AND ANOTHER THING
Who exactly wants Birt burnt at the stake?
PAUL JOHNSON
The witch hunt launched by the Indepen- dent on Sunday against John Birt is one of the nastiest on record. As I write it looks as if the campaign to burn Birt at the stake has failed. When all the professional heavy- weights within the BBC backed him, the plotters switched to an alternative plan to drag Dukey Hussey, the chairman, to the pyre as a substitute. But that too was scotched when the governors met on Tues- day night and all the facts were revealed. Birt's tax status, needless to say, was a red herring. The object of the campaign, of course, was to stop the attempt to turn the BBC from a profligate and log-rolling bureaucracy into an efficient, responsible media corporation. I hope Andreas Whit- tam Smith, the Independent's founder and moral tutor, is proud of himself. I hereby award him the Joe McCarthy Prize for Ser- vices to Smear, Innuendo, Humbug and Character Assassination. He also gets the Guilt by Association Medal for dragging in Hussey.
When income tax was first introduced by Pitt many Englishmen rightly complained that it was what they called an 'inquisitori- al' imposition, leading to unwarranted intrusion into private affairs and business- es. Campaigning against its peacetime extension in 1816, Sir Francis Baring said he would 'much rather be summoned before the bench of bishops to be ques- tioned about his belief in the doctrinal points of religion than appear before the income tax commissioners'. Leading the successful radical effort to get the tax scrapped, Henry Brougham said it was non- sense that people's finances could be kept secret. He presented evidence to the Com- mons that individual income tax returns had been sold as old paper: in one case a cheese-shop had used them for wrapping its goods up, so each time you bought a slice of Cheddar you could read of your neighbour's intimate affairs. Obviously, said Brougham, these infamous probes into privacy could be used by unscrupulous peo- ple for all kinds of undesirable purposes.
Nearly two centuries later, the Birt witch hunt has proved how right Brougham was, and I wish his matchless oratory and foren- sic skills were now available to defend the director-general from his furtive enemies. Looking at what has been published about Birt's tax arrangements, I deduce quite the opposite to what has been alleged about him. Far from being a crafty fellow anxious to maximise tax avoidance, he seems to me like a man not much interested in money, who hates to be bothered with the tiresome details of tax law and therefore sticks with an out-of-date formula which saves him lit- tle money simply because it is too time-con- suming to change it. Far from being greedy, he has forfeited immense sums, by way of share-options, in the private sector, precise- ly in order to work at the low-paying BBC because he feels a public duty — as well as a professional challenge — to do so.
Either it should be unlawful to publish anyone's tax returns, or everyone's should be available for public inspection. The 'rev- elation' of Birt's claims for expenses has led to much chortling in the media. All right: let us have a bit more general openness, especially from those who campaign for a freedom of information act. I see' that the Observer, for instance, has called for Birt's resignation. That being so, perhaps its edi- tor, Donald Trelford, would let us all have a look at his income-tax returns and claims for expenses. And, since he included the BBC chairman in his resignation plea, per- haps Trelford would let us into the details of the personal tax return of his own boss, the almighty and highly secretive 'Tiny' Rowland. Come to think of it, why do not we hear from Andreas Whittam Smith, who started all this, about his income and expenses as editor and chief executive of the Independent newspapers?
All claims for expenses, especially when `taken out of context' as they say, are liable to raise a laugh. I once submitted an item, following a trip to Rome to report on a Vatican conclave, reading 'emoluments to monsignori'. I hasten to add it was a per- fectly valid claim, and for a sum which, in retrospect, seems pitifully inadequate. One `Can you spare 10p plus 9 per cent next year, rising to 17.5 per cent in 1995?' remembers the New Testament story of the woman taken in adultery, in which Jesus starts to write in the dust, and the crowd of accusers melts away. Birt voluntarily filed his tax return for publication at Companies House. Now let us have every executive or operator in the media and broadcasting showbiz who earns more than, say, £100,000 a year, follow his example, and tell us all about their expenses, not least' their dealings with secretaries. I warrant we would have a few giggles.
Last week, the Foreign Secretary, Dou- glas Hurd, was sounding off about the cur- rent bout of self-flagellation in Britain, say- ing we heard too much from the critics and not enough from the achievers. Well, Cabi- net ministers on the run always say that, but Hurd's point has some validity in this con- text. Birt is an achiever. Like Lord Reith, to whom he has a strange resemblance, he is an iron man: hugely hard-working, dedicat- ed to the point of ferocity, determined to raise the BBC from the slough of fuzzy inefficiency into which it had fallen, impa- tient of all that is second-rate, careless and idle in that mildewed and fly-blown organi- sation. He has made, is making, many ene- mies: among those of his predecessors to whom his vigour is a reproach, among the inadequates he has already sacked, moved sideways or rendered harmless, and among the many others, some in high positions, who feel threatened by his penetrating progress.
Behind the artificial fuss about Birt's tax return, there is a far more sinister and reac- tionary campaign to keep the BBC as it has been, a musty, wasteful, memo-circulating, buck-passing, over-staffed, bureaucratic, time-honoured nationalised industry. The putsch against Birt is the backlash of the mediocre, the revolt of the dead wood. The notion that he is lowering BBC standards, `betraying the legacy of Reith', is fantasy, the reverse of the truth. Birt is not without his faults, and his instant decision to change from freelance to PAYE status, in response to the witch hunt, looked like an admission of error, a bad tactical slip. But one of the things which persuades me he is the kind of person we need at the top of our public life is precisely the coalition of the Left, the envious, the hypocrites and the time-serv- ing failures and nonentities which has ranged itself against him. Had Birt fallen, the achievers would have lost a battle and we should all have been diminished.
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