THE PLAY'S THE THING
The media: Paul Johnson
identifies the real test
of Hussey's new BBC WRITING in the Guardian, the former editor of the Listener, Russell Twisk, argues that the TV establishment has now bowed before Mrs Thatcher. The recent TV festival in Edinburgh, he wrote, `marked the surrender of the last great pillar of society to hold out against the Thatcher revolution'. I wonder if he is right. There is certainly no physical sign of it. The TV culture in this country is still constitutionally left-liberal. Those who work for the Duopoly, especially at the decision-making levels in news, current affairs, drama and other areas where ideas and politics are important, remain over- whelmingly the kind of middle-class people who vote Labour or Alliance. The few Conservatives among them feel very iso- lated, as they occasionally complain to me. Young men and women who reject the orthodox progressive pharmacopaeia stand little chance of promotion. Someone with traditional, conservative views would have no hope of being appointed, say, as Jeremy Isaacs's successor as boss of Channel Four; it is taken for granted that this post goes to someone acceptable to the Left. Newspap- er editors and Tory MPs who went up to Edinburgh to address the festival audience were left in no doubt about the political allegiance of the television production elite. Ian Curteis, author of the Falklands play which the BBC suppressed, rightly remarked that television drama, for inst- ance, is a one-party state.
The BBC's behaviour over the Curteis play is bad enough in itself but it is also a test-case of where the BBC is heading. The full story behind the BBC's censorship of this play is set out in the 50-page introduc- tion to the printed text (Hutchinson, £3.95). It is a disturbing account which the BBC has not been able to answer. Official- ly the BBC says it could not put on the play because of election year. This is quite untrue: the BBC was quite happy to put on a dramatised version of the Westland Affair. At a nudge-and-whisper level some BBC figures then put it about that the play was simply not good enough to transmit. This was an afterthought and plainly un- true. Alasdair Milne, the then Director- General, wrote: 'it makes a terrific story'; he thought 'very highly' of the play. The producer appointed to put it on, Cedric Messina, considered it 'a very fine play'. The director, David Giles, called it 'splen- did' and 'spellbinding'. Anyone who, reads it can see that it is a fine piece of television craftsmanship by one of the best and most experienced men in the business.
The real explanation is quite simple and confirmed by letters and documents in Curteis's possession: the play was dropped because he refused to alter it in such a way as to give it an anti-Thatcher slant. He would not do so because this meant distort- ing the historical facts as he had discovered them. In particular he objected to the BBC's suggestion that he should re-write scenes in the War Cabinet to show that ministers were influenced in their military and political decisions by the coming elec- tion. This monstrous suggestion, for which there is no evidence at all, and abundant evidence against it, especially from the Service chiefs, would if accepted have amounted to a deliberate historical falsi- fication. Curteis refused to manufacture such a falsehood and that is essentially why his play was banned.
I can understand why the Left within the BBC found Curteis's play hard to swallow. It is in no way pro-Thatcher. It is not a right-wing play at all. What it does not do, because there is no evidence, is to endorse the Left's myth that Mrs Thatcher deliber- ately fought the Falklands War to save her political skin and win the election. The myth is dear to the Left because it enables them to avoid the unacceptable truth about Mrs Thatcher — that she is a simple, straightforward woman who, on big issues, 'Job losses in the beer and sandwich in- dustries are probably permanent.' . expresses the views of most ordinary Brit- ish people. The Left needs to see her as a political crook who was quite willing to spill a lot of blood in order to stay in power. They have to believe she wins elections by trickery and fraud because otherwise they are obliged to accept that they themselves do not speak for the masses — which, for progressive middle- class intellectuals, is an intolerable thought. There were thus deep, emotional, almost transcendental reasons for the opposition within the BBC to Curteis's play. It was and is hated precisely because it is factual.
So what happens now? The BBC still refuses to put the play on. It hangs onto its rights in the play because it is afraid someone else will present it and that it will enjoy a big popular success. Meanwhile, Chairman Hussey has carried out his purge, the weak Alasdair Milne has gone, and new figures have emerged at the top of the hierarchy. Everyone wants to know: has Hussey succeeded in transforming the BBC into an organisation more representa- tive of Britain and the British people, or are all the changes superficial? My mind is still open on the subject, but I shall regard whether or not this play is transmitted as a decisive pointer. So far, Hussey has made no move on the issue, simply repeating the official BBC line. Michael Grade, the great survivor from the old regime, privately reiterates the Left's cover-story — the play is not good enough. If I were Hussey 1 would insist on fighting and winning a battle on this issue, because if he lets it go by default, the Left within the BBC will take heart and conclude they can still get their way on anything they consider essen- tial. Hussey is not yet in control at the BBC and this is a Falklands War he must win.
Two readers rebuked me in letters pub- lished last week. David Duckels asserted that Jews do not use the word 'holocaust' when referring to the Nazi 'Final Solution' in Eastern Europe. This will come as a surprise, for instance, to the leading histo- rian of the subject, Dr Martin Gilbert, who entitled his comprehensive book The Holo- caust and who is also the compiler of An Atlas of the Holocaust; or to the former Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, who remarked, on the occasion of the destruction by Israeli aircraft of Iraq's nuclear reactor, 'There will not be another holocaust in history . . . never again, never again'. The truth is millions of Jews use the word in precisely this sense.
Secondly, Colin Haycraft asserts that someone, like myself, who constantly con- sults dictionaries to check the precise meaning and origin of words cannot be what he terms 'an educated person'. This repellant phrase gives the game away- Education, especially in such a vast field as the English language, is not a finite but a continuing process. I am not ashamed to be dependent on dictionaries; most writers are, if they are any good.
Previous page
