Between the Lines: I'll take the Whitehouse (1988)

The Between the Lines Column from the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

I’ll take the Whitehouse

ITV opened its autumn season with a blockbuster (for which read: expensive, short-run soap opera) called I’ll Take Manhattan. It was the usual story of highly suntanned men making love to dollar signs and women who failed the audition for Dynasty or Dan Quayle's past. In between endless bouts of what the Sun calls bonking, these blokes compete over who can be the richest swine and own most of New York.

As unbelievable and tasteless tedium, such soap bubbles fade into insignificance when compared with that bigger-budgeted soap opera which has been dominating the US media in recent times. The great battle for the right to preside over American capitalism, between the Democrat with the permanent grin and the Vice President who has spent the last eight years as the chief assistant to Washington DC s village idiot.

The media dominates the US election. It dominates it in a manner that turns conventions into variety shows, speeches into prolonged smiles peppered with cliches and ideas into temporary interferences in the struggle to say least and win most support. The media campaigns of both parties in the US election are such that no socialist opposition, even if it was numerically big enough to mount a campaign against them (which at the moment the World Socialist Party of the United States is not) would be in a financial position to even begin to compete equally in an attempt to persuade the US workers of the case for the socialist alternative.

Instead of any serious attempt at presenting society as it is or offering solutions to its manifold problems, of which the wage slaves of the USA are far from free, the election advertising which is put out concentrates almost entirely on fascistic leader imagery. As in the implausible soap operas, the audience is urged to suspend disbelief and devote their minds entirely to superficial issues of personality. Thus it was that while Congress voted millions of dollars to arm the Contra terrorists, supported by both Bush and the Republican and Bentsen, Dukakis’s running-mate, the media "news" was about whether Bush's partner, Quayle. had once slept with a Playboy model when she was working as a hired "political lobbyist".

Instead of there being any debate about why one in four US children are now living below the official poverty line, the men with the media agenda were more interested in finding out how it was that Quayle. the super-patriot, managed to do the sensible thing and, like many other rich young kids of his class, dodge the Vietnam war where workers were sent to be mutilated and murdered.

Nobody elects the owners or controllers of NBC. CBS or ABC. Yet it is widely acknowledged in the USA that if they want to destroy a Presidential candidate they can. With them lies the power to tell the millions of American workers what "the real issues" are. Approximately half of the American workers will respond by not voting. It is bad enough having to watch tripe like I'll take Manhattan. without being told that you have to appear as an unpaid extra in it.

I’ll take Downing Street

While Hollywood beefcakes were pretending to take Manhattan and political half-wits were trying to take the Whitehouse. poor old Neil is still trying to storm Ten Downing Street. Panorama (BBC1. 9.30pm, 5 September) was all about the Labour Party’s current policy review exercise. Who ever said that good old tragedy was dead?

The programme exemplified much that is the pathetic tragedy of the reformist Labour Party. There was Tony Benn addressing a small rally of believers who had come to hear the rhetoric of radical change. The noises he made were good ones; some of it sounded like selected paragraphs from the Socialist Standard. It was, of course, the unselected passages which let him down and make him essentially no more than a useful frontman to be used by Kinnock and the rest in order to appropriate the hope of workers who should be using their energies destroying capitalism, not trying to run it. There was John Prescott who believes that Labour Party policy is fine and the world would be a much happier place if only the Labour Party had an extremely opportunist Deputy leader who comes from Hull and has no particular ideas about anything and is called John Prescott. Roy Hattersley. looking more than ever like a sad parody of himself, dribbled on about the importance of developing the Labour Party's ideas, by which he meant that more people should read his extremely dull book about why individuals would be more free under a "mixed economy".

There was even a two-second shot of a couple of Socialist Worker sellers standing outside a Labour Party meeting telling the Labourites how they have betrayed the workers once again. Of course. Socialist Worker urged workers to vote for these Labour betrayers in 1987, as they did in 1983, 1979, 1974 . . . The tragedy of the Panorama programme was that it showed the consequences which the Labour Party has brought on itself by 80 years of promising to reform away the inherent problems of the capitalist system without seeking to abolish the system itself. The simplicity of the socialist alternative — the need for a voice to be heard urging workers to abandon all illusions in reformism was not heard on the programme. The fact is that there are those seeking to change society and there are those seeking to change the seating arrangements in the Palace of Westminster and Kinnock's party has become so absorbed in the latter process that it no longer even occurs to them that whoever wins, the workers will lose under capitalism.

Your chance to be critics?

Right to Reply (C4. 6pm, 3 September) came from the Edinburgh TV Festival where four ’ordinary viewers" were invited to have their say about what's wrong with TV. In a half-hour programme, which included a five-minute introduction and several minutes of media controllers patting the "ordinaries" on the head, this big chance for the workers to have their say amounted to about five minutes each.

Of course, Channel Four chose who was to be invited to come along and criticise them and — surprise surprise — the Socialist Party member from Glasgow, who was told by Right to Reply that they would probably want him to come along, was eventually dropped from the programme. In the event, the four "ordinaries raised some pretty ordinary criticisms which, even if acted on. would not change the fundamentally undemocratic, pro-capitalist. life-distorting. minority-controlled nature of British TV output.

This column will continue to expose TVs crucial role as an agency for capitalist propaganda and manipulation of news, ideas and images. We shall praise them when, as occasionally happens, they tell the truth and offer some enlightening material for the consumption of our class. (In that respect, we can only be pleased to see the repeat showing of the excellent documentary, Fourteen Days in May and the follow-up documentary shown last month.) But we shall not desist from demonstrating that between the lines of most of what is not shown on TV is a poisonous intellectual diet which workers absorb at their peril.

Steve Coleman

Born to it – or just up for it? (2001)

"Alex the Animal"

TV Review from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are you a born athlete? A born artist? Naturally intelligent? Or were you born with the wrong genes?

There is something depressing about the assumption that to be good at anything. you have to he born good at it. It’s depressing because it robs us of control over our own lives, and seeing as we give up most of the control we could exercise over out lives to our employers for the vast majority of our time, it’s a loss we can ill afford to make.

It’s all part of the ruling ideology, of course. We’re told that the reason we don’t have any power over our lives is because we don’t have it, and we don’t have it because that’s part of the natural order of things, and we wouldn’t know what to do with it if we did have it. You’re either a born leader – or an entrepreneur – or a natural follower or employee. Socialism is against human nature.

But this is in contradiction to another ruling idea, namely that if you want to get on in life and achieve something worthwhile, or become an entrepreneur, all you have to do is “put your mind to it”. Hard work (i.e. hard work for an employer), dedication and long hours are all that is required and, sooner or later, you shall surely succeed.

The fallacy of the first idea was exposed in an entertaining way in Faking It, a Channel 4 documentary showing until recently on Tuesday evenings. The idea of the show was to take Joe or Josephine Public, and see if they could perform a role other than that which capitalist society had assigned to them. They were given a month’s training by people with expert knowledge on the role they had to play. Then they were thrown in the deep end: they had to perform the role for real alongside those for who it is a “natural” job. The “experts” were asked if they could spot the “fake”.

For example, a painter and decorator was trained how to paint modern art, and successfully fooled the art critics who instead denounced a successful modern artist as a fake; a cellist was successfully trained to perform as a dance DJ; and, in my favourite episode, an effete, toff homosexual Oxford student was trained up to be a bouncer working the door on a busy London nightclub.

Having been bought up on a farm in the country, the Oxford student’s only previous experience seeing their housing estate, all his worst prejudices were confirmed. “Oh my god,” he said in horror as he passed a discarded mattress in his taxi. “Did you see that? There was a mattress on the pavement. That’s exactly what I was expecting. Oh my god.”

Given everything that we knew about this student, the chances of his making it as a bouncer on the door of a nightclub could not seem more unlikely. When he met and stood side by side with his trainers – towering doormen experienced in the martial arts and in real-life street-fighting – the physical and cultural differences between them seemed all the more startling. The doormen looked “naturally” big and imposing, and the idea of turning this slightly built, nervous student into one of them was comic – plain impossible.

But the show demanded the impossible. We followed him as he went through a metamorphosis – not exactly waking up one morning to find himself transformed into a gigantic fighting machine – but a gradual and hard process of training. He was put through his paces in martial art skills – including a few sessions in the ring so he would know what it feels like to get hit hard – and was given acting and voice training lessons so he looked and sounded the part – “y’aint caming in, y’ah daan’t meet the dress code”.

By the end, not only did he look and sound the part but, when he played for real on the door of a busy London nightclub, not one of the “real” bouncers identified him as the fake. Natural born bouncer?

Another essential part of the training process was a night of bonding with his new-found friends. He was taken on a piss-up, which rounded off the night in a strip club. When asked if he had enjoyed the night, the student came clean to the huge loud-mouthed cockney doormen, and told them he was gay.

The interesting thing about this was that the student assumed they would be horribly prejudiced, coming from the background that they did, and would turn against him – indeed, would feel dodgy about having rough and tumbled with a poof. As it turned out, it was the student’s prejudice about them that was unfounded. They couldn’t give a shite about his sexuality – and pointed out to the student that he was the one who was prejudiced for making assumptions about them based on their accents, their job, and their housing estate.

I loved the whole series because it showed that human beings are capable of a wide variety of behaviours and skills when given a favourable environment. It sent the mind reeling with what is possible when we assert our own needs.

Imagine what we could he and do if we participated fully in the creation of our own lives! Our social existence may determine our consciousness, but there is now no reason, other than the rule of capital, why we cannot actively create our own social existence, and therefore our own consciousness. This is real freedom – not just freedom from oppression or freedom to do what you want, nor even freedom to choose but a dynamic freedom to determine what the choices are in the first place

Stuart Watkins

Blogger's Note:

The Guardian's 'How We Made' column had a short piece on the "Alex the Animal" episode in September 2020.

Proper Gander: Far into the far right (2024)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite its promotional graphics promising a flashy spy thriller with steely black-clad secret agents, Channel 4’s documentary Undercover: Exposing The Far Right was more sobering than spectacular. Cameras followed investigators from advocacy group Hope Not Hate as they went incognito among far-right activists to learn more about how they operate. As Hope Not Hate’s Director of Research Joe Mulhall says, ‘the far right often present one image to the world, and what they’re saying when they think no-one is listening is different. We have to be in the room when they think no-one’s listening’.

Two researchers who get ‘in the room’ are Harry Shukman and Patrik Hermansson. They travel from London to Tallinn, Warsaw and Athens, with Harry wearing a hidden camera and adopting the persona of ‘Chris’ to infiltrate a far-right network. This is composed of the richer, entrepreneurial type of activist, rather than the thuggish, St George’s flag-wearing variety, but their attitudes are the same, as shown when secret filming reveals abhorrent racist views.

By attending meetings online and in person as ‘Chris’, Harry pieces together information about what he calls a ‘very secretive company’: the Human Diversity Foundation, whose CEO Emil Kirkegaard is described as a ‘scientific racist’. One arm of the company arranges and funds research into ‘race science’, with articles published by its other arm, the Aporia website, established by ex-RE teacher Matt Archer. Aporia’s essays defend conservative values, with an unnerving emphasis on discussing genetic differences between groups. The documentary goes on to explain that the Human Diversity Foundation is a replacement for the Pioneer Fund, a financial backer of the far right. Being a charity, the Pioneer Fund had to disclose its funding sources, but as a private company, the HDF has no such requirement. ‘Chris’ is keen to find out the identity of a donor willing to invest $1.3 million, who Kirkegaard says is ‘between white nationalist and libertarian’. When ‘Chris’ asks if this person’s views could attract criticism, Kirkegaard replies ‘he’s so well off that it doesn’t really matter what they say’, which was one of the more depressing lines in the programme. Harry and Patrik eventually learn that the donor is Andrew Conru, a millionaire who made money in the early years of the internet by setting up online dating sites. Captions at the end of the documentary say that Archer and Conru have now ended their involvement with the HDF.

A previous covert operation by Hope Not Hate to infiltrate the fascist group National Action helped prevent a murder attempt on Labour MP Rosie Cooper, and was later dramatised for ITV. The documentary features its work to investigate and expose other far-right players, such as Paul Golding and Tommy Robinson. Golding, leader of the Britain First party, is filmed by Harry’s hidden camera saying he wants the country to deteriorate, as he sees it, so that this will motivate more people towards the far right. Tommy Robinson (formerly of the English Defence League) was found guilty of defaming a 15-year-old refugee from Syria, and went on to break a court order by repeating his claims in interviews and broadcasts. He was sent to prison for this in October 2024, with evidence for his trial contributed by Hope Not Hate.

Fighting the far right comes with risks of threats and retaliation; its ideology attracts people attracted to violence. The documentary itself was pulled at the last minute from premiering at the London Film Festival in case its screening led to reprisals. And while it was being recorded, Hope Not Hate’s founder and CEO Nick Lowles heard that the police had arrested someone who was arranging to have him targeted. The programme shows the strength and perseverance of those such as Patrik and Harry in particular who have kept up a persona to go undercover amongst such hate-fuelled people, although they’ll have to find other activities now their identities have been broadcast.

Contrasted with the bravery of the investigators is the confidence of the far right, no doubt boosted by the wealth available to organisations such as the Human Diversity Foundation. The documentary focuses on revealing Conru’s identity, but presumably there are also other millionaires who feel that their privileged status is best defended by investing in ‘race science’. The more money which goes into researching ‘race science’, the more it can gain traction in the market for ideas, regardless of the weakness of its arguments. The far-right activists featured in the documentary promote their ideology with a professional, business-like approach which suits their aims. The HDF aspires for its research to influence public policy and the views of the capitalist class, whereas the likes of Tommy Robinson and Paul Golding aim to attract support among the working class. This potentially makes the HDF and its associates more dangerous than the ‘populist’ far right, because of the power wielded by the elite. Even with a proportion of the capitalist class backing ‘race science’ – ie, race-based eugenics, how successfully they could translate this into furthering their own wealth would depend on the vagaries of the economic market and attracting broader support. Still, it’s concerning that ‘race science’ is now more prominent as part of the far right’s ideology than at any time since the 1930s. Hope Not Hate aims to combat this tendency by unearthing how its organisations are run and working with the police when they break the law. However many successful investigations they complete, the struggle is too wide for them to win, as it will continue as long as the societal conditions exist which breed far-right ideology.

Mike Foster

Proper Gander: Gathering storm (2023)

The Proper Gander column from the November 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Staying behind at work to get drunk and tunelessly sing karaoke with colleagues every few weeks isn’t in most people’s routine, and certainly wasn’t during the Covid pandemic. But that’s what happened then in 10 Downing Street, the place which issued the restrictions on gatherings for the rest of us. During the lockdowns which began in spring and winter 2020, at least 16 leaving dos, quiz nights and ‘Wine Time Fridays’ were held behind the shiny black door while the rest of the country was policed for illegal meet-ups. Channel 4’s docudrama Partygate was a sobering reminder of the Conservative Party’s not-so conservative parties. The programme’s dramatised scenes of government staff’s boozing, trips to the alcohol aisle in the supermarket and incriminating email exchanges were derived from findings in the inquiry headed by senior civil servant Sue Gray and the police’s investigation. Alongside these scenes were clips from past news broadcasts, often of Boris Johnson saying something crass.

The drama focuses on the party-animal team of ‘special advisers’ working in Number 10, particularly a newcomer to the Brexit Unit when the pandemic hit, Grace Greenwood, played by Georgie Henley. While she and many of the other characters aren’t specific real people, they plausibly represent a breed of young, posh graduates from the ‘right’ establishments who sycophantically support Boris Johnson. He’s only depicted in the dramatised sections from behind or at a distance. When he speaks, as voiced by Jon Culshaw, he comes out with embarrassing strings of half-formed quips which his fan club laps up. Other real people portrayed include Johnson’s special adviser and head of operations, Shelley Williams-Walker, who was made a Dame in his resignation honours list, perhaps for services to DJing during the parties. Another is Helen MacNamara who, as the government’s ethics chief at the time, presumably thought that providing a karaoke machine for a leaving bash was the morally right thing to do.

Cleaners and security guards are the only staff depicted as having any sense of responsibility, but too low down the pecking order for this to count, such as when a guard is given the brush-off after trying to object to one of the get-togethers. The police’s response to attending at least one Downing Street gathering hasn’t been revealed to the public, although details of some of the fines awarded have been. Boris Johnson and Helen MacNamara each paid £50 fixed penalty notices for attending parties, with MacNamara denying any partying. Rishi Sunak, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was also issued with a £50 notice, along with 80 others, meaning that Downing Street was the address with the most Covid regulation penalties in the country. Between the dramatised scenes we hear from people fined larger amounts, like Xen Watts, the organiser of a snowball fight in Leeds who was issued with a £10,000 fine and Toriano Reed from London who was ordered to pay £14,300 for being held responsible for a gathering in his shed.

The programme also includes interviews with people who kept to the lockdown rules through their most difficult times. Alan Handley from Tamworth talks about his wife’s funeral, which only eight family members could attend, sitting two metres apart. Emma Jones from London speaks about how her daughter couldn’t meet with her friends or relatives before she died of cancer. While these, and others, aren’t likely to forget how Downing Street staff ignored the rules, after enough time passes, scandals like Partygate tend to get pushed away from most people’s attention, replaced by different criticisms of the government (such as debates around immigration or the HS2 railway line) and wider bad news. So, the programme was a useful reminder of how the Conservative Party has operated, with a smug assumption of superiority. The characters working in Number 10 featured in the programme consider themselves above the rest of us, and therefore not subject to the same rules, especially the lockdown laws they devised. They act like this not because they’re Tories as much as because of their distance from the populace created by the institution they work (and partied) in. The framework of government comes with a very limited type of democracy, but the special advisers are unelected. Instead, they’re selected from a small bubble of objectionable yuppies active in whichever political party is dominant. So, they’re even less accountable than voted-in politicians. The Partygate scandal drew attention to this aspect of government, behind the polished spin which it prefers to present.

Sue Gray’s report was published in May 2022, soon after the police completed their investigation, so Channel 4’s dramatisation of their findings has come late to the party, so to speak. Its broadcast was still timely, though, coinciding with October’s Conservative Party conference. This scheduling looks like a jibe by Channel 4 at a government which has wanted to review its broadcasting remit but probably won’t get the chance before the next general election. But the programme does more than reproach hypocritical Tories drunk on power as much as on red wine. It highlights how they acted as they did because the institution they are part of is so detached from the rest of us.

Mike Foster

Proper Gander: Super marketing (2023)

The Proper Gander column from the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s the difference between Wagon Wheels and Cart Wheels? About 10p a pack and the colour of their packaging: Cart Wheels are Aldi’s cheaper version of the perennial chocolatey snack, which original maker Burton’s insists hasn’t shrunk over the decades. The differences – and similarities – between established brands like Wagon Wheels and supermarkets’ counterparts were the subject of Channel 4’s Secrets Of The Supermarket Own-Brands. Presenter Denise van Outen checks out the products lining the aisles, and chats with various experts to reveal how supermarket own-brands are more than just slightly inferior copycats of ‘proper’ brands. How they are marketed is as important as how they are manufactured, and the documentary only has enough time to outline some of the methods used to flog us one variety of comestibles over another. With its jaunty music and bright colours, the programme is pitched as a cheeky nudge to be more shopping savvy rather than a hard-hitting exposé of a racket. Despite this, it highlights how much we’re manipulated not just in what we buy, but also what we think we’re buying.

Most supermarkets have at least three ‘tiers’ of own-brand goods: the cheapest ‘budget’ range, the standard one which just undercuts the ‘proper’ brands, and the ‘premium’ one with the swankiest wrapping. Traditionally, ‘budget’ ranges were packaged in an obviously no-frills way, with the apparent cheapness of the design echoing the lower price. A tin of Tesco’s Value baked beans with its stark blue and white stripes looked quite unlike a can of Heinz Beanz. Strategies started to change around 2018, by which time discount chains like Aldi and Lidl had established themselves in the marketplace. Since then, ‘budget’ supermarket own-brands have been more likely to ape the packaging of their branded counterpart, such as Cart / Wagon Wheels and other favourites like Hula Hoops and Robinson’s cordials. Often, the branding will barely mention the supermarket and instead go for an image that suggests a homespun, small-scale producer, such as Sainsbury’s Stamford Street or Tesco’s Stockwell & Co. Both strategies disguise that the products are ‘budget’ own-brands, although the ‘premium’ ranges, such as Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference, aren’t shy with mentioning the shop. All this suggests that supermarkets no longer want their name to be associated with cheapness, even though cheapness is what more people are after since prices rocketed. Still, the strategies are doing what they’re supposed to, proven by how supermarkets generate more profits from their own-brands than from branded products.

The way that own-brand goods are manufactured is planned to maximise profits by minimising costs. Richard Crampton, Sainsbury’s Director of Fresh Food, admits that sometimes the three ‘tiers’ of their own-brand products, from ‘budget’ to ‘premium’, are all made in the same place. One example is their own-brand stuffed pasta, with each range distinguished from the others by slight variations in their recipes ‘enhancing that product’ to the ‘same high standards’, enthuses Crampton. There are also more similarities in the content of branded and own-brand goods than we might expect. For example, Hula Hoops and their replicas are both produced in the same crisp factory, albeit with varying ingredients or processes. And the six most well-known brands of washing powder are made by only two companies, with nearly all own-brand ones manufactured by a third. The diverse range of brands for what boils down to similar products by a few producers gives only an illusion of choice, one of capitalism’s hallmarks.

The companies get away with this because of how their branding strategies are underpinned by an understanding of psychology. One state of mind which they aim to encourage is loyalty to a particular product. We’re most likely to stick with ‘proper’ brands for toiletries, beauty products and cleaning materials, no doubt reinforced by their advertising campaigns which can ‘shout louder’, according to retail expert Miya Knights. While there’s more competition between own-brand and branded food and drink, some long-established names have maintained their loyal followers, such as Coca Cola. The documentary features YouTube food reviewers the Smythe family, whose parents resolutely only buy Coke. However, the predictable result of a blind taste test is that they mistake Lidl’s Freeway cola for ‘the real thing’, showing that the brand they adhere to isn’t as distinctive as they assume.

A related point was made when Denise and brand psychologist Jonathan Gabay set up a street stall to hand out Magnum-like ice creams to passers-by. Some are promoted with a snazzy image and an elaborate back story about how the ice cream gets churned, and others are only announced with the word ‘Aldi’ written in felt-tip. Even though the same ice cream was given out throughout, those which came with the sales pitch were thought to taste better than the ones without, even once the hoodwinked recipients were told the truth.

The two experiments show us how much our preferences, for food in this instance, are shaped by how they are commodified. A small number of producers have dominated the market by finding the most cost-effective ways to manufacture our more popular fodder. Tweaking the details of a basic recipe creates versions of the product which can be pitched to customers grouped by levels of spending ability. This lack of real choice between ice cream, cola or pasta is disguised by varying the branding, either a little or a lot. At its most manipulative, branding can even impact on how appetising we find the product, when we associate its image with good taste. Throughout, money dictates how this process plays out, in the costs of manufacturing and marketing, and then in the sales which turn into profits for the owners. The way that commodification moulds what we consume is inescapable in capitalism, of course, not just in what we use but also what we watch. Secrets Of The Supermarket Own-Brands itself was interspersed with glossy adverts and sponsored by a big name brand.

Mike Foster

Virgin on the Ridiculous (1995)

TV Review from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Channel Four has recently been showing a season of horror films, and viewers could have been forgiven for thinking that the kind of torture exhibited in Witness: True Love Waits (4 July, 9pm) was an entirely new addition to the horror genre. The action centred on Nashville, Tennessee, where the devotees of the local Baptist churches have taken to insisting that their children take vows of celibacy until they marry. Much of the documentary was taken up with film of local church “leaders" instructing teenage children in what is, and is not, permissible behaviour before marriage according to the “Holy Scriptures". Teenage girls were advised to spend six months "finding Jesus" before entering into any sort of relationship with the opposite sex whatsoever, and after this period of holy probation, only talking, holding hands and some forms of dancing were deemed permissible.

And were the teenagers happy with this state of affairs? Were they buggery. Most were torn between guilt at offending Jesus before descending into hell for all eternity, and expressing their natural sexual inclinations in a healthy manner. The boys were sad and guilt-ridden, the girls either brainwashed automatons or tearful would-be rebels. Most demonstrated signs of what is commonly called neurosis. One teenager was so deliriously happy with her lot that, when asked to recant her past sexual indiscretions before the church, she spent the entire time sobbing her heart out, barely able to speak the guilty words that were tearing her apart. After the ordeal, she ran back into the congregation to the arms of her parents, looking for consolation from the twisted mentalities that were so intent on making her life a misery. She probably had nowhere else to run.

Truly, what bastards these Christians can be, like most fundamentalist religious fanatics. Brainwashing, manipulation and humiliation were the techniques used to get the right result for Jesus and that was only the public face of it. Without a doubt, True Love Waits was one of the most terrifying programmes seen on television this year, and should have been compulsive viewing for anyone toying with the ideas of any of the barmy god-squad outfits that infest modern capitalism. It was a truly disgusting sight to see slick twenty-something preachers feeding guilt on a plate to vulnerable teenagers. "No touching below the neck! No 'dirty talk’ and certainly no passing of bodily fluids!" Verily, the devil's liquids are everywhere and are not to be trifled with until couples are “united in Christ".

Good News

Despite all this nonsense there was some good news. For despite the attractions of the "community" of church, with its friendships. singing and sense of common purpose, there were doubts. Oh yes, big doubts, and the flock were forever in need of shepherding away from the green grass of Satan's meadows. Straying from the path seemed quite common, and the leaders always needed to be on hand to quell any misgivings or slap wrists (mind you, we weren’t told of their views on masturbation but can guess).

In one ceremony reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the young believers were encouraged to bring the Devil's Music to church and burn their tapes and records in front of the congregation. To put it mildly, most looked less than ecstatic at the thought, and one girl said that secular music played such an important role in her life that she wouldn’t. Some eventually turned up with bags of old tapes to destroy, but most did so with what was visibly no enthusiasm for the project These were, in truth, the sort of people who were manipulated into burning Beatles' records in the sixties when John Lennon made his famous remark about the Beatles being "bigger than Jesus". However, most modern Bible-bashers should care to remember that the fuss soon died down when American teenagers realised that Lennon wrote better lyrics than Jesus and could play the guitar as well.

What True Love Waits showed was what history demonstrates all the time. Religious indoctrination can never be wholly successful for the very reason that much of it is so evidently at odds with human instinct. Primarily the instincts to love, to play, and to have sexual intercourse for the sheer pleasure of it which characterise the human species. The turnover of adherents to Evangelical and Baptist churches seems to be even greater than that for those mind-numbing Trotskyist groupings, and it is not surprising.

Of course, even a broken clock is right twice every twenty-four hours and not absolutely everything in the Christian creed is wrong, just most of it. Indeed, if the teenage church-goers of America care to take one piece of advice from the Bible it might be "go forth and multiply", an adage which, in a slightly different context, should be directed at their religious manipulators and tormentors too.

Dave Perrin

Proper Gander: send in the crowns (2023)

The Proper Gander TV column from the June 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Both of May’s big events were marked by corny rituals, ridiculous costumes and celebrating a country’s figurehead, with the hype cranked up high. While the Eurovision Song Contest comes around every year, there’s a longer gap between coronations. Over the seven decades since the last one, the reach of the media has grown in ways which those who huddled round a small black-and-white screen in 1953 could scarcely have imagined. Then, as now, the TV coverage of the coronation shows us that its pomp and pageantry is a world away from the difficulties endured by the vast majority. Whether the coronation is seen as an affront or a temporary escape from rising prices and struggling public services depends on our individual point of view.

The point of view pushed by the mainstream media was that Charles’ crowning should bolster a sense of pride not just in the monarchy but in the country’s ability to ‘put on a do’ when so much else isn’t running well. The latter also applies to Eurovision, and another similarity between the two events was the central role of the BBC. The corporation had the monopoly over footage filmed in Westminster Abbey during the coronation ceremony, with an agreement that they would be paid royalties (as it were) by other broadcasters using it. As reported by the Guardian on 5 May, this arrangement was made murkier by the coverage being produced by BBC Studios, a for-profit arm of the corporation, with ultimate say over what could be shown decreed by the royal household. On the day, this was communicated to broadcasters every five minutes, with some parts of the ritual vetoed beforehand, such as Charles being greased up with ‘holy oil’. The National Union of Journalists, in particular, was concerned ‘that a public event, paid for by the people and televised for them to be able to pay their respects should be censored in even a small way’. The BBC’s coverage wouldn’t have been much different without these restrictions, though, as it was overseen by Clare Popplewell, whose favour with The Firm was shown by her being appointed as a commander of the Royal Victorian Order following her work on televising 2022’s platinum jubilee.

This explains why the BBC gave only the briefest mentions of the anti-royalist protests, whereas Sky News, for example, gave them more airtime in its own reports. Otherwise, Sky News’ commentary aimed for the stateliness of the BBC’s, throwing in predictably bland phrases such as that Charles is ‘fulfilling his destiny’ and that the ceremony is ‘both ancient and modern’. Anyone tuning in to GB News would have had Nigel Farage and David Starkey for company, lapping up all the tradition. Later, on his Tonight programme, Mark Dolan hosted a ‘coronation party’ for a panel of pundits wide-eyed with enthusiasm for the royals. He talked about the spectacle in sycophantic superlatives, while against protester ‘numpties’ he said that ‘our day’ was an advert for ‘modern Britain’, adding that if the republicans win we would only get a faceless public servant as a figurehead, such as ‘president Gary Lineker’. GB News’ coverage had levels of tackiness you at least wouldn’t get on the BBC.

Channel 4’s coverage was less reverent, with a package of programmes on its website including documentaries reminding us about Diana’s death and Prince Andrew’s incriminating interview with Emily Maitlis, the latter to be the subject of an upcoming drama from Netflix. Sitcom The Windsors’ coronation special saw the event relocated on the cheap to Slough’s Holiday Lodge Express and Charles abdicating. For all its cheekiness, The Windsors ended up with the family reconciled on the Buckingham Palace balcony and the crowd below rejecting a ‘fiscally responsible, slimmed down monarchy to suit these straitened times’ for one that’s ‘full on’. Like all Channel 4’s output, it wasn’t as radical as it would have us believe.

ITV’s coverage has the honour of the most complained about programme of the year so far, following actor Adjoa Andoh saying ‘there is a bit of me that has gone from the rich diversity of the Abbey to the terribly white balcony’. She was perhaps forgetting that in the real world, the nobility isn’t going to be as diverse as that imagined in her show Bridgerton.

A short piece broadcast on Al Jazeera pointed out that jewels used in the ceremonial trinkets brought out for the coronation are a product of the state’s colonial background, including the slave trade. ‘Their king is a symbol of our bitter past which unfortunately translates into our very difficult present’, according to Everisto Benyera of the University of South Africa. Otherwise, the commentary on Al Jazeera was drier and less involved, with historian Linda Porter saying that while the pageantry is something people ‘can be pleased with’, it may not have a wide impact on ‘national pride’. There’s a contradiction in trying to make people feel part of an institution which is outside them. This applies not just to the British monarchy, but to any monarchy, including that of Qatar, whose state funds Al Jazeera.

The various broadcasters’ coronation coverage differed in tone according to their niche in the market, although they still relied on the ‘money shot’ footage from inside Westminster Abbey controlled and sold by the royals and the BBC. For all the mainstream media’s efforts to present the coronation as something for everyone to rally around, within a day there were calls from leaders of commonwealth countries in the Caribbean to ditch the monarchy, and complaints that the police were too keen to use their new powers to arrest protesters. The coronation has exposed tensions in society as much as its glossy spectacle has been a distraction.

Mike Foster

Proper Gander: Dukes And Rebukes (2023)

The Proper Gander TV column from the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The royal family get enough coverage in the media without a need for fictional retellings of its excesses. Netflix’s ongoing series The Crown has been the most prominent, reframing the dynasty’s recent history in whatever way will win the most awards. In what looks like a dig at The Crown’s pretentiousness, Channel 4’s Prince Andrew: The Musical makes a song and dance of the life of the now-disgraced Duke of York, the eighth person in line to the throne. Andrew is played by comic actor Kieran Hodgson, who also wrote the show’s deft, droll script. He portrays ‘randy Andy’ as smarmy and self-aggrandising, enjoying an extravagant lifestyle because he’s ‘Elizabeth’s favourite son’ and doesn’t have the expectations of being the heir.

The show takes us through Andrew’s life with jaunty musical numbers and real archive footage narrated from the character’s perspective. We begin with the 2019 interview with Emily Maitlis on Newsnight, which Andrew reluctantly realises didn’t put him in a good light, before rewinding to his younger years, believing that he was a hero in the Falklands War. His marriage to Sarah Ferguson is presented as a transaction from which Sarah sought to benefit, much like her later attempt at selling access to Andrew to an undercover reporter. A role as a trade envoy gave ‘air miles Andy’ opportunities to continue his jet-setting ways, no sweat. The frothy format of a musical is supposed to be an impudent way of telling his story, but jars when the subject of sexual abuse comes up. After Andrew’s association with convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein became known and he was accused of sexual assault by Virginia Giuffre (the latter glossed over in the musical), he ‘stepped back from public duties’. He reached a financial settlement with Giuffre which (in a logically puzzling way) did not include an admission of guilt. The programme risks minimising the seriousness of the allegations against Andrew by putting them in the frivolous context of a musical. In it, Andrew makes the point that he’s a useful scapegoat to take attention away from the wrongdoings of the rest of the royals.

The show was commissioned as part of ‘a collection of irreverent, thought-provoking and hugely entertaining shows that no other broadcaster would air’, according to Ian Katz, Channel 4’s Chief Content Officer. This may have felt like a last throw of the dice for the channel which at the time was planned to be privatised, a decision since reversed.

Prince Andrew: The Musical isn’t the only Channel 4 show to present the royals in a cartoonish way, being close in tone to The Windsors, a sitcom which has been running since 2016. In both programmes, members of ‘the firm’ are characterised too loosely to be particularly insulting. In the musical, Munya Chawawa portrays Charles as a stern boss who tries to keep Andrew in line, and who also unfortunately reminds us of his infamous ‘tampon’ remark. The late queen was immune from being lampooned in either show, though, not appearing as a character. While Elizabeth was treated with too much veneration in the mainstream media to attract much criticism, the caricatures of Charles demonstrate that there’s less reverence for him, even now he’s the monarch.

Prince Andrew is probably secretly relieved that media attention has largely switched away from him to his mother, brother and now towards the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The latter’s criticisms of the attitudes of other royals towards her were the focus of last December’s documentary series, Harry & Meghan. This was hyped up enough to attract Netflix’s highest number of viewers in the UK for the year, although how many really did endure its almost six hours of self-promotion from the estranged and bitter Sussexes? Harry has since courted even more attention with his tell-all memoir Spare and another round of interviews, for which he’s no doubt received a princely sum of money. But this hasn’t bolstered his popularity, as measured by YouGov’s Royal Favourability Tracker, which has reported a drop in support for him as well as for the monarchy as a whole. Harry’s salacious confessions about drug-taking, being knocked to the floor by William, having frostbitten genitals and killing members of the Taliban have chipped away some of the mystique which the royals have traditionally attracted.

Being born into a life of privilege has damaged Harry and Andrew in different ways, raising the issue of what kind of institution produces lives like theirs. Questioning this can only be a good thing if it’s a step towards a wider rejection of the social system which includes having a monarchy. If the figureheads for capitalism are so dysfunctional, what does that say about the system? Presumably, the House of Windsor is hoping that the pomp and pageantry of Charles’ coronation in May will push away recent bad press and declines in popularity. Even if it does to some extent, more pointedly, the spectacle will be in stark contrast to the privations much of the country will still be trying to cope with. The coronation will be a reminder of the gulf between how the vast majority have to live and the indulgences of the elite.

Mike Foster

Caught in the deep (1999)

TV Review from the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bizarre though it may seem, English cricket—and the televising of English cricket—so accurately reflects the wider economic and cultural changes of British society in recent years that it is simply uncanny. For those who care to remember, leisurely games of cricket on the village green were central to John Major’s vision of a society at ease with itself, along with warm beer and old ladies cycling to church on Sunday mornings. And while Major’s vision was overtly anachronistic, cricket has always tended to embody much that is considered to be distinctively “British”: the old Gentlemen versus Players class distinction, the quiet civility of the English tea, the resolute application and grit of the undefeated all-day batsman, and—more often than not—the stiff upper lip of those in extreme adversity. Of course, the game has changed over the years along with wider society and few would disagree that it has become harsher, nastier and more competitive. English cricketers have been, if we are to be charitable, poor at acclimatising to the new conditions. Today there is something of the metaphoric frightened rabbit about them as they are repeatedly showered under a hail of West Indian bouncers, spun out of their senses by passing magicians from the sub-continent and battered by the explosive and inflammatory verbals of the Australians.

Cricket in England had always been an essentially timeless phenomenon—like the “season”, Wimbledon, Last Night of the Proms and much else. That TV coverage of cricket reflected this is fairly obvious. Few could have died of excitement at the sound of John Arlott and Jim Laker coaxing England towards a draw on a dank Tuesday afternoon at Old Trafford. High drama it certainly wasn’t, though perhaps one of the finest accolades given to them by a critic was that they at least made five days of sitting in an armchair watching the grass grow seem like a veritable pleasure, and indeed for a few million every summer it was. But now the BBC have lost the Test Match coverage franchise for the first time—along with so much else too—and things are not quite the same. The greying, sedate affair hosted by the BBC has left the field of play, retired hurt, to be replaced by something altogether more brash.

A loud appeal

Channel 4’s cricket coverage has certainly blown away a few of the old cobwebs. Indeed, just as the new technology of capitalism constantly serves to revolutionise that system from within, so at last (though more prosaically) has TV cricket coverage been revolutionised by elements of that same technology so as to accurately reflect the dynamic of society as a whole. From the “speedster” and the close up action replay through to the “snick-o-meter”, Channel 4 is knocking on the door of the twenty first century, bringing to sports lovers the aids to comprehension and the sheer excitement that befits a technologically advanced civilisation. And yet there is a downside, as there always is in the market economy.

While the technological advancements of civilisation open up whole new vistas, so at the same time does society itself become less “civilised”. Not only does Channel 4’s coverage come with a good deal of the brashness we have come to associate with so much else of the fast-food culture we inhabit, but it extends to breaking point public tolerance of commercially-orientated TV. The advertisements that have crept into cricket and other sports over recent years, from the advertising hoardings at the grounds and the sponsoring of competitions and then teams, to the painted advertisements on the pitch itself, have now been supplemented by particularly insidious versions of the ubiquitous TV commercial.

As each session of play in a Test Match lasts for at least two hours, usually without formal interruption of any sort, the advertisers had a headache reconciling the needs of the game and of the viewer on the one hand with the dictates of the market and profit on the other. Their solution has been to run a 20 second-or-so commercial every few overs of play, completely untelegraphed to the audience. There is no programme theme music, no couple of seconds of silence as the programme “card” comes up by way of warning—in fact, there is no warning at all. It is effectively a bizarre, elongated version of subliminal advertising. It is immensely irritating and not surprisingly, has been almost uniformly condemned. Yet, ironically, without the increasingly bizarre adverts for cars and bottled lagers which now infest the screen during cricket coverage, there would probably be no improved coverage of the type Channel 4 have been able to provide.

There may be more important examples of the irrationality of capitalism and of how the market system is unable to properly use the technology it has helped develop so as to meet human needs, but few illustrate it so graphically as the changes undergone by cricket coverage, and exemplified by Channel 4. Cricket is now a more compelling TV sport than it ever has been, except that it is ceaselessly undermined with adverts which seek to distract and intrude rather than genuinely inform. Just as the market gives with one hand, so it takes back with another because the rational planning of human services will always be a secondary consideration quite some way behind the making of profits.

One final thought: does the cricket “third umpire”—called upon to make adjudications with the help of a TV monitor and replays—have to sit through some near-subliminal rubbish while he tries to make a decision over a marginal run out? Somehow we think not. And is he doesn’t have to, then why the hell should we?

Dave Perrin

And the winner is . . . (1999)

TV Review from the March 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing brings a lump to the throat quicker than the round of glad—handing and mutual back-slapping that constitutes the modern “awards ceremony” . So it was with Channel Four’s Political Awards, shown—endearingly enough—on Valentine’s Day, only on this occasion the cause of any lump in the throat could only be bile. There can be few more sickening sights than a group of politicians congratulating themselves on their parliamentary performances, politicians who on any other day of the week are barely on speaking terms—and not simply because of any political differences either. The principal differences between them will be entirely personal and most likely malicious.

At this particular event, those politicians nominated for awards by Channel Four were put to sit next to one another at nominees` tables, shifting uneasily in their seats and shooting suspicious, sideways glances at their rivals. Only when they were certain the camera was on them—as the announcement was made that one of their rival nominees was victorious—did they crack a smile. And those smiles! It is not easy to generate facial expressions redolent of the type of creature that would be created if Dick Dastardly were to be crossed with Donny Osmond, but most seemed to achieve it.

Not that all the politicians were slimy, untrustworthy examples of a life-form lower than tabloid journalists. Some of the nominees and victors were principled within their pro-capitalist context (Ted Heath, Tony Benn, Chris Mullin) while others were talented enough performers of the political arts, and transparently so (Benn again, Anne Widdecombe, Richard Shepherd).

As with all awards ceremonies what was really irritating was the cloying, fake mateyness of it all. If smugness and complacency paid, they’d all be millionaires (though, come to think of it, a fair few of them are). Far more interesting would have been some critical awards based on the underlying search for meaning in modern politics rather than the concoction of a ceremony designed to encourage the bastards even further. Needless to say, it was not forthcoming from Channel Four, so the Socialist Standard has bravely stepped into the gap and produced its own set of awards for the parliamentary exponents of political science over the last year.

And the categories are:

Greaser of the year: the first category and the one with the most competition. Winners at previous ceremonies tended to come almost exclusively from the Conservative Party. This year’s entrants come from the Labour backbenches, in particular from New Labour’s sinister Stepford Wives, Barbara Follet—clones without a social conscience. But the overall victor—by a short brown nose—must come from the Cabinet itself. This year’s winner: Alun Michael, Welsh Secretary, who is currently so far up Tony Blair’s backside he can now see Jack Cunningham’s ankles.

Turncoat of the year: the man who posed as the workers` friend, spending years proselytising the Trotskyist cause and who now lavishes praise on the CBI while kicking the unions where it hurts: Stephen Byers, Trade and Industry Secretary, and yet another Trot who has turned out just as expected.

Hypocrite of the year: the man who said that workers should expect no favours from business under a Labour Government but who himself was caught receiving some very big favours from business indeed: Peter (“what’s half a million between friends?”) Mandelson.

Lunatic of the year: the ever tender, loving and caring Reverend Dr Ian Paisley, saint to the sinners, and three turnips short of a truck-full.

Joker of the year: the newt-lover extraordinaire, whose “loyalty pledge” to the bosses` friend Tony Blair should send the appropriate signals to the workers of London that he can in no sense be taken seriously as any sort of socialist, real or imagined: step forward, Ken Livingstone, whose campaign for free tube rides for reptiles will end up fooling no-one except the lizards on the benches next to him.

Political deserter of the year: Captain Paddy Ashdown, whose piousness in the face of the social problems of the world has only been equalled by his enthusiastic support for the system that caused them. His resignation brings forth the positive prospect that we may now at last see less of him. Hard-up Somerset farmers may now take the opportunity to plant potatoes in his permanently furrowed brow.

Special Princess Diana Award for saintliness: Tony himself, of course. Even now thousands are preparing to hurtle themselves off the pavement in front of buses just so he might come to visit them on one of his many nightly hospital visits. At least that’s why we think they’re doing it . . . though it is possible that other explanations are more plausible. They might, for instance, have spent Valentine’s night watching Channel Four and then regretted it very much indeed.

Dave Perrin

More Exploding Diarrhoea from the States (1998)

TV Review from the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you haven’t yet seen South Park (Channel Four, Fridays) the chances are you will have read a TV review about it. At the risk of saturating the market, here’s another one.

For the uninitiated, South Park is the most recent in a series of “adult” cartoons designed for television, following on from programmes like BBC2’s Ren and Stimpey and Stressed Eric. It is about as far from Bugs Bunny or The Hair Bear Bunch as you are likely to get. It is violent, coarse, shocking and disturbing in almost equal measure. It is also—at least periodically—rather funny.

Based on school life in a town in Colorado it centres on the bizarre and deranged activities of four young elementary school kids, one of whom gets slaughtered in each episode, hence the show’s catchphrase “Oh my God! They killed Kenny!” The storyline material can be best illustrated with reference to an episode last month when a grandfather of one of the children begged his grandson to kill him and put him out of his 100 year long misery. When the kids decided to string up a cow from and tree and drop it on him (“it’ll look like an accident”) a passing cop in his patrol car stopped to see what was going on. When he saw that he’d disturbed the kids and that they were only trying to kill an old man his response was to tell them to carry on before he drove off.

This illustrates why South Park is one of those programmes you laugh at but then in many ways wish you hadn’t. The effect is similar to laughing at one of Bernard Manning’s better jokes—profoundly unsettling. And every now and then one of the characters will berate another one by telling him he’s “an asshole” because his mother’s “a fucking Jew”. There is an underlying comic subtext to this—such comments are invariably apropos of nothing and designed to show how children (often mistakenly) pick up and use the language of the adults around them. Unfortunately, comic subtext is not always picked up by those watching, let alone those watching late night Channel Four (if in doubt try watching it with a group of young kids to witness the varying reactions and attitudes).

Help! Help! Here come the bores!

There are two standard reactions to phenomena like South Park. The first is the knee-jerk reactionary position of the Daily Mail and the so-called “moral majority”. This sees programmes like South Park as being part of some leftist plot to undermine decent family values, as the work of the devil himself, or even both. Their religious ravings notwithstanding, what escapes those promoting the conservative agenda is that to a large extent these programmes are reflecting what is already going on in society. A healthy society where peace and co-operation reigns is unlikely to produce programmes about young children murdering their grandparents. The sort of society that produces such programmes is a violent and sadistic one, plagued by division, suspicion and generation gaps. In other words, the sort of society that capitalism is.

The other standard reaction to South Park comes from the woolly liberals at the other end of capitalism’s political spectrum. If they see anything wrong or disturbing about such programmes they will justify them on the grounds that they are unlikely to do anybody any harm as they are only TV shows (hey, do you think all the kids are going to go around killing their grandparents now or something?). This is a simplistic view, typical of the left, which fails to understand the reciprocal and reinforcing nature of much of the material emanating from capitalism’s media. This is because while violent and anti-social TV programmes are a reflection of a violent and anti-social society, they are not merely a reflection of this as they have an impact and impetus of their own. No materialist can seriously argue that children exposed to violence and murder on TV every day of their pre-adult lives are not going to be affected by it. They may not immediately go out and start killing old people, but they will have built up a tolerance to violence and a certain perception about how to solve problems that others will not. The economic foundations of capitalism provide the origins of most modern violence, but it is its political structure and media apparatus which provides much of the impetus.

In the episode of South Park already mentioned, Kenny—before he is murdered—contracts an extremely contagious case of “exploding diarrhoea”. Rarely in the history of television has a programme provided such a rich metaphor about its own origins in the jungle of market madness known as the USA, or about society’s future trajectory as it projects heap loads of shit all over the working class. Laugh? I nearly cried.

DAP

Proper Gander: Four Sale (2022)

The Proper Gander Column from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Any celebrations planned by Channel 4 to mark its upcoming fortieth birthday are likely to be clouded by its future as a state-owned broadcaster being in doubt. The channel which has brought us Big Brother, Bake Off, Brookside and Brass Eye is the most prominent of the 12 run by The Channel 4 Television Corporation, with others including Film4, E4 and streaming service All 4. Its content, which aims to be edgier and hipper than that of the BBC, ITV and Channel 5, isn’t made in-house, but by profit-seeking companies such as Endemol Shine UK and All3Media.

The Channel 4 Television Corporation is a statutory corporation, which means that its remit is decided by an Act of Parliament. On 4 April the government announced its intention to privatise the corporation, which would require a change in legislation, with its sale to the highest bidder expected in 2024. The government’s stated rationale is that a privatised Channel 4 would have more freedom to make money, with the implication that this will improve its programming. The previous Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden explained this in true Tory style: ‘There are constraints that come with public ownership, and a new owner could bring access and benefits, including access to capital, to strategic partnerships and to the international markets. Private investment would mean more content, and more jobs’ (tinyurl.com/puun7a93).

This is a u-turn from the government’s stance in 2016, when the then-Secretary of State Karen Bradley agreed with a report from the House of Lords which said ‘We are concerned that, notwithstanding assurances given at the point of sale, a private owner may seek to dilute Channel 4 Corporation’s public service remit in future, in order to maximise profit’ (p.4, tinyurl.com/26k45c7t). The change in policy is apparently due to shifts in the media landscape since 2016, particularly the rise of video-on-demand services. On 4 April current Secretary of State Nadine Dorries posted on Twitter ‘Government ownership is holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon’. This isn’t really an equal comparison, as streaming services don’t broadcast news, which is one of Channel 4’s most popular products, but they are all competing in the overall media marketplace. Channel 4, along with other traditional broadcasters, is steadily losing viewers to the trendy streaming services. Consequently, the adverts which interrupt its shows have fewer viewers, and so the cost of advertising drops, which reduces its income and therefore its reserves needed to buy programmes.

This is a threat to Channel 4 because nearly all its funding comes through selling advertising slots. Although this wasn’t known to Nadine Dorries, who during a meeting of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee in November 2021 wrongly assumed that Channel 4 was funded by ‘public money’, and when she was corrected responded with ‘And… so… though it’s… yeah and that’ (tinyurl.com/2p8a5m6e). Dorries’ credentials for overseeing the nation’s culture were previously demonstrated by her eating animal genitals during her appearance on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! which led to her breaking the MPs’ code of conduct and being suspended from the party whip.

Despite the market shifting towards streaming services, Channel 4 is in a confident position financially, reporting a record pre-tax surplus in 2020 (tinyurl.com/4hrzakwv). Media analysts Enders have estimated that the channel could be sold for between £600m and £1.5bn (tinyurl.com/yc76h7fa) to whichever hungry buyer wins the eventual bid.

Many people are against Channel 4’s potential privatisation, including its bosses. Chair Charles Gurassa said that its board has ‘serious concerns that the consequences will be very harmful, both to the UK’s creative economy and to the choice and breadth of distinctive British-made content available to UK audiences’ (tinyurl.com/yckd26yc). The National Union of Journalists and opposition parties don’t support the sell-off either, with Liberal Democrat culture spokesman Jamie Stone saying ‘This government seems hell-bent on trashing this uniquely British legacy and undermining jobs and investment in the creative sector’ (tinyurl.com/mem434kt).

With the criticism has come speculation on the political reasons behind the planned sale. Jeremy Corbyn tweeted on 5 April ‘The Tories want to privatise Channel 4 to shield themselves from accountability and drag the UK’s media landscape even further to the right. If Channel 4 falls into the hands of billionaire barons, the establishment moves closer to freedom from scrutiny at the expense of truth’. Channel 4 News has a reputation for being critical of the government, so the argument is that privatisation will stifle this. Previous Minister of State for Media and Data John Whittingdale said ‘This is not motivated in any way by a political agenda or ideology. It is about sustaining Channel 4 and making sure that it has a viable future’ (tinyurl.com/yc3xunss). But there is an ideology involved, that of believing that organising production is best left to the dynamics of the capitalist market. Those opposed to privatisation are concerned that increasing the extent to which market forces affect the channel will damage programmes which have less potential to be profitable, such as the news and niche drama. Where they’re mistaken is in assuming that the channel is sufficiently protected from market forces by remaining state-owned. Whether Channel 4 is ‘privately’ or ‘publicly’ owned, its output is still produced by companies motivated by profit, and shaped by commercial interests, such as the rise and fall of viewing figures representing changing consumer levels and therefore income. And even while the channel is ‘publicly’ owned, the public doesn’t own it in any practical way. Channel 4 already runs according to what’s in the interests of media companies, which privatisation would only reinforce.

Mike Foster

Proper Gander: Stripped Blair (2011)

The Proper Gander column from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the dark corridors beneath the Chilcot theatre, Gordon Brown has finally caught up with Tony Blair. He raises his gun and Blair tries to talk his way out of a tight situation one last time: “I think you’ll make a great Prime Minister. You’ll love it. The girls. The parties. Power’s a great aphrodisiac.” Brown doesn’t listen and, trembling, he pulls the trigger.

And so marks the end of Blair’s escape from those who turned on him, as imagined in The Comic Strip Presents: The Hunt For Tony Blair. This enjoyable one-off reunited the team who have been making short comedy films since Channel Four’s launch in 1982. Previously, their output has included both the miners’ strike and Ken Livingstone’s takeover of the Greater London Council filmed in the style of Hollywood blockbusters. The Hunt For Tony Blair developed this approach by presenting Blair’s downfall as a 1950s film noir.

On the run for murder, he finds himself abandoned by his previous allies, including a sinister, camp Peter Mandelson who changes sides to help Blair’s pursuer, Inspector Hutton. He’s even rejected by George W. Bush, here depicted (probably for the first time) as a mafia godfather out to “fuck Iraq”. But the most memorable performance is from Jennifer Saunders, playing Margaret Thatcher as a faded movie star. Lying on a chaise longue, she reminisces over old footage of the Falklands War before seducing Blair in her four-poster bed.

Keeping the satire this loose allows the Comic Strip team to get away with scenes like Blair pushing Robin Cook from a mountain during “a friendly walk in the Highlands”. But elsewhere, the film skirts closer to reality, especially in Stephen Mangan’s spot-on portrayal of Tony Blair as someone too self-satisfied to accept his guilt as a murderer.

Mike Foster

A Bit of Argy-Bargy (1996)

The TV Review column from the August 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The approach to history of those so-called "radical" historians who still uphold the capitalist system was exemplified last month by Channel Four’s Secret History: The Battle of Goose Green (12 july. 9pm). This programme. based on a book by Spencer Fitz-Gibbon, devoted itself to examining the strategic conduct of one of the key battles during the Falklands war. Its main contention was that far from being the type of honourable victory Thatcher exhorted us to "rejoice" at, it was instead a campaign severely flawed by the archaic tactics of the British army and the "over-the-top-lads” mentality of paratroop commander Colonel H. Jones. Colonel Jones, killed in action and awarded a posthumous VC for his troubles, was portrayed as a soldier straight out of a Boys Own comic—heroic— but in the cold light of day unprofessional in an army of supposed "professionals".

The attraction to Channel Four of such a programme is obvious—a chance to attack the culture and ethos of a British institution, in this case the army, without doing anything so radical as question its reason for existence, with a good deal of trivia and personalisation thrown in for good measure. In other words, this programme exemplified the approach of reformists and radical poseurs everywhere, the approach that deals with effects and not causes and isolates phenomenon that are mere aspects of a greater totality. Its real intention was to highlight "the shortcomings of the army’s command system at the time of the Falklands war", as Spencer Fitz-Gibbon put it himself in an article in the Guardian. Though one Falklands commander went so far as to question why the Battle of Goose Green need have been fought at all, this was a mere side-show and was still informed by the mentality which is obsessed with the strategic conduct of battles and with army tactics. But what, we may ask, was the purpose of all this?

Who—apart that is from the stereotypical Brigadiers in Bournemouth and flag-waving buffoons with improbably short haircuts—cares precisely how efficient British paratroopers are at killing foreigners? It is just not the kind of issue that preoccupies an adult, critical intelligence. This is what makes it all the more galling that Channel Four should have devoted time to such a farrago of nonsense, especially under the heading Secret History, which suggests that if this is an example of the type of secrets left to uncover, it is probably not worth the bother.

Crass as ever

Instead of concentrating on this type of non-issue, why didn't Channel Four commission a programme examining why the Falklands war was actually fought in the first place— probably a real secret to millions? Was it fought to protect 1,800 freedom-loving Falklanders or was it to defend the interest of the capitalist class from Britain and their investments there? Was it to defend democracy from dictatorship or to protect the ownership rights of the British government and capitalists over billions of pounds worth of adjacent raw materials? While it was at it, the programme could have investigated why all the major political parties in Britain supported the slaughter, and why it was that that inveterate peace-monger and CND luminary Michael Foot urged Thatcher on to make an example of the Argies.

And—more important than the desperately sad antics of Colonel H. Jones—why did the freedom-loving British Parliament try to stifle opposition to the war? For instance, when the anarchist punk band Crass released an anti-Falklands war single they were instructed to "watch their step" by the House of Commons. When they refused and released their "homage" to Mrs Thatcher, How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead?, the government prosecuted them (as it turned out, unsuccessfully). The sound and sight of the pompous government minister Tim Eggar on TV and radio being asked to recite some of the offending lyric is still something to be treasured by those opposed to the jingoism of the entire pro-war campaign.

But just how many people are aware of the real facts surrounding the Falklands conflict is a matter for speculation. One thing is certain, however, they will not have been enlightened much by Channel Four's Secret History. If they don't get round to doing a proper investigative job of the real reasons for the Falklands war, then perhaps they may at least try to redress the balance by devoting a programme to the thousands if not millions who opposed the conflict instead of focusing on those who gave gloried in slaughter and who have sought to defend the need for armies and armaments. Let them also show the fake radicals in their real colours bemoaning after the event the strategic conduct of a slaughter they supported—let them show the Labour leader and all the others baying for Argie blood while those with a real idea of what it was all about stood out against the entire barbarous conflict. If they do they may let the final word go to Crass, who were more perceptive at the time of war than a thousand Channel Four historians who fancy themselves as latter-day armchair generals, helping the army to be more ruthlessly efficient:

Is it any wonder there was such sickening celebration over the Task Force
When so-called radicals work hand in hand with the ruling elite?
Yesterday those wily creeps rejected the ‘status quo',
Today they smarm and charm passageways to its very heart
Where's the free individual in all that? Where’s the hope and aspiration?
Identities have become corporations.

(Yes, Sir. I Will)

Dave Perrin 

Watch Comment: Channel 4, Wednesday 7 August, 7.50pm (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

A bit of a problem with regards to this notice which appeared in the pages of the August 1985 Socialist Standard: the problem is that I don't know which SPGB Comment speaker the notice is referring to.

It could be either Clifford Slapper or Brian Montague. Both appeared in this 5-minute slot on Channel 4 in the mid-80s. So, not taking any chances, I've decided to post both clips .

Proper Gander: Left In The Dark (2013)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Would a few days without electricity turn you into a hysterical, paranoid, petrol-siphoning looter? Perhaps, if Blackout (Channel 4) is as realistic as it hopes to be. This one-off docudrama imagines what would happen if the National Grid was shut down for a week by a terrorist ‘cyber attack’. Footage from real riots and protests is mixed with actors improvising what their characters film on mobile phones. This gives the programme a scary amount of verisimilitude, if you ignore how implausibly long-lasting the batteries in their phones must be. Through the blurry, wobbly camerawork we follow a couple of lairy lads on a looting spree and a woman with her comatose boyfriend in a hospital with its backup power dwindling. There are a few examples of individuals helping strangers, but the show focuses more on how relationships would be strained further. For instance, the character who starts out smug about having his own generator cracks under the pressure of keeping it from would-be thieves while struggling to provide for his family.

The shakily-filmed action is broken up with sombre captions giving some less-than-reassuring statistics. Emergency lighting in most public buildings usually lasts no more than three hours, apparently, while if you’re relying on a life support machine, then you’d have around five days before its back-up batteries are prioritised elsewhere. Like its grim forerunners about pandemics and nuclear war, Blackout points out that society’s current infrastructure would collapse within days of a serious catastrophe. However, the loss of electric power isn’t shown to lead to a loss of state power. Defending itself through the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the state would bring in temporary courts, armed forces on the streets and ‘Emergency Relief Centres’, which in the drama turn out to be empty. A lack of decent contingency planning is to be expected in our society, focused on protecting the interests of the few and making the cheapest cutbacks for the rest of us. So, if the programme is right about this, would its predictions about chaos on the streets also be proved right? Such a bleak view ignores how groups of people have worked together to get through worse disasters in real life. The show would have been more interesting if it had explored how we could co-operate, but in that respect it leaves us in the dark.

Mike Foster