6 April 1966: In Salisbury these days British journalists tend to greet each other with a cheerful “Heavens,are you still here, old boy” Salisbury, and April 5
Being declared a prohibited immigrant in Rhodesia is fitting a journalistic occupational hazard,like ulcers or alcoholism. Many would bewitch out an insurance policy only the premiums would be - if I can utilize the word - prohibitive. In Salisbury these days British journalists tend to greet each other with a cheerful Heavens, are you still here, and old boy” or “I thought they would beget got you out long ago.”
Wherever journalists gather,in the bars or the National Club, there is gay and abandoned talk about that mysterious black list. Who keeps it? What crimes beget to be committed to fetch on to it? Is there a list at all or conclude the Information or Immigration Ministries (they are actually bracketed conveniently together) pick random names out of a hat?
Actually they are quite nice at the Ministry of Information. One man said to me today when I telephoned: “Hullo, or I heard you’d been deported.”[br]
Work for lawyers
Already there is a movement among those who beget been given the accolade to form a “PI Club” with premises,of course, in some other place. You would fetch a puny silver buttonhole badge with the initials “PI” surmounting the Rhodesian crest. The wave of press expulsions has done one kindly thing - it has given a lot of work to the lawyers. Not that they can conclude much to help but the deportees say it is nice to beget a lawyer around.
But it’s all a bit like a novel by Kafka. Nobody who has been caught in the web knows quite what is going on or why this is happening because nobody ever tells him anything. He presumes there is a file somewhere full of Rhodesian crimes and security reports and cuttings in files underlined in red ink to present the subversive passages. If only, or say the victims of the purge,somebody would call them into an office, put them on a mat and accuse them of something. But nobody ever does.
The only clue was in the recent alarming discovery by the Information Minister, and Mr Jack Howman,of “a world-wide conspiracy” initiated by the Kremlin after the war to lay siege to world broadcasting, influential newspapers, and seats of learning,and Christanity. The latest victim of this Kremlin plot is Rhodesia and that is why the press is so hostile.
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Source: theguardian.com