Mark Thompson’s strategic review of the BBC may be momentous in its implications, even though its actual cutbacks are minor (admit it: had you ever heard of, much less listened to 6 Music?).
Mark Thompson’s strategic review of the BBC may be momentous in its implications, even though its actual cutbacks are minor (admit it: had you ever heard of, much less listened to 6 Music?). This is because it has abandoned the idea that the BBC has to do everything. Until now, the BBC has followed a ‘wider still and wider’ policy. It has defended every piece of junk and every market grab on the grounds that it must cater for the greatest possible variety of tastes and audiences in order to serve all licence-fee payers. That way madness — culminating in Jonathan Ross, his millions and his torment of Andrew Sachs — has lain. It has proved impossible to argue that the BBC has the distinctive values which it is pledged to uphold in its Charter. So what Mr Thompson says he wants is good. The only possible argument for the BBC’s unique system of funding is that it is unique in the value of what it does. But if I were one of those who wanted to keep the licence fee, I would worry. For all its goody-goody way of talking, the BBC has survived by staying powerful. Politicians dare not confront it, except in occasional moments of rage. If it gradually becomes the case (a process which was well under way even before Mr Thompson’s review) that millions of people barely use the BBC at all, what is the politics of forcing them, on pain of prosecution, to pay the hypothecated tax? Why should between 100,000 and 200,000 mostly poor people each year be criminalised because they want to watch television, but do not want to fund something they never see? As I write, I hear from Hastings magistrates’ court that I must come and see them next month to discuss my refusal to pay my television licence so long as the BBC pays Ross. It is good to feel that the empire ranged against me has passed its zenith.
After 40 years, Ian Paisley is retiring from the House of Commons. I remember his entry to it very well, because my father, who has a taste for the politically impossible, stood against Dr Paisley in North Antrim in 1970 as a Liberal, duly losing his deposit. In those days, the rhetoric of the ‘Big Man’ was more flamboyantly biblical. Alcohol, for example, was ‘the Devil’s buttermilk’, but as my father explained to Dr Paisley after 30 or so of his supporters had attacked my parents’ car while they were inside it in Ballymoney one night, the buttermilk seemed popular enough with his righteous supporters. At the count in Ballymena, a huge crowd of Paisleyites gathered in the Diamond and roared out ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow’, which caused my father, in his speech after the declaration, to declare that ‘Oh God our help in ages past’ might be more appropriate. Dr Paisley was so furious that he grabbed the microphone and shouted to his followers to start up ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow’ all over again. In the ensuing 40 years, the volume of the sectarian bellowing was gradually turned down, and the British establishment now congratulates itself on having tamed the old brute. But I wonder if the final lap of his career will not prove in history to have been the most ignominious. At least it can be said of Paisley in his heyday that, however frightful his bigotry, his eloquence and courage did give Unionism a voice which could not be ignored. But in the end, he was not a Unionist at all. He just wanted to be the King of Ulster, and this he achieved by dividing the spoils with a gang of even more revolting people, Sinn Fein.
The sad death of Rose Gray, of River Café fame, somehow expresses the political moment. The River Café captured most of the things which made New Labour attractive to the more educated floating voters. It was modern, informal, egalitarian, European, Venusian, but also classy, starry, expensive. It embodied what Peter Mandelson called the ‘both/and’, as opposed to ‘either/or’ approach to life — you could be both environmental (proper sourcing) and greedy (proper sauces), both concerned about the poor, the planet etc, and yet pleasantly rich. And although there was perhaps a risk of pinko smugness about the place, Rose Gray, whom I knew slightly, achieved a lot more than creating a restaurant fit for Blairites to eat in. She and her business partner Ruth Rogers had, in their generation, the sort of effect which Elizabeth David had in hers — an ability to persuade hundreds of thousands of people who cook at home that it can be an interesting, even inspiring thing to do. What happy hours we provincials have spent with the River Café duck cooked in sweet red wine, or pheasant (potentially such a dull bird) stuffed with quince cheese and thyme. So Rose Gray embodied what New Labour was supposed to be about — spreading benign middle-class values in a way which dissolved the old hatreds and improved the quality of life; but where she succeeded, it failed. If Gordon Brown were a restaurant, what sort would he be? Not the River Café.
As Tories get jittery about the opinion polls, those who want to hold the Conservatives to their promise to repeal the hunting ban, if a free vote authorises it, keep trying to probe the party’s will on the subject. I suggest they should not worry that the promise will not be fulfilled, but that a Tory government will do nothing to encourage the free vote to go the right way. Suppose there are, say, 330 Conservative MPs. There may be hardly any who are personally anti-hunting, but if they sit for Luton or Bolton or Surbiton how many of their constituents are going to make them sweat if they simply do not bother to vote? Hardly any Labour MPs will vote for repeal, and perhaps only a dozen Liberals. So all the Tory party managers need do, if their leader decides that the subject is not worth political expense, is — nothing. At present, pro-hunting activists are very important in constituency campaigning. They need to get their candidates’ pledges signed in blood.
My proposal for a charity — working title, Meeting People — whose sole purpose is to provide well-informed volunteers to accompany ‘clients’ of the public services to their meetings with officialdom, gains touching support from a south London reader, Mr Garth Wiseman: ‘As a pensioner with so many chronic illnesses that I’m registered disabled and living alone (my wife left when I became ill), I find my physical debilitation reflected also in a loss of mental and emotional energy such that I am unable to fight my corner when necessary.’ That’s exactly it — the feeling that one cannot fight one’s corner. It is when one most needs the public services that one is in the least good frame of mind to struggle with them.
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