The Workers Who Switched Off Wogan
When, in happier times to come, the history of these rotten years of capitalism are written. special praise will be recorded for those men and women of the working class who pulled the plug on Terry Wogan. An industrial dispute is in progress at the BBC. and the bosses are being made to learn that without the workers to operate their means of mass communication even such unstoppable giants as Nicholas Witchell and ever-smiling Tel will be left talking to themselves.
The workers have called for a 16 per cent pay increase: profit-conscious Beeb-bosses refuse to offer more than 7 per cent—which is less than the current rate of inflation. The Chairman of the BBC, Marmaduke Hussey, is paid £679 a week for doing his unelected, part-time job of running the BBC in line with the wishes of the government. The unelected BBC governors—all part-timers, with other incomes—receive £407 a week. In 1987 the top four BBC bosses were paid £225,000: this was increased by 33 per cent, to £340.000, last year This year the 140 top managers at the BBC have been given a £2,000 pay increase. Meanwhile, a clerk in the BBC's Engineering Department starts on £125 a week before tax: researchers in BBC News and Current Affairs start on £208 before tax. Since 1982 the pay of BBC staff has risen even more slowly than teachers, nurses and ambulance drivers.
At a strike meeting in London in June BBC workers were told by workers from the World Service that during the demonstrations in Peking workers there had passed on messages of solidarity to the BBC strikers. These are the people who do the really important work in the broadcasting service. Of course, there is a terrible irony in the fact that when the BBC workers are not out on their one-day strikes they are having to put out programmes attacking the action of other strikers whose problems are the result of the same wages-profit system which puts making money for the idle minority before rewarding hard work. It has been really encouraging to see the power of the unions to blank the BBC screens and force the management to show repeat programmes and abbreviated news reports.
Wogan does homelessness
All good things come to an end. and just as the strikers took off Wogan from our screens. so it came to pass that the strike day was over and the Million-Dollar Smile returned. On 3 July Wogan "did" homelessness. Well, it was a good subject to do. Esther Rantzen had "done" incest and Lenny Henry had "done" starvation in Africa last year.
So, let's "do" the homeless. In half-an-hour, of course. That should crack the problem. This is the way TV “does" social problems. Bring on Tel—my word, he looks sincere tonight, they must be "doing" a Big Subject. Trot on a couple of homeless kids from cardboard city. They look like sad cases. It’s all wrong that they should be homeless. Tel looks compassionate. Then he looks at his watch. Hang on to your hats, lads and lasses, the half hour's nearly over and we ain't “done" the experts.
On trips David Trippier, the Junior Housing Minister. With him is Sheila McKechme of Shelter who explains just how miserable life is for the homeless. She says that there are an official 370,000 homeless people in England and Wales (116,000 homeless families) plus the 100,000 or 150,000 unrecorded kids who sleep rough, beg for a living and are not even counted by the government statistics. She points out that if you are under eighteen and not on a YTS scheme you are not entitled to state income support—but if you're homeless you can't get on to a YTS scheme. The young homeless are compelled to beg.
Trippier waffles on about the importance of housing associations to provide cheap accommodation. (Which is odd, because in the last ten years, while the Thatcher government has placed its hopes in such bodies to build homes, the number of houses built by housing associations has fallen from 40,000 to 25,000 a year). There are 102,000 empty properties in Britain. Nobody has counted the unused bedrooms, but one would not lose too much cash in a bet that our Terry has more than a few in his house.
Enough of such talk; half-an-hour's up and we've "done" the homeless. Switch over to Coronation Street. No homeless people there. Although I for one would rather live in a cardboard box than in Albert Square—better homeless than brainless. I say.
Down on the Farm
The Killing Fields (BBC1, 2 July, 11.05am) was about the dangers facing farm workers. Last year 56 workers were killed on British farms—agriculture is second only to the construction industry for occupational fatalities. These deaths are sometimes caused by personal negligence, but often by cost-cutting refusal by farm employers to bother with safety standards. There are only 160 safety inspectors for the whole of Britain; they cover about 2.000 farms each and do not visit farms more than once every three to nine years. Children of thirteen are legally allowed to drive tractors on farms and this was defended by Richard Epton of the National Farmers Union who pointed out that this kind of work is good training for kids to become efficient farm workers later in life. We were told the sad story of fourteen-year-old Brendan Dixon who was killed on a Norfolk farm where he was a part-time employee.
Another case of profit before safety: money before life. Now, that could be a subject for Wogan to "do" if he finds himself with a spare half-hour to fill—that is, if the BBC strikers haven't filled it in for him.
Steve Coleman
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