From the Rt Revd John Dudley Davies
Sir, - The Church Times recently noted the celebration
of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, at which Dr
Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech, often called "I
have a dream" (Comment, 23 August).
Some of us may have wondered why so little of the actual speech was
presented in the celebration broadcast on the BBC.
Fifty years ago, Dr King was a very significant figure to us in
South Africa. It was a depressing time; Mandela and his colleagues
were in prison. The ANC and other Congress bodies were banned.
Leaders such as Bishop Ambrose Reeves had been deported. The
traditionally "open" universities, such as the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where I was a chaplain, had been
virtually silenced. But Dr King was a black man with a powerful
voice, speaking to the world, speaking to our situation.
The apartheid government saw him as a dangerous communist, and
made it a criminal offence to quote him or publish him. But Dr King
did his best to keep in touch. Like the leaders of the African
National Congress, he had been deeply influenced by Gandhi, who had
originally developed his philosophy of non-violence in South
Africa. Our Students' Representative Council invited Dr King to
come to give our annual Academic Freedom lecture. Everybody knew
that he would not be allowed into the country to do this, but it
was a public gesture of recognition.
Dr King had an English friend and colleague, a priest who had
worked with him in the United States and in Geneva. This was Edward
Crowther, who had moved to work in South Africa and had become
Bishop of Kimberley & Kuruman. In response to our University's
invitation, Dr King gave Bishop Crowther a tape of a lecture that
he had given, in which he developed both his vision of the part to
be played by the Church in relation to an unjust society, and also
his rationale of non-violence. If we couldn't have him, we could
have his voice.
The Bishop passed the tape to a group of us in Johannesburg. We
made about 1000 copies of it on LPs; through a network of
colleagues, we got these distributed across the country over one
weekend. Although, of course, the speaker's name was not stated on
the label, the record was quickly banned. But at least it had made
Dr King's voice audible in our country.
I still have one of these records, and have often played it and
lent it to other people. Because of the recent anniversary, I
planned to invite people to hear it now. I mentioned this to our
local BBC radio station. They would have liked to include some of
the lecture in a broadcast. But then rigid and expensive conditions
of copyright emerged. Eventually, they got permission to broadcast
an excerpt, on strict orders that this should not last longer than
60 seconds - 60 seconds of a speech that promoted freedom and
resistance to oppression!
I think that I see why, in the anniversary broadcast, the "I
have a dream" speech was represented by a collection of
snippets.
Dr Martin Luther King is part of world history; his voice should
surely belong to the world. Faced with the obstacles created by a
cruel and oppressive regime 45 years ago, some us, in a small way,
risked our liberty to make his voice heard. Nowadays, his voice has
to overcome the obstacles of commercial profit. Evil ideology has
been replaced by the financial opportunism. The ideology,
mercifully, no longer rules; but commercial advantage is on its
throne.
What would Dr King have to say about that?
JOHN D. DAVIES
Nyddfa, By Pass Road
Gobowen SY11 3NG
