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).

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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

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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

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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. Hatton and the role of Labour’s ‘Militant’ Lord Stockton, the former Conservative wing on Liverpool City Council. In naming Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, was a names, the programme, which is One-Nation Tory, who favoured generally agreed not to have been the consensus politics. He said in the Lords: best piece of television journalism, led the BBC to the libel courts, and to It breaks my heart to see – and I settling £20,000 damages on Neil cannot interfere – what is happen- Hamilton, M.P. Any organisation ing in our country today. This broadcasting the number of hours the terrible strike, by the best men in BBC does will have its off moments, but the world, who beat the Kaiser's the intense public scrutiny it is under, and Hitler's armies and never gave not least from press and politicians, in…. Now there is a new kind of means that its faults will always be wicked hatred that has been amplified, undermining its ability to keep brought in by different types of its eye on the ball, as has happened in people. (Macmillan 1984) the last year. In March 1984, Thatcher’s Policing the miners’ strike brutalized assault on the unions she had dubbed many constables who had never ‘the enemy within’ reached its apogee in previously left their own county. the calling of a miners’ strike. This rapidly Confronting a convoy of hippies, who escalated until the so-called ‘Battle of lived in old buses and were apparently Orgreave’ on 18 June, when mounted bound for Stonehenge for the 1985 police charged a miners’ blockade of a summer solstice, Wiltshire police saw fit coking plant near Rotherham, causing to corral this convoy in the infamous severe injuries. Even before this, we had ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ on 1 June, noticed that nearly all news coverage of smashing the vehicles’ windows, the strike had been shot from behind terrorizing and clubbing women and police lines, unwittingly helping children. Over 300 were arrested and perpetuate the image of the confronted charged but, as at Orgreave, none of the miners as ‘the enemy’. We sent a charges were proved and damages were 3

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eventually awarded against the police. of the Union, which featured Martin The convoy were on the day offered McGuinness of Sinn Fein and the sanctuary in his Savernake Forest by Democratic Unionist Gregory Campbell, Lord Cardigan, sickened by seeing a both of whom were democratically heavily pregnant woman bludgeoned by elected representatives, but who still a policeman. I spent the week filming supported violence. Its producer, Paul another Open Space there as the Hammann was a skilled publicist, and it travelers licked their wounds and tried to was no great surprise to me when comprehend how they could be attacked Sunday Times reporter Mark Hosenball for being a dangerous threat in their own ambushed Thatcher at a Washington country. press conference with a ‘hypothetical’ question about British broadcasters It echoed a complaint I had heard earlier giving a platform to ‘the IRA chief of staff’. in the year in Belfast, from a Protestant Thatcher said that she would ‘condemn woman whose husband was being tried them utterly’ and, a great political row for terrorist activities on the word of a was started with Home Secretary Leon supergrass. ‘It’s bad even for the Brittan eventually calling on the BBC to republicans. But how could the British do ban the film. As is well recorded it to us, their own people’. Even when elsewhere, the BBC governors broke with breaking the law in the same way, the tradition by viewing the film and deciding members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, to accede to the ban. Unfortunately, the thanks not least to friends in the Royal then Director-General, Alasdair Milne, Ulster Constabulary, did not see was away on a fishing holiday in themselves as enemies of the state in Scandinavia at the time, fatally the same way that the republicans were undermining the BBC management’s characterized. Thatcher’s earlier cold- defence. Although the film was eventually hearted contempt for the death of shown, the row did permanent damage Bobbie Sands from his hunger strike in to the BBC’s governance, its political the Maze in 1981 – ‘he was a convicted independence and Milne’s career. criminal’ – was not something they expected for their own, or felt was I was part of the collateral damage. My justified. In the early 1980s, over 600 equally timely and challenging film about republican and unionist paramilitaries the supergrass system was quietly pulled were arrested and charged on the from the schedule by then Managing uncorroborated word of supergrasses, Director of Television, Brian Wenham, who in turn went free to a new life under despite its having been legally and witness protection. Four of these mass editorially cleared. It was his mendacious show trials went ahead, including one excuse in a press release that it was that sent 22 IRA suspects to jail for 4,000 ‘unready for transmission’ that insulted years in 1983, before the system my professionalism, and led me to write collapsed and eventually all were letters of clarification to my contributors released because of its flagrant injustice. in the families of IRA, INLA and UVF members. Perhaps predictably, it was the Unfortunately for me, the film I had made UVF contingent who chose to share my with the late Irish novelist Nuala O’Faolin, confidences with the national press, and On the Word of a Supergrass, was also my reasonably intemperate words were due for transmission on BBC2 the same quoted in leading articles in, among summer (1985) as a Real Lives film, Edge others, the Guardian and Daily Mirror. I

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assumed my career had ended that day to attempt to break up or privatize the but, in all fairness to Wenham, he stood BBC. When the Peacock Committee by me and On the Word of a Supergrass unexpectedly backed retention of the was, like Edge of the Union, eventually licence fee in 1986, she knew this was transmitted. The experience speaks to one battle she may not win. This was one the two contrary impulses of the day: a portion of the ‘family silver’ which fatal inability to withstand the political Macmillan had commented on her will of an ideological government which ‘selling off’ which was to remain in the controlled the purse strings and the state sideboard, leaving it open to appointment to the BBC board of intervention. governors, and a countervailing determination to get the important work One of the more egregious examples of out despite these crippling constraints. It such intervention was the ‘Zircon affair’, is notable that it was not this battle over concerning Secret Society, a series of editorial freedoms that was finally to programmes made in 1986 by emasculate the BBC, but a Labour investigative reporter Duncan Campbell. government eighteen years later, His revelation of a half-billion pound spy desperate to bury the truths about its satellite programme that had not been faulty prospectus for war in 2003. approved by the Commons Public Accounts Committee led to government Precisely because of its constitutional pressure being applied through the BBC obligations as a public service Governors on DG Alasdair Milne to drop broadcaster, the BBC is seen as the the story. This and another programme enemy by every government keen to spin on secret Cabinet committees were the message their way. As former shelved. The Observer ran the headline Panorama reporter Richard Lindley on 18 January 1987 ‘BBC Gag on £500m writes, in his biography of that Defence Secret’ and, as Milne recalls: ‘It programme: ‘There will always be those wasn’t long before the Special Branch who see left-wing subversion in any were running all over the BBC in Glasgow questioning of the status quo, any like mice, removing boxes of paper and challenge to authority: apparently every inch of film they could find’. The Winston Churchill believed the BBC to be then BBC Chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, a nest of Communists’ (Lindley 2002). had been appointed by Thatcher to ‘sort Following Churchill, Thatcher was not the BBC out’. His Deputy, Joel Barnett, keen to subject herself to BBC had formerly been Chair of the Public interrogation, preferring the soft soap of Accounts Committee, and responsible for the Jimmie Young Show on Radio 2 to the £200 million ceiling on government hardball on Newsnight. She did, however, expenditure before it needed PAC listen to the agenda-setting Today ratification, which Zircon flagrantly programme on Radio 4, later to hire one ignored. Andrew Gilligan. Like the astute politician she was, she picked the battles she Another governor was Daphne Park, could win. The BBC is, by definition, an principal of Somerville College, Oxford, Aunt Sally for all and she was happy and a former MI6 officer. She reportedly hurling battens at it when it gave her the said that the BBC should never work with opportunity. But, apart from shamelessly people like Campbell, whom she labeled stacking the board of governors with ‘a destroyer’. This establishment inquis- Conservative appointees, she chose not ition unanimously agreed that the

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investigation of Britain’s Secret Society programme makers, from doc- should not have occurred, and Alasdair umenttaries to Spitting Image, meaty Milne was summarily sacked. Chief material to work with, the BBC made a Accountant Mike Checkland was perfect whipping-boy for an ideologue appointed in his place. wanting evidence of apostasy. Michael Grade reports an outraged Bill Cotton, The point had been made that no one then Deputy Managing Director of BBC was irreplaceable, and that there were Television, of responding to Thatcher’s subjects the BBC should avoid, although criticism of the Falklands coverage: it did not lead directly to a cowed ‘Prime Minister, are you accusing the corporation. When, on 19 October 1988 BBC of treachery?’ As Grade comments: Tory Home Secretary Douglas Hurd ‘He still got the CBE!’ (Grade 1999). I announced that all organisations in wonder how she would have responded Northern Ireland believed to support to the news that the BBC had caved in to terrorism would be banned from directly Conservative pressure to censor Radio broadcasting on the airwaves, broad- 1’s chart show running of Ding-Dong! The casters continued to film such interviews Witch is Dead reaching number 2 to and merely replaced the sync sound with mark her death. I sense she would have actors speaking the same words. It been triumphant, but contemptuous. Her signified that the battle for free reporting biographers record how she loved an against a censorious government argument – and a worthy opponent. continued. Just as Thatcher gave us

References

Young, H. (2003), ‘Margaret Thatcher’s Execution (23 November 1990)’, Supping With the Devils, London: Atlantic Books.

Trethowan, I. (1984), Split Screen, London: Hamish Hamilton.

Milne, A. (1988), DG: The Memoirs of a British Broadcaster, London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Apple, R. W. (1984), ‘Macmillan, at 90, Rouses the Lords’, New York Times November 14, 1984.

Lindley, R. (2002), Panorama: Fifty Years of Pride and Paranoia, London: Politico.

Grade, M. (1999), It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, London: Macmillan.

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