Broadcasting and Union Struggle: A History in Video

The Battle of the BBC

Other people have blogged on the current industrial action by NUJ members defending their pensions against the BBC management retirement raiders. The Worker’s United has a short commentary here and I would also recommend this one on A Very Public Sociologist in which you can get a list of celebrity scabs.

For my part, the current dispute has prompted some thoughts about the history of trade unionism in the media. Firstly, BECTU is sitting this one out which is a big loss – it has a history of relative militancy in the film and TV sector. One of its predecessors, the ACTT, was at the forefront of industrial struggle in the 1970s. In 1973 they commissioned a report, written by Simon Hartog, detailing plans for the nationalisation of the film industry (which can be accessed from this page, if you’re interested). In 1975 the ACTT commissioned Patterns of Discrimination, the first ever trade union report into sexual discrimination in the workplace, and appointed a full-time women’s equality officer. They were responsible for shutting down much of the ITV network for ten weeks in 1979 – what Glen Aylett calls the “granddaddy of television strikes”. They were also central in negotiating the now defunct Workshop Declaration in the 1980s, which for my money is a landmark model for progressive film-making (Amber Films – the only workshop to survive from that era – have details here). While it was never widely adopted, for those lucky enough to work under it the Declaration provided what are now almost unimaginable opportunities for lefties, women, members of ethnic minorities to make films that represented their interests and visions as opposed to the perceived needs of the ‘market’. 

If broadcasting trade unions have been at the front of progressive union policy, the broadcast sector as a whole has been at the front of neoliberal restructuring. Trade union membership in the film and television industries, as in trade union membership more generally, is less than half of what it was 30 years ago. In fact, the audio-visual industries are seen by some commentators as exemplary of the trajectory towards de-unionisation and the attendant casualisation that has characterised the neo-liberalisation of industrial economies since the late-1970s (see here, for example). If that is the case then the current dispute has ramifications for more than the pensions of BBC workers.

And now a look at some past struggles.

A Random History of Trade Unionism in the Media in Video Format 

Report on current industrial action:

BBC One Strike, 1994:

ITV Strike, 1979:

And finally, Wapping Lies, a video on the Battle of Wapping in 1986. This lesson from history precedes Murdoch’s integration into the fabric of the British economy, British politics and British culture. It demonstrates the sort of issues that are at stake at the current time with downward pressure on the pay and conditions in the public sector part of creeping privatisation. As David Puttnam recently argued, it is Murdoch's control over the British media - not the BBC - that is “chilling”.

Here’s hoping the NUJ do better this time around.

The Assault on the BBC

Steve Barnett has written a good critique of the current attack on the BBC and Public Service Broadcasting eminating from the Adam Smith Institute on the OurKingdom blog, reproduced below. This is a solid defence which Montagu fully endorses. Apart from some slightly dodgy stuff about income support. And the OurKingdom blog's nationalist bullshit. But apart from that it is well worth a read.  

Right-wing think tanks don’t like the BBC. Never have, never will. This latest attempt from the Adam Smith Institute to diagnose the BBC “problem” and then propose a “solution” is a disappointingly shallow and intellectually weak analysis which – surprise, surprise – concludes that the licence fee should be replaced with a voluntary subscription.

At the heart of its convoluted argument is a simple conviction which has defined every right of centre approach to the BBC since the Peacock Committee: private sector good, public sector bad. The right simply cannot abide publicly funded institutions, even ones that manifestly contribute to Britain’s social, economic and cultural welfare. If it’s funded by taxation, they start from the assumption that something is profoundly wrong. The notion that we might just have created an internationally admired and domestically effective institution through the simple expedient of an annual fee simply doesn’t bear thinking about. Something must be done.

It is curious that the purported aim of this report is to “elevate ambitions and liberate energies”. In fact, that’s just what the BBC does. But we read virtually nothing about what this actually means in terms of vibrant journalism or creative dynamism or cultural innovation before the report moves swiftly on to the familiar narrative about radical technological change demanding a radical policy response. And so it has been for at least 25 years since cable was first laid and the Hunt Report predicted a technological revolution. There is always another revolution coming, another transformed consumer experience, another excuse for dismantling a publicly funded institution which offends the right’s sensibilities. Deja vu, all over again.

There then follows a feeble and incomprehensible attempt to pre-empt the “defenders of the system” by outlining their arguments. This refers in abstract terms to the BBC’s news, education and welfare roles while either deliberately or lazily ignoring virtually every rationale for maintaining a strong, independent, internationally admired, publicly funded institution: barely a word about value for money, or the economic and export benefits, or the enormous cultural impact of programmes that are rooted in British identity and British lives, or the contribution to innovation and training, or the value of a universally available communicative space which is devoid of commercial messages and free at the point of delivery.

When it comes to radio, this supposedly radical set of ideas falls back on the hoary old notion of giving up Radios 1, 2 and 5 to advertising. No thought to how that would impact on the rest of the commercial radio sector, not a single mention of how a shift to commercial funding would transform the output of the stations. If the Adam Smith Institute really believes that a commercially funded Radio 1 would champion new bands, expand its playlist and give over chunks of airtime to news and documentary features, it clearly does not live in the real world.

Fairness is a recurrent theme, in particular fairness to the poor and fairness to the BBC’s competitors. While the Adam Smith Institute shows commendable concern for those who are being prosecuted for non-payment of the licence fee because they can’t afford it, their distress might be better directed towards alleviating poverty rather than one tiny symptom of its effects. Given that income support is available to all, and that the licence fee is included in the calculations of a basic living income, there is anyway no reason for not paying it. I doubt that the Adam Smith Institute would favour an increase in state hand-outs to assist those who struggle to pay their other bills.

More in tune with the Adam Smith Institute’s basic philosophy is the report’s concern for the health of private sector competitors. Of course the BBC restricts opportunities in the private sector, in much the same way that many Harley Street practitioners have their income potential severely constrained by the NHS. We don’t premise health debates on assumptions that the job of the public sector is to fill in gaps left by the private health insurance market, just as we don’t start debates about policing on the basis of enhancing opportunities for Group 4. We start with public policy objectives, and an essentially social democratic ideal of a public space, like libraries and public parks, which offers access to all and does not treat its users as consumers defined by the size of their wallet.

There are many other problems with this report. It refers to an “emerging consensus” about top-slicing the licence fee as if there had been barely a voice raised in anger against the last government’s daft proposals. Did the authors not read the responses to the Labour government’s plans for funding local news consortia from the licence fee? Do they really not understand how much James Murdoch, amongst others, despises the idea because it would enable the licence fee subsidy to leak out to other organisations rather than be contained within a single easy target? There is certainly no such consensus amongst policy analysts in academic circles who have seen the same discredited ideas being recycled for over 25 years.

And there is the same old nonsense about HBO, its wonderfully original drama, and its profitability. All of this is true – and tells us precisely nothing about the UK. HBO’s success in the US is directly attributable to the size and scale of the American market: over 300 million people and a potential universe of 115 million television household subscribers. That is five times the potential market in the UK in a country whose GDP is seven times ours. So of course it has the financial muscle to produce great drama. Which, of course, is all that HBO does. Even with its huge market potential, it does not produce high quality peak-time journalism, it doesn’t do radio or online, nor make ground-breaking documentaries nor stimulating children’s programmes. And that’s certainly not because the big networks are doing it.

If the Adam Smith Institute really wants a better understanding of how we can learn from American experience, it should turn to one of its fellow ideologues. According to Professor Robert Lichter, president of a Washington-based conservative pressure group and paid consultant to Fox Television, the free market is not the universal panacea so beloved by its devotees. He said a few years ago: “I've never been able to figure out how competition makes cars better and television worse. In other industries, competition creates new and different products. In television, it makes all the products look the same. That's weird”.

Weird maybe, but demonstrably true in every country which has pursued a free market, commodified view of broadcasting rather than starting with desirable public policy outcomes. The Adam Smith Institute’s “solution” would redefine public service programming as dull, worthy, low-rating programes which would be relegated to the margins. It would inevitably result in less of what people actually want. Less original high quality drama, less new comedy, less high quality news, less investment in British children’s programmes, less original investigative journalism, less innovation. And it would destroy one of the few remaining properly resourced, independent and internationally acclaimed journalistic operations.

Rather than taking a great British institution and vandalising it, wouldn’t it be wonderful if – just once – one of those dry, economistic policy think tanks could throw off their ideological straitjackets and actually celebrate the cultural, democratic and economic benefits which the BBC continues to bring to every British citizen? But that would mean the ultimate heresy – praise for a publicly funded institution. Pigs will fly first.

Damn straight Steve.

BBC Factual Programs, Social History and Celebrity

Montagu’s Daughter recently had the opportunity to watch Who do You Think You Are? on BBC 1 with Irish actor Dervla Kirwan (it was a slow night).

Dervla is from Dublin and already knew she was the great grand-niece of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins. A particularly interesting subject for the show, you might think, and we do see her learning of her grandfather’s role in the Irish war of independence and subsequent support for partition. In fact the show glosses over this period, save for a few awkward references to the Irish Republican Army not being the same as the modern IRA, and a particularly poor description of the Black and Tans’ role in repressing the nationalist movement. The show steers clear of anything controversial. Perhaps the complexities of British imperial history and the Irish freedom movement are beyond the format?

More effective was the exploration of the life of Dervla’s maternal grandfather, a Polish Jew who escaped persecution to Ireland and married her Catholic grandmother. Both would have had to give up a lot for the sake of their relationship and were ostracised from their communities. Harry Kahn was later sentenced to one year’s hard labour by Sir Frederick Faulkner in a particularly nasty anti-Semitic miscarriage of justice. The case was taken all the way to the House of Commons and was probably the source for a passage in James Joyce’s Ulysses. A story of love among hardship, then.

Who Do You Think You Are? is a success story of British television. Now in its eighth series it regularly attracts audiences of six million, has its own BBC magazine, interactive section on family history of the BBC website, a 2010 BAFTA nomination for Best Factual Series and the format has exported to the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and South Africa.

It is also a good example of the way social history is packaged in contemporary British broadcasting. An edu-tainment hybrid, the show mixes a fascination with celebrity with popular genealogy and the traditional documentary-history format. Each show's narrative is constructed through a dramatisation of the research process with the subject visiting archives and meeting experts, adding a gloss of celebrity sparkle to the ordinarily dusty activity of sitting in libraries and searching micro fiche. The human reactions of otherwise unreachable stars – crying at the fate of their forebears/revelling at struggle in the face of adversity – provides the pay-off. And along the way we learn about social conditions for the working-classes in mid-Victorian Britain, say. It counts towards the BBC’s statutory commitment of factual programming (1295 hours in 2009/10) as part of its Public Service Remit, yet also connects with broad, mainstream audiences. Win-win?

For the celebrities there are obvious benefits. They get screen time and the opportunity to build upon their brand identity, ubiquity and marketability. The program makers get to tap in to this brand in their marketing – a good example of synergy. But this also reveals its limitations as a factual programme. How far are the didactic potentials of the show limited by the format? In organising the historical information around the narrative of one particularly successful individual – a successful narrative resolution, if you like – every episode tends to celebrate social mobility. Times were tough for my family, but through hard work and the unbridled opportunities provided by post-war capitalism, we got there in the end, shiny, happy and rich. When confronted with more genuinely challenging and less well understood historical events and issues, in this example at least, the program breaks under the pressure, unable to cope.

How to explain this? One answer is that people aren’t interested in complex representations of history and don’t want to learn ‘stuff’, preferring to be dazzled by simple stories with happy endings and shiny people (although I don’t know if Bruce Forsyth or Chris Moyles would fit into that category). So if program-makers can create a format which gives them that while sneaking in a bit of history, all the better.

Another answer, however, can explain modern factual broadcasting in terms of structural pressures towards commercialisation, of which cross-platform celebrity branding is a major part. While shows like this help the BBC fulfil its commitment to factual programming – a key thing that would be lost if the BBC went commercial – they must also be understood as a component of the commercial media landscape and the way that public service broadcasting is increasingly put under pressure to fulfil objectives in the interests of private business – in this case subsidising the development of celebrity-actor brands – at the expense of more complex but informative and useful understandings of history.

Which is it, A or B?