Lady Plowden's prizes
The way in which Lady Plowden and her fellow members of the Independent Broadcasting Authority have chosen to dispose the enormous patronage they possess tells us a great deal about the way the country is governed, and why it is run as badly as it is. It is difficult to think of anything quite as preposterous as the pantomime last Sunday, in which dozens of members of the Establishment came trotting along to the IBA headquarters to be told whether they had won or lost their contracts, whether or not their bids had succeeded, what conditions and expectations they were being obliged to fulfil: in short, whether or not they were good boys, and what were the prizes they had won. Lady Plowden was like a headmistress at prize day, full of smug satisfaction and mild reproofs. She even sacked a pair of boys — not indeed for being naughty, but for not being quite nice enough. Southern and Westward lost their franchises; ATV was told to change its name, and do more about the East Midlands; Trident was told to get rid of either Yorkshire or Tyne-Tees; Granada was told to pay more attention to Merseyside; and Thames, London Weekend, Anglia, Harlech and the rest, although keeping their licences to make profits, if not any longer exactly to print money, were all variously told to pull up their socks.
It is appalling to reflect that, had printing been invented at about the same time as radio and television, the same essentially disgusting rigmarole would doubtless have been followed, with newspapers (and magazines such as ourselves) having to troop in and ask the likes of Lady Plowden whether or not we were to be allowed to continue to publish and make profits or suffer losses. The printed word remains essentially more influential than the broadcast message, if only because those in charge of, or who own, radio and television really do not know what is news or what to say about what is happening until their producers, editors, commentators, script writers and news readers have read the newspapers. If the politicians who have seized and who maintain control over radio and broadcasting could have seized control over the press they would have done so, and there would have been no shortage of Lady Plowdens to dish out permits, lectures, and prizes. There would be good boys and bad boys among newspaper publishers, and winners and losers on prize day, just as there are good boys, bad boys, winners and losers at Lady Plowden's benefit performance. It is horrible to contemplate, and people like Mr Benn are already contemplating it.
We need to remember this, when we consider Lady Plowden's prize list: it is in its essentials as least as corrupt as Sir Harold Wilson's Honours List, and much more important. Power may or may not tend to corrupt, but patronage is corrupt in itself. Lady Plowden affected to demonstrate her own independent incorruptibility by sending messages round to the Home Secretary to pass on to Downing Street, conveying her decisions. She seems to have forgotten, such is the authority she now thinks she possesses, that her job came from Downing Street in the first place and that she and her colleagues are as much the recipients of patronage as its disposers. She and her colleagues in the Brompton Road are as much a part of the Establishment, of the set-up, as are the politicians and mandarins of Whitehall; and those who win her prizes— like those who lose them — are also the self-same kind.
The prize-givers and the prize-winners are those who have never uttered a word of disturbing opinion in their lives. The system is one of safe people awarding safe contracts to safe people, preferably with nice faces. Politically, it is arranged to benefit the safe and sound and mildly left-of-centre Establishment. What we are being spoon-fed is television of the Establishment, by the Establishment, for the people. What we get is not bad television: the Establishment is not incompetent, and there are many talented people in broadcasting who thrive despite the atmosphere in which they have no choice hut to exist. Nonetheless, tIV System is wrong. Why on earth should Lady Plowden, or anybody else, tell us who is to provide our television?
If standards are to be laid down, then let there be a general broadcasting council. But if licences and monopolies are to be awarded, let them be sold to the highest bidder, and not dished out as prizes to whichever collection of faces and names and promises takes the fancy of Lady Plowden, admirable Old battle-axe though she be.
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