AN IRON DUKE FOR THE BBC
Paul Johnson analyses the latest attempt to bring the Corporation under control
A GREAT deal of nonsense has been talked and written about the appointment of Duke Hussey as chairman of the BBC governors. It has even been said that he had to get out a London A to Z to find his way to Broadcasting House. In fact he is perfectly familiar with its corridors. He has even demonstrated a formidable aptitude for showbiz, for Hussey was the chief organiser of the Times's great anniversary festivities at Hampton Court, the most spectacular entertainment I have ever attended in Britain.
A more plausible objection, aggressively advanced in a Daily Telegraph editorial, is that Hussey is not tough enough to bring back the BBC to discipline. It is true that, during the long Times strike under the Thomson regime, he and his colleagues made the strategic miscalculation that they could financially starve the NGA into surrender while continuing to pay every- one else. In particular Hussey made the mistake of believing that the journalists of the Times and the Sunday Times were as decent and gentlemanly as he is himself. But we can reasonably assume that Hus- sey, like many other people, has learned the lessons of that disastrous episode, which anyway took place in the Dark Ages of trade union supremacy. The argument that Hussey has not got what it takes may rest upon a misunder- standing of what is required at the BBC. The Left believes (or in the case of Gerald Kaufman affects to believe) that the BBC's critics, such as myself, want to turn the Corporation to the Right. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I want, and what I believe most people who are disturbed by the BBC's recent perform- ance want, is a return to the old, objective non-political BBC standards. It is one of the most fundamental fallacies of the post- Sixties Left that there is no such thing as objective truth. This came out very strong- ly in the row over the recent Channel 4 programmes on wartime Greece. When those who had actually been present pro- tested at what was a blatant piece of Communist re-writing of history, the first response of the Jeremy Isaacs gang was to offer a programme on Greece with a right-wing slant. That infuriated the critics even more than the original distortions, because it implied that they were anxious to play the same deceptive game as the Left, when all they wanted was for viewers to be told the plain, unvarnished, demon- strable and objective facts.
That is all we want from the BBC. We want it to get out of the progaganda business. We want it to abandon agitprop. We want it to resume its old and now largely forgotten practice of placing the truth before any other consideration. We want it to be fair-minded, as it used to be, long on facts and short on opinions, espe- cially in the presentation of news and, when it gives a contentious point of view, to allow the other side of the argument a say. These are not very exigeant demands. Personally, I would be very happy if the standards of factual accuracy and presenta- tion still largely maintained on the BBC overseas service were restored to its domestic networks. But I think it is also important that the BBC should stop mixing politics and culture. People hate being 'got at'. Those with strong political opinions (which seem to be invariably of the Left) should not be given predominant power over plays, series and other fictions. Above all, the BBC should have clear rules in all these matters, and when they are broken the offenders should be punished and if necessary removed.
Can the governors under Hussey achieve all this — which, when you come down to it, is not very much for the license-paying public to ask? Douglas Hurd, as Home Secretary, has the theory that the BBC can be brought back under control if the governors act as a co-ordinated body. In his view, so long as the governors are united and clear in their aims, left-wing mutinies at the production level cannot succeed. There is general agreement that the late Stuart Young was a peculiarly bad chairman, partly because he was a sick man. Hussey will certainly do very much better than Young in welding the gov- ernors into a unity. In Joel Barnett he has a potentially excellent Number Two who, though a former Labour minister, has certainly no sympathy with the anti- authority Left which is the BBC's bane. But the way in which the governors are actually appointed (rather like a Royal Commission) makes the board a feeble instrument for authority-wielding. What Hurd has not yet grasped is that the command structure of the BBC, which dates from the quite different Corporation of the 1920s, needs fundamental reform. In the meantime Hussey will be called upon to exercise strong and decisive leadership.
His chances of succeeding will be im- measurably increased by a suitable change of director-general. Alasdair Milne has come up through the production hierarchy and, perhaps for this very reason, has failed to impose his authority on the management and production tiers. He is not due to go until 1988 but it is most desirable that a change should be made as soon as possible next year. The feeling in the industry, shared by many people who strongly support, in general, the BBC concept of public service broadcasting and even by some who work within the BBC — is that a new director-general should be appointed soon and that he or she should come from outside the Corpora- tion. It is also urged that the newcomer should have strong managerial, rather than production, experience, and be capable of implementing policies of reform laid down by the new Hussey board. One name I have heard mentioned is Christopher Bland, Chairman of the London Weekend TV holding company. But whoever is appointed, it is clear that Hussey will need a professional working partner in restoring the BBC's standards.
TUESDAY saw the appearance of Bri- tain's new quality daily, the Independent. This has been a most carefully researched and prepared venture and I wish it the greatest possible good fortune. I have seen a number of its dummies, but I felt that it would be more useful for me to examine a whole week's performance in the next issue of the Spectator.
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