Censorship or conformity?
Dear Editors,
1. Michael Gill’s experience (May Socialist Standard) in having his invitation to participate as a Socialist Party representative on Kilroy withdrawn on the researcher learning of his political views, will surprise only those who thought that audience participation involved no pressure from the production team.
Whilst dissent is acceptable with the framework of conventional left-right politics, that is, over which party can run capitalism better, pressure to conform exists at all levels of broadcasting. That this happens at the highest level is made quite clear by the original 1927 BBC Charter. This state “Government has the last word . . . an absolute power of veto over BBC programmes”, and it can also instruct the Corporation to withdraw programme material even before it is sent.
But censorship such as Michael Gill experienced may result not from government instruction, but from either the personal bias, conscious or otherwise, of the production staff, or, as probably in this case, the sheer pressure on staff themselves to keep within the bounds of political conformity. They too, are workers afraid to step out of line and dare not risk being accused of introducing either irrelevant or contentious material.
The sympathetic presentation of Kilroy tends to obscure the fact that many personal issues touched upon are trivialised by not relating them to a deeper social causation. But then, if it were to do this, every such programme would point the finger at the wider audience’s acceptance of capitalism as the cause, and the closing catchphrase, “Take care of yourselves” would take on a wider significance. The banal might even give way to the exciting and adventurous.
But does the Socialist Party really expect the government media to provide a free unbiased platform for their views? I am not optimistic. Despite a number of Broadcasting Reports recommending that broadcasting provide an outlet for minority political views, I feel that the Socialist Party must rely on its own slender material resources for this.
2. Stewart King’s letter (May Socialist Standard) on the anti-working class activities of the Labour government evoked many memories for me. As one of the conscripts he mentions, dragooned into the army by that government, I refused their order to help break a London dock strike—one of the eleven occasions that government had used troops in industrial disputes. I was of course punished. In a perverse way, the 1945 Labour government helped make me a socialist.
But the history of politics is shrouded in myth, especially where the “social welfare” legislation of the post-war government is concerned, and I hope I may correct the misconception in Stewart King’s letter ascribing child benefit to them. The principle of Family Allowances had received general cross-party support in the wartime coalition government, but the Family Allowance Act was, in fact, given Royal Assent on 16 June 1945, the operational date being set for August 1946, to be implemented by whichever party was then in power. The government on 16 June was a Conservative-led caretaker government and the legislation was put forward by Hore-Belisha, a Conservative minister.
The Family Allowance Bill was therefore enacted some six weeks before the General Election put Labour in power on 26 July 1945. For obvious reasons neither Labour nor Conservative parties are keen to publicise this fact.
W. Robertson,
Hove, Sussex
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