The BBC vs the British Government
The BBC was designed from the outset, in its 1927 Royal Charter and licence, to hold government to account in the interests of public service broadcasting, “A public corporation acting as Trustees for the national interest”. So the BBC was, and remains, accountable ultimately to the King and to parliament but not to the government of the day. My book “The BBC v Thatcher” explores the complex and evolving relationship between the government and the BBC from the early days of commercial competition in the late 1950s, when the BBC had to wake up and flex its considerable muscle to retain its hold on the public and on the British Establishment, through to the turbulent 1980s when Margaret Thatcher sought to bring the BBC to heel. As Norman Tebbitt, her senior cabinet colleague, said of the BBC, “they are all pinkoes and traitors”.
In the midst of the 1982 Falklands War, Dick Francis, Director, News and Current Affairs and the BBC’s effective Editor-in-Chief, publicly rebuked Prime Minister Thatcher when she criticised the BBC’s coverage of the war. He was continuing the long history of the BBC’s unyielding defence of their independence from government interference and their obligation to report to the public what they saw as the objective facts.
The only weapons that Mrs Thatcher had to bring the BBC to heel were to squeeze the BBC’s income by restricting increases in the periodic licence fee reviews – over which they had control – and, over time, to reshape the membership of the BBC’s Board of Governors, whose appointments they recommended. The government could also convene an ‘independent’ commission to review the scope of the BBC’s activities as part of the periodic (every 15 years) Royal Charter renewal process. They also possessed a “nuclear option”, to expressly demand that the BBC did not transmit a programme which they felt was not in the national interest, in other words, to impose censorship. Their right to do this is described in Section 13.4 of their licence. The BBC, for their part, would be free to publicise this act of censorship.
So what was the history of this complex and difficult relationship between government and BBC and was the conflict seen between Mrs Thatcher and the BBC’s Dick Francis new?
In the first thirty years of its life, from 1922 into the 1950s, the BBC were generally compliant with government preferences and did not seek to inflame, particularly during the Second World War when there was a declared National Emergency such that the BBC had to comply with government wishes. It was the era of regulation by tap on the shoulder: “do the decent thing, old chap”.
This was to change in 1956 when an embattled Prime Minister Eden, against international opinion and without cross-party support at home, engaged British forces on the ground alongside Israeli and French forces against the unilateral Egyptian seizure and nationalization of the Suez Canal, thereby blockading a critical shipping route for oil. Eden wanted BBC airtime to broadcast to the nation supporting his decision and approach. The leader of the opposition, Hugh Gaitskill, demanded a right of reply, wishing to put the case against the government actions. Eden was incensed at this and, when the BBC’s local Arabic station continued to broadcast the full spectrum of views, Eden summarily ordered that the Foreign Office assume control of the BBC’s local Arab station and turned it over to UK government propaganda with new staff. Eden also cut the Foreign Office funding to the BBC and, at one point, threatened to take over the BBC itself on the justification that this was a “total war”, a threshold that was not even reached during the Second World War. The BBC held firm and Eden backed down.
Following the arrival of competition in the shape of ITV in 1956, a less polite and more interrogative style of news journalism emerged as a young generation of producers and journalists vied with each other to make news and current affairs fresher and more entertaining. They challenged the cosy and respectful relationship between political leaders and broadcasters. People like Robin Day, Michael Charlton and Cliff Michelmore in front of the camera were complemented by equally challenging producers and editors like Paul Fox, Huw Wheldon and Grace Wyndham-Goldie. Dick Francis learnt his trade from these pioneers of news and current affairs broadcasting. Leading politicians were affronted and had to learn how to turn this new weapon, ‘combat television’ if you like, to their favour. It only needed a match to light the dry timber and start a forest fire between the BBC and government.
That match was to be in Northern Ireland and fires that it started raged throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973, Dick Francis had been promoted from the London-based Current Affairs team and posted to Northern Ireland as a young Controller Northern Ireland but he had already by then produced “A Question of Ulster” in 1972, the controversial courtroom style examination of sectarian differences with representatives from each major party in the same room.
The BBC in Northern Ireland, which had always had the reputation of being essentially loyalist, ie pro-British, determined to take a more balanced view, seeking all points of view, even if extreme and even if it meant interviewing terrorists to understand their motivations.
A series of British Prime Ministers and their Irish Ministers found this approach objectionable, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and then, most famously Margaret Thatcher.
In 1979, a month into Margaret Thatcher’s first term as Prime Minister, Dick Francis, by then Director, News and Current Affairs (effectively the BBC’s editor-in-chief) decided to broadcast an interview with the bombers of Airey Neave, a close associate and advisor to Margaret Thatcher, in the precinct of the Palace of Westminster, their faces covered by hoods, Thatcher was incensed and wanted to outlaw such interviews.
Two years beforehand in March 1977, at the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Dick Francis, then the BBC’s Controller Northern Ireland, made a speech at Chatham House in which he laid out the principles of “Broadcasting to a Community in Conflict”:
“The BBC is on the side of all that is right and good”, continuing, “We are not impartial as between democratic and undemocratic means. We do not give equal time to right and wrong”. “We are sometimes asked whose side is the BBC on. The implication is that we should take sides, that in a situation lacking consensus the BBC should stand by the government ‘in the national interest’. But which government? Which national interest? Often the government at Westminster has been at odds with Stormont (the Ulster government). Often the Westminster government’s point of view has been opposed, not only by undemocratic and violent organisations, but also by a majority of elected politicians in the province. Surely, the national interest must lie in solving the problem, and the public’s interest in being given reliable information about the problem in their midst.”
Francis defended the need to inform, objectively and as a result shared sometimes grisly, unpalatable information, often gleaned from avowed terrorists. He felt the only path to a form of uneasy truce between the warring factions was by informing the public of the facts, however gruesome, and giving the public the ability to form their own views.
The stage was set for a very public battle between Thatcher and the BBC, as my book explores.