a new player's right to have his salary increased after one year. One good year, of course. The owners wanted to put a cap on salaries. They resisted the right to have a salary increased by arbitration after only one season. They resisted, need I say, the very thought of pouring enough of the loot they take from television into a tripled pension fund. They resisted, but not for long. The strike was no sooner announced than it was over – in, at any rate, 36 hours.

The owners dropped their demand for a cap on salaries, but salaries will increase with any rise in the cost of living. That means not the players cost of living, but the government index. The owners, while not tripling the pension fund, will increase it by nearly $200 million over six years.

All this was decided after nine months of so-called negotiations, which as late as last Tuesday found the parties back at square one where they'd started in 1984. Then came the strike – a frantic, all-night session, no progress, then a two-hour meeting on Wednesday and a settlement.

This is almost always the way with American strikes. Both sides swear, for months on end, never to surrender. When the strike is on, they sit up all night and triumphantly announce at dawn that it's over. I can't explain this. I took it up with an old friend of mine whose whole career has been spent in arbitrating salaries and pension funds. 'Nobody understand,' he said, 'that young people love a strike. It shows they're tough and independent. It proves their machismo and they're going to get something out of it.'

But how about the owners? The company? Management? 'Oh,' he said, 'they like to keep a strike threat dangling because, in the main, they're looking for a tax write-off.' I don't know if that's the whole truth but it is the voice of experience.

As I hinted earlier, the move to impose economic sanctions on South Africa is gathering steam in Congress, in universities and among many corporations, or limited liability companies. An interesting sign of how far and deep investment goes in South Africa came this week from, of all hygienic places, the United Nations. I have friends in the United Nations who never pause to denounce the maintenance of investment money in any South African business. They are ardently behind the congressmen who want an early law to disinvest and, of course, one respects their stand, their principles.

This week, however, we were temped to ask them if they wouldn't mind having their pensions docked in support of this great cause, for it came out that the United Nations' pensions fund at the end of May had $250 million worth of holdings in 30 companies that operate in South Africa. Once this became known, the UN moved quickly towards disinvestment. Now they have only $100 million in 14 companies.

I think this discovery points up the difficult, the personal difficulty for any of us, in putting our money, so to speak, where our mouth is. I remember in 1947 (was it?) when Mr Ernest Bevin's policy towards Israel was regarded in this country as odious. I had friends in New York who would not serve you Scotch whisky, though I noticed they willingly served sherry which was then being exported by the detestable dictator, Generalissimo Franco. Of course, boycotting Russian vodka has become much easier now that it's made in practically any country that grows wheat or rye.

I once figured out, from looking at the labels on the tins and packages in a supermarket, that if you started to pin down the country of origin of your coffee, your gin, your bananas – a great deal of what you eat and drink – your conscience might stay healthy but you might starve or go mad. A government, of course, cannot always afford so tender a conscience. as witnessed the time during the Second War when wolfram tungsten was essential to the manufacture of many weapons and it was necessary to stay on good terms, whatever their governments, with Bolivia, Brazil and Korea.

So, in the end, we come to poor old Ronald Reagan. He had no sooner told the press that he'd had an irritating pimple on his nose and it was taken off and not to worry, than the eager beavers got busy prodding and badgering him to say who'd done the operation, had there been a biopsy? If so, where? And on and on.

Eventually, the White House dropped the bluster and fluster and said, 'Yes, it had been a touch of skin cancer' which the president, quite rightly, said is the most harmless form of cancer. In the first stripe, anyway. And has a record of better than 95 per cent successful excision.

So then, the New York Times' splendid Tuesday science supplement had reams and reams on skin cancer and backed up the president in urging people, especially older people, not to lie and broil in that good old, noonday sun. Next time it can go deeper.

And this recalled to me an old surgeon friend I used to have a weekly drink with. 'Come in late Friday!' he'd say, 'That's an easy day for me. I spend a couple of hours with mostly admirals, farmers and damn fool women socialites.' What could they possibly have in common?

'Well,' he said, 'the sailors and the farmers can't help it. Their job over exposes them to the sun, but the socialites think a tan is cute and healthy. Later on they learn better.'

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.