Patricia Holland

Myths of Origin

Although very different in their activities and outcomes, both broadcasting and the National Health Service (NHS) were created within a rhetoric of public service and a dedication ‘to the service of humanity in its fullest sense’ so eloquently expressed by John Reith. Both were set up at significant moments in UK history: BBC radio began when the memory of the First World War was still painful; the NHS immediately after the Second. These were moments when the idea of a unified national ‘public’ had a particular potency, when there was a desire to overcome social divisions and inequities. Both services addressed a broad and inclusive ‘public’ with a scope way beyond those who were ‘casting their problems on society’. Both were funded by ‘the public’ at large through a universal payment and were free at the point of use; both reached out to a population seen as sharing certain needs. For John Reith, founder and spiritual father of the BBC, this broad public needed education, information and entertainment, too, even though this was rather reluctantly tagged on (Scannell and Cardiff 1991). For William Beveridge, whose 1942 Report gave birth to the UK’s post-war welfare state, the public needed physical care andmedical attention ‘from the cradle to the grave’ (Thane 1982:246–254; Fraser 1984:214–221).1 Although the historical realities which surrounded the foundation of the two services were complex, both continued to carry with them these powerful myths of origin, and these contributed to the embedded expectations and attitudes of practitioners and users of the services.

‘Quality’ and the Broadcasting White Paper

‘The entire edifice of micro-economic theory is based on the simple proposition that the goal of all economic activity is to maximise consumer welfare,’ wrote the neo-liberal economist, Cento Veljanovski (1983:44), and this was the spirit in which the White Papers on Broadcasting and Health were presented to the public. Working for Patients promised to ‘improve services to patients’ while Broadcasting in the ’90s: competition, choice and quality, stated firmly: ‘The government places the viewer and listener at the centre of broadcasting policy’ (Home Office 1988, para. 1.2).

Griffiths, Peacock and Restructuring Public Service

‘It was like being part of a conquering army,’ proclaimed Edwina Currie. The future Junior Minister of Health (1986–1988), with immaculate make-up and glistening red lips, positively glowed when, 23 years later, she recalled the Conservative election victory of 1983 (Tory, Tory, Tory programme 3 2006).1

Who’s the Casualty? Popular Programmes

‘In 1948 a dream was born: a National Health Service. In 1985 the dream is in tatters.’ This was how Paul Unwin and Jeremy Brock began their proposal to the BBC for a hospital series based in an accident and emergency department. They pitched a document which ‘read like a manifesto’ (Kingsley 1993:4).

The NHS and Third-Term Politics

‘From the rock market to the stock market’ proclaimed the advertisement. ‘Virgin Music is going public. After the big bang how about a little pop!’ And a traditional boss in a three-piece suit begins to rock and roll around his panelled office (1986).

Freedom and the Public

The theme of the 1979 election would be ‘freedom’. In the neo-liberal view, personal freedom was linked to economic freedom and both rejected the fusty ties of a class society. The election campaign set the tone. The Sun newspaper, owned by one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite entrepreneurs, Rupert Murdoch, printed a three-page article urging its huge popular readership to ‘Vote Tory This Time’ with some impressive capitalisation: ‘FREEDOM to run your life as YOU want to run it, or to be shackled by the bureaucrats and the political bully boys. FREEDOM to work with or without a Union card – or be shackled to a dole queue in a declining economy’ (Lamb 1989:154). The Conservatives’ election broadcast claimed: ‘Those who want to work are left feeling guilty.’ Aspirant parents and hard-working businessmen plead ‘guilty’ to the sin of ambition. ‘Do you want better schooling?’ ‘Guilty.’ ‘Did you make a profit?’ ‘Guilty: I’ll try not to do it again.’ ‘You’re sentenced to nationalisation!’ The interests of workers were presented as being in opposition to the interests of trade unions, and the interests of trade unions were characterised as ‘socialism’. ‘It’s a free society versus “socialism”,’ the right-wing Conservative politician and intellectual Enoch Powell had written back in 1965. For him, ‘everyone who goes into a shop and chooses one item instead of another is casting a vote in the economic ballot box’ (quoted by Letwin 1992:74). A debate between planning and competition, which dated back to the 19th century, was being revived (O’Malley 2009).

Your Life in Whose Hands? Restructuring Professionals

The relationship between the medical establishment and programme makers had never been entirely respectful. Undermining arrogant surgeons, giving them a taste of their own medicine, mocking their authority, had entertained the nation through the Carry On and Doctor films. The tradition continued with Richard Wilson’s tactless and hung-over surgeon in Only When I Laugh. Such moments could be seen as a safety-valve, a carnivalesque expression of fears, which served to confirm rather than attack established relationships. However, by the beginning of the 1980s the medical professions were being subjected to more serious challenges.

Restructuring Social Class

Reviewing her memoirs in 1993, The Times columnist, Janet Daley had argued that Thatcher’s greatest achievement had been the transformation of the class structure. Her personal toughness had helped to legitimise the ‘right of working-class people to be self determining’. On BBC2’s The Late Show (27 October 1993), Daley pointed out that it was ambitious working-class voters who had kept Thatcher in power.

Broadcasting into the 1980s

How does this passionate critique of the structure of broadcasting, with its parallels with the radical criticisms of the health service, and its denunciation of traditional definitions of public service as a sham, square with the broadcast output of the time? This chapter will be looking at the practice of broadcasting in the 1970s, and the radical campaigns which challenged and sought to reform it.

From Needs to Wants

As she identified four approaches to medical programming vying for dominance across the airwaves – the ‘look after yourself’; medical; consumer and environmental approaches – she observed convincingly the ways in which these were mapped on to shifting social attitudes. Broadcast programmes address a wide audience, but each of these categories conceptualised its audience in a particular way.