■ ■ ■Billy faced an even greater challenge when he visited London in
- As in Birmingham, controversy awaited him when he
stepped on Britain’s shores. To raise money for the trip, Billy’s
organization had produced a fund-raising brochure in the U.S.
that described the spiritual condition of postwar England with
less-than-precise language: “And when the war ended, a sense of
frustration and disillusionment gripped England, and what Hitler’s
bombs could not do, Socialism, with its accompanying evils,
shortly accomplished.”
The phrasing may not have been inflammatory in America,
but Billy’s aides did not know British politics and had unwittingly
criticized Britain’s ruling Labour Party, also known as Socialists.
An article appeared in a London Daily Heraldnewspaper entitled
“Apologise, Billy—Or Stay Away!” A British journalist wrote,
“Billy Graham has more gravely libeled us than anyone has dared
to do since the war.... Socialism, indeed, by ushering in the Wel-
fare State, saved Britain from degradation of poverty and injustice
that might have brought about a revolution.” And in the Daily
Workernewspaper, another British writer said, “This fast-talking
American... confessed with a light laugh that many people had
said to him: ‘Stay at home.’ It is excellent advice he would have
done well to heed.”
Although alarmed and discouraged about the damaging pub-
licity, Billy employed the same tactics that worked so well in
Birmingham. He surprised the critics with a prompt and clear
apology for the mistake. He and his team feared the snafu would
keep people away; instead, for twelve weeks audiences packed
every venue where he preached.
Journalists learned they had misjudged him. A writer with the
Daily Expressnewspaper confessed, “To be honest, I was prejudiced
about him. We have heard so much here about these American
hot gospellers and their methods of selling religion, which they
seemed to have picked up from the salesmen of insurance. And
then, just after breakfast yesterday, I met him. I had better say
Loving Harsh Critics