THE SPECTATOR
THE MUTINOUS BBC
The genesis of the story about the BBC's drama The Monocled Mutineer is rather strange. About ten days ago, the newspapers carried stories, presumably put about by friends of Mr Douglas Hurd, that the Home Secretary was looking for a conciliatory chairman of the BBC, a 'team player'. This was an implied rejection of Lord King, the chairman of British Air- ways, who is reported to be Mrs Thatcher's favoured candidate. A few days later, there was a counter-attack. It was pointed out in a number of stories that the first world war mutiny described in The Mono- cled Mutineer did not really take place and that the hero of the drama, Percy Toplis, was not even in Etaples at the time of the action. It was further said that Conserva- tive MPs were enraged by the programme, and was argued that all this emphasised the need for a strong man like Lord King to take control. Two stories — one about BBC mendacity, the other about the chair- manship — found themselves deliberately, but rather unsatisfactorily combined. So far as The Monocled Mutineer is con- cerned, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a drama which plays fast and loose with historical fact — no one would claim that Macbeth is an accurate portrayal of early mediaeval Scotland. Alan Bleasdale is entitled to weave whatever fantasy about the first world war that he wishes. But what makes the venture more suspect is that the BBC has chosen to represent the drama as essentially truthful and has only taken refuge in the argument of `the greater truth' under pressure. Dramas like The Monocled Mutineer trade on their ability to present 'fact' in an imaginative form. The audience of Macbeth is not supposed to say `Ah, he really was like that', while that of The Monocled Mutineer is invited to be- lieve that this is an accurate portrayal of the demoralisation and class hatred of the British army in the first world war. Whether or not the drama is interesting and well-written, this is a shabby way to proceed. The BBC, as Paul Johnson argues on page 20, has been unscrupulous. The question of the next chairman, however, is separate. The characteristic of the modern BBC is that it has grown too large and flabby to maintain the identity and integri- ty of its early days. It is hard to see how any new chairman could do much to alter this. Even if the job were made full-time and the chairman were to exercise his powers to the full, bringing in a co-operative director general, he would not be able to reform the BBC properly. Its problems are not simply those of mistaken attitudes — they are problems of structure. As the range of broadcasting grows so much grea- ter, it becomes more and more impossible for a 'public service' monolith like the BBC to keep up. Cable and satellite broadcast- ing will quite soon make the Corporation obsolete. Most of this is recognised in the Peacock Report. The Government has decided to do nothing about the report, and is therefore very foolish to continue to complain, as does Mr Tebbit in particular, about bias on the BBC — not because that bias does not exist, but because complain- ing will have no useful effect. The Govern- ment's policy towards the BBC seems to be to do nothing but to make a lot of unfriendly noise. The effect is to encourage the BBC to become still more biased in order to display its independence. Since the Government does not intend to dis- mantle the BBC, it should not put in an over-active chairman with a zeal for change, such as Lord King (who keeps saying that he does not want the job anyway). Such a man's radicalism would be frustrated by the Government's cowardice. Given its policy of querulous inactivity, the Government would do much better to appoint an agreeable and competent Establishment figure not too unsympathe- tic either to the BBC's traditions or to the worries of the critics about declining stan- dards. Surely this is a job for Sir William Rees-Mogg.
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