Radio
Trouble at farm
Michael Vestey
Iwas rather slow off the mark with the now notorious episode of The Archers on Radio Four that delivered an impeccably bravura piece of government propaganda about Tony Blair's speech to the National Farmers Union. I heard the offending item because I listen to The Archers every evening. I was sitting in an armchair in front of the fire with a gin and tonic and thinking with a chortle that it was only too typical of the leftish tone of the radio soap. There is something comforting about the bias of The Archers; it has been there for so long that one has become used to the indoctrination. If I'd heard a character say- ing, 'I like that William Hague's common sense revolution,' the paramedics with their air-ambulance would have been summoned to remove me to intensive care.
For those readers unfamiliar with both the incident in question and The Archers, two of the leading characters, organic farm- ers Pat and Tony Archer, were discussing Blair's speech to the NFU earlier that day. Blair had apparently been hissed at and booed by farmers but we heard Pat con- vincing an initially sceptical Tony that the Blair speech was a good thing for farming. When Tony asked if there was to he help for the 'poor old pig-farmers' Pat replied that he hadn't ruled it out. She told him not to be so negative. Unfortunately for the BBC, the country and farming pressure groups were listening and were outraged. After complaints, the BBC apologised, saying that the way the scene was depicted was inappropriate. 'We are taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.' It was doubly unfortunate because the government has only recently indicated that it was seeking to influence the plots of soap operas to promote its policies and the suspicion has arisen that this scene was included at the last minute to satisfy Down- ing Street. The BBC has denied any politi- `Where's the common sense in that?' cal interference and one has to accept this at face value. However, if anyone at the BBC has evidence to the contrary they only have to contact me and full confidentiality will be guaranteed.
What seems to me more likely, in the absence of spin-doctoring evidence, is the cock-up theory of history to which I am something of an adherent. In the past The Archers has been criticised for not reacting quickly enough to crises in farming. Kate Rowland, the head of radio drama, said on Radio Four's media programme, The Mes- sage (Friday) that the series had responded to the Countryside March in London and that the Pat and Tony scene was just anoth- er example of reactive drama.
What she didn't say was that The Archers ignored the run-up to the first Countryside protest march whilst broadcasting, almost night after night, the preparations by a homosexual Ambridge pub landlord for the Gay Pride March in London. It was only when the press noticed this bizarre empha- sis that The Archers programme team hur- riedly included references to the Countryside March. By the time the second, much bigger Countryside March took place, the programme was on the case, realising that it was, unlike the Gay Pride March, something to do with the countryside.
And here, for me, is the nub of the prob- lem. The Archers is run, and written by, people who are largely urbanites. Some of them might live in the country, one of the scriptwriters is said to be an organic farmer, but it concentrates on issues ago- nised about over city dinner tables. Apart from the queer publican, women's concerns over pregnancy have come to dominate the series, babies and very young children con- stantly appear burbling gobbledegook, the public school vet, the son of an academic, pours scorn on private education, no one seems to smoke any more, the successful, larger farmers are rapacious exploiters; if I had the room here I could list countless other examples of political correctness.
The BBC says the plight of the Grundy tenant farmers in The Archers is an exam- ple of its depiction of the crisis facing smaller British farmers but this too is mis- leading. Eddie Grundy is in serious finan- cial trouble, not because of the state of British farming under the Blair govern- ment, but because he ignored livestock feed bills instead of trying to pay them. Downing Street must be pleased about feckless old Eddie. Blame can't be laid at the government's door. Perhaps, deep down in their writers' breasts, some of The Archers scriptwriters would really prefer to be playwrights at the Royal Court Theatre, lauded by critics from the Guardian and Independent for their 'searing' and radical drama but for whatever reason find them- selves creating lines for a radio soap lis- tened to only by the hated Middle England. No wonder Ambridge is, as the Sunday Telegraph's headline put it so aptly, a safe Labour seat.
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