Disgruntled Reader

Disgruntled Reade

"I am sending you a letter," the telephone caller told John D. B. Junor, editor of the London Sunday Express (circ. 3,766,724). "Maybe you would like to publish it." To Editor Junor, that was the understatement of the week. The very next Sunday, at the very top of the Readers' Letters column on page 4, under the headline ''I protest--" appeared the work of Junor's caller. It was signed Beaverbrook--the one man in all England who can be sure his letters to the Express will always be published.

As Express proprietor and Junor's boss, British Press Lord Beaverbrook was only exercising a publisher's right to disagree with his own paper. A devout and hymn-singing Presbyterian, the Beaver had been irritated by a Sunday Express story about some British clergymen who deplored the assault tactics of door-to-door canvassers for two religious faiths: Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Thundered disgruntled Reader Beaverbrook: "Mormon missionaries represent an important and dignified branch of the Christian religion. Their people in Utah and elsewhere are good-living and God-fearing citizens . . . Paragraphs and interviews denouncing Mormon missionaries should not be given publicity in the Sunday Express" Said Sunday Express Editor Junor, who got the message: "The letter speaks for itself."

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