SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Clearly we must brace ourselves for a long period of soul-searching about, and from, the
BBC. From all one hears, the place is quivering with incipient upheaval and uncertainty. Sir Hugh Greene steps down a few days from now. McKinsey efficiency experts prowl the corridors. Lord Hill doles out his often un- palatable prescriptions. Sound radio prepares to suffer the axe. All is flux. A group of pro- ducers have even affirmed their belief that Radio• One should accept advertising. Since this is a programme designed only for light- hearted tosh, some might think that the ques- tion of advertising was, in terms of prin- ciple, of absolutely minimal importance. But no one familiar with the BBC'S peculiar mix- ture of genuine high-mindedness and dotty self-importance could make that error. The proposal smacks of revolution, or panic.
Its old admirers (of whom I am one) have long recognised that 'the Bac' was as much a mental or spiritual condition as anything else. ('Oh yes, he has a good mind—a first-class mind—but has he got a Corporation mind?') Kenneth Adam's current serial in the Sunday Times, in which he luridly depicts recent staff changes at the BBC, illustrates this with many a happy touch of unconscious humour. It is implied that nothing less than divine inter- vention had marked out the chosen few to lead the BBC : the rest of the world had but to look on in awe (and pay their licence money, of course). And now, it seems, this private world is at last dissolving. The metaphysical Corporation is seen to be just another malleable public utility, one with the Egg Board and the White Fish Authority : vincible, human, mortal.
The old (and new) Adam
Not that it should be thought that the upper priesthood of the old BBC wete impervious to change. Consider this extract from Kenneth Adam's eulogy of Sir Hugh Greene last Sun- day : 'From the beginning, Greene accepted the paramountcy of television in the BBC'S business. He was the first Director-General to think of it as more than "an extension of broadcasting," which was Haley's depressing phrase.' And this extract from a different source: 'When Sir William Haley was Direc- tor-General of the BBC he spoke of television as "an extension of broadcasting." This annoyed some of the television staff, who in those days liked to think of themselves as a new and master race. Of course. Sir William was right.' (My italics.) That was from an article in the SPECTATOR of 24 August 1962; its author, Kenneth Adam.
Passport to portico
The battle for London proceeds with almost daily communiques announcing victories or defeats. The past week has seen Mr Anthony Greenwood put an end to hopes of saving Woburn Square from the London University bulldozers, but also a strong hint that the Tate Gallery will escape rebuilding and will instead be able to expand on a new site near by. Woburn Square is, of course, a greater loss architecturally than the Tate's portico would have been. Its destruction, however, is merely part of the general obliteration of this most elegant part of London which the university has been perpetrating for years. Mr Greenwood's reason for not intervening is that the scheme had gone too far ahead to be changed now. The people who have been resisting it for an entire decade, ever since the original plans were made public, must find this rather like having salt rubbed in their wounds. But what is sig- nificant about the failure of the protests at Bloomsbury and the apparent success of those at the Tate is contained in this fact—ten years separate their beginnings. In those ten years, there has been a great stiffening of public opposition to such attacks.
What will actually emerge from the Tate affair remains obscure. The army, I gather, is still reluctant to abandon its riverside hos- pital site but looks like being firmly persuaded to do so. In that event the best solution for the Tate's overcrowding that anyone had hoped for—twin galleries, one for British art and one for modern art generally—could be achieved. The Tate trustees were somewhat taken aback by the volume of criticism pro- duced by their plan for tacking an extension on to the front of their present building. Never- theless, they ought to be (and I believe are) thoroughly grateful. Perhaps they would con- sider refurbishing the famous portico, at present rather shabby, as a thankoffering.
numpty Dumpty word
As the good Fowler observes, often the meaning of a vogue word 'by no means explains itself to the average man, who has to find [it] out as best he can.' The average man has a stiff prob- lem in the current vogue word 'integration', used in a racial context. Integration is widely applauded, but who can say confidently what it means? The Oxford Dictionary knows it not (in this sense): the chairman of the Race Relations BOard this week tried to clarify the point by quoting Mr Roy Jenkins. According to him, integration is 'not a flattening process of assimi- lation, but equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.' Cultural diversity? Surely the most common connotation implies a unified culture. It's an American usage originally, and John Graham, in his article on page 360, employs the current American sense when he writes of negro housing enclaves as being specifically not integrated: yet they provide cultural diversity all right. Mix up blacks and whites in the same street and you get integration : separate them in different areas or schools and you don't, even though opportunities may be equal and cultural diversity flourish. The Oxford lexicographers, I'm told, are now working on a definition. No easy task, since the word's meaning depends at present upon the user's views. One remembers, too, Orwell's observation that unclear use of words usually indicates unclear thinking.
Child's play to them
Most fascinating headline of the week (from Wednesday's Times): 'NIXON CALLS IN DOER US TO HALT BOOM'. If the American government (unlike some) really has to call in outside experts to do that sort of thing, we could suggest a few names. There's J. Callaghan, S. Lloyd . . .
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