Thursday, January 27, 2022

Pilkington Report: The SPGB's Statement (1963)

From the January 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard
The Socialist Party of Great Britain has tried for a long time, without success, to persuade the broadcasting organisations to allow us to state our point of view on radio and television. Because of this, we were particularly interested in the section of the Pilkington Report which dealt with the time allowed on the air to minority organisations. 
We submitted a statement to the committee which our readers may find of interest. As the Pilkington Report, in size and price, is intimidating enough to deter most people, we reproduce our statement below, as it appeared in an appendix to the Report.
1. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, on whose behalf this statement is submitted, is a political organisation, small in membership, but with a distinctive object and a continuous history over half a century or more of propaganda activity. Our purpose in submitting this statement is to draw the attention of the committee to the fact that in spite of repeated applications made during a period of over thirty years we have never been afforded the opportunity to state our distinctive case on radio or television in this country. Our companion organizations in certain other countries have fared better than we have here, and our own members on visits to the USA fairly easily obtain the opportunity denied to us in this country.

2. We have stated that we have never had the opportunity to explain the aims and policy of the Socialist Party of Great Britain on radio or television in this country. The importance of this to us is that these aims and policy have never been stated at all, since there is no organization except our own that is concerned to state them.

3. Not having had members elected to Parliament, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has, of course, not been considered for controversial political broadcasting under the agreement made with the major political parties. Nor, in spite of attempts to secure such opportunities, has it been included in the controversial broadcasts of a round-table character as envisaged by the 1947 agreement on political broadcasting. (Page 8 in appendix H to the Report of the Broadcasting Committee, 1949).

We repeat, that no listener or viewer in this country has ever heard the case of SPGB explained on radio or television by us, nor heard its distinctive attitude expounded in relation to problems of the day.

4. The problem of giving minorities opportunities to state their case has, of course, been considered often. The Broadcasting Committee, 1949, touched on various aspects. For example, in Paragraph 257 they dealt with religious and other minorities and made what would appear to be a suggestion covering all minorities. Paragraph 257 says in part:—
We cannot do more than throw out for consideration of the government the suggestion that it might be reasonable to have something that may be held to correspond to a “Hyde Park” of the air, that is to say, an opportunity for all minorities who have messages, religious or other, on some occasion to put their messages over, not regularly or at length, but some time.
In paragraph 259 the Committee went on to say that the broadcasting authority, in allotting opportunity for ventilation of controversial views, should not be guided “either by simple calculation of the numbers who already hold such views, or by fear of giving offence to particular groups of listeners. Minorities must have the chance by persuasion of turning themselves into majorities.”

5. Reference has already been made to the many fruitless applications we have made in the course of years. A number of applications were made between 1927 and the outbreak of war in 1939, but we have no detailed particulars of those as these records were destroyed when our Head Office was bombed.

In general the replies we received then to our applications were of the same kind as those we received at later dates. We were not told that for some reason or other we would never be allowed an opportunity; but always that there were reasons why the request could not be acceded to at that time.

6. One of these several applications made by us to the BBC was on nineteenth August, 1953, when we mentioned that another small political organization had been given a short space of broadcasting time. (See Appendix 1 for the correspondence about that application.)

The reply of the BBC explained, as we already knew, that, we did not qualify under the party political broadcast agreement. It also described the other broadcast to which we referred as having been included on the ground of “programme interest and attractiveness ”

To this we replied that what we wanted, on the lines of the suggestion of the 1949 committee, was an opportunity to state the controversial point of view of our Party.

In 1954 we submitted a statement drawn up, as far as we were able, on lines suggested by the BBC for inclusion in one of their programmes, but we were told on 21st April, 1954, that it was not of a kind that offered a basis for a broadcast.

Even if it had been considered suitable it would, of course, have fallen short of an opportunity for us to state our case.

7. Reference has already been made to experience in the USA. Members of the SPGB on visits to the USA and Canada have had several opportunities of stating our case in TV and Radio interviews, including half an hour of questions and answers on a popular TV programme in Los Angeles, ten minutes on Radio at Vancouver, an interview on another occasion on TV in Los Angeles and another on Radio at Vancouver.

In addition our companion party in the USA can obtain opportunity to make its views known on radio, as for example, recently in Boston.

8. It may be said that the inability of the SPGB to be able to state its case even once in over thirty years has not been due to a policy which results in the exclusion or neglect of minority points of view, but has been due to programme difficulties facing the controlling authorities. To such a suggestion we must point out that from the standpoint of giving expression to our minority point of view, we have been totally excluded just as we would have been if there had been a policy of exclusion.

9. We have been no more successful with ITV than with the BBC and an incident that occurred in 1958 will illustrate the kind of problem that arises. On 10th February, 1958, in an ITV lecture, a statement was made which, as reported to us, was to the effect that all Socialist parties supported the 1914-18 war. As the SPGB did not support the war we wrote to those responsible asking that the lecturer should defend or support his statement and that we be allowed facilities to state our position. From Associated Television Ltd., we received a reply stating that the remarks made were not quite correctly reported by us (but without giving their version) and referring us to the lecturer, who, we were assured, would be making any reply which was appropriate.

We wrote to the lecturer drawing his attention to our complaint, but did not receive a reply.
Executive Committee,
Socialist Party of Great Britain.

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