TWO VICTORIES FOR FREEDOM
at the defeat of the high priests and the television triumphalists
WITH the Broadcasting Bill at last wearily wending its way onto the statute book, I must congratulate the Government on standing (fairly) firm on two issues: the right of religious groups to advertise on television, own cable stations and sponsor programmes on them, and the obligation of broadcasters to observe reasonable im- partiality or balance. It is notable that the same kind of progressives and Wet- Conservatives opposed both, the first on the grounds that it was in the national interest to keep irresponsible people off the air, the second on the grounds that it was an outrageous piece of censorship. Well, they do like to have it both ways, don't they?
The first is an important blow for broad- casting and religious freedom. Up until now religious broadcasting has been a genteel carve-up between the established, main-stream churches and the few religious outsiders they approved of, a system run through a body called the Central Reli- gious Advisory Committee. In effect the carve-up has helped to prevent new varieties of Christianity, or re- interpretations of the old ones, from de- veloping. Until the broadcasting age, new evangelists preached — in the open if they were denied access to religious buildings. That was how Jesus founded Christianity in the first place, and how the Apostles expanded it. John Wesley, if he could not get possession of a pulpit, set up shop by the wayside. But today, if a religious innovator is prevented from broadcasting, it is hard for him to get started at all. In an article in the Independent last week, the chairman of Crac, the Bishop of Liverpool, defending the old system, called for 'a sense of responsibility for those who may be vulnerable to undue influence'. But that was exactly the case the High Priest and the Scribes and Pharisees had against Jesus. He was so irresponsible. He had wild views and caused trouble and, horror of horrors, threatened to embroil them all in a row with the Romans. He had consorted with that other irresponsible fellow John, who dressed in skins and baptised people in the river, in the most unseemly manner. Jesus was always trying to exercise undue
influence, by practising faith-healing and performing miracles, on all kinds of vulner- able people — children, women, above all the poor, who couldn't read the scriptures and were exposed to every kind of foolish nonsense, such as 'blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth'. Then there was that apostate follower of his, Paul, who wrote things like, 'Divine folly is wiser than the wisdom of man', and said that God 'has chosen things low and contempti- ble, mere nothings, to overthrow the ex- isting order'. You can't get more irres- ponsible than that, can you? No wonder the High Priest wagged his beard and rent his garments.
The truth about our faith, as I sought to demonstrate in my History of Christianity, is that the insights provided by Jesus's teaching are capable of almost infinite elaborations and explanations, most of which appear as subversive and irresponsi- ble as Jesus's own message when they are first uttered. I am thinking of innovators like Origen and St Augustine, Calvin and Luther, St Bernard and St Francis, all of whom, I suspect, would have had some 'I can lick anyone in the house.' difficulty in getting onto the air under a Crac system. 'In my Father's house are
many mansions' and there is room for different forms of Christianity. to co-exist. The kind practised by the Rt Revd David Sheppard and his Roman Catholic archiepiscopal colleague in Liverpool might well have horrified Cardinal Man- ning and Mr Gladstone (for different reasons) and I can't say I like it much myself. But it is one possible interpretation and I would not deny it a voice. The same goes for television evangelism which, in- cidentally, takes many different forms, not one, as its opponents allege. There is, I would have thought, no chance that the Jimmy Swaggart variety will catch on here. Bishop Sheppard and his allies should put more trust in our national character. The rest of us should keep a close watch to ensure that the Independent Television Commission's draft code of practice does not develop into a code of censorship and so undermine Parliament's intention, a threat against which an excellent article by Jonathan Clark in the current Sunday Telegraph provided a timely warning.
As for the impartiality provision, this will not, as its opponents have vociferously maintained, prove unworkable. On the contrary: there are plenty of us around who will ensure that the television moguls are obliged to work it. It is vital that the kind of censorship imposed by the people who control the duopoly's output on cur- rent issues, on any views which do not reflect their own, should be ended, and that alternative opinions should be heard. It is also important that distortions of the facts should be corrected. Both of these principles are embodied in the notion of balance and are vital ingredients in the whole concept of freedom of speech. For insisting on this, Woodrow Wyatt and I have had to take a lot of stick from the media triumphalist lobby but I am pretty sure most people agree with us. Max Hastings insinuated in this journal last week (Diary) that true Conservatives ob- ject to the impartiality requirement. He is mistaken, as the debate at this year's Conservative Conference demonstrated. He seems to think that the opinions of Wyatt and myself can be discounted since we reasoned our way into conservatism comparatively late in life. He boasts of having had the same political views since he was a child. Let me refer him to the wise words of that great chemist, Sir Humphrey Davy: 'Consistency in opinion is the slow poison of intellectual life, the destroyer of its vividness and energy.' Actually, I was quite surprised to hear Hastings is a Conservative. His allegiance reminds me of Samuel Foote's infidelity, as recorded in the Life of Johnson: 'Boswell: "Pray, Sir, is not Foote an infidel?" Johnson: "I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he is an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog Is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject".'
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