Should Socialists Defend The BBC?

The BBC is under attack from the government. Its not alone. Johnson's Bonapartist regime is attacking all sections of the media other than the most right-wing, most fawning elements. It is what every authoritarian regime does, in order to limit criticism of its actions. For Boris's Bonapartists, its not just the media under attack. Its the judiciary too. Again this is exactly what every authoritarian regime does, as it cuts off channels for limiting and checking its power. That kind of direction of travel only tends to accelerate as, unchecked, the regime, every time it faces a problem, attempts to cover it up, to divert attention, and is led to ever more extreme measures of censorship and coercion. The government is doing all in its power to undermine the BBC, threatening its funding, by a variety of measures. The BBC is seeking support by pointing out that the government is attacking it, because of its role in criticising the government, and not toeing the line in the General Election, and over Brexit. So, then, should socialists defend the BBC against the attacks by Boris Bonaparte? 

The first thing to say is that, whether or not the government actually do believe that the BBC was biased against them, in the General Election, and over Brexit, the truth is quite clearly different. Does anyone seriously believe that the BBC was biased in favour of Jeremy Corbyn? This is a BBC whose top political journalists are all Tories. Many of them were Tory activists as students. The BBC, from its top management structures down, is stuffed to the gills with people who represent the establishment. Many of them go on to become Tory politicians or peers; some, like Lord Patten, have moved the other way. This is a BBC that checks the backgrounds of all potential journalists to see if there is anything that would make them a challenge to its perceived establishment interests. As representatives of the establishment, there may have been a tendency to want to see Brexit challenged, but only from the most spineless liberal perspective. Certainly, there is not the lightest reason why the BBC would, or did, give anything like support for Jeremy Corbyn, and, in fact, its quite clear that the very opposite has been the case, from the moment the potential for him becoming Labour leader arose. 

And, whatever motivation some, within the BBC establishment, might have had to reflect the views of the dominant section of the ruling class, to oppose Brexit, pure commercial self-interest, and personal empire building overtook it. If any institution can be given credit for Brexit going through its the BBC. For more than a decade it could have been renamed the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation. Barely a day went past when Nigel Farage, Suzanne Evans, or some other UKIP nonentity was wheeled out on to a BBC politics programme, news review, or Question Time. The Daily Politics could have been renamed The Daily UKIP given the number of times these nonentities, who could not get a single MP elected, and represented no one, were given airtime. And, of course, this is the same BBC that gave the fascist Nick Griffin airspace too, on Question Time, despite the fact that his pathetic little organisation represented even less! 

Why did the BBC invite these people on? Because they are big mouths, controversial figures, guaranteed to garner an audience. They enhance the BBC's ratings, in an era when 24 hour news coverage that says nothing meaningful, and nothing new, from one hour to another, has to justify its existence. It is the means by which the producers of these various programmes build their own personal empires within the BBC, empires which freedom of information requests have shown bring large rewards to those involved. Although the gutter rags, like the Daily Mail and Express, along with the Sun catered for the declining rabble of elderly Tories that are drunk on the xenophobia and bigotry pumped out by those rags, they only acted to feed the existing Faragist flock. The BBC, by giving a mass platform to Farage and the fascists legitimised them in a way that the gutter press never could. Brexit, like Farage himself, is a creation of the BBC. 

And, the BBC hostility towards Corbyn, and the ideas of the Left that he symbolised, also played into that. In 2016, it is true that Corbyn did dozens of meetings and rallies across Britain calling for a vote to oppose Brexit. Whilst, Corbyn himself should never have appointed the hopeless Alan Johnson as Labour's referendum coordinator, and its not surprising that Johnson disappeared from sight, the fact is that the BBC along with the rest of the media essentially boycotted all of Corbyn's rallies. Corbyn could have made that more difficult, of course. He could, and should, have brought European socialists to Britain, to wage a united EU wide campaign against Brexit, against right-wing nationalism, and against the austerity programmes that conservative governments were imposing across Europe, and on the EU itself, as had been most obvious in the action taken against Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. Given that he had said that he wanted to build a mass social movement, the EU referendum campaign was a perfect opportunity to have done that, by holding weekly mass rallies and marches in major cities, as Michael Foot had done effectively in 1980 and 1981. But, the truth is that the BBC, and the other media outlets, were only interested in presenting the referendum as yet another soap opera, or unreality TV show. They were only interested in covering, in any detail, the petty squabbles between Tories, between Cameron and Johnson, Johnson and Gove, and so on. They completely depoliticised what should have been a major political event removing any informative content from the process, and particularly removing from view any alternative perspective, any concept that Another Europe Is Possible. 

The BBC is the mouthpiece of the state, but in the current era it is even decadent in its performance of that role. If the BBC were being considered in any other country, we would describe it for what it is, the state owned propaganda arm. When it was established, it was used, by the state, against the working-class engaged in the General Strike. It has continued to be used against the working-class throughout its existence. We should take a similar attitude to the BBC as we do to other state owned industries and services. That is that we do not wish to see a reversion to some previous privately owned condition, but nor do we defend these institutions on their current basis. We should fight for the greatest degree of workers control over these institutions, but recognising that, particularly under this Tory regime, that is unlikely to be granted, short of a revolutionary situation, we should begin to create our own alternatives. 

In the case of the media, it is unforgivable that the labour movement has not already done so. The labour movement of the past was able to produce its own newspaper, which was the form of mass communication of the day. Every man and his dog, it seems, today, has their own Youtube channel. The costs of media production equipment has fallen dramatically. The highest viewed channel in China a few years ago was one produced by one young man in his bedroom! The labour movement has the best writers, actors, directors, journalists there are. We have a wealth of talent of comedians, singers and so on. There is absolutely no reason that the Labour Party, together with the TUC, and the Cooperative movement could not, today, have its own high-quality media unit, with a labour movement channel on Cable and Satellite, just as various football clubs do. For one thing, its necessary in order to provide an alternative, for all those disaffected by the mainstream media, who then find themselves being poisoned by the outpourings of RT, or the even more overt state propaganda of some of the other broadcasters. 

The Tories do have a point in relation to the licence fee. Why should you face imprisonment for not paying? It is, after all, the poorest that are most likely to be in this position. The idea that you should go to a Debtors Prison for non payment of bills is something that belongs in a Dickensian novel, not the present world. Of course, the Tories would have to be careful about that, because it also applies to non-payment of Council Tax, or Income Tax etc. 

We cannot defend the licence fee, which is a monopoly price charged by the state for something which is not even in monopoly supply. It means that consumers are forced to pay for something they may not even consume. Nor can we defend the BBC on a political basis either. The liberal establishment politics of the BBC may be preferable to the conservative Bonapartist politics of Johnson's government, but it is none of our business to be choosing between lesser evils. Hand over control of the BBC to its workers, establish a Board which brings together those workers with the wider labour movement, as an organised representative of the viewing public, and then there would be something worth actually defending. Open the books of the BBC and all other media outlets, so that we can see the links between these institutions and the bourgeoisie, and the links between their various journalists, and other personnel, with the ruling class, and then we can see what we are dealing with. Until then, we should treat the BBC for what it is, the main mouthpiece of the ruling class. We need to build our own vibrant, forward looking labour movement alternative to it.