Television
Red and blue
Richard Ingrams
The BBC have launched yet anoth.e„r series about 'what really happened' in dry ferent situations called Inside Story. 1.11.e first programme dealt with a lengthy q. pute, if you can call it that, at the Nortn' amptonshire Evening Telegraph last year' As usual there were a lot of gaps in rha information given to the viewer. We %verde told that the whole thing began wh,a", nine journalists defected from r" National Union of Journalists to the Ina. titute of Journalists. But no nact explained why they did so. There was hot a single squeak out of the manageme° and I don't think anyone even gave r,be name of the owners of the paper. DeaPI,t,,e these omissions the programme, for hit' simple reason that when people are IOW angry they forget the camera's presenc,aci gave one an exceptional and vrvi., glimpse of militant unionism in actinP,' Led by a bearded Australian Mari called Ian Reinecke the NUJ pickets ,.a ragged-looking bunch of bearded folk anoraks, kept up a vicious campaign abuse and violence against the paPerd` editor and the print-workers who ha been instructed to come out in sympathy. 'You slimy little turd', was a rYfri ical epithet hurled at one poor N% scab. Meanwhile inside the building ti:o paper's editor Ron Hunt, a dogged 0' pipe-sucker with Nabarro-style whiskera: was single-handedly producing the neg155 paper, the end product being described 80 'garbage' by the NUJ leader. It was.a serious fault in this otherwise griP1)17/1 programme that it did not explain whY,.,;o the end the management gave in :ill allowed the establishment of an closed shop. Editor Hunt may have the battle — he was fined £75 by t" union — but he was surely right in thinkill that the publicity, and in particular this film, would be highly damaging to the NUJ whose militant members were seen quite clearly to be loutish hooligans. The IOJ must have gained quite a lot of recruits as a result.
I think that when people refuse to aPPear on the telly, as I suspect the management of the Northamptonshire EvenIN Telegraph did, the fact should always no recorded. It would sometimes be nice to be given much more information about the circumstances in which films are „Made. The intelligent and charming Kobert Kee began a series last week called The Faces of Communism (Yorkshire) with a film about Yugoslavia. DesPne the compere's intelligence and charm the programme was peculiarly dead, ' Partly, I suspect, because it was made in restrictive conditions. More questionable ,however in this case was Kee's attitude.
s film was an apologia for Tito. Kee on Yugoslavia was the left-wing equivalent °Lf Chalfont on Persia. In other words it 'ad nothing really to do with Marxism and was more a case of a journalist being a bit soft about a strong man. The rather 13.11oney scenes of happy workers par ticipating in decision-making or celebrating in the • People's Wine Bar could be ecmtrasted with David Jessel's retrosPective look at the French evenements of Days of Revolution. This lively shown on the BBC on Monday, uespite Jessel's rather too glib cominentary, at least conveyed the feeling of a nation engaged even now in fierce controversy
and moreover being free to
Nage in controversy for the telly. One ic'Pic which did not crop up in the Where „Are They Now? department was Viet the focus of all the student protest of the late 'sixties. Ironically this poor country, having gained its freedom is now Widergoing a series of horrors of the type that will certainly never be shown on television. I doubt if Robert Kee would get permission to film in Saigon. , I fear we have by no means heard the last of Miss Emily Wilcox, the twoonth-old daughter of Desmond, head of BBC's General Features Dept and sther (née Rantzen) wife of the above. Cib l a the strength of a mild attack of baby aes Esther got herself onto a very bort% Man Alive programme (D. Wilcox PrciP.) on post-natal depression and told us.all about her psychological upsets after ring birth to Emily. The new Radio lines has on its cover a picture of reother and child. And meanwhile we baril that at the BBC a special creche is heing established for baby Emily and her "haanY. It is well known that mothers who ",,ave babies rather late in the day tend to
rte on them to excess. Will the BBC w hire a team of doctors to pontificate this topic and the dangers of sub
• Fting a little baby to too much publ [City? [City?
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