Signs of the Times

William J. Haley

The Times

Sir William J. Haley, Editor The Times, London in an address to the British Oxygen Group of Companies

Men and women, and young people and children, are all too often led to believe in nothing, to respect nothing, to be ashamed to deem anything fine, and to hold nothing sacred.

Books, newspapers, broadcasting, television, all were meant to be great educational influences. They have all paid lip-service to education. They were expected to level the intellectual and aesthetic inequalities in society. ... They have levelled downwards, not upwards. Thus it is that we have had television programmes that have seemed near-blasphemous, books that are pornographic, newspapers that are, as Sir Richard Livingstone once described them, "A chaos of values." And we have had these things because modern methods of communication demand acceptance by the greatest attractable audience.

Is it any wonder that ... new generations are confused; that there is cynicism and lack of faith in anything; that there is restlessness, rootlessness and unease?

Society ... depends on our having faith in our values, belief in our moral standards, courage not to stay silent when these things are scoffed at or attacked. It depends on having courage to assert that what is false is not true, that what is ugly is not beautiful, that what is beastly is not clever, that what is cynical is not to be admired. And that there is no respectable half-way house between honesty and dishonesty.

Only individual example and leadership can change the climate of opinion. In these matters Governments can achieve nothing. People such as yourselves are among the true leaders. (Where social conduct is concerned, business-men can be far more influential than politicians.) You mix and mingle and can set tone and pace. You are in many lands. You are in the world's traffic and will find many instinctively accept your standards. You have young people under you who will copy your example.

Do not stay silent. If we are silent, we desert our responsibilities. If we are apathetic, we betray our heritage. If we are defeatist, we surrender what is noblest in the spirit of man.

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