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The BBC – ‘Not One of Us’

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The BBC – ‘Not One of Us’ JOMEC Journal Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies The BBC – ‘Not One of Us’ Peter Lee-Wright Goldsmiths College, University of London Email: [email protected] Keywords Thatcher BBC Radicalism Abstract Working as a producer in BBC Television throughout the Thatcher regime, making documentaries about issues such as collapsing industries and the jury-less Diplock courts in Northern Ireland, as well as studio programmes and outside broadcasts about local and national politics, I had a unique engagement with Thatcherism. It is my contention that it was the robust radicalism of Thatcherism, challenging any medium that dared oppose her, that enabled the BBC to find its focus in the 1980s. Contributor Note Peter Lee-Wright is a member of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre and a senior lecturer in television journalism. He was trained as a journalist and radio producer in the BBC World Service, before becoming a documentary filmmaker working for all the terrestrial television channels. Recent publications include The Documentary Handbook (Routledge 2010) and – with Phillips and Witschge – Changing Journalism (Routledge 2012). cf.ac.uk/jomec/jomecjournal/3-june2013/LeeWright_Thatcher.pdf Most look to the Falklands War as the experience with terrorism, always an defining event of the Thatcher period. It underrated aspect of her psyche, made certainly transformed popular perception her an unyielding proponent of media and won her the 1983 election. But I curbs which touched upon it’ (Young believe it was the much more seminal, 1990). and historic, conflict with the Irish that gave bite to the bellicose figure now Preceding Labour and Conservative seen as a latter-day Boudicca, and focus governments had struggled with the to her animosity to the BBC. Just five BBC’s determination to report impartially weeks before her 1979 victory, the man since the beginning of the so-called who masterminded her leadership ‘Troubles’ – and they had not always campaign and the nearest she had to a done so. I had journalistically sound friend, Airey Neave, was killed by a car programmes censored at the BBC World bomb inside the Palace of Westminster. Service because they did not accord with She said then: government views. In 1972, I was planning a World Today on Northern He was staunch, brave, true, Ireland, and had booked the two strong; but he was very gentle and journalists who were the best informed: kind and loyal…. I and so many the Sunday Times’ Insight Team’s John other people, owe so much to him Whale, who had recently edited the and now we must carry on for the Penguin special on Ulster, and the things he fought for and not let the Guardian correspondent, Simon Winch- people who got him triumph.1 ester. I was told that, since they both had come to the conclusion there would be On July 5 1979, the very last BBC Tonight no peace without talking to republicans, programme broadcast an interview with one had to go, their view not supporting an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) the government opinion of the day. spokesman, back to camera and dis- Whale and Winchester were, of course, guised with an ill-fitting wig, claiming right and later, even though the Thatcher responsibility for this act. Neave’s widow, government maintained the fiction that who had not been warned, saw the Ulster was a security situation, not a interview and complained, along with political war, we now know for certain many other outraged citizens. Later that that unofficial talks were going on most summer, Jeremy Paxman and a film of the time, despite being consistently crew from BBC’s Panorama accepted the denied. It is cold comfort that senior BBC invitation to film a staged IRA road block executives have since admitted to me in the small village of Carrickmore, Co, that the BBC did lose its objectivity over Tyrone. The footage was never shown, Northern Ireland for a time in the early but the press had a field day with stories 70s. accusing the BBC of collaborating with terrorists. Thatcher allegedly went ‘scatty’ However, the need constantly to confront in Cabinet, and from these two incidents the incompatability of political conven- a set narrative of the BBC giving Irish ience and journalistic objectivity did give terrorists ‘the oxygen of publicity’ was the BBC a more robust sense of mission born. As Hugo Young wrote, at the time throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. of Thatcher’s fall in 1990, ‘her own Speaking to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1977, the then 1 Margaret Thatcher speaking to the press on the BBC Controller of Northern Ireland, Dick day of Airey Neave’s death 30 March 1979 1 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal Francis, said: ‘We have a contribution to to question the accuracy of British make to the maintenance of democracy, reports. Thatcher said she felt offence both by providing a forum where harsh and emotion was caused by the ‘times differences of opinion can be aired and when it seems that we and the by reporting courageously and investig- Argentines are being treated almost as ating the unpalatable truths which equals and on a neutral basis’ (Hansard underlie the problems in our midst’ 1982). (Francis 1977). Even the Conservative and cautious BBC Director-General in She had more to say when, the following 1979, Ian Trethowan, wrote that the week, a Panorama controversially bludgeoning he and the BBC received covered dissident views about the after the INLA/Carrickmore incidents conduct of the war. She said ‘the case only lasted a fortnight and then stopped. for our country is not being put with He suspected that ‘even newspapers sufficient vigour’. Another MP called the hostile to the BBC began to worry about programme ‘an odious and subversive some of the more extreme demands travesty’. The next day, the then which were being heard for censorship Chairman of the BBC, George Howard, of material from Northern Ireland’ and Director-General Alasdair Milne (Trethowan 1984). Trethowan, like most suffered a severe roasting before the BBC DGs was under constant pressure, Conservative Backbench Media as much from within the corporation as Committee. The timing of this row is so without. Thatcher’s enmity had the critical it may have been confected. A unanticipated effect of creating some- few days before, on May 2, the thing like common cause within this Argentina’s only battle cruiser, the famously ungovernable institution. Belgrano, had been sunk, costing 368 lives and the scuppering of peace Although Northern Ireland would return proposals. As is now known, not least as the casus belli, a skirmish in the due to the whistle-blowing civil servant South Atlantic distracted Maggie and the Clive Ponting, the ship was sailing away media in 1982. The American media had some 250 miles from the British fleet happily colluded in the simplistic and well outside the Total Exclusion assumption that their coverage was what Zone Britain had declared. This dubious lost the US the Vietnam War, so the action ensured the all-out war that military planners in the Falklands followed, and a long tail of anxiety about decided to impose full military too many questions being asked. censorship on coverage of their action Thatcher was enraged when a caller on there. Predating satellite phones and the an 1983 election programme questioned internet, they had complete control of her about the sinking of the Belgrano: communications, and tried to influence ‘Only the BBC’, she said, ‘could ask a reporting. What they could not control British Prime Minister why she took was the language used, and it was this action to protect our ships against an that upset Thatcher and her government. enemy ship that was a danger to our Where she, in Churchillian mode, boys’. Later that year, I took a Royal expected reports on ‘our boys’ and ‘the Court production of Falkland Sound/ enemy’, she heard from the BBC the less Voces de Malvinas – based on the poetry loaded ‘British’ and ‘Argentinian forces’. of Lieutenant David Tinker, who, before One MP accused Newsnight’s Peter Snow he died in the Falklands on HMS of being ‘almost treasonable’ for daring Sheffield, had dared to question the 2 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal validity of the war – to Plymouth to film production team to film an Open Space before and discuss with an invited documentary from the pickets’ side with audience of navy officers, widows and Sheffield Police Watch, which had a naval dockyard workers. The Plymouth corrective effect on the hitherto partial Corporation banned us from using their coverage, even admitted to in the late theatre and the Admiral of the Fleet sent Alasdair Milne’s autobiography (Milne a bulletin to all serving naval personnel 1988). It is ironic that the impartiality the to have nothing to do with me. The show BBC tried to maintain under the more was shot and shown, but, whatever else lethal conditions of the Falklands was it was fought for, the Falklands was not less well observed in the north of about free speech. England. The BBC did not help its case with the In conflicts like these, the choice broadcast in January 1984 of a between objectivity and partiality should Panorama entitled ‘Maggie’s Militant be clear. But the divisiveness caused by Tendency’, an exposé of some Tory MPs’ a prime minister whose first question links to far-right organizations. It was always ‘Is s/he one of us?’ inevitably appeared to be a deliberate riposte to cast anyone unwilling to defer, especially the right wing press’ vilification of Derek independent messengers, as enemies.
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