An Open Letter to "Truth"

Dear Mr Barrett,—I have received your letter of the 3rd of April, in which you ask me to divulge, to your Mr Clarke, any information I have concerning the organisations I labelled Fascist in this column. I would have thought that the way in which I spoke about your paper would have made it clear that such an invitation would be at the very least, unwelcome it is not merely that I would feel degraded in associating myself with a paper that sells itself by reporting the more unusual habits of the sexual deviants and the exploits of precocious adolescents in this country, I should also object to the way in which you would use the information. If you limited yourself to attacking the aims and objects of such organisations and examined the forces within society which give rise to such organisations, then some useful purpose would be served by my co-operating with you. After all I too am opposed to the theory and practice of communism, but I do not believe that any useful purpose was served by the McCarthy-like articles that Truth published.

I realise, Mr Barrett, that your letter was partly a response to the challenge I issued in the last paragraph of my par; therefore I must offer my apologies to your paper. Truth, it is clear, is willing to hold individual and possible Fascists as well as Communists up to ridicule, abuse, possible victimisation.—I remain, Indignantly,

Val Maxwell.