Rudinblog

Liverpool and Thatcher had a lot in common

The release of the 1981 Cabinet papers under the 30 year rule have yielded some truly historic revelations. Perhaps the most fascinating relate to Margaret Thatcher’s direct interventions and communications with the IRA. At a time of acute tension in Northern Ireland, mainly the result of hunger strikes by Republican convicts, who demanded they be treated as political prisoners rather than common criminals. This was no posturing - they began to die and one, Bobby Sands, was by then an MP. The official stance of the government was that they would not deal with 'terrorists' - they were murderers and bombers. To countenance any change in their status would be to acknowledge that such acts could be justified as part of a legitimate struggle against the British occupiers.

The assassinaions and bombings on the mainland had ben in full swing for eight years and Republicans had audaciously murdered Thacher's Northern spokesman, close aide and Colditz PoW escapee Airey Neive as the election campaign that brought her to power got underway, by blowing him up as he started his car in the House of Commons underground car park. It was now personal. 

Of course, 'everyone' knew there were negotiations using 'back channels', but the revelation that Thatcher herself was involved in the communiques with the IRA leadership and was leaving all options on the table - including one for Britain to withdraw from Northern Ireland, would certainly have caused -to put it mildly - ructions in N Ireland. The Unionists were, in any case,rightly terrified that the English were not too fussed about hanging onto N Ireland  and would- as I suspect they will soon over Scotland - to conclude that, you know, we've been good together, but if you feel that way, thanks and by bye. Don’t let us stand in your way!

Britan as in a pretty demoralised state in 1981. When Thatcher came to power two years earlier, the brutal but accurate verdict was that Britain was not only no longer a world power, but wasn't even in the first rank in Europe. The view of the Foreign Office was that the UK's decline from being undisputed number one in the world, with an Empire that covered a third of the globe and where the sun never set, etc., to one beleaguered and neutered by over-ambitious and unrealistic defence commitments and a failing economy, should be managed gently. Only a third of Thacher’s Cabinet supported upgrading Britain's nuclear defence to new Trident submarines - it was pushed through in secret using the Royal Prerogative.  Many right across the political spectrum reckoned that Britain’s economic decline - just five years after the previous Labour government had felt compelled to agree to IMF terms to slash public spending in order to secure a 'standby' loan and avoid the possibility of the country going bankrupt - was equally inevitable. The country was too set in its ways, too complacent, the unions too powerful, the political class too weak and it could no longer compete on the world stage. Best to go gently into that long good night.

Thatcher of course was having none of this but some in her Cabinet - even those who were, at that stage anyway, 'true believers' - believed that some parts of the country were unlikely to respond to the harsh medicine which was thought necessary to cure the 'patient'. In Liverpool's case, her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Geoffrey Howe argued to her,  public money would be wasted. Like paramedics at the scene of a catastrophe where there are many severely injured and dying casualties, brutal assessments were needed to choose between those who were doomed and those who might survive and to concentrate limited resources on the latter.

In interviews given to coincide with the release of the papers, Howe has denied that he meant that his view that the city should be subjected to a "managed decline" Liverpool should be simply abandoned and left to its fate. But, frankly, I don't believe him. 

The fact is Liverpool represented everything Thatcher  loathed and were the awkward squad who she feared could block her goal of changing Britain. It, and many of the former great industrial cities, had become barren for Conservatives and they and their populations were expendable. In many constituencies, the Labour party was being taken over by Militant; the true nasty party, demonstrating a political version of Newton's third law of Physics.

And the poilitical parties weren't the only nasty ones.  My favourite quote in these papers is from Michael Heseltine, sent to Merseyside for what many in Thacher's government regarded as a 'fool's errand',  was so shocked by the police ( ready to be used as a political force in the great industrial battles to come, whose pay had doubled under Thatcher and were better equipped than ever) and declared they were not racist- they were thuggish and brutal to everyone! So some sort of equality was achieved.

Visiting Liverpool yesterday though, on the fourth day of sales, we found the car parks at (UNESCO heritage) waterfront - pictured! -and multi-million private investment-led shopping centre were showing 'full' signs. Queues to get into Pandora's, where cheapest item is about £60. And of course, queues past Anfield for the visit by Newcastle United. It has top-rated car plant(s), Biotech and Gaming industries, to name just a few of its employment highlights, a world-class Philharmonic orchestra, superb theatre, the rich cultural and architectural heritage and superb museums and art galleries.

 In the case of Liverpool's citizens and Thatcher - unlike another law of physics - opposites repelled. Yet both refused to accept the accepted wisdom of inevitable decline.  Both were proved right. By the end of the '80s, Britain was no longer "the sick man of Europe", it was rushing up the league tables of economic power and productivity - indeed one car plant in the depressed north-east was rated as  the most productive in the world. The country still had a seat at the top table - still a nuclear power, still a permanent member of the UN Security Council, still a leading light in NATO, the Queen was still Head of State in more than a dozen countries and of a Commonwealth of a third of the nation's peoples and, after giving them a good hand-bagging, Thatcher had secured a significant rebate of the UK's contributions to the EU.

Could all of this had been achieved without the destruction of so many people's futures, so many communities, so much wasted talent? In 1981, much needed to change in Britain, not least on trade unions who often blocked sensible and necessary changes in working practices, etc.. But couldn’t the North Sea oil revenues been put into a sovereign fund, as Norway has done, to secure the country’s economic future and provide excellent pensions, public services, transport infrastructure, etc., rather than on unemployment benefits to a 'lost generation' and tax cuts for the already fortunate?  

One thing is for sure – 1981 was the year of fateful decisions and long-lasting consequences. The Cabinet papers make for fascinating reading aboout the realities, dilemmas, conflicts and uncertainities of governance. And in their different ways, with the benefit of hindsight and as we are facing very uncertain, perilous times once again, both Britain’s and Liverpool’s post-1981 history can give us some grounds for optimism. Happy new year!

 

 

 

Myths, legends, identity and the magic of radio

Psychologists – and, indeed, psychiatrists – reckon that all of us, certainly the healthiest of us, construct myths about ourselves and our past. Ironically, the most mentally healthy people construct a version of their past which gives them support and succour. It is an existentialist point I suppose, but to an extent if we imagine the past to be something then that in a way is what it is, for what is the past but somebody else's perception and version of events and people?

The construction of myths is well recognised to be a powerful force in national identity. The British, for example, like to think that they are unique in their courage and forbearance in the Blitzkrieg in World War II. Yet, diaries and other accounts of German civilians during their far worse aerial bombardment provide much the same narrative; they too were united against a common enemy.

Hilariously, last week-end one of the Australian newspapers, reflecting not only on the Commonwealth conference in Perth but also on the announcement of the end of primogeniture in deciding the succession to the British monarchy, has discovered that if the proposed rules had been in place over the last couple 100 years or so, the current British monarch would be a homoeopathic in Halle, Germany. I'm tempted to say "you couldn't make it up", but of course we did during World War I, when our German Royal Family changed their name and effectively renounced their entire national heritage, being as Britain was then fighting a country headed by one of their cousins.

Just as we were coming to terms with  all this came the announcement of the death, two days before his 85th birthday, one of the best-known and certainly most extraordinary figures in our national life. Sir Jimmy Savile created so many myths about himself and assumed such an extraordinary impenetrable character, it was impossible to know the truth about him or virtually any aspect of his life. We know that he was the youngest of seven children born in poverty in 1926: we know that he was a "Bevin boy" sent down to work in the pit in World War II, during which time an accident nearly crippled for life and we know that he was a full-time professional wrestler. There are some other facts that many the newspapers and other media got wrong but can be verified as incorrect: for example, The Observer obituary stated that he worked on radio Caroline but he never worked on any of the pirate radio ships, although he did visit radio Caroline North in 1965 and, according to Keith Skues's book, Pop Went the Pirates, was full of admiration congenial circumstances in which the seafaring and seasick disc jockeys worked. BBC online so that he was one of the first DJs on Radio One – complete rubbish as a quick check on the line-up of that famous picture at all souls Church opposite broadcasting house in London would testify, as well as a scan of the early schedules which are easily seen online. Skues's book also quotes his reaction to the launch of radio one, saying it could never replace the pirates because one station had replaced the variety produced by so many.

The biggest unknowns and intrigues are to do with his private life and sexual proclivities. I do know that a number of journalists on national newspapers had a number of files on him that they wanted to run as a story over some decades, but he put great legal pressure on them – he refers to this one occasion in his autobiography – not to run it and it seems that usually, they couldn't make it (ahem!) 'stand up'. The Sun did in 2008, and he sued - apparently with success. Of course, you can't libel the dead, so we might expect a flurry of stories in the weeks and months ahead. I think his existentialist self has been lucky in that, due to the public opprobrium over ‘Hack-gate’ the newspapers are being very careful about what they print at the moment – even about dead men and not wishing to further alienate the public who often feel it is unfair to attack people once they are unable to answer back. We do know that he was devoted to his mother – whom he called The Duchess - to an extent which I think most of us would regard as unhealthy. If ever there was a case to support Freud's theories psychoanalysts and Jimmy Savile is surely it! 

We don't even know, as he often boasted, whether he was in fact the first person to regularly spin records professionally as the main form of entertainment for the evening dance halls and ballrooms, but no one else has made this claim so we can be pretty sure that was true. This period though is one of the murkiest in his past. He hints in his autobiography and has subsequently claimed various interviews that he was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a thug. A tough man in a tough and tenuous business, he would "sort out" any trouble and any rivals. They called him The Godfather, he boasted.

He says that, whilst he never actually had anyone beaten up, some of the stuff that he did give him these 10 years in prison. 

And was he, as has often been claimed, the first radio DJ to ditch scripts and talk off-the-cuff? That's more questionable, given that was on Radio Luxembourg which at the time was in thrall to dedicated, sponsored slots from the big four record companies.

This strange arrangement, which did not seem to cause a great deal of comment at the time – probably because Radio Luxembourg and the other pre-war continental commercial stations had established the idea of sponsored programming being a normal part of commercial radio – was commented on several times by Pete Townshend, who gave the inaugural John Peel lecture on Monday night at the annual Radio Festival, the home of which is now near the futuristic Media City in Salford.
It was a privilege to be in the audience – at the first opportunity I scrambled into the hall to get the nearest available non-reserved seat directly opposite the lectern and mic set up for The Who’s lead songwriter and guitarist. 
I think Pete Townshend is one of the greatest creative forces we’ve had in Britain in the post-war era, with a takent  which is spread well beyond being in one of the greatest rock bands of all time and somebody who, moreover, thinks, speaks and writes extremely intelligently about rock music and other forms of art. His interview with Jon Savage in December's Mojo magazine for example is well worth reading. And the link with John Peel – who could hardly contrast more with Jimmy Savile – is especially strong in my case, for the moment that I really appreciated Peel was when he played the whole of what I still think of as side two of Quadrophenia straight off the back of the 11 o'clock news one night. I can't remember hearing that done – certainly not on the BBC – before, but what I didn't know ungtil the Toiwnshgend lecture (introduced by Peel's eldest son, Tom Ravenscroft, himself now a radio DJ), was that Peel had been an important part of the production of the album, having helped Pete mix the radio distort bit at the end of Cut My Hair.

But The Who were clearly fascinated by radio and especially commercial radio, having produced the hilarious The Who Sell Out album, which mixes their music tracks with jingles and commercials from the offshore pirate stations of the mid-1960s, notably Radio London – the most commercially successful of those stations and which was financed and programmed by Texans. And ironically, although Peel came to be the  'antithesis of the 'Boss Jock', fast talking, jingle playing top 40 radio style that Radio London so successfully produced - albeit in  a slightly watered-down form for the sensibilities of English listeners - he did in fact in Dallas on top 40 station, where a lot of those classic Top 40 radio ideas came together in the early 1960s.

Now, I have met both John Peel and Jimmy Savile, although if I said I'd worked with them both that would be pushing it a bit, except that I was a full-time employee of the British Forces Broadcasting Service during the Peel period in which John Peel’s Music  was recorded at the London HQ and broadcast on its stations around the world; I met Jimmy Savile at the time  he was presenting a syndicated golden oldies radio programme, which I bought and programmed on Sunday lunchtimes when I was Program Controller at Radio City Gold in Liverpool.

They could hardly be more contrasting characters and it won't surprise you to learn that I felt a far greater affinity with John Peel than I did Jimmy Savile! Like many of the best radio presenters, andDJs John Peel was shy, but unlike most radio presenters he had absolutely no interest in the showbiz side and was especially unusualat Radio One  in not pursuing the huge amounts of money to be gained by opening supermarkets and the like. Although he did, not eschew all the financial games that could be made if you were a well-known and unique voice, earning quite spectacular amounts of money for voicing commercials for lavatory paper and the like!

But when I met him at the BFBS studios in London and was allowed to sit in on his programme, I kept very quiet for the first 20 minutes or so as I know how sensitive many radiopersonalities are to breaking that magic that somehow they create in  inbetween microphone and listener. Much as I wanted to chat to him, my inner voice told me to shut up and wait to be spoken to!

After a while, he looked up at me and said: "I do like reggae records Richard, don't you?" I nodded and tried to think of some pointed and intelligent reason for my liking of such music, before he continued: "they have such pretty labels".

I think that was his very kind way of telling me that I shouldn't be overawed by his status and reputation, as someone who would bring to the attention of the great British public – and indeed the publics of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium and other countries within the transmitter range of the BFBS Germany (according to independent research then reaching some 5 million citizens across Europe in addition to that those for whom it was intended; British servicemen and women and their families and civil servants working for the Armed Forces) so many artistes and so many different kinds of music.

Indeed, even way beyond the audiences for the BFBS stations was his BBC World Service programme, which had extraordinary number of listeners in, I think, every continent. But although he took that side of his work extremely seriously he didn't take himself too seriously and that is what I think people perhaps loved about it more than anything else.

Anyway, I obviously hadn't  made a complete idiot of myself as, at the end of the programme he said he he was going off to Radio One and invited me to sit in on his programme there at Broadcasting House in Portland Place – which, in deference to the audience in Germany he’d just been addressing, he termed ‘Portland Plaza’,  which for some reason (probably giddiness at finding such a rapport with one whom I so admired), I found hilarious!

But what I also liked about John Peel was the fact that he didn't just make a few extra quid by recording programmesfor BFBS and then forgetting about the Services audience, he actually went out to Germany and other places to the big summer showsand the  like. I think it was because he never forgot his time as a conscript – he must have been amongst the last of the National Servicemen - and he realised that although after 1960  British troops were all volunteers in theory, in reality if you were, say, a working-class lad from South Yorkshire, your options were somewhat limited. The Army provided a regular income, food, board and great mates, in return for what was, at that time, the  rather limited risk of receiving an enemy bullet to the head.

There are countless tales of how John Peel connected with those otherwise feeling disconnected, isolated, insecure and alone – just as the young John Ravenscroft had been, at private school, in the army and – the reason for him making the foray to Dallas – to be a representative of his father’s firm. (He was working on radio there when JFK was assassinated and in fact had met and shaken hands with both President Kennedy and LBJ on a previous visit they had made to the city - the photograpbhic evidence of this he liked to flourish to doubters at social gatherings!). Having all these experiences - the banal and the bizarre - made him able to relate so well to people through the radio.

Radio presenting IS an artifice of course; it is so strange to be able to make that connection from the microphone. It's only when you stop doing it you realise what a weird job it is!

For some of the time when I was at the BFBS Berlin and did the Breakfast Show, there literally would be nobody else in the studio, indeed the only person I saw first thing in the morning and for the first and a half of the programme orso was the security guard came round with his German Shepherd dog to check that the IRA had not left a ‘present’ overnight. To go into the studio first thing in the morning, open a microphone and make that connection with the unseen audience - then on both sides of the divided city - was an odd thing. I also had, along with the other presenters, a late-night show every other week (just as Peel had to 'double up' on the Midnight-2 am slot on Radio London, where he made his reputation with The Perfumed Garden Show) and on at least two occasions I repeated the same thing that I'd  heard John Peel do all those years ago; play the whole of oneside of Quadrophenia.

So, John Peel made you relax but it won't surprise you to know that that was certainly not the case with 'Sir Jimmy Jangles’. He came up to Liverpool as a kind of promotional trip to promote his show and for us local radio types to bask in his reflected glory and have a bit of national celebrity stardust sprinkled over us as we gathered in the main studiofor the  team photo, which I'll dig out and perhaps post of online on another occasion.

He came up with the producer of the show, who I knew because we both worked at Metro Radio in Newcastle upon Tyne.  Sir Jimmy never actually spun a record on the radio in his life – he was always ‘tech op driven’. Indeed, this syndicated show was contrived from a series of links recorded by the producer at the flat in Leeds and then later mixed with the music. He could knock off a  few shows in one afternoon at a time long before ‘voice tracking’ became common!

Savile's first words to me when greeted him in reception was: "where’s the photographer?" I replied that we hired a photographer to come along and take some shots in a little while, but he said impatiently: "No, no. I mean the press photographer!" It was quite clear that his only interest in coming to Liverpool was to get into the local/regional papers but unfortunately both the morning and evening paper in Liverpool were, if not exactly downright hostile, extremely reluctant to give the station any publicity.

This had been the case for years – the reason being that not only were we rivals in terms of news coverage and I suppose in some way for the audience's respect and attention, but as a commercial station, for advertising revenue. Up until the launch of Radio City in 1974 the local papers had a monopoly on the lucrative display advertising for car showrooms, stores and like. So it was that if the paper felt obliged to feature the station or its presenters, because they opened an event for example, they would routinely refer the person as being from "a Liverpool radio station."

It was actually hilarious and became a running joke at the stationas to the lengthsgs they would go not to mention Radio City. And, fair enough, on this occasion, our PR department hadn't supplied them with a story to justify picture, so they didn't show up.

Whilst we were doing the tour and the photo shoot in the studio, Savile got on the phone to his contacts at the paper and, after beating a hurried retreat as soon as the main business had been done, headed downtown and, low and behold, next day he was in the paper with some sort of contrived story which had nothing to do with the station and of course didn't mention it.

His exit may have also been hastened by a slight disagreement I had with him as walked round the newsroom. He was saying that competition in his day was much greater than  ow. I said this was rubbish – he had a virtual monopoly when he started, whereas now there were hundreds of stations. I have a notion he wasn’t used to being contradicted. It may be that I am one of the few people to have crossed him not to have their legs broken by his friends in the Underworld, or their scrotum cut off and hung on the door of his revolting mobile home, featured on the Louis Theroux documentary (don’t watch any repat of THAT if you’re feeling queasy).

So this was my experience of this extraordinary one man machine devoted to his own publicity and glorification. There was certainly nothing about Savile that was anything to do with promoting music – I don't believe he had any interest in popular music and you can tell this by the way he introduces it either on radio or on his creepy Top of the Pops’ performances. (If you don’t believe me and you have a strong stomach, check out some of the repeats they’re currently showing on BBC4 from the relevant week in ’76, just before punk arrived on the scene, the promotion of which was the re-making of Peel's  credibility for a new generation.) No: Savile was not my idea of a DJ at all. I just didn't get ‘it’, or his attraction. Those stupid catch-phrases and the faux yodelling. Is that supposed to be funny???

 However, as in other radio fields I believe he was genuinely a pioneer. Aongst all the glowing obituaries on account of his radio and TV stardom, two shows hardly got a mention and yet these are the very ones for which I believe he does deserve some credit. One was called Speak Easy, produced by the religion department at the BBC and was a Sunday afternoon panel/audience talk show on Radio One, whichwass very innovative for its day and tackled wide range of subjects related to morals, current affairs and so on, from an interesting variety of locations. The chief innovation was the "Mr Roving Mic' which went round the hall to pick up questions and comments from the audience. As I say, this hardly sounds ground-breaking now but it was at the time, especially for ashow dedicated to young people's opinions and lives.

The other was called Savile’s Travels – the same title that was usedfor  the syndicated golden oldies' show many years later. This was innovative on several levels: firstly Savile used a very small tape recorder and he went around the country during his stints as a hospital porter, marathons, etc., and talk to "ordinary people" as he did so and then linking into the music. The show was seamlessly put together and again it doesn't really sound very original now but there was nothing like it to my knowledge before and rarely since.

I think this idea stuck in my mind for when I did a special afternoon programme from Maltby colliery in South Yorkshire on BBC Radio Sheffield. I recorded the different links and interviews as I went in the 'cage' down the mine, scrambled along the seams with my specially adapted Uhe ( bulky reel to reel tape machine (maximum recording time on one school of tape at the minimum acceptable professional speed of 7.5 i.p.s, which therefore had to be changed by torchlight underground). The machine was one of two specially adapted by the BBC and approved by the mining authorities as safe to use underground. Essentially, there was a special outer case to prevent any chance of an electric spark being emitted from the machine, which could cause the catastrophic deep underground. Anyway, as I stumbled along I had a list of the records that had been programmed to playin  my head and so could link to the tracks, and then I played the whole thing out 'liv'e in the show, whichwass apparently so effective that the newsroom thought that I was presenting thewhole  show live form the pit and were quite amazed to find – when they tried to send a message to me at the mine! – that I was sitting in the studio.. So I have to thank Savile for planting that idea in my head.

Back to the Radio Festival and Pete Townshend's lecture was introduced by two of my favourite radio presenters. I've blogged about before when I visited there then evening show on Radio Two  in the spring and afre now to be found on weekday afternoons on BBC 6 Music. To me, Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe are pretty well everything I want in a radio presenter: knowledgeable, witty, sharp, with a superb rapport with their listeners and the sort you'd love to go to the pub with for a couple of hours. This is what you strive to do I believe as a radio presenter.

I also greatly respect both their talents as writers and journalists. I met Stuart again when he gave a talk as part of my university’s series of lectures on ‘identity’, to promote his latest book  Hope and Glory: The Days That Made Britain. Unsurprisingly, he is also an excellent lecturer and, again, quite shy and self-deprecating. After going up to him with a colleague and re-introducing myself, he signed my copy of his book and graciously accepted – or let his agent accept on his behalf! – a dedicated copy of MY book! It was a bit of a cheek and was not sure whether even I would have the bottle or the gall to do that but then again I am always telling my students that people can only say ‘no’ at worst and I did hope he might find some of it interesting. His agent was very kind about it, told me later she had indeed handed it on to Stuart  and said she was ordering a copy for herself – so that’s one extra sale!

Shortly after arriving there I was greeted warmly by John Myers – with whom I worked in the mid-late ‘80s at Red Rose Radio. He went on to become a very grande fromage indeed in radio and is now Director of the Radio Academy. This was his first Radio Festival, so naturally he was a bit nervous. He described me to another big radio person as his 'hero'. Nonsense of course, but nice! He was enjoying my book, he said; I talked sense and it was perfect for an hour or so on a long train journey! Not a bad recommendation: hope he can post that on Amazon! After doing a very significant report on radio for the government he has just been asked by the Beeb to do one on how to implement local radio cits with the least pain. Should be fascinating!

My main reason - or excuse  – for attending the Radio Festival though was to accompany my students at the Foot in the Door session on the opening afternoon. This is a great idea and similar to the 'crossove'r day that we have at the BEA and NAB  in Las Vegas, where students and other wannabes are given the chance to have their show-reel critiqued and then to meet industry professionals, make contacts and quiz them about how to get into the business. At Foot in the Door they use the ‘speed dating’ idea, whereby you have 10 tables, each of which has two or three professionals on it in different areas of the business and you move on after klaxon call every 15 min. It was hosted by Rob Ellis of Capital FM fame, much to the delight of my female students, as can be seen!  

We had a bit of time before the event, and, whilst the girls ‘did lunch’, a male student, Adam, and I did a quick tour to check out the mazing changes at Media City. I asked him to take a pic of me outside the new Manchester home of Radios 2, 3, 4 and 6 Music in ‘The North’, with Stuart Maconie’s face prominent in it!

 

FITD with the team 31 Oct 2011

We were interviewed by the Radio Festivals' podcast team before the main event started. As you can hear, the students find my undimmable enthusiasm for radio quite amusing as I readily concede, yes I've never been' cool'… never seen the point of ‘cool’; I think that being in a radio station can be the most fun you can have with another group of adults without taking your clothes off! So I make no apology for my enthusiasm and, as I sometimes waspishly point out, I've never been out of work and these two things may be connected.

I did make a gratuitous plug from my book in the  interviews but sadly this was cut! Not so into other interviews I've done recently of which I'm very grateful to have the chance to do a bit of promotion,one of which was by a fomer student on our international journalism course for Euranet,

Euranet int 17 Oct 2011

 

to a potential audience of over 13 million. I often joke with my students that when it comes to the stage where I am applying to them for work  I know they have made it and I couldn't be happier. Well, I wasn't quite asking for work here but it was still good to be interviewed by one of my former students, although she said she felt like a 19-year-old again and was very nervous!

The other interview, this week, was on BBC Radio Merseyside, which, as I mentioned in my last blog post, is still reeling at the thought of some 20% cuts in its funding but which also had just received good news about improved ratings, adding some 43,000 weekly listeners. The spot that I was given was just about the peak time of 07.50 so I was very pleased with that and delighted that the interviewer would be my former colleague on the sister station to Radio City Gold, Tony Snell.

Rudin B21 int R Merseyside 2 Nov 2011

and, thanks Tony, for allowing me to give the title publisher of the book again at the end of the interview!

 

 Tony is a real star and someone has developed so much as a broadcaster from his days as a breakfast show FM jock someone who can handle with ease and without awful 'gear- crunching' as I call it, in going from different types of items, the wide-ranging daily current affairs based programme, but still keep his slightly cheeky and 'Anfield lad made good' approach. It's a neat trick and it works because it is real and genuine and Tony can break through to make a direct connection with the listener. The magic of radio. Contrived, in very strange circumstances - but reality, not a myth.

 

 

Time for the BBC to put its distant, unloved relation up for adoption?

In most people's lives there are key moments when you realise that something – a relationship, a job or even a car – that has worked very well for you both is not working any more and it's better for everyone's sake to call it a day. In fact, it happens with nations, too. Of all the empires the world has ever known, Britain's was not only the biggest, but was dismantled – with the notable exception of India – with greater good grace, speed and lack of bitterness than any other. It nearly happened in Northern Ireland, which is what so terrified the Unionists; at the height of The Troubles most Brits would probably have said a reluctant but resigned farewell to the six counties of Ulster, and the same may well happen in the next few years with Scotland. You know: it was great when we were together, we did good things and we played to each other's talents and resources, but it's time to move on. No hard feelings. Thanks and goodbye.

I think that time has come for the BBC and its local radio stations in England. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed these things over the years and even decades that one of the biggest, proportionate cuts announced yesterday as part of 'Delivering Quality First' in the whole of the Corporation's empire was to local radio. We've been here before, as 'Fiona' would say in the classic BBC radio comedy Round The Horne, many times; many, many times. In fact, I joined local radio just after the last but one (or was it the last but one but one?) set of cuts, when the stations were salami-sliced 10%. Shared evening programmes? Been there, did that. In fact, the week after I arrived the 'Night Network' was launched across six stations in what the BBC terms (with spectacular dismissal of any real geographical or cultural realities) the 'North-east'. The Night Network was produced by, and came from on weekdays, the BBC studios in Leeds, a city which no one else in the country would describe as being in the north-east of England, but there you are. So back in '89, those BBC local stations only had local output between 6 AM and 6 PM; 6 PM to midnight we shared programming  - including the brilliant, highly creative Martin Kelner doing the late slot - and from midnight it was back to a BBC network. In fact, even shared daytime regional programme predates that, with the legendary Denis McCarthy in the East Midlands and the late Norman Thomas in north-west England having an afternoon show broadcast over several stations. Between those periods, though, the Corporation decided that shared programming during the daytime was not a good idea and I think at one stage even separate, distinct evening programmes were given a financial boost. If you work with, or study the BBC long enough, it is absolutely true that the wheel is reinvented over and over again. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear Alvar Lidell reading the Nine O'Clock News on a new station called the Home Service before the decade is out, although this would involve some original and creative human resources management.

Each time these cuts happen, the BBC seems to reckon that, because local radio is by its nature diffuse, it will have less trouble if it cuts these services rather than the rightly loved and revered Radio Four (I think, uniquely, with a 0% 'cut'). The problem is greater than that: large sections of the BBC, especially in its senior management, have never understood the appeal of local radio. I think there is a kind of collective folk memory from when John Reith, by sheer brute force and personality, stifled what was a disparate collection of independent – as opposed to Independent, the euphemism that was to be used for commercial radio! - local radio services into a unifying national and regional network back in the 1920s. The BBC wanted control of all radio output; it didn't like mavericks doing their own thing. Ultimately, the BBC, like governments, doesn't trust the people and it certainly doesn't trust its staff. But the ambition of the BBC was, in any case, to be a major national institution and a vital part of Britain's life and lives, and in that, you have to concede, it has succeeded. So a national, unified, voice, with the highest editorial, technical and artistic standards under a single management became the goal and was largely achieved, with a few sops to the 'National Regions'.

Not everyone in the BBC thought this way, of course. The pioneer of its local radio was Frank Gillard, a wartime correspondent who became enamoured with what he termed Home Town Radio, after listening to small public broadcasters in the United States. But it took a rebel Irishman, Ronan O'Rahilly and a fleet of radio ships in the mid-1960s to demonstrate that the public rather liked having an alternative to the BBC, (which many working class people and not a few middle-class always found patronising in tone and elitist in content), playing non-stop pop played by 'personalities' - which, as Tony Benn, the then Minister in charge of broadcasting described in his diaries as anathema to the BBC :"like having the pubs open all day". But faced with a straight choice between having a new national radio competitor – Benn's creative solution to the problem - to provide what millions clearly wanted, and doing it itself, the BBC, in many cases with extreme reluctance and even outright hostility of senior staff, opened up Radio One.

The 'pirates' had also established, ironically perhaps through the rather less commercially successful, lower powered ones, that local services of information and personality chat were also popular. Tony Benn didn't want the BBC to do those sorts of stations either; he proposed a new independent corporation which would look after local radio and a new national commercial pop station. The latter would help - through what would be huge profits, with the 'pirate' stations forced to close down - with the financing of less commercially viable, local services. But, handed this job as well by the Labour government after Benn was 're-shuffled' , the BBC couldn't afford the local stations and went into partnership with local authorities for its at first experimental-only services, and only on VHF/FM. But so much for history – I wouldn't add! This period fascinates me and is the crux of the research I've been undertaking for several years now, some of it published; some of it, hopefully, still to be published! But it demonstrates the unloved birth of the stations and the residual snobbishness and dismissiveness that is evident still today in the BBC hierarchy.

Not only has it gone through different stages of salami-slicing local services, the BBC never made up its mind what its local stations should, primarily, be doing and how much of this should be dictated from the centre and how much autonomy individual station managers should have over their output. Again, I went through several stages of this; at one-time, at least in the 'north-east', we were to have a 'spine' of all speech at breakfast-time, from say around 7:45 to 25 past the hour. But Radio Merseyside had, all by itself, decided years before that to have an all-speech breakfast show – indeed I applied for the freelance presenter's job on that; one of the few interviews when I didn't get the job, I might add! In fact, Radio Merseyside has always blithely ignored most of the diktats from Broadcasting House. Sometime, it was even reluctant to use 'BBC' in its identification, idents, logos, etc., because it (rightly in my view) thought that an important part of the appeal of Radio Merseyside was that it was not the BBC 'writ large', indeed the imprimatur of the Corporation could be a turnoff for its largely working-class audience, for the reasons outlined above. And even between stations in the same region or sub-region there was always a distinction between those - like Radio Birmingham, Radio Manchester and, where I was, Radio Leeds - that were nestling, generally unloved and largely despised, within the broad bosom of a regional centre (which did telly, you know, even to the whole nation!), and those that existed in buildings that were just for that station. The contrast when I went from Radio Leeds to Radio Sheffield was marked and it can be no coincidence that the stations that have been enclosed within a regional Corporation empire have been the least successful in terms of percentages of the local population tuning in each week, and that Radio Merseyside was the most successful – indeed it had, and has had for years, more listeners than any other BBC local station outside London, where the potential audience is more than five times larger.

One of the key clashes - in which I was more an innocent victim more than a player - was whether there should be a strong element of entertainment-led output and such things as specialist music shows, where local bands, artists and others could gain airtime and experience; or were the stations primarily or even wholly to be effectively a local news bureau of the BBC, with output at the very least dominated by news and current affairs and talkback programmes of one kind or another? Again, the circle has spun several times on that one. At Radio Leeds I just could not make the new Head of Centre (then a recently created but long since disbanded post), who had never worked in radio before (as he proudly told the station staff on his arrival) understand that, of course, listeners to BBC local radio expected comprehensive and high-quality news and sports coverage, but that was a 'given'. That didn't actually win over listeners – let alone, as we were desperate to do at the time, pull in new listeners. How you built and sustained an audience was by really getting under the skin of the area and becoming an indispensable part of the fabric of everyday life, and that was just as likely, if not more likely, to be achieved by having strong personalities, strong branding and promotion, and quite a lot of what might sound like trivial and 'fluffy' output. You had to be both entertaining and credible – indeed that was the reason given for my appointment as Programme Organiser (again, a long disbanded title, but of course the same job has to be done no matter what you call it!) and Deputy Manager. The problem was, I wasn't HIS appointment! But the Head of Centre, who went on to be only the second most important person in the BBC and recently retired, just didn't seem to 'get it' and this undermined the whole credibility of myself, my Manager, and the staff. It was a horrible experience!

This is funny really because the BBC in its national networks, especially when it developed the 'pyramid of taste' idea after the War, thought, and certainly hoped, that you drew people in via a lighter, popular, network and then hoped to elevate their tastes and interests to more serious fare. This was as much an age as it was a class, cultural and education thing. So, for example, I first became interested in my local station, Radio Birmingham ("the heart of the nation station") in the early 1970s because it had an excellent Heavy Metal show on Tuesday night, called, erm, Heavy Pressure. My joy was almost unconfined when its presenter, Malcolm Jay, announced on-air that I had won that week's competition – to win a copy of the new Edgar Winter Group album. He read my letter in full and said "well done, mate". He called me mate! He called me mate! That was a great thing to think about during next day's double Chemistry lesson. More than that, the presenter of the weekday breakfast show was an amazing character, with a strong Brummie accent, who was very funny and became a legend – Les Ross. And on Saturdays – oh joy! – and long before 'double-header' shows became common, he teamed up with another DJ called John Henry for, indeed, the Ross and Henry show ("They're outrageous!" - I still have the pin badge). Not only that, but this had a 'live' audience, in the sense that you could just stroll into the BBC's Pebble Mill studios, and take the lift to the tiny bit of that building occupied by Radio Birmingham and just be in the studio with them: not behind the glass, or anything! Indeed, when the news came on at 11 o'clock, we all had to shush up, as a newsreader would simply sit at the table in the studio and intone the local bulletin. There was a weekly competition for the "far out listener" and the whole thing was a 'gas'(as we would say then!) from start to finish, not least because they played fantastic soul music, so much so I can't hear Al Green or James Brown without thinking about those days. But anyway, the point is that this would be a way in which many younger people would get into local radio.

This sort of stuff though still represented quite a small part of the station's overall output. I went, aged 15, to a sort of interview, having sent a tape of myself knocked up using my cassette recorder and our home record player – a tape which I'd also previously sent to Radio One and had a very nice letter back from the Controller saying that he "admired my technique" but that I should really set my sights a little lower for the start of what he was sure would be an illustrious career! But when the Radio Birmingham Manager asked me what I listen to, I said, of course, "Les Ross and Heavy Pressure". "Anything else?" Now I was stumped! I mean, I didn't listen to the steam engine programme, or the sport. And, frankly, with the exception of sport, why would I be expected to? The point was that they had a listener in a 15-year-old who was interested in working at the station in some capacity, liked the output that he liked and would probably, in time, as he grew older, and his interests expanded would listen more as he wanted to know about local developments, schools, the economy and so on.

But the impetus of the last few years has been that, whatever they say about its appeal to all audiences and providing what we used to call a "full service station", the stations have been skewed towards audiences who are largely old and working class. In fact, the average age is so old that the listeners are dying off, which is why the figures have fallen pretty well consistently in every survey for the last five or six years. As the various rounds of cuts have taken their toll, the output that might refresh that audience has gone, and therefore the whole audience has gone down. So we're now into a vicious spiral, where the audience is declining, so there's a hard case to make for the stations being protected against the worst of the cuts, resulting in lower audiences, and so on. And now, in the latest round, its most successful station, Radio Merseyside, is facing 20% cuts.

"Oh, well they're overstaffed anyway" is a common riposte, disappointingly including from my former colleague John Myers on this morning's Today programme. Well, not from what I can see. I shall be going to Radio Merseyside on Monday with some of my students, but the last time I was there one of the journalists had to come down to staff the reception during the receptionist's lunch-break. And if you are going to do journalism properly, and actually break stories, attend council meetings and the like and really get under the skin of the area (rather than just being another news processing bureau, with your main sources being PR 'news releases', and 'the calls'), then you do have to employ quite a few people at that level alone.

In the last few years, we have also had, at long last, and some 40 years after Tony Benn proposed it, a protected, third tier of radio of full-time community radio licences. Well, the BBC locals were supposed to be community radio – you know, not just a professionalised staff, talking at people, but the people being the broadcasters and managers themselves. The Corporation's local radio stations, even in this digital and online age, are also squatting on a huge number of attractive FM and even AM frequencies. Expansion of radio in most parts of the country on the traditional broadcast bands has come to a halt now because there are simply no more frequencies. Should the BBC be squatting on all of these if it is only providing a half-hearted, poorly resourced and unloved service? Might this now be the time to take to do what Tony Benn wanted to do all those years ago, and have a separate authority, structure and funding basis for local public broadcasting radio stations? Genuinely locally run and managed, perhaps on a mutual, co-operative type of basis, and involving such organisations as universities (okay, full disclosure/declaration of interest time!). Stations which could provide the sort of output which a broad range of citizens could enjoy and relate to, and indeed to which they could contribute? Where there would be a real sense of shared ownership in every sense and which would not be encumbered by the baggage of the Corporation. I know to my cost that everything you do on one of its local radio station has implications for the wider BBC and you just cannot be fleet of foot and daring in ideas, because if you screw up you may damage the whole BBC 'brand', its reputation and cause a whole lot of serious trouble, right up to Cabinet level.

It shouldn't be run from London – or even Salford. In local radio you should have all the management under the same roof; you should be able to go to even the top boss with ideas and get their feedback instantly, not have to go through some complicated compliance procedure or tiers of intervening regional and national management. In that respect it should be in fact more like a self-contained commercial organisation, such as Sky News, which deeply impressed me as a place to work, because, as one of the 'workers' said to me, not only was there a great atmosphere and that he would be happy to go for drink with anyone in what is a pretty large newsroom, but if you had an idea you can go to the management and you'll get a decision quickly, one way or the other. This is how life should be! The BBC can be a dead hand and suck passion, creativity and initiative into a black hole of corporate governance. For all its virtues and strengths it just is not suited to local broadcasting. It wasn't in the 1920s and it isn't now. By thy deeds shall they be known; by its cuts shall be known the nature of the BBC's attitude to the constituent parts of its portfolio.

In short, BBC local radio now faces a death of a thousand cuts, gradually fading out, along with its listeners; a situation which I'm sure will come as a great relief to many senior BBC managers – the only Director-General I can think of that genuinely passionately supported local radio was Greg Dyke.

It's time to give the stations back to the people. It's time for the BBC to clear out and make way for true local radio, by the people, for the people. Been nice knowing you, BBC. No hard feelings. Thank you and goodbye.

Liverpool bids farewell to Labour's next ex-Leader

The revelation that Paul Greengrass, the director of The Bourne Supremacy, and who co-authored with Peter Wright the bug-and-tell expose of the UK's secret services, Spycatcher, helped Ed Miliband prepare for his public appearances, provides too many potential threads for any blogger on this week's Labour conference to ignore. The most obvious one is that Miliband, like the fictitious Jason Bourne, is pictured looking stunned and confused and, frankly - as it was rather and tactlessly put to him on BBC Radio 4's Today programme - somewhat "weird", and seemingly having no knowledge of the sinister conspiracies of which he was a part. But no writer of political thrillers would have dared to have its main character – who is usually a figure designed to engender interest and even empathy by the reader and viewer - committing fratricide. The elephant in the room – in fact the trunk at least was visible one or two occasions at the conference, held in a glorious looking sun-drenched Liverpool – was that the party had chosen the wrong brother and Ed was just not up to the job.

To say that personalities do not matter in politics is ridiculous. Looking good on television has been essential for any political leader since at least the early 1960s and being able to engender at least grudging respect, even if you disagree with their policies, is equally important. The Mail on Sunday – admittedly not a newspaper generally helpful to the Labour cause – commissioned a poll which asked the public to characterise the main party leaders through a variety of prisms and circumstances. In fact, I think this can be narrowed down to two main questions: the foxhole and the neighbour test.

The first is the person who you would like to be beside you, with the enemy perhaps a few hundred yards away; you're running out of rations and the bullets are whizzing over your head. In the circumstances you'd want somebody tough, ruthless, decisive and who, if you are wounded or temporarily knocked out, would do their very best to drag you to safety, even at the cost of their own life.

The neighbour test is who you would like living next door to you; who could be relied on to water your roses whilst you're away, would alert you if they saw water or smoke emitting from your home, and with whom you could imagine spending a pleasant evening, and to whom you would trust with your secrets and problems – and receive sage advice.

Few political leaders passed both these tests. Churchill and Thatcher, for instance, would both easily pass the foxhole test, but Thatcher would be scolding about you not having done the weeding, or keeping up with the paintwork; Churchill would be to self- absorbed and absent-minded. Harold Wilson and John Major both pass the 'good neighbour test' but I would think I was doomed if I was in the foxhole with them. Of the leading Labour figures of the last half-century or so, Denis Healey and Barbara Castle both pass both tests, as does Jim Callaghan, the only one of that trio to make it to number 10 and the only person in the 20^th century to hold all four big offices of state – Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as PM, and, as it happens, the only Prime Minister I have sat down for a one-to-one lengthy interview.

Ed Miliband fails both miserably. I'm sure he would say all the right, soothing things in that foxhole just before the 'fun' started, but would be would be useless under fire and indeed, as he was almost forced to concede by the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson, he's never had to fight for anything in his life. Paradoxically, though, he has done one thing which, you might argue, demonstrates the necessary political ruthlessness needed in a Prime Minister – the decision to run against his brother in the Labour leadership last year. But although that was unquestionably a tough thing to do it was also hugely disloyal and, in my view, utterly wrong. And I reckon most British people who have older brothers will think the same. I just cannot imagine that if my brother and I were both political figures – or in any other line - that I would work to stop him getting to the top by putting myself into the frame. Indeed, I would do everything I could to help him to get there. To do otherwise goes against something quite atavistic and elementary. Maybe it's also paternalistic and reactionary but that's what I feel. I just wouldn't trust a man who would do that.

I couldn't see him as an ideal neighbour either; he neither has the kind of 'laddish' approach to life that I can enjoy, and I'm sure he'd be scolding me from not recycling more. Like many on the Left, he says all the right things – he can talk the talk – but his actions betray a very selfish agenda. I suppose you have to have a supposedly Marxist father to have an arrangement where you can inherit property and avoid tax, where dad's connections and name means you get an internship with Tony Benn to set you off on your political career , and, naturally, a 'career' that never actually includes what we might call a proper job, to have complete ignorance of the everyday concerns, aspirations and attitudes of your fellow countrymen.

I do have – full disclosure time! – a particular beef with Miliband Jr over his ministerial job in the last government as Secretary of State for (well, presumably AGAINST!) Climate Change, when he compared those who objected to wind turbines as being socially irresponsible, comparable with someone not wearing a seatbelt or ignoring a pedestrian waiting at a zebra crossing. I fiercely object to the turbines, bearing in mind their enormous cost, inefficiency and most of all their blight on what's left of our countryside. It is typical that Miliband would support something as modish and voguish as those. Naturally, he would throw them himself into the climate change cause, denounce those who were somewhat sceptical about the evidence and the actions proposed by government and the huge cost to the taxpayer as being heartless and irresponsible; unmoved by the flight of drowning polar bears or the melting ice cap on Everest.

For the record, let me make it clear that I do think that the climate is changing and that man's activities have an effect on it – it would be astonishing if it did not. What I cannot go along with though is the idea that there is a direct and precise connection between, say a certain tonnage of methane or carbon dioxide and a change in global temperatures. The Earth is just too complicated a biosphere for this to be the case and there are many other factors, such as sunspots and volcanoes, which have a habit of throwing all the predictions out of the window. And anyone who thinks that the 'scientific community' has more integrity than the supposedly more flaky academics and practitioners in the arts and humanities is naive in the extreme. Now, I have no scientific training beyond school level and neither does Miliband, but I do know that scientists have an agenda that is driven as much by the need for the next research grant, the promotion of a book and career matters generally, than it is by dispassionate observation and conclusions. (More on the BBC's coverage of the Climate Change issue, as well as EU and much more in my new book! Did I mention….? Everything from Baudrillard to penis-size discussed within its covers).

What drives me even more bonkers though is the smugness and condescension of the Green party, a spokesman for which I once heard scolding a man who wanted to fly off with his family to have a bit of sunshine; the first time he'd ever been able to do so. He should, said the Green, think first about the damage that flight was doing to the Earth and should holiday at home. By this time I was screaming at the TV: "and where did you go on your gap 'yar'? Presumably you took the train to, say Kirkby down the road from here, where there is lots of poverty and social projects in need of doing, rather than, say, off to work with indigenous tribes in South America, paid for by daddy's trust fund." Grr, grr, etc.

The Miliband of course would never criticise the NHS, because all the focus groups – and true enough, the applause in Liverpool – will tell him that this state health monolith is our new religion and that all who work in it are angels and heroes. Again, this view does ignore the evidence, including from some of those who work in the health service, with several reports in the last few months saying that there is indeed much wrong with the service and the attitude of many of its employees. For all its achievements and its plus points – and there are many – you are, for example, many more times as likely to die from certain cancers in particular in Britain that you are in the (Boo! Hiss!) U.S. system and other comparable first-world countries. Even in largely social democratic Western Europe, health is usually provided by competing social insurance groups, trade unions, mutual societies and the like. But any suggestion of even a tentative move in this direction provokes screams from the "four legs good, two legs bad" brigade of 'privatisation!' I realise, that despite all the evidence, I'm in a minority position here and as a democrat I have to wearily accept that the British people will never countenance any real change in the system, even though it would manifestly lead to much better life expectancy and an all-round better service. But a political leader who wants to be a weather changer, not just a manager, has to take political risks and Miliband never will. He is constrained by the knowledge that general elections are decided by a relatively small number of uncommitted voters in a minority of marginal seats. The swing voters must be modified, flattered, smothered with vanilla-flavoured speeches and photo opportunities.

But he just doesn't say anything of any interest and his scheme keynote speech to the conference was truly dreadful at every level, in my view. The most astonishing part was the line: "I am not Tony Blair", which was greeted by some boos. Michael Portillo said on the BBC's late-night TV political gab-fest This Week, you just cannot imagine what was going through his and his speechwriters' minds when they put that line in, because there is just no way it can have a good reaction. If the audience approves the line, it demonstrates how much they disliked their most electorally successful leader and are effectively disowning the decade when he, and the party, was in power. If it was greeted – as it was – by boos, that is capable of being read both ways, neither them helpful to Labour, showing there is even more antagonism towards Blair, or that they are sorry that he isn't Blair! And silence would be just embarrassing. Quite extraordinary when you think this speech must have been written by supposedly very bright people who are politically aware and are being paid to sniff out all the fault-lines of the speech. And it demonstrates at the very least a lack of competence on his part, to add to charges above.

Of course, I could be proved wrong; I might have predicted, six months in advance, the last election results within a seat (he modestly reminds his readers!), but if the coalition survives the course – and that is quite a big 'if' in my opinion – we have some 3 1/2 years to the next election. Please feel free to remind me of this if indeed Miliband sweeps to power on a landslide, provided by a grateful and adoring nation. It's possible: governments tend to lose elections, rather than oppositions wining them, so it will largely depend on how the ConDem government is viewed at the time. But as it stands I would say he is doomed to join Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and (although of course death took him before he stood an electoral test) John Smith in the post-Callaghan pantheon of Labour leaders who never made it to Number 10. I think it is even likely that the next Labour Prime Minister is not even in the House of Commons at present. As with Blair, who wasn't elected until after Callaghan's defeat, or Cameron - first elected more than a decade after Thatcher left office - they may need someone who is not tainted by past failures and the fissures of the party in government; who can indeed be Bourne again.

That was good for me – is it good for you?

….in which your Blogger achieves critical mess.

A couple of years ago, our regional TV news from the BBC here in north-west England had a refreshingly different 'take' on the annual story of the latest GCSE exam results. You know the sort of thing they usually do: the 'package' features a group of telegenic girls excitedly ripping open the envelopes with the results, then there's the expression of sheer joy, excitement, whooping, "Oh my God! Six A stars!", hugging with fellow pupils, etc. Not this time! Instead, a group of lads, possibly not in the top quartile of intelligence, was seen opening the envelopes with a mixture of pessimism and world-weary acceptance that the results would be, shall we say, slightly less than impressive. As indeed they were.

One in particular, though, clearly had a realistic and cheerful view of his prospects, because when you read his results out - which, if I remember rightly consisted of two grade Es, if that's still the lowest pass grade, and the rest 'U', which I think is for 'unclassifiable' - far from being embarrassed to recite these results in front of the TV cameras, he was clearly, as they say round these parts, 'dead chuffed': "That's good for me, that" was his considered response and he went off with his mates quite happy. In a way this was touching, and "that's good for me, that" instantly entered the family list of catchphrases, to be deployed whenever someone does something which, to most people, would be considered quite unexceptional – for example, when I screw in a key-ring cabinet in the downstairs 'cloaks'. In fact, any achievement involving me and DIY is greeted with this response. Because that's what you do in families – you take the proverbial from each other. It's a sign of affection, because, as my dad would have said, unless you want a fight, you can only be rude to people you like. You can usually see the extent of friendship amongst males by the amount they take the p**s out of each other.

There's a good reason why men do this, of course: in evolutionary terms we're but a few steps away from hunter-gatherers, who need to know whether others are tough enough, quick enough, bold enough to do the day's 'kill' and fight off sabre-toothed tigers and the like. If not, your role is to be back at the cave, doing your best to help protect and nurture the land and the young. That is not a soft option and usually requires more individual courage and initiative and being happy to rely on your own wits, make your own decisions and judgements, and this requires the capacity and tenacity to take a stance that others might challenge. As will become apparent to anyone who knows me or reads even a smattering blogs, Tweets, Facebook updates, etc., I do have a number of *fairly strongly* held opinions (some of which, on the UK joining the Euro for instance, I feel have been vindicated - so there!) and are more than happy to express them in, shall we say, robust terms. That of course invites criticism from time to time and that is fair enough.

Of course, if you have spent all your working life prior to going into education in the media, everything you write, say and, in TV's case, how you look (actually, increasingly in radio's case also how you look, thanks to the ubiquitous WebCam) is open to scrutiny and challenge: first by your colleagues, and then by the public. If you start on a weekly newspaper and then progress to a regional daily, as I did, you are very conscious of the impact your work has and that you not only had better get it right but you know you might have to defend it, in person, to a very angry punter who turns up at the office counter. I have a feeling that if Johann Hari, instead of going straight from Oxford University to a national, liberal newspaper had done an apprenticeship in local newspapers (so brilliantly portrayed, at least in the time the drama is set, by the recent TV adaptation of The Field of Blood), then, despite what Toby Young may think, he would be less touchy about criticism, more respectful of others' views, leave their Wikipedia pages alone, and be more wary about making stuff up or passing others' work as his own. Certainly - and of course I do have a vested interest in this - some training would be a good idea, but you can't get the feel for the relationship between the words that you type and the people who read them outside the workplace bubble until you get up close and personal with your readers and audiences.

However, journalism and broadcasting is one thing – academic writing is another and brings a whole different raft of criticism and review, which can be chastening and even crushing, but which has to be endured and expected if you are to make any kind of impact. I've loved writing since, well, since I could write – which is a terrible way of expressing a love of writing! Stephen Fry, unsurprisingly, says this a lot better, in his introduction to a new BBC series, which starts on Sunday. Here's how his piece in the Radio Times (24-30 September, 2011: 19) – which forms part of the forward to the book of the series – begins:

Words are all we have. Certainly, reader, words are all we have, you and I, as you read this and I sit and tap at my keyboard. You have no idea where I am as I do this, and I have no idea who, where or what you are as you continue to read. We are connected by a filament of language that stretches from somewhere inside my brain to somewhere inside yours. There are so many cognitive and cerebral processes involved simply in the act of my writing and your reading these words that not all the massed ranks of biology, genetics, linguistics, neurology, computational science or philosophy can properly describe, let alone understand or explain, how it all works.

 

Yes, well, not bad Stephen - but par for the course for the Fry. When I was in the final stages of writing my new book – gosh, you're wondering how many paragraphs it would take until I actually got round to the plug when you? – I re-read David Hendy's superb work on BBC Radio Four, Life On Air. It has rightly won awards: the research is extraordinarily good and, most importantly, the narrative around it is lively, engaging and even riveting – quite a feat when it's discussing internal BBC memos! David gets under the skin of what was going on, why things happened the way they did, what were the key points when decisions were made and decides if those decisions were due to the force of particular personalities, or for artistic, ideological, bureaucratic or pragmatic reasons. All this I try to do in my own research, particularly the historical elements that I'm working on. When I finished re-reading his book I e-mailed David (who I've known for some years and with whom I've presented papers at conferences and so on) and said that his work was both inspiring, but also demoralising. Inspiring, because of the quality of the work and the elegance of his writing; demoralising, because I knew that I could never write anything as good. He responded, saying that I was being too kind, etc. But I'm not - and neither is it a case of false modesty on my part; the readers of this blog will know that is not an accusation that can fairly be levelled at me! But I hope I do have a realistic assessment of my abilities. I know that my book is the best that I can produce, given my own limitations (see below!) and that of time and the distraction of little things like life, but I think I've pulled together some coherent arguments and evidence, and that it is written in a lively style. Given the wide scope indicated by the title it is of course open to criticism at a more general level; that I've chosen to concentrate on the wrong things and that I've missed or underplayed key developments and exaggerated others. Here is a bit of a blurb on the book – roaring up the Amazon top 1000,000 chart (!) - and then we can move on:

• A lively and engaging text, using interviews with broadcasters and managers, as wells as research and case studies from the UK, USA, China, India, South Africa, Australia and many other countries.
• Argues that it is important to understand broadcasting's history in order to appreciate today's issues.
• Reveals how people 'really' use the broadcast media and explains why 'on demand' and multiplatform viewing and listening is causing a fundamental shift in our relationship with broadcasting.
• Explores the significance of Reality TV, including Big Brother and shows how social media has helped to blur the distinctions between fantasy and 'truth' and the continuation of broadcasting 'myths'.
• Assesses the validity of accusations from both the 'Left' and the 'Right' of bias in broadcasting.
• Investigates the impact of broadcasting, including the TV leaders' debates in the UK 2010 general election, and arguments that TV news coverage encourages 'copycat' mass killings.
• Analyses claims of 'dumbing down' in broadcasting and contains startling evidence of reductions in viewing of 'serious' programmes.
• Shows how trust in broadcasting and broadcasters is under threat, including studies of the 'Gilligan' and 'Ross/Brand' affairs.
• Considers the impact of TV and radio programmes, formats and news coverage across national borders.
• Discusses the nature and importance of Citizen Journalism.
• Makes the case for the continued importance and special appeal of radio, including 'pirate' radio, but reveals a potentially fatal drop in listening by younger people.

I give myself credit, too, for exposing myself to those very possibilities of negative criticism. I might immodestly think that I have a good reputation at the moment and every time you put out something new you risk that reputation being damaged. Every person who creates anything – and then, when the first 'thing' turns out well, creates something else, whether it be an album, a book, a movie, or, indeed, a piece of furniture - knows this. Yet still we do it because, despite all the risks involved with such a venture, let alone the hard slog (and although the research is wonderful and the end result can be satisfying writing is hard, hard, hard!), the sacrifices, both financial (I took three months' unpaid leave because that was the only where I could have a sustained period I could really concentrate on the work) and personal, not least to my wife, you feel you need to do it. Because you can – or you think you can - and because the rewards in making the connections with the mere words that Fry talks about are immense. Getting into somebody else's brain, engaging with them through those collections of shapes, IS an extraordinary business and hugely gratifying.

After those e-mails to David I also thought I was being rather too unkind on myself; not in my assessment of the comparative merits of our work, but in remembering that (and this is absolutely not to take ANYTHING away from his towering achievements), aside of course from being highly intelligent, he had read mediaeval history at Oxford, and would therefore have been taught and mentored by some of the best in the academic world on how to research material, how to assess it and how to write it up. Whereas I didn't attend – other than weekend and summer schools - a traditional university (of any type, let alone 'the dreaming spires') and went to and FE and Tech College before becoming an indentured trainee at a local 'paper. I went into academic life late and have been playing 'catch up' ever since, in contrast to most of the others who write in my field, generally squeezing in my research and writing at week-ends and holidays. That could read like an almost Hari-style special pleading of mitigating circumstances, or a request for special sensitivity in the assessment of my work. It isn't, but, if the book doesn't go down well, those thoughts will help me bounce back and increase my determination to do even better next time (if fate and circumstances permit a 'next time'). The book is done, it's out there, and although, it will be a 'squeaky bum moment' when I see the first reviews, if they are harsh I shall at least think back to that lad with his GCSE results: that's good for me, that. Bugger! That crash was the key-ring cabinet falling down.

One of the great ‘What Ifs’ in history

…Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and on 'being there' on another day when disaster struck Manhattan from the skies

 

One of my favourite radio programmes – sadly absent from the BBC's schedules for a while now – is called "What If…?". As you might imagine, the premise of the programme is to imagine how different events, the world, a nation or parts thereof, might have been if different decisions have been made, if there had been different outcomes from various sequences of events. They gather together a panel of experts – historians, participants, journalists, etc. It's a game that in my modest research I play myself – in my case it's on a small part of the history of media in the UK; not perhaps matters on which the fate of nations rest but still, it is fascinating to see how close we came to things working out very differently and to establish the sequence of events, the pressures, the power bases, indeed the politics, as well as pure chance and personalities that determined events.

On the wider scale, you could debate on different things might have been had Hitler proceeded with his atomic weapons research, rather than dismiss it largely because most of its leading proponents were Jewish. Or if Joe Kennedy Jr. had not been killed during the war and if he, not his younger brother Jack, had become president, or if in 1960 Joe Kennedy senior had not fixed the presidential election the help of his Mafia friends and Richard Nixon had squeaked home. How would Tricky Dickie have reacted to the Soviets installing nuclear rockets on Cuba? Or would Khrushchev not have done so, because Nixon was regarded as a strong Cold War warrior, whereas, after the Bay of Pigs disaster, he thought Kennedy was weak and could be intimidated?

What if Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated and had gone on to become President and had ended the war in Vietnam about five years earlier, let alone taken a very different approach to world affairs than did Nixon? In the UK, what if Labour had, as all the opinion polls had predicted, won the 1970 general election. This would not only have affected the media policy that I'm concerned with my research – and indeed, as many Labour people argued, it was the intervention of Radio Caroline in that election which did at least help turn the tide in the Tories' favour anyway - but most importantly it would have meant that Margaret Thatcher would not have gained a Cabinet seat at that time and therefore would not have been in a credible position to challenge Ted Heath for the leadership of the Conservative party. Or what if Labour – again, as expected – had narrowly won the 1992 election and, presuming the ERM debacle would still happened the following September, that Labour would have been blamed the economic incompetence, probably been out of office for another generation and Tony Blair never become prime minister? And so on and so on.

Most pertinently of all, what if those hanging chads in the voting booths in Florida had behaved themselves and that the brother of the Republican candidate was not in charge of ruling their validity? Would a President Gore have taken the same actions? According to Gore – who I heard speak at the Edinburgh International Television Festival a few years ago – emphatically 'no'. They would certainly have been no invasion of Iraq: the one action above all else which has destroyed America's and Britain's international reputation and, aside from the tens of thousands – quite possibly hundreds of thousands – of innocent lives lost, and bodies broken and minds traumatised, has, following the law of unintended consequences, succeeded in uniting the Shia tribes in both Iran and Iraq and so posing a potentially deadly threat to the West.

No doubt be many who regard this is the sort of academic masturbation; enjoyable if you like that sort of thing, but ultimately pointless and futile. And true, if the genocidal Saddam had continued in power it is quite possible that many thousands would have been killed by him and his psychotic sons and henchmen. But they might not have been the same people who were killed directly or indirectly as a result of the invasion – rather a crucial point if you or a member of your family are one of those who would not otherwise be dead.

In life we don't have a control group, so we can never be sure how things would have worked out. But still, on this tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities, it might not be wasted time to imagine how different – and how much better – the world might have been if a different attitude and course of action had been taken by the United States. If, instead of behaving like a drunk on steroids in a bar, lashing out at anyone he thought might have humiliated him, and approached what was an undoubted, continued threat to its citizens, and a quite understandable desire for justice or even vengeance on behalf of those killed in such a callous and horrific way, calmly, rationally and with dignity. It's easy to forget now just how much support there was the USA in the days after the attacks – even Yasser Arafat gave blood for American citizens. For once, indeed for the first time since the attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, America was the victim of unprovoked aggression. At that point it had tremendous moral capital and goodwill on its side.

Let's imagine President Bush' s televised address to the nation a couple of days after the attacks went something like this:

 

My fellow Americans.

 

On September 11 this country was subjected to a horrific, callous attack on its soil and on innocent citizens. The people who died were every major faith and of none, and from every continent of the world. Some of them had been in this country for generations, others had been in a matter of months. Aside from their humanity, the thing that united them was their common goal was to live in a country where they can practice their own faiths, speak their minds, have free association and live their lives anyway they wished, so long as it did not impinge on the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens. The mass murderers who carried out these attacks hate everything that this country stands for. They hate the fact that those of different creeds and ethnicities and work and play happily alongside each other, with mutual respect. They hate the fact that no matter what your gender, your class, racial background, you have equal opportunities for education, for employment and can associate with whom you wish. Theirs is a creed rooted in hatred, division and the denial of rights and liberties to those who challenge their authority and their dogma. They must not, and they will not, prevail.

To be an American citizen is the greatest desire for millions on this earth. Indeed, one of our greatest issues - the numbers of people who wish to come and live here – is a problem of our success. We are living testament to the ideas of freedom, liberty and the common rights of man. It's not a coincidence that the country which has these democratic rights and liberties at its heart has the biggest economy in the world. True, we have been blessed with great natural resources, but so have many other countries, who have failed fail to produce the fruits that can come from those resources, because they have failed to establish the well of freedom. It must choke our enemies that the very things they despise are those that clearly bring the most abundant material success and the greatest human happiness. Their only response is a cult of death and destruction.

As most of us learn in the school playground, bullies are cowards and full of self-loathing. What most of us also learn is that, although they might trouble and intimidate some for a while, if we stand together against them, they slink off to lick their wounds. Occasionally, they return: reformed and better people.

It would be easy – and no doubt popular – if I were to order an immediate attack on those suspected of masterminding these attacks. We have the biggest economy in the world and the biggest defence. We have enormous resources to deploy, we are the world's only superpower. We could do that - but we won't.

A former, great President, Theodore Roosevelt, thought the best policy was to 'speak softly, but carry a big stick'. And we have a very big stick indeed. Another great President, Ronald Reagan, realised that the Soviet Empire could be defeated - not by waging war, but by outwitting and out-smarting the regimes that imprisoned their own peoples. His legacy – the collapse of the Berlin wall and the substitution of a terrible, authoritarian system with democracies and freedoms, came to fruition under my father. Many said this would be impossible – but Ronald Reagan, with the resolve and commitment of our allies, achieved this historic victory over tyranny. We can do so again.

Do not misunderstand me. We will seek out those who organised his terrible acts ruthlessly and without mercy. We shall, if they surrender, bring them to justice, but if they refuse we shall, without compunction, destroy them and their operations. But we shall not, even with the justifiable wish for revenge, make a terrible situation worse by endangering the lives either of our own young people, or of other innocents in other nations.

We are a compassionate country with decent, generous people, and we will not allow our values and our moral leadership to be compromised and to destroy our own liberties. That is what our enemies wish. They wish us to turn in on ourselves and against our cherished decencies and values. They wish to provoke some sort of religious war, for only by destroying the very things that make this country great can they win. But although this was in attack in America, it was not just an attack on America. That is why we shall unite with the rest of the world in defeating the enemy of every decent, human instinct and desire. I have been greatly moved by the overwhelming messages of support from almost every other country in the world. Not just from our historic allies but from many who have often been hostile to the US in the past. They have recognised that this is a fight for all humanity. Together, we can assure there is no hiding place, no safe haven, for those who planned these attacks and who may well wish to perpetrate even more. We assert the right to take any measure necessary to defend ourselves but we shall, so far as is compatible with that defence, work with all countries who demonstrate their willingness to join in this great fight.

On September 11 we saw the best and worst of humanity. The worst who carried out these atrocious, sadistic acts; the best from our citizens, our fire-fighters and police, many of whom sacrificed their own lives in their attempt to save others. If we ever needed reassurance that right will prevail, that was it. Good can came out of these terrible events – those still living under tyranny can breathe free; those that promise salvation through death and destruction will be humiliated, vanquished, rejected and ejected. That is the best way to honour our dead and the most devastating response to our enemies.

Thank you for listening. God bless you and your families. And God Bless America.

The sad thing is that in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, that would seem to be pretty much the public response from Bush and his administration. I was also struck, when watching Fox News's replay of their coverage of the day, just how moderate was THEIR response to the horrific, obscene events as they unfolded. On the phone to Al Haig, they discussed the 'calm and measured' response that should be made by the US.

Of course, it takes more than fine words to produce the right actions, but let us assume that if such a speech should be made it was sincere and was followed through. We might now be looking at a very different world; one in which the first decade of the 21st century was to the Middle East what the last of the 20th century was to eastern Europe.

I am not the only one laying the 'What If' game. The idea – voiced by a representative of the US State Department on today's Andrew Marr show on BBC television - that the removal of Saddam directly or indirectly led to the Arab spring of 2011, is ludicrous and contemptible. The events in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya are more likely to have been postponed than hastened, with those opposed to reforms being able to argue that changes in regime, sponsored by the US, were in that country's interests and that you are a dupe and a patsy if you went along with it.

The right response, surely, was once you had attacked the strongholds and hideouts of Al Qaeda, to work, supply train and provide intelligence for those who are working to overthrow the numerous vicious regimes in the world. In doing so, there would be far fewer, if any grieving families and shattered lives of our own young men and women in the armed forces. Has it – and is it – sacrifice worth making? If a single member of our own Cabinet had one son or daughter in harm's way I might be prepared to believe they are sincere in their claims. But unless you, dear reader, would think that the loss of your own children would be 'a price worth paying' we have no right to state this.

My own philosophy in life and one that I think can be extended to a national policy is: "we seek to be on good terms with all other people, but don't f**k with us, or we'll have you! Or to put it more diplomatically, (and I write as one who is certainly not a pacifist and who is very hawkish on defence): we shall mind our own business and seek only to live our lives and run our own country in our own way. But be under no illusion of our power to destroy you and make no mistake: if we perceive a credible and immediate threat from you against us, we shall do so.

Re-watching the iconic, horrific images of the day (a feeling of sickness; rather shameful to watch the planes go in and the towers collapse, when you know you are watching the destruction of thousands of innocent lives; the thud-thud-of the bodies falling being the most distressing of all) makes me think about all kinds of personal associations with New York, America and views on politics, domestic and geo-political. I first visited New York in May 1977; a 19 year old starting what I regarded as Life's Great Adventure. I had travelled on my own and it was highly unusual then for anyone outside the very rich, top professional and 'meeja' classes to visit the USA. I was certainly the only person at the paper who had ever travelled to America (and three years before that I had crossed the Atlantic to stay with relatives in Newfoundland – almost unheard of then) and probably one of only a handful in the whole town. New York was then notorious for its violence, especially its murder rate – I think it was the highest in the world. A man was stabbed in the bus behind me on the drive from JFK Airport. The hotel I had booked – by post, of course – was $15 a night, on Seventh Avenue; the cheapest listed in the tourist guide I had sent for. It was essentially a brothel, which also had rooms you could rent by the day, as well as the hour. When I arrived, there were several transvestites in the foyer. As I was unpacking, I noticed that, across the little courtyard from my room, a 'sex worker' and her client were well away – there were no curtains in the window and the light was on (perhaps so the Pimp could keep an eye on things). I was not only living the dream, I was seeing a real-life 'video' of the song: a combination of The Boxer and Walk on the Wild Side! (Whether or not 'there were times when I took some comfort there' will have to wait for my autobiography!). And I loved it! When you hit the streets the energy was amazing.

At that time there were no real skyscrapers in the UK – no Canary Wharf, no 'Gherkin', and even though you have seen it so many times in the movies and on TV, nothing really prepares you for it. Included on my list of things to do was of course the World Trade Center – then only some four years old. In truth, I was keener to go up the Empire State Building, and climb up the rickety steps into the crown of the Statue of Liberty. The twin towers were a bit flash: dedicated to commerce, but still - the ride in the elevator was amazing, as was the view.

But, of course, it was the radio that entranced me. Prior to my trip I had heard a few snippets of the Top 40 giant WABC – the station was being played in the Yellow Cab my first day there. If there is ever a movie of my life (bit unlikely!) there will be a sequence when I am viewing Manhattan from the back of the cab and long-time morning show DJ 'Happy Harry Harrison would be on WABC, playing Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke. But the biggest revelation was the all-news station, 1010 WINS. I was immediately taken by their voice-over jingle ident:

New York wants to know. And we know it! This is WINS. You give US 22 minutes, we'll give YOU the world."

Several questions: why 22 minutes? Not 15, 20 or 25? And how about: "We'll give you the world!"?! The confidence, the chutzpah of it. You didn't get that on the BBC, or even on London's LBC - the commercial speech station in London, largely modelled on WINS.

And then the way the newscaster would introduce himself: "I am (Stan Z Burns) and here's what's happening". Note – not what HAS happened! But (present tense) what's happening NOW!

I had to visit the station. Obliging as they nearly always are, this was arranged. The Program Director couldn't see me until the end of the day…4 o'clock OK? Yessir!

I was fascinated and intrigued by so much of it – not least that the constant ticker-tape noise behind the newscasters was (of course!) a sound effect, on a continuous loop cartridge. We'd done most of the tour of the newsroom and studios, when something amazing happened – word broke through that a helicopter had crashed 'atop' the Pan Am Building. This was a service to take business types from JFK by Sikorski helicopter to and from downtown Manhattan. That afternoon, as its passengers were disembarking, it collapsed, even as the rotor blades were still whirring, slicing into bits four commuters; it then toppled over and bits fell into the street, killing a passer-by. Naturally, the newsroom went nuts; reporters were dispatched, phones were bashed. I wrote in my diary later: "THIS WAS THE MOST EXCITING DAY OF MY LIFE!" Well, I am sorry if that sounds callous, but if you don't as a journalist just live for – dream - of being in a newsroom moments like that, you have no right to be a journalist!

"You Limeys sure pick the right day to visit an all-nooz station" proclaimed the Director, mopping his brow.

So I took New York, its people, its media, its ATTITUDE to my heart. Before going to upstate New York to stay with family friends in leafy White Plains, I took the Greyhound to Washington DC, stopping off at Arlington Cemetery en route at the graves of John and Robert Kennedy, where I paid my respects – in tears, certainly. But the most inspiring thing, after the tour of the White House, and the National Air and Space Museum to see the Apollo craft (I was a space nut as well) was visiting the Congressional Library to view the original documents of the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of  Independence. Documents that are so straightforward, economic in their wording and yet so powerful. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The First Amendment to the Constitution (the FIRST!) guaranteeing press (and religious) freedom. That is the American dream and its gift to the world. Because I am an optimist and because my life experience is that, in the end, good does triumph and life gets better, and despite all the terrible mistakes made by the USA, I believe it IS mankind's last best hope: the only country with both the will and the means to defend and promote liberty, whatever the threat and the provocation, and that its spirit and that, specifically of New York, will prevail. What If? As New York Senator Robert Kennedy said:

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

 

 

Now and Then – Part 2

    So, in the words of journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Freedland, "the summer when the news forgot to stop", is finally over. A truly extraordinary couple of months, which saw Rupert Murdoch biffed in a Parliamentary committee, parts of London and some other UK cities witnessing a complete breakdown of law and order for hours on end (with the capital's largest-ever police 'service' leaving families trapped in their apartments to their fate), the world's biggest economy losing its Triple A credit rating and teetering on political sclerosis, and one of the world's most vicious regimes (admittedly in a crowded field) toppled with a combination of the sheer guts of its citizens, backed by air support from NATO. In fact, 2011 as a whole is shaping up to rival other Years to Remember such as 1968, 1989-90 and 2001.

    The British political class has rivalled the police (who have reacted like hypersensitive teenagers to any criticism, however justified - in my opinion they've been let off lightly) in demonstrating hypocrisy, corruption and uselessness. So, we have the spectre of our Prime Minister – the most privileged leader of the most privileged Cabinet since the early '60s - belatedly returning home from his Tuscan villa complaining about an unjustified sense of entitlement, and who is, along with the Mayor of London, a former member of the notorious Bullingdon Club - which regularly trashed restaurants and terrified innocent people and was lucky not, like Boris, to have his collar felt - insisting that 'wrongdoers must be punished, there can be no excuses'. But, of course, if you're wealthy you can have your youthful mischief and get away with it, because you can always afford to pay off the aggrieved restaurateur, etc., and have a smart, family lawyer to get you out of clink if it goes wrong. Most of all, you can have your youthful indiscretions in private places, whereas your social housing estate kid has nowhere to go but public spaces. Then there's a Deputy Prime Minister (who also did a spot of vandalism in his youth) who doesn't seem to realise that the word 'Deputy' means, erm, that you deputise for the boss when he's away.

    It was all so different in the olden days of course, when the police were paragons of virtue, never accepted a bribe, when young people showed respect of their elders and burnt off their youthful energy with tea dances, and never, ever had sex until they were at least engaged. Apart from the scandals in the Met's Vice Squad in the 1960s and '70s, Teddy Boys in the '50s, the Mods and Rockers in the '60s, the skinheads in the '70s, the violence on the streets from rival football supporters…

    The reaction of the authorities in the '60s was spookily similar. The quotes about the Mods and Rockers for example could have been written today (or the other way round!). 'Bring back national service' (given the apparent easy availability of guns in our cities, is it really a good idea to ensure our young men are proficient with firearms?), 'bring back the birch' - the Isle of Man had that in the '70s and extended its application up to 21 years of age in the first 'moral panic' of the mid-1960s. Well, true enough that did work, in that a well-publicised case of some young Glaswegian men does seem to have prevented disturbances from reaching that island paradise. One of the great joys of being an academic is the access you get to newspaper archives and as it 'appens, part of my research covers the 'Mirror' from this period. Here's a sample from the edition of 25 July, 1965, accompanies by a picture of the miscreants in their swimming trunks, showing as much of the weals resulting from the punishment as is possible in a family newspaper:

They admitted causing bodily harm to a holidaymaker by setting upon him, hitting him with a bottle, and stamping on him after he asked them to stop swearing. The four were also fined a total of £80. Only two hours after sentence the birch -- three 3ft. twigs bound into a 14in. long handle at one end and weighing a maximum of 9oz. -- was produced. Brown-haired James McKell said: "I was led away to an upstairs room. Nine people were waiting.

Cried

"I was bent face downwards over the back of a chair. I cried with fear. My trousers were pulled down and my shirt pulled up. Two policemen held my arms and a third held my head down. A fourth, a sergeant, used the birch.

"The pain was terrible. I kept screaming for my parents. I was in pain for hours."

Stocky, pug-nosed William Connelly said: "I thought they were hitting me with red-hot wire.

"I just shouted until they had finished."

William Keenan said: "It was over quickly. But I'll never do anything that could get me the birch again."

Magistrate Radcliffe told me: "This island is a happy place. We want to keep it so that people are safe to walk the streets."

Mr Edward Bancroft, president of the Hotel Association, added: "We would rather have fewer holidaymakers than be flooded with Mods and Rockers like Clacton and Margate."

So, we COULD do that – well, actually we couldn't; the European Court of Human Rights wouldn't allow it. But plenty of countries do – Singapore, for example, held up by R Murdoch as a model country! My paternal grandfather - the son of a miner who chose the police service (then known as the Police FORCE) largely because the remuneration for senior officers included a house, and who rose to be a Chief Superintendent - had a choice solution for the containment of riots: "Shoot the first one". Or, as Phaedrus (15BC-50AD) put it: Aggression unchallenged is aggression unleashed.

And there can be no doubt as to the public appetite for harsh punishments, and many a bleeding heart liberal has had his/her world view challenged:

 

As the old saying goes, a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and the riots could prove a turning-point for liberalism. During the last major disturbances few members of the opinion-forming classes lived in Hackney, Brixton or central Manchester. They do now, and they will remember their fear on Monday and Tuesday nights. (Andrew Gilligan, UK riots: a festival of broken glass, Telegraph, 14 August, 2011.)

 

Being a Grammar School from solid, middle class home, loved and cherished, etc., did not prevent me and contemporaries from going a bit wild. A school trip to Alton Towers left the theme park reeling! I was culpable because I had supplied other kids with beer from home - which we got free due to my dad's job - and I don't think many of them had had alcohol before! Lecture from deputy head next day, swishing cane: never had complaints before, completely unacceptable, you've let down the school, but most of all (etc.). Made it clear that if he had his way all the boys would have been given 'six of the best' (I'd been 'slippered' before, but not caned, which was reserved for really bad behaviour, rather than cheekiness and mostly low-level classroom disruption which was my forte – see RudinBlogs passim for fuller account of the joys of being a schoolboy in the late '60s and early '70s) but he'd been over-ruled because some of the girls had behaved just as badly and they couldn't be caned! So it was detention for us all for a week. Then I could talk about me and my mates chasing other kids, running in and out of hotels and bars , causing aggro, being out into the early ours with my parents not knowing where I was or what I was up to; this is all in the period 14-16 years. It's all a matter of degree, circumstances and location.

God knows what I'd have been like if I hadn't had a stable family background. So I think a LITTLE humility and understanding and distinguishing between really bad, violent behaviour and the rest is required. What I do recognise is that young men crave for three things (and probably in this order): sex, status and excitement. And you tend to get more sex if you have a higher status, so if you cannot achieve that through conventional means – mostly through work – then you will find it elsewhere. Most of all, you need love and respect. I was struck by the comments – made quite unselfconsciously during a previous panic about gangs - from those in a notorious Liverpool outfit, a member of which was implicated in the tragic, accidental shooting of Rhys Jones, at a location I drive through most working days: "He has no dad, he has no family, we're his family and we love him."

Now, you might be thinking 'well, Richard, this is all very well, but if you'd been at the other end of the riots and looting, were in fear of your life, seen the business you'd worked hard day and night for a decade trashed in a matter of minutes, you wouldn't have such benign feelings about all this. In fact, it's just this sort of woolly, middle-class, moral relativisim, hand-wringing, guilt-ridden, self-loathing nonsense that's led to all this mayhem! I say get these little s*!%s off the street, and bang them up. It's time to put the fear back!'

And, up to a point, I do think adolescents and young men do need (and are happiest and most secure with) rules, boundaries, threats of punishment that are followed through when necessary and, above all, good, tough male role models. This used to be fathers and teachers, but the first are often absent now and the second are powerless to exert any meaningful punishment. But I fail to see how, say, a young man with no 'previous', who is full of contrition, is half way through a course almost certain to lead to a good job but who, in that state of euphoria after a night of passion at his girl-friend's flat (oh, blessed memory!) and somewhat hazy through drink, sees the tail-end of a bit of looting and decides – 'what a laugh this will be when I tell girl-friend and my mates tomorrow!' – to put his hand through a broken window and take a pack of water worth £3.50, is caught and imprisoned for six months and will almost certainly lose his place on the course, with ALL the implications of that, serves society or the individual.

There is another way – it's called Restorative Justice. And it's most certainly NOT a 'soft option'. And best of all, it empowers the VICTIM – because it can't happen unless the victim agrees. Time and time, victims of crime complain that they are cut off from the whole judicial process – sometimes never even told what has happened to the offender.

Offenders find the process demanding and tough. We require offenders to take an active role in repairing harm, acknowledging the impact of what they've done and facing up to the consequences. (Lord McNally, Restorative Justice Helps Prevent Harm, Restorative Solutions, 27 July 2011).

The classic mistaken assumption of conventional justice is to punish criminals as if they will never come back from prison to live among us. But with rare exceptions, they all come back. When they do, we depend on them not to cause more harm in the community. We are all interdependent in a shrinking world: criminals, victims, and the wider society. (Lawrence W Sherman and Heather Strang, 2007) Restorative Justice: the evidence, Smith Institute 2007)

 

And if you're thinking that I would think differently if it happened to me, well 'it' did. I won't go into the details – there's no reason legally why I shouldn't but it's not necessary to make the point. Briefly: a young man, who let's say I knew a little - attacked me, in the middle of the day, with witnesses and caught on CCTV. It was completely unexpected, had no 'lead up' that I was aware of and I had no reason to think he had a grudge against me. But he had got into his head that I had, some time previously punched him in the head and began a campaign (unknownst to me) to my superiors to have me sacked, calling me 'scum', etc. Landing the first blow from behind me and pushing me into a chair he launched a frenzied attack on my head, before being pulled off me. He departed with a threat to return to 'f*!"£$g finish this/me/you (it wasn't clear) off'. As he wasn't immediately apprehended I was offered the choice of proceeding with a charge of assault (possibly with occasioning GBH – one of the reasons I have been a far less frequent blogger of late is that the whiplash from my head being punched from side to side has exacerbated am existing neck/shoulder problem, making writing painful to do - rather than just to read – HA!), in which case he would have a criminal record and almost certainly lose his job. As I remarked "I didn't go into this (higher education) business to reduce young people's life chances".

And when the day came for us to meet, he being seated next to a police officer, and for him to apologise and I heard his tale – not to put too fine a point on it his life was a crock of s£!t and he looked so lost and troubled, his 'hoodie' pulled down over the fists that had punched me - I was SO glad I had done it. We all need someone in our corner and the sad thing is, I could have been that person. But of course, I can't be now.

Naturally, I received any amount of support from colleagues, friends, relatives. Old school chums offered to come up as a posse to sort him out and half-heartedly chiding me "Don't say you didn't get a crack back at him!" Best of all, was an e-mail I had from a colleague who works in another part of the university, which simply read: "You are a good man". Which is, above all, what I want to be. In fact, I would use that as a test to distinguish between the really violent, psychotic elements, who certainly have to be incarcerated, and those who are just lost, troubled and lacking in any self-worth or respect: "Would you rather be known as a hard man, or a good man?" If the latter, there is hope. We all have moments of madness. We can all go off the rails. And, after all, David Cameron, in justifying giving the job as his Head of Communications to the already tainted Andrew Coulson, did say that he believed in giving people a second chance.

 

NoW and Then

Paul McCartney has often said that if the walls of the abattoirs were made of glass everyone would become vegetarian overnight. I'm sure he is right, and as an omnivore but one who blanches at the thought of the slaughtering process and indeed tries not to think about it, I will concede right at the start of this blog that I'm a tad (cheerfully!) hypocritical about aspects of life and so if what follows appears to have a superior tone; that I am taking the moral high ground, let it be noted that I recognise that I'm just as capable of applying double standards or in being in denial about unpleasant and troubling facts as anyone else.

The words 'extraordinary, 'dramatic' and 'unprecedented' are often bandied around in the media to try and whip up interest in a story, not least when it is about the media – because nothing, or hardly anything, interests the media more than itself – but in the case of the News International phone hacking affair these words and more are well justified. Indeed, overused phrase such as "impossible to exaggerate the significance", "tipping point" and "game-changing" may even be apt. And of course it isn't just 'about' the media but our whole political system, culture and not least the integrity of guardians and enforcers of the laws of the country.

I've been meaning to write this blog since the whole saga began about 10 days ago but each day something new and amazing has happened and I thought: "wait and see what happens and then comment on that". But I think if I wait until the end of it I could be waiting a long time! But because it did grow like topsy and I couldn't resist adding a few comments on each new, dramatic development, as well as (inevitably!) the occasional anecdote and autobiographical element, I've split this into two.

Quick recap of the headlines: just over a week ago it was announced that the country's biggest selling newspaper was to close after 168 years; News Corporation has announced that it is abandoning for the moment at least its plans to take over the 61% of BskyB - perhaps the best and almost certainly the most profitable subscriber-based TV system in the world – that it doesn't already own; the Coalition Government decided to back a motion on the Labour opposition day and two enquiries have been announced under a judge. Perhaps most significantly of all, Rupert Murdoch - the most feared and courted media baron in UK history – has been humbled, and politicians who just over a week ago were courting him are now falling over themselves to condemn him. It now seems inconceivable that any politician, whether in or out of government, will fear him and, indeed, the endorsement of any of his papers at the next election may be seen as a poisoned chalice. The request – then summons – from the Select Committee of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, along with son James, and Rebekah Brooks - until this Friday, the Chief Executive of News International - demonstrated the power of Parliament even when the two Murdochs are foreign citizens. In fact, one of the many things I've learned from this saga is that Parliament had the power to demand people's attendance, even of foreigners, if they were the time in the UK. I would have loved to have seen the pictures of the Serjeant at Arms – even without her regulation tights – delivering the summons.

As I write this, the latest twist is that Brooks, who, un til yesterday, Murdoch insisted must stay, despite persistent calls for her to go from leading politicians and many of the journalists at the News of the World (a good joke being that the wrong red top had gone!) has finally resigned. This however it seems was not prompted by some mea culpa, but by the second largest shareholder of parent group News Corporation in New York, who demanded that she went. It is worth bearing in mind that, despite the Murdochs attempting to use them as a private fiefdom, these are public companies. It is also worth bearing in mind that many pension funds have money invested in BskyB, so we shouldn't be too delighted when their share price plummets. When it comes to the world of international finance and corporations we are all, to some extent in this together and it is inevitable that those with the most to lose, those on modest salaries and pensions, will be hit hardest if the Murdoch empire does indeed start to fall apart.

Finally, we have various allegations of police incompetence, collusion and corruption, going right to the top of the country's biggest force.

The only comparable such tale in recent times was the Hutton affair of 2004, when both the Director-General of the BBC and the Corporation's Chairman both resigned in the wake of the official report into the so-called 'sexed up Iraq dossier' saga on the then government's compilation of the case for going to war (see last paragraph!). That report got the Prime Minister of the day and his then the communications' chief off the hook, even then the ramifications were miniscule compared to the fast unfolding drama ran now witnessing. We are truly – another cliché coming up – in unchartered waters and every day is bringing even more astonishing revelations. Given its widespread ramifications in the political, cultural and economic life of the country 'the British Watergate' might not even be hyperbole and, indeed, Carl Bernstein, one of the journalists who revealed the Watergate scandal has used this term in relation to the current events the size of the pond. It is even possible that it could ultimately lead to the ousting of the Prime Minister and/or the ejection of the Murdochs as "fit and proper people" to be a part of British broadcasting.

So, going back to my point about meat eaters not wanting to think about how the processes which brought that nice steak bacon sandwich onto their plate, if we're going to start apportioning blame to this terrible affair let's do the "we are all to blame" bit. Because the fact is that if we didn't want to read stories about the sexual peccadilloes of footballers, TV stars and the rest, the News of the World and other papers would not print them and the police would not have been drawn in to supplying vital information to the journalists. In what is unquestioningly a ruthlessly competitive environment, compounded by the structural changes in the media industry with advertising revenues flowing to the Internet and reduced readership (the 2.6 million sales of News of the World seems impressive, but it was selling about twice as many a decade or so ago and in my lifetime it sold an astonishing 9 million copies), the papers have been increasingly driven to getting stories they know will increase sales.

Now this might be met with incredulity, but I really believe that even journalists on the News of the World would much rather use their undoubted talents and skills to reveal wrongdoing and corruption in government, amongst officials, or serious criminal activities and bring crooks to justice. And of course they did continue to do this. But the fact is that sales went up when they had a front-page splash of the 'away games' of footballers and TV stars and the more salacious were the kiss and tell stories, the more they sold. So we get the tabloid press we deserve.

And how do people think – did they think – they got these stories? And more pertinently, what effect did they think they had on the innocents involved: the wronged wives and partners, the tearful and bewildered children? I was struck by one of the comments from someone who was brave enough on a recent Newsnight to admit that she had read the paper. To her it was just a bit of fun; she would get together with her friends at the Sunday lunch and they would pour over all the dirt and gossip and have a good laugh. Back to my simile over meat-eating: you don't think about the pain and distress of the animals being slaughtered, you just enjoy the nice steak or chop on the plate.

Well, runs the defence, if 'they' don't want to appear in the papers with these embarrassing stories 'they' shouldn't do it. So, it seems the British public expect, for example, young men at the height of their sexual drive and perhaps have higher than normal levels of testosterone, who have fantastically high earnings and women literally throwing themselves at them and begging for sex, to behave like eunuchs at a brothel? And what in any case have 'they' done wrong to justify such public opporbrium? Take another famous example, that of the revelations of Max Mosley going to a 'sex dungeon' and being whipped by leather-clad women. The justification for this story – that there was a Nazi motif to these proceedings - was wrong and he won a privacy action against the paper. But the wider justification on, as it were, moral grounds, was that Mosley, as the then head of Formula One, and so was a public figure. The same has been used as justification for exposing and deposing the former England soccer team captain. So, our moral leaders are the head of the motorsport or a footballer? This is hilarious to me. I might take my moral leadership from the Archbishop of Canterbury and there would be perhaps public interest if he was having extramarital affairs but otherwise, in my opinion, what goes on between consenting adults which affects no one else is a matter for them and it is not the job of a newspaper to reveal these things to their wives and children, etc. (Gentle reader: my thoughts on how to limit this sort of coverage whilst retaining the press's ability to expose 'real' wrong-doing is in the second part of this Blog…bet you can't wait!).

Looking through the front-page splashes that the final edition of the News of the World proudly reproduced, there are undoubtedly some genuine, public interest revelations, but they seem to have become fewer and far between. Yes, the scandal of the then Minister of War sharing a mistress with a Soviet spy at the height of the Cold War was justified (that was back in '63!) and the more recent match-fixing probes certainly fitted that bill, but most of the recent ones had no public interest justification.

What about when they exposed genuine law-breaking by celebrities, most commonly illegal drug-taking? Well, I have a problem with this too, because I do not believe that the private consumption of drugs should be a criminal matter. I may be deficient in my moral universe, but the criminal law is there to protect the property and personal safety of me and other members of society and I fail to see how someone snorting a line of coke in private threatens this. This isn't the place to get into a detailed exposition of my libertarian views and of course I have to accept that such things are illegal until and if Parliament decides otherwise, but frankly these stories do not pass the "so what?" test in the classic definition of news: "dog bites man - no news; man bites dog – news".

Given the prevalence of class A and B, never mind class C, drugs in the television and entertainment worlds, I would be surprised to learn of celebrities and stars who haven't taken them. The relish that many people have over 'slebs' being caught out reminds me of those kids at school who used to gloat at other kids getting into trouble and being punished. A joy in seeing other people in pain and humiliated. What does that say about us as a country? As school, it degrades everyone and whilst that sort of gleeful schadenfreude might be expected and acceptable in children, I don't think it is in adults. And it is no good saying that people aren't doing anything wrong by reading about what others were doing; that is the defence often given by paedophiles who look at child porn on the Internet. True, they haven't carried out the abuse, but if people like them weren't willing to use their credit cards to see it, it wouldn't take place. Obviously, some children would still be abused, but the market would be reduced, so the incidences fewer. All the evidence, by the way, suggests that this is also true of drug-taking: far from an increase in use of drugs after they've been declassified or decriminalised, all the studies show there is less, and of course most of the crime and gangs associated with the drugs' trade (perhaps accounting for some 85% of all criminal activity) would disappear. This is not to condone, let alone advocate, drug-taking certainly of A class drugs, but it shows the stupidity and futility of criminalising drug takers.

Most fair-minded people accept that popular newspapers like the News of the World have done important things and they have certainly played an important part in our culture for many decades. I was first aware of the NoW as an eight or nine year old, back in the mid-1960s. On Sundays, most of my nearby friends went to church or Sunday school but, coming from an agnostic family – indeed I have never been baptised in any faith to this day: my parents thought it wrong to decide for an infant what their religion should be, so it appears I'm going to both the Catholic and Islamic hell (double bugger!) - this wasn't part of my routine. So I started trotting down to a less well-heeled part of town where one of my school friends lived, a lovely tall and rather confident girl called Helen. Her home was in a classic hard-working, respectable working-class community and on Sundays her granddad would give her the cash, plus some pocket money, to go to the newsagents to pick up his copy of the News of the World and (almost unbelievably, and I am sure this was illegal even then for children of our age) his weekly cigarettes' ration! Helen had obviously picked up from her grandfather the importance of the paper and when I made some comment – no doubt picked up from my parents, whose paper on that day was the Sunday Times – that it was a bit of rubbish, she rounded on me (and I remember this really clearly!) that it was a very important paper and uncovered and reported on things people were doing wrong and this in turn led to important changes. Respecting the views of someone who was such a kind and compassionate person, this had a big effect on me and I used to flick through it as we skipped back to granddad's. Although this sounds like a boast, I did have a very high reading age for someone my years, so I could understand all the stories, although not of course some of the coded prose and euphemisms for various salacious tales involving vicars and choirboys and the rest.

More than that though, in talking to granddad it was clear that his relationship with the paper was quite complex and even profound. An intelligent man who, like most of his generation I guess would have left school at around 14, he didn't just look on the newspaper as a weekly dose of scandal and titillation, but as (and this might seem fantastic to later generations) as a form of education. This attitude would probably have been instilled by his parents or even grandparents. It is striking when you look through the really old editions of the paper how much of it is geared towards expanding the knowledge of its readers; it began publishing just as mass literacy, as well as the mass dislocation of the population was taking place, at the height of the Industrial Revolution and towards the very end of the 'taxes on knowledge', which had been used by the powerful elites to make newspapers unaffordable to the common man, let alone woman. The very first edition contained an offer of encyclopaedias, and many other popular Sunday papers offer versions of these types of books, as well as literary works. Moreover, millions, like Helen's granddad, believed such papers were on their side; they dealt with the aspirations and the problems of the working classes, and their investigations and exposures were against those who exploited, humiliated and defrauded them. Such newspapers had a personality; they were welcomed into the home as a friend and champion. To them, journalism was a respected and noble calling. It was practised by 'educated people", with the knowledge and skills to help, rather than exploit them. This may have been a somewhat naive belief, and of course there was a widespread understanding of the papers often also being used for propaganda purposes by rich proprietors. Nevertheless, a free press - which had only been established after several centuries of conflict and debate - was appreciated, I think, in a way that is quite hard to understand today. Although I wouldn't appreciate all of this until much later as I began to study media history – which now I'm privileged enough to teach and research – these partly formed views and perceptions definitely lodged in the Rudin brain and made me think about the role of journalism and newspapers.

In our family holidays to my grandparents' little holiday place on the Lincolnshire coast, one of my tasks was to go to the newsagents every day. I used to love this, as when on holiday we bought a wider variety of papers that when we lived at home and I was fascinated by all the tabloids, not least their use of language, especially the puns often used in the headlines – in fact at one stage I thought there was some sort of law that you had to have puns in all the headlines of papers of that sort!

But there was something else about the News of the World in its heyday which is hardly ever commented on, and that is that until around the mid-1980s Sundays in Britain for most people living outside London or a handful of other big cities, was incredibly boring. It really was! There was hardly anything open, apart from the pub for a few hours and the cinema if you are lucky, and so the News of the World provided some important diversion and entertainment, and - let's not be prissy about this! - in the days before the Internet provided such stimulation at the click of a mouse, for many men it was a classic 'one-handed read'. It wasn't just the pictures of scantily clad young women but the salacious and neo-erotic tales it had of celebrities getting up to rather more than the 'once a week in the missionary position with the lights off', which was the total sum (if they were lucky!) of many adults' sexual lives.

As a paperboy in the early to mid-1970s I learned how eagerly the paper's arrival on the doormat was anticipated by many of my homes in that distinctly suburban, middle-class area and let it be forgotten that although it is associated mainly with the working class readership, sales were so large that it also had the highest number of socio-economic groups A and B of any paper's readership. I also was instructed by the manager at the newsagents that I was to tuck the paper inside the more respectable, serious newspapers, such as the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times. There must be countless couples who used to snuggle up in bed and read together the more revealing parts of the paper as a bit of foreplay of a Sunday morning, or when the kids were at Sunday school!

Naturally, one of the most welcome aspects of my time in the 'newspaper distribution business' was being able to read all the papers every Sunday as I went from house to house and I always bought a couple myself and certainly this quite often, if there was a particularly salacious story, would indeed include the News of the World, which helped my feverish imagination of many a day and night through those difficult years!

In part two of this blog I am going to reveal my own tales of ethical dilemmas in journalism, including a full confession of an illegal practice. I am also going to discuss my thoughts about the Murdochs, press regulation and generally how I see this affecting the media landscape in Britain. But, after a period when the trade of journalism has been thoroughly trashed and the already low reputation of journalists has been dragged down still further, let's remind ourselves of a few facts and a few reasons why a free press – that is to say, publication without the need for a licence, without censorship and subject only to the general laws of the land and a self-regulating code - has been and is so important. Our Parliament, public bodies, and our 'Rolls-Royce' civil service did not protect us from going into an illegal war and the only people who've lost their jobs from the whole nightmare of Iraq have been the journalists, who, in admittedly sometimes flawed reporting, did at least expose the lies and distortions used by politicians and the military, and the widespread abuses and torture practised by the Allies.

It was journalists, sometimes in league with friendly parliamentarians, and their use of the cloak of Parliamentary privilege, who have covered many miscarriages of justice and led to the release of many prisoners, who had usually lost several rounds of appeals from our supposedly brilliant judiciary.

It is journalists and journalism that has brought to book innumerable crooks, conmen, and webs of corrupt officials and politicians, which the police had failed to unravel, and indeed brought to book many corrupt police officers.

Many medical malpractices, cover-ups of many kinds and all sorts of threats to public safety and well-being have been exposed by journalists. Laws have been changed as a result of some of these and even the legal age of sexual consent was brought down by one of the first journalistic 'stings' - by W.T. Stead, an undercover reporter back in 1885. It was journalism that exposed the lies and incompetence of the military in World War I – though not, tragically, before the slaughter of the Somme. Much more recently, it was journalism that exposed the abuse of Parliamentary expenses and allowances (and it should be remembered that this only came to light after the distinctly unethical practice of a BROADSHEET paper using a stolen series of documents).

The list goes on and on, but finally we should not remember that the only reason the abuses alleged to have been undertaken by News International and perhaps some other newspaper groups have come to light is because other journalists have doggedly exposed these practices and published them at great risk to their reputations and fortunes. It is print journalists– seemingly chaotic, flawed, and compromised they might be by pressures of time, commerce and megalomaniac proprietors (as one academic put it: "it works in practice but it would never work in theory"), who produce something approaching a daily miracle: one which, when you see the conditions and pressures under which it is created, is astonishing for not what it gets wrong, but for how much it gets right - and astonishingly cheaply for the 'end user'. An incalculably important part of our national life and our freedoms.

Sustaining the ‘unsustainable’

"If there ever is a revolution in Britain it will start here in Liverpool." (Tony Benn during dock workers' strike of the 1990s).

I hope that quotation is accurate – it was cited during the speeches after today's rally in Liverpool against the government's planned changes to terms and conditions for public sector workers – especially their pensions. Like Tony Benn – who started out as a 'moderate', technocratic MP and Minister, with a flair for public relations and media handling, but became progressively more radical - I find I am becoming more left-wing as I go into middle age. This is not supposed to happen! The financial shocks of 2007-08 proved that the financial institutions, corporations and the other real rulers of the world, were not only hopelessly incompetent but mendacious, grossly irresponsible and fantastically selfish with it. I realise I should have come to this conclusion before then, but…!

But if Tony Benn DID say the above, I know what he means. Liverpool – parts of which were ablaze thirty years ago this month in the worst, most sustained rioting in the British mainland in the 20^th century - has cajoles. It's one of the reasons I like working in there and why it is certainly a cracking place to teach – and practise – journalism.

Today I was a participant in the 'story', as one of thousands who took to the streets. The sun shone, the people were in good voice – astonishingly good voice, in fact – and the mood was good-humoured but very, very determined. One of the most effective points came from the ALT speaker and it was about teachers being forced to work until 68 before they could retire. Not all public sector workers are expected to work until 68 – the armed forces (are there no desk jobs?), the police (ditto?) - but teachers (who often have to deal with kids whom the police can't cope with!) are expected to struggle on until 68. As one of her members, a PE teacher, said: "I can't really see myself running round a playing field at 68!" Of course, it won't happen. People will be retired on sick leave, before they can take pensions. So then of course they will go on benefits! It is political and economic madness and morally contemptible, especially when compared with the public pensions paid to Parliamentarians (on top of their often considerable, personal wealth).

I started the day thinking a little bit – as I suppose you are bound to do – that it might be a futile exercise and could I really afford to lose 1/260^th of my annual salary by striking and maybe, you know, it was a bit unreasonable to take this action now and that I do feel I have a privileged job, I love my work and it is such that, mental and physical capacities remaining reasonable I would love to continue until some form at least until my 70s. Indeed, the thought of retiring terrifies me. What would I do? Take up sodding golf? Not have great colleagues to work with and have a laugh every day? Students to motivate and help and maybe even on occasion inspire? Nightmare! I don't live to work but it is a very big part of who I am, how I see myself and, I s'pose I must admit, my personal status. Although I might tell myself I was really striking to support low-paid workers…. I needed my resolve stiffening! Thank goodness it came, via the radio.

One of the key approaches I try to drum into my students is to make sure that not only do you research the subject of an interview and a story as thoroughly as possible but make sure that you have key quotes and sources to hand. Catching people out spouting a straightforward denial of them saying something when you know that they have said it – or, in the case of NHS reforms, that that they have done something that they specifically said they would NOT do - is a great moment for you and adds to you and your employer's credibility. That, rather than trying to 'trip people up' for the sake of it, or talking over them, demonstrates your professionalism and, indeed, when it is on a key issue of the moment affecting millions of people you are providing an invaluable public service.

Of course, you'd expect Radio 4 presenters/interviewers to be well briefed but it was still good on the morning of the big strikes in the public sector, mainly over proposed changes to pensions to hear Evan Davis skewer Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, who had claimed that the independent report into public sector pensions by former Labour minister John Hutton had said the current arrangements were "untenable" and "unsustainable". As Davis pointed – and you can do this yourself at home, dear reader! - Hutton said neither of those things. 'Untenable' or 'tenable' do not appear at all in the report, and 'sustainable' appears when Hutton says the changes he proposes would ensure that public sector pensions are sustainable. You might say that this is semantics; that the thrust of the Hutton report is pretty much as Maude claims, but it is very interesting that ministers keep quoting these same lines as the justification for their approach and they are just not there. And even when Maude had more or less been forced to concede that Hutton never uses 'untenable' he maintained at the end of the interview that "everyone" agrees the current system is untenable!! When that happens, you just know that he is spouting the official briefing and the 'lines to take'. And, as Goebbels said, if you're going to lie tell a big one, and keep repeating it and then most people will believe it is fact. Furthermore, graphs in the report and supported by the respected Institute of Fiscal Studies, show that the cost of pensions at the current rates would fall as a percentage of the nation's wealth. So, if we're talking about sustainability then it is a matter of priorities. Governments can always find money for the things they want or need to do. It's a question of politics. Which brings us back to today's strike, in which I was happy to participate.

The other main line from the ConDem government and the useless article who supposedly 'leads' the Labour Party (you know the party that was founded to advance and represent the interests of organised labour, and the leader who, thanks to the tax avoidance on houses he and his bro' have organised following the death their supposedly Communist father – what was that about 'all property is theft'?) is that is wrong to strike and inconvenience all those hard working mums and dads, etc. when negotiations are continuing. But this isn't like a normal industrial dispute between management and unions - this is a negotiation about how the wealth of the country will be divided in the future. It seems clear to me that if you wait to take industrial action until AFTER the negotiations have been concluded – and when the decisions on pensions are a fait accompli – then you will be wasting your time and money. NOW is absolutely the right time to show solidarity and determination. If the government really believes that the unions are serious and the members are resolute and that they are prepared to shut down schools and all kinds of public services come the autumn then that will surely affect their attitude. As was pointed out by the excellent Peter Kellner of YouGov later on the Today programme, the electorates in February 1974 and in 1979 voted against the respective governments not so much because they agreed with the unions but because they blamed the government for not keeping essential services going. And if the public thinks that a bit of give and take – and in the case of the teachers' unions by the way, pensions were 'reformed' some four years ago with agreement between government and unions – would have stopped the strikes, then they are at least as likely to turn out the current government as to think the unions are being unreasonable and greedy.

There is a fascinating battle going on for the hearts and minds of the people over this. The spectre of the UK becoming another Greece is being used to scare people into accepting massively reduced standards of living, including into their old age. But the unions, and excellent organisations such as UK Uncut, mainly through the social media, are pointing out all the tax avoidance rip-offs which are denying the exchequer some £123 billion a year. The tax and other financial arrangements of a Cabinet dominated by multi-millionaires has not gone unnoticed – including the Chancellor's £4 million trust fund. The 'ordinary Joes' who can't afford fancy lawyers and accountants pay their due taxes – the wealthy often manage to avoid paying any. At times like these that really rankles – and rightly so.

The other main argument for making those in the public sector pay more in, work longer and get less at the end (what a winning combination!) is that, whilst years ago final salary pensions were common in the private sector, they have all but disappeared there now, whereas they are still common in the public sector and it is unreasonable for taxpayers who don't have such schemes to paying for those who have. But this is an argument for the race to the bottom. If, as is proposed, the final salary idea is replaced by a career average, then there will never be an incentive for private employers to offer this again. But if they are competing at some levels with the public sector for good employees then they may be forced to re-think this over time. ('Equality of misery' is not a slogan that appeals to me).

Then there is the fact that, according to s speaker at today's rally in Liverpool, the teachers' pension fund ran a surplus for 56 years. Where did that money go? Back into the Exchequer of course. And this, like National Insurance, is where it has all gone wrong. Today's pensions contributions are going to pay today's pensions, not our own at the requisite time. I believe money that we are putting into the pensions' and NI pot should surely go towards our own benefits and pensions. At the moment both are, in effect, just another form of general taxation.

We do certainly live in interesting times. Of course I may be proved to be wrong, but I've a feeling that, if the unions and their supporters play it cannily, after all the set-backs, retreats and defeats for organised labour, we could be in the verge of a stunning climb-down by government.

Why, after decades of arguing for voting reform, I THINK I’ll be voting ‘No’ to AV

The city is Berlin – the date: 9 June, 1983. It was a good evening, as I'd been with some friends from the civilian mess, where I was staying during my last full month of bachelorhood, to an open-air Van Morrison gig in the city. It was also a general election night back in the UK and, as it happens, the only general election since I was 18 in which I've been unable to vote; disenfranchised, you see, due to the changing status of employees of British Forces Broadcasting Service that April from MOD civilians to a new arrangement, which meant we were not liable to tax in the UK and therefore could not vote (no representation without taxation).

But that didn't mean I wasn't keenly interested in the outcome. Over two years before I had signed up to the new Social Democratic Party – SDP - (the first UK political party to accept membership subscriptions by credit card, which does make it seem a long time ago!), which had been largely formed by breakaway group from the Labour Party, appalled at its lurch to the Left and its policies, including withdrawal from the then European Economic Community without a referendum, unilateral nuclear disarmament (at a time of great tension, and potential threat from the Soviet Union, not least just a couple of miles from where I was then living), nationalisation of the top 200 companies and a more or less siege economy, etc. etc. It was on this manifesto – which a then Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, dubbed "the longest suicide note in history" - that of course Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were first elected. Anyhow, I greatly liked at least two of the 'Gang of Four', Shirley Williams and David Owen; the latter I regard as the best Prime Minister we've never had since the Second World War, combining just the right mix of high intelligence, confidence, toughness, compassion and communication skills, developed no doubt in his time as a practising GP, as his father had been.

In the early, heady days of the SDP, before it went into a formal alliance with the Liberal Party, and at a time when the then new Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher was deeply unpopular and Labour was incredible as a government to most of the electorate, it had reached stratospheric levels in the opinion polls - at one point credited with more voting intentions than Labour and Conservative combined. The Falklands War in '82 and signs that the harsh Tory economic and industrial medicine may be about to bring fruits for at least some changed the game, but it was still expected that the party would do very well indeed against the two so-called mainstream parties, who were then at the extreme of their respective ideologies.

As we piled in to the mess bar to watch the TV coverage from the UK – the 'live link' with London till something of a novelty then – I watched with increasing dismay as the results came in and the SDP and Liberal parties (in an electoral pact not to stand against each other) came second after second, which meant that, although they jointly received nearly a quarter of the national share of the vote, their combined seat tally came to just 23. Labour, on the other hand, which gained only a few per cent more of the popular vote, had well over 200 seats, even though this was then the worst performance of any second-placed party since the War. It seemed an outrage, and my conviction that there needed to be changes to the electoral system - which had formed at least a decade before when in my mid-teens - took on a new passion.

I was certainly not alone. I remember John Cleese, one of the prominent celebrity supporters of the SDP, doing an excellent party broadcast in which he derided those who claimed that a more proportional system would bring chaos to our political system, and poor governance. "Poor old Germany! He cried. "How badly they are doing with their proportional voting; how unstable they are!" The case seemed unanswerable. Voters in all but marginal seats were effectively disenfranchised at elections, as the contest was decided by relatively small switches in voting in a relatively small numbers of seats, which then produced a wholly disproportionate impact on the parties' representation at Westminster. Because each seat was a separate contest, producing only one winner who simply had to have one more vote than any other candidate, it was no good if a party came second in every seat; they could win over 40% of the national and local vote and end up with nothing. And most MPs were elected with only a minority of the vote; a position that had radically changed from the 1950s, when the vast majority voted for one of the 'big two' parties. This had to be wrong.

Moreover, depending on where the concentrations of votes landed, you could have – as happened twice since the Second World War -the party which came second in the overall share of the vote forming the government, ruling alone. And the so-called First Past The Post (FPTP) system does not even necessarily reduce the strong majorities and stable government that it is often credited with. On at least six occasions, of the 18 general elections since the War, the overall majority was either non-existent or so small that the government of the day was vulnerable to defections, deaths and by-election defeats and on at least two or three periods the country was in a constant state of 'general election alert', causing great uncertainty in the financial markets and other aspect of national life.

For more than a quarter of a century after that night in '83, hopes that one or more parties in a position to effect change would back electoral reform. Especially as, since 1997, other systems were used in the various devolution settlements and the sky had not apparently fallen in.

(Quick bluffer's guide: At the moment there there are four other systems in the UK, in addition to FPTP which is for Westminster seats and local councils in England and Wales. The others are: Additional Member System (Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and London Assembly); Supplementary Vote (executive mayors in London and some other cities); Single Transferable Vote (all elections in Northern Ireland except for Westminster MPs, and for Scottish councils) and the proportional, Closed Party List (elections for MEPs, apart from in Northern Ireland). All of these have flaws, especially in regard to the 'single member constituency link' of FPTP, and either in their proportionality or accountability. The closed list system for the European Parliament is beautifully proportional but leaves the voters with no choice as to their preference for individual MEPs – they're elected in the order decided by the party hacks).

Twice, in elections which they won, the Labour Party had promised in their manifesto to put reform for elections to the House of Commons to a referendum and, twice, as with tuition fees, they broke that promise. The Jenkins commission, established under one of those other members of the SDP's 'Gang of Four', Roy Jenkins, was set up by Blair fairly soon after he came to power, but the recommendations that there should be a system called 'AV Plus' for Westminster elections, was ditched. When the Jenkins Commission considered the Alternative Vote it found it to be worse than poor and pronounced that its effect was "disturbingly unpredictable". Whilst it continued to deliver a single representative for a constituency – which seems important in the UK's political culture – and it did allow voters to rank the candidates in order of preference, it neither possessed the virtues of proportionality, nor overcame the defects of FPTP. Other studies have shown that AV could have produced even more distorting results and in 1997, even though the Conservatives clearly came second in the national vote, they would have been third in the number of seats, reduced to well under 100, whereas Labour's majority would have been so overwhelming so as to produce a one-party state.

Then came the frantic hours and days after the inconclusive 2010 general election, and the backroom deals – the very thing that FPTP is supposed to prevent! – meant that, what Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg called "the miserable little compromise", was settled on as the only other system that the leading Conservative group was prepared even to put to a referendum.

The campaign for this referendum – only the second nationwide referendum we've ever had in the UK - must be the most desultory, disingenuous, bad-tempered and tedious in the history of British election campaigns. To say that it has failed to inspire or fire up the voters would be generous. Both sides have made ludicrous and often quite disturbingly inaccurate claims. The 'No' side, of the cost, complication and effects of such a system; whilst the 'Yes' camp that AV would make MPs work harder, reduce corruption in the political class, and - in a statement so cretinous that it could only have come from Nick Clegg: "if you are completely happy with the current political system then vote no, otherwise vote yes." That's rather like a diner in a restaurant, who has eaten there many times before, but doesn't much care for the décor, deciding during the first course to leave the restaurant and go to another one down the road which he's never tried and has no idea what it will be like.

You, patient reader, after enduring a mini history lesson and briefing, along with a slice of autobiography, will be relieved to know that I'm not intending to give you another lecture. But let me spell out as concise as possible while I think AV is worse than even the current system's acknowledged unfairness and iniquities.

It is clearly a sound idea – and one that is practised in most other elections are engage with, e.g. those for union positions – to place candidates in order of preference, so that that even if your preferred one does not win, your vote can still count towards your second choice. It saves the agony of those who support candidates who are unlikely to win in having to put a peg over their nose and vote for the least worst on offer, to stop the one they really don't want to win getting in. Fair enough. The problem with counting everybody's second placed (etc.) votes is that many voters will fear that putting a particular candidate in second place will, as it were, help override their first choice. So, most systems only count the second preferences of those voting for lower placed candidates from the first round.

But the problem with AV is that only some voters will have their second choices counted and these will be for the candidates who have the least first preferences (as Churchill said: "the most worthless votes for the most worthless candidates"). In most cases, this will be for the fringe parties, say the BNP, or the 'pro-life' lot. Some cases, true, it will be for The Greens, which I suspect many readers of this Blog may find less objectionable than the first two, but in a tight race, say, between Conservative and Labour, second preferences for the extreme candidates may be the only ones which will be added to the original tally.

Now, the curious fact is that one of the arguments against AV has been that it will tend to produce blandness and the candidate the fewest dislike, rather than the one most like. But what doesn't seem to have been argued is the reverse: that in, say, an area of high immigration, where the BNP candidate receives a significant vote, but who is never going to win (and where the ultimate winner will be either Conservative or Labour), it will make the latter candidates make the strongest possible pitch to BNP supporters for their second preferences. This will no doubt also be reflected in the national campaign - so it will tilt the whole flavour of the election, regardless of the eventual winners, to the extreme. FPTP does at least ensure that the candidate who more people want than any other wins and also means that the leading parties and candidates can ignore extremist views because those candidates aren't going to have a significant impact on the final result. Proponents of AV cannot have it both ways: they constantly claim that it will force candidates to reach out for a broader swathe of political opinion than is currently the case: yes it will, but not in a way I think most of them desire. So, be careful what you wish for.

Okay, so now I'm going to get a bit nerdy and explained as briefly as possible what I think the election system should be and it is none of those currently being practised in the UK (deep breath: here comes the science bit, etc.). The ideal system seems to me is one that combines both preferences and weighting. Clearly, if you put a candidate in third place you do not rate them as highly as one in the second place and definitely not as much as in the first place. So why not weight the votes accordingly, so that candidates given second preferences will have to have twice as many of those preferences to count as much as for a first preference? There would have to be three third preference votes to count the same as a first, and so on. That could be done for however many candidates there are. Okay, it sounds complicated, but trust me I've 'done the math'; I can show my 'workings out' if there is a public demand for me to do so (!). It can mean that second preferences, if all are counted, do make a difference, and even in a tight race, especially in 'three way marginals', whether you rate candidates third or fourth. And it does result in the candidate who most people rate the most, winning.

So, there you have it, Rudin's Preferential, Weighted Election System. Where everybody's preferences count, equally. Can I rely on your vote??

Of course, it is more complicated to count and to calculate but it needn't be more complicated to actually vote. It would either be done in the old-fashioned paper way, by having a separate ballot paper containing all the candidates for your first, second, third preferences, etc., and these then to be put into respective piles and counted and calculated according to the simple formula outlined above, or we could – shock, horror! – institute voting machines. You know: just as they have managed to use in the US for decades and, more recently South Africa and in many countries where numeracy and literacy rates are lower than in the UK. I don't think that, within reason, the cost of extra time in counting the votes should be the deciding factor. Surely, what we most want is a system that best reflects the wishes of the electorate. As we've seen, even the current system does not necessarily produce strong majorities and anyway, I don't think that should be the overriding factor. Certainly, it does do the democratic heart good to see one government kicked out and another installed – usually in the UK this is within hours of the last vote being cast ("throw the rascals out"). There is also the accountability of just one party ruling and so being held to account for their policies come the next election, with little 'wriggle-room', in contrast to a coalition, where, as now, one party can blame the other for broken promises. But is it a good thing that a relatively small change in voting preferences should result in a total change in government? And is it such a good thing that, say, someone of the talents of David Owen, if he decides he cannot join either of the two parties most likely to form a government, should spend the rest of his life in the political wilderness?

I know what many will now say: yes, very good Richard – well done, mate, for putting the Rudin brain cell to use and coming up with your wonderful system – but we're not being given the chance to vote on that or any of the systems other than AV. So, it's either stick with what we've got, in which case we'll probably never get another chance in our lifetimes and we'll have one-party governments, doing outrageous things against the wishes of most of the electorate, etc., or go for AV: something that is, yes, imperfect, not what we wanted, etc., but is a small step and maybe opens the door to better things. Bugger! I thought I'd made my mind up…now I am not so sure….