Cold War in the Air
By D. W. BROGAN IF we want to mark the contrast between the First and Second World Wars 'there are two technical devices that were entirely novel. One was the atomic bomb (unless we hold that it is just another bomb) ; the other was the role played in the Second War by radio propaganda. Naturally enough, the attention of the man in the street was concentrated on such public entertainers as Lord Haw-Haw. Not much attention was .given by the average man to the foreign programmes of the B.B.C., and again, naturally enough, it was assumed that foreign broadcasting was simply an extension of home broad- casting.
It is because this assumption is natural that some of the implications of the present controversy about the " alleged " cuts in the Foreign Service of the B.B.C. may be ignored, and, if one may judge by some things said in the debate in the House on April 4th, are being ignored. .For example, the Foreign Secretary lumped together all the information services of the Government, and implied that, if one thought that too much was being spent on them, it was improper to object to economies, no matter where these economies fell. But to assume this is to assume two things, one highly doubtful, the other wrong. It is to assume that what may be called internal political warfare, the posters boosting output, savings, the recipes for meatless dishes, all the apparatus for making us good citizens inside Britain, is of the same importance as the use of devices to strengthen friends and win over enemies abroad. It is, of course, a question of opinion ; but if this point is debatable, it is not debatable that when it comes to " projecting " Britain abroad, these organisations (even the domestic B.B.C.) are either totally . ineffective or only of limited utility. The normal play of political supply and demand will do most of the work on the home front ; there is no such play of supply and demand abroad. If we wish to make friends and influence people abroad, we have to pay for it. It may be assumed that we have passed the days when we couldn't care less. It matters a lot if Communist propaganda in France or Italy, neutralist propaganda in Holland, gets a free run for its money. And it may get it if the Foreign Service of the B.B.C. is seriously crippled.
For radio has immense advantages over any other form of presenting our case or simply ourselves. We don't propose, for Instance, to have a series of British newspapers in foreign tongues. Admirable as is the work of such Press officers as I have seen (and of the maligned British Council), they touch a much smaller section of the population than does the radio, which has the advantage that it can appeal to people who can- not buy newspapers which might contain dangerous thoughts, to people who for some reason or other have a rooted distrust of all the Press (based on unfortunate local experience), and to that very large section of people who still, in fact, find the spoken voice more convincing and easier to follow than the printed page. Can the B.B.C. meet the demands of that clientele?
It can ; it has done so ; it is doing so. True, Listener Research cannot give us such plausible figures for the effectiveness of B.B.C. programmes in Persia as it can for Scotland. But there are ways and means ; there are the letters that come in—and people who send letters are serious listeners. And letters from Persia have been mounting very rapidly, so rapidly that already in 1951 a good many more have been received than were received last year (the figure already runs into some thousands). Is it desirable that literate Persians should have news edited from a British paint of view? Is it likely that we could get into the inflamed Persian Press the kind of news-presentation that we can put over in the air? Does the Foreign Secretary need to pause for an answer?
Then is the kind of news put out worth listening to? Natur- ally, I cannot vouch for Persian or Marathi or Cantonese. But the B.B.C. has one great asset that it acquired during the war, and that it has not yet lost—the reputation for trustworthineSs, objectivity and calm. We have all laughed listening to home news bulletins at the superhuman objectivity and self-control with which trifling pieces of news like the overthrow of some remote potentate is recounted in the same tone as the sinking of the Oxford boat or the death of Ivor Novello. I have more than once composed a B.B.C. bulletin to end all B.B.C. bulletins. " It is announced from the Vatican and Lambeth that the world will end tomorrow. Weather forecast, storms and high tempera- tures." But that stiff-upper-lip calm is, in fact, an asset. Not all, not nearly all, the B.B.C.'s assumptions of superiority over American radio are justified. But this one is. To listen in New York to the semi-hysterical gabbling of slanted news is to be made to wish for the almost Cantabrigian austerity of Portland Place. To be dogmatic, it is desirable that our point of view and our view of the news should be put to friends. neutrals and the peoples behind the Iron Curtain. The Foreign Service of the B.B.C. is the best way to do it. And it is quite certain that what we don't do others will.
Behind the Iron Curtain there is an immense appetite for less tinctured news than is issued by the satellites. (The Manchester Guardian has just printed an extremely interesting account of the welcome given in Poland to a Polish transmitter operating from Madrid.) It is needless to say that Moscow—and branches —are not going to economise on these lines. At the moment of writing the U.S.A. may not be expanding as fast as was hoped. But " The Voice of America " is already in operation in a big way. And it is not desirable that the lead should be every- where and most of the time in American hands.
The present cuts arc not cuts, we are told ; they are refusals to expand. It will be all right to expand when there is a real crisis. But these are evasions, not answers. There is a real crisis now. And, with rapidly rising prices, to pin the B.B.C. down to its old budget is to contract, however the fact may he described. And one drawback of contracting now is that it may not be easy to expand later. Audiences can be lost ; possibly channels can be lost. Personnel can be lost. And that is very important indeed. It is not only a question of personalities (though the sceptic should reflect on the immense personal im- pact of E. R. Murrow speaking to the U.S.A. from London or J. B. Priestley speaking to his own countrymen). It is that the necessary technicians are not easy to train or to replace. The editorial jobs in a thing like the B.B.C. Foreign Service have no real equivalent in the Press (though the best editors learned their basic art, as a rule, on the Press). The present refusal to expand means, in fact, a contraction in per- sonnel and in hours on the air, and this at a time of increasing external tension. If we are not in a state of danger, then why the immense arms budget? If we are, and if our main object is to prevent war, do we rely on arms and " the normal channels " of diplomacy entirely? If so, we ought to be told so. It would be idle to ignore the fact that there are politics involved. The Labour Government in general is tender, after nuts and chickens, Kongiva and Gambia, of its 'reputation for good administration. The new Foreign Secretary has expressed pain at the finances of Battersea Park, as well he might. What easier demonstration of thrift than to save on this remote enter- prise? It is just this attitude that is alarming, for it seems to reveal that parochialism which the Labour Party (officially internationalist) has so often shown since it took office. It has again been shown by the dismantlement of the foreign service of the Daily Herald (though that normally loyal journal was not as well-disciplined as usual on this very question). And at the centre of the controversy is the new' Foreign Secretary. Mi. Morrison once went to Strasbourg, stepped off on the wrong foot, learned that he had, and smartly got back on the right ohe, as a Cockney should. At the moment he is behaving as if he came from " Silly Sussex." In the first war a Cockney settled id Canada went to join the. Army, and gave London as his birthplace. " London, Ontario? " No, London, all the world." That is the attitude needed at the Foreign Office more than extra office space.
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