Bishop moans at BBC using Joan Bakewell to present programme on Mary Whitehouse

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt. Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, has written to the Daily Telegraph today objecting to the BBC using Joan Bakewell to present a BBC Radio 4 programme tonight on the clean-up tv campaigner Mary Whitehouse.
The Bishop writes: "I was astonished to read (Comment, June 2) that Joan Bakewell is to present a programme on Mary Whitehouse today. It seems highly unfair that one of Mrs Whitehouse’s principal adversaries should be writing her epitaph. Dame Joan writes disparagingly of Mrs Whitehouse’s Midlands provincialism but does not give any good reasons why her own metropolitan elitism should be preferred. In fact, a good case can be made for holding that it is the libertarianism of the chattering classes which has led to the broken Britain we see all around us. "
He adds: "Dame Joan allows that Mrs Whitehouse was right at least about the commercialisation of sex, but fails to see that this has been made possible by the kind of “liberation” of which she has been an important agent. She says she does not share Mary Whitehouse’s answers. I don’t share hers and neither should the nation."

• The Mary Whitehouse Effect is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 tonight at 20:00.