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BRIAN
DEER: TRAVELLING WHITE Page 1
The
Sunday Times Magazine (London) April 26 1998
Every
year thousands of British volunteers embark on an
awfully big adventure: to help the Third World.
But Voluntary Service Overseas, VSO, funded by
£21m of taxpayers' money, is under attack.
Critics say that it does little to fight poverty
and a lot to boost volunteers' careers.
BRIAN
DEER INVESTIGATES
Forty
years ago last month, a letter appeared in The
Sunday Times that was to produce a remarkable
effect. It was from the Bishop of Portsmouth, one
Launcelot Fleming, who proposed a new form of
social action to bolster Britain's impact
overseas. He had just finished chairing a
committee of the nation's great and good that had
probed the then-emerging rock 'n' roll culture -
and he had come to the conclusion that there was
Something To Be Done with what he described as
"suitable boys". Rather than be
corrupted by newfangled pinball machines, motor
scooters and other contemporary vices, he felt
that young chaps (he never mentioned girls)
should go and do Good Work around the world.
"I
know of urgent appeals from Sarawak, from Uganda
and from west Africa," he wrote, in a
350-word epistle to this newspaper, printed under
the headline The Year Between, "not
for money but for volunteer assistance, in the
field of primary teaching, youth work, community
development, adult education and social welfare
generally, where a readiness to give service
would not only be of value in itself, but could
act as an inspiration to the young people of
these countries."
This
letter is now pasted into the front of my
notebook as I fly with photographer David
Harrison above an orange west African landscape.
We are seated near the back of a 19-seat Beech
1900C, built in Wichita, Kansas, heading 400km
north from the city of Accra, the coastal capital
of the republic of Ghana. Seated around us are
six Protestant missionaries who chatter excitedly
about "planting churches". I ask their
leader if business is good. He grins and tells me
it's "excellent."
We
are here because of what grew out of that letter:
Voluntary Service Overseas, or VSO. After its
publication, on March 23 1958, a retired colonial
official named Alec Dickson, in cahoots with
Fleming, contrived an apparently spontaneous
write-in campaign from friendly headmasters and
chums overseas, giving Sunday Times editors and
the newspaper's readers the impression of a
groundswell of support. Letters poured in and,
within weeks, what had been a sub-editor's
inspiration to fill a single-column, two-line
correspondence page heading was taken up as the
interim title of this body. They called it
"The Year Between".
How
the bishop squared taking part in this deception
presumably god only knows, but 1958 was as
different an era to ours as the Beano is from
Nintendo. Many columns of that weekend's Sunday
Times were filled with talk of the H-bomb. The
paper reported that 40% of households had
television sets, and the radio listings included
such Light Programme treats as the Billy Cotton
Band Show. Celebrity medical stories included
news that Lady Harwood had mumps, and the page 1
splash was:
- SIR
WINSTON IS
- 'NOT
TOO WELL'
In
this environment, the bishop's proposal must have
sounded like a Billy Bunter jape. "If, as I
believe, there will be no difficulty in finding
volunteers," he explained, "it will be
necessary for some body - or bodies - to accept
responsibility for three things: for selecting
suitable boys and suitable projects, for finding
travelling expenses, and for ensuring that at the
other end there is someone who will meet the boys
and set them on the right road."
*****
This
report is copyright, Brian Deer. Responses,
information and other feedback concerning this
resource on Voluntary Service Overseas, VSO, are
appreciated - via the briandeer.com homepage.
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