Radio
Rights issues
Mary Kenny
'I am a 24-year-old mother of two and my boyfriend and I have recently split up. I have successfully got him put out of our council flat, and although he has had a maintenance order to pay for the children, he refuses to do so, saying that he already has to pay for the children by his first wife. However, his first wife says that she gets nothing from him either. Can you tell me what my rights are in this case?' This is the sort of problem that fetches up on the Jimmy Young programme on Radio 2 (10.3 a.m. until 12.15 p.m., daily) from listeners, and some fatcat lawyer is duly wheeled on as an 'expert' to deal with it. The preacher in my local church delivered a powerful sermon recently in which he said that the rot set in with The Rights of Man; first we demand rights from the State, then from .our neighbours, then from our family, our friends, employers, Nature, providence, creation until all rights conflict with each Other and we devour one another. Of course, one of the points to be made about rights is that lawyers make money from demanding them and that is one of the reasons why I imagine, they are so relentlessly pushed on the State radio; I am convinced there is an unofficial legal lobby working fulltime on stirring people up about their rights, for sure enough, every second programme on the airwaves is concerned with making people anxious about their 'rights' — You and Yours, Checkpoint, Woman's Hour, Parent Power, and all the Phone-ins. What is so insidious is the National Council for Civil Liberties-type mentality behind it all— that it is the State's job to pick up the Pieces in everyone's private life. Everyone makes mistakes in life, such as marrying the Wrong person, running off with other peoPle's spouses, quarrelling over the children, etc., but does that mean the State always has to Pick up the check? The BBC lawyers usually seem to say so. How about a programme entitled Your Responsibilities, or A Quick Guide to your Duties to Others? No Chance.
It's a rum organisation, the BBC. They would never dream of hiring a racialist to be their Community Relations Correspondent, they would never engage a fierce libertarian to report on the closed shop, but they don't mind having a religious programme which seems to me to be totally anti-religious. Sunday (8.15 a.m., Radio 4) has a consumer's attitude to the churches: is the n •-•ay Christian movement getting its Proper rights? What right has any man, theologian or layman, to have any opinions about abortion, being merely a man? The rights of guerrilla movements and their rights to financial support from the World Council of Churches are much dwelt upon. The main presenter, Clive Jacobs, is a firstclass radio reporter; but he is working on the wrong programme. They could do with him on Today or PM where they always need thoughtful iconoclasts; he just doesn't belong on Sunday, since he gives every impression of having no faith in the spiritual dimension at all. Indeed, this programme is a really good example of marketing idiocy; the one invariable rule in selling any media commodity is ignored — that you don't get rid of your old customers by insulting them long before you have attracted new ones. Sunday insults people who are interested in religion, and is of no -consequence whatsoever to anyone who isn't. So it loses both ways.
As it is important to explain yourself when you are being rude, I will give an example of how Sunday lacks a religious understanding. Recently, they exposed — along with two other BBC programmes, Nationwide and Checkpoint — some seemingly crackpot spiritualists who are currently on a tour of Britain. I daresay the spiritualists are crackpots, and Sunday took the usual consumerist viewpoint of fearlessly tackling and 'investigating' the man who has organised the tour. But that is not the point of a religious programme. For the listeners of Sunday, it would have been far more apt to discuss with someone like Brian Inglis, the history of crackpot spiritualism, the psychology of people who believe in it, why people believe in it, and what fantastic cases have existed in the past. (There is also a fascinating history of how the rationalists and scientists have cheated on the phenomenologists by falsifying the evidence.) This is what people who are religious are interested in; the reason why — not the consumerist viewpoint, which is perfectly valid, but quite honestly a bit overworked these days.
Coverage of the Euro-elections has been pretty grim — even the commercial stations have managed to sound like Russian-type state radio telling the people what is good for it. By far the best way of tackling the European scene is homing in on something specific, such as the long and excellent feature Henry Kelly did recently (28 May) on The World Tonight about how the Dutch have mismanaged their gas resources. Apparently, they have completely squandered the money — instead of re-investing it. There remain some magical moments on radio — Tito Gobbi on Start the Week one Monday morning in mid-May, quite beautifully drawn out by Richard Baker. You suddenly understood why people will pay any amount of money to be sung to. Vanessa Redgrave was on the same programme and came over very nicely — very sincere, generous and concerned about the people who worked with her, being very careful to give due credit to the technicians, the writers (she mentioned Kathleen Tynan's script of the Agatha Christie movie four times) and the cameramen and lighting experts who are so important in any production. Patrick Cosgrave, sometime Spectator columnist, featured recently on Any Questions, and was disappointingly easy-going on the three silly-Billies who were on the team with him — Lord Soper, Lord Robens and Claire Rayner. To the question: 'For what would you wish to be remembered?' Paddy replied: 'I would like my daughter to say— "He was a man who served his country." 'Which country is that, Patrick?
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