Passing the parcel (1995)

TV Review from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Election nights are almost exciting, and Local Elections ‘95 on BBC 1 last month proved to be no exception. There was David Dimbleby with a twinkle in his eye and a Mars bar in his pocket. Peter Kellner looking studiously professorial next to a bank of computers. Anthony King thumbing through his mental book of historical precedents and the ubiquitous Peter Snow arms flailing like a whirling dervish in conversation with Magnus Pike. "Just a bit of fun” is Snow’s catchphrase. and of course it all is just that, at least for him.

For the politicians it is different—election night is akin to a life-or-death prognosis. John Selwyn Gummer had seldom looked glummer as the news trickled in of the most humiliating Conservative defeat in local elections on record. Frank Dobson chortled like a Father Christmas on Prozac and the Liberal Democrats' spokesman was there as well, popping up like Chad over a wall occasionally in the hope that nobody would forget he was there too. But it was Labour's night, and if all Frank Dobson's Christmases had come at once. John Prescott beamed as if his political marriage to Tony Blair had just been consummated in spectacular style. He opened a bottle of champagne at Labour Party headquarters and thrust the spray orgasmically at the cameras, adjectives tumbling over one another just as the Moet tumbled out of the bottle.

It was indeed touching that the working class could have had such an effect on their fellow human beings. Touching, though not altogether surprising, as it is the workers who put the politicians in their exalted position to start with.

If local election night demonstrated anything it was that the Labour Party . . . pardon me. New Labour, is on a roll of gigantic proportions and that the Tories are digging themselves further into a hole and not out of it. Labour, on this performance seems set to win a General Election and they will be aware at this time like at no other that dangerous talk costs political lives. During the election campaign itself they showed themselves cognisant of this fact, fighting the battle on presentation, managerial abilities, sharp suits and white teeth. "Policies" has become the most dangerous word in their vocabulary. When tackled about this by Dimbleby. Frank Dobson shrugged his shoulders and gave a "what can we do" look. Local government, he said, is hamstrung by government subsidies and capping, and so even if Labour wanted to spend more on education or local services, it couldn't.

At this point John Gummer intervened to claim that you could not blame the Conservative government for the belt-tightening consequences of the world recession and that in any case things were getting steadily better under the foresighted stewardship of John Major. But then came the pièce de résistance—Sir Teddy Taylor. Tory rebel, beamed in via satellite or some such device to tell the panel that they were all wrong as the real problem was Europe. "I know I'm being a bore . . ." he said, and of course he was right. And right about something else too. He went on to say that just as it didn't matter which of the parties controlled the councils, neither did it matter much which party controlled Westminster, as they were all prisoners of the system, the headquarters of which he identified as being somewhere in Belgium. Now he might have been misplaced about the importance of the last bit. but his substantive point, of course, has a lot going for it.

Travel with Teddy

Travel round Britain and can you tell where a Conservative council ends and a Labour one begins? Travel around Europe or any other part of the world and try doing the same with governments. It is very difficult indeed, and Sir Teddy has obviously noticed. Given all this, quite what his function is as a politician must be in some doubt, his obsession with Brussels notwithstanding. If he thinks politicians are as impotent as this (and they generally are) then it cannot be long before he packs it all in forever and takes to the stage.

But have some sympathy for him. Sir Teddy showed that he had grasped, in his own hamfisted way, a fundamental truth of capitalist politics, even if he lacks the full explanation for it. And this is that, in reality, election nights at present are momentary interludes in a mind-numbingly tedious and pointless exercise. They are the time when the two rival but otherwise identical brands of cola release their sales figures, when two bluebottles climb up a wall to see who can reach the ceiling first. Pointless, though at the same time mesmerising if your life is empty enough. And if the phrase "get a life" should be directed anywhere, the BBC studios on election nights are as good a place as any to aim. 

Dave Perrin

Between the Lines: A Question of Thought (1994)

The Between the Lines Column from the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Question of Thought

1994 brought the news that the BBC has decided on a replacement for Peter Sissons as host of its flagship current affairs programme Question Time. The job has gone to David Dimbleby, the BBC's Election Night host and brother of Jonathan, chair of Radio 4’s Any Questions'? There’s nothing like keeping it in the family.

Though Sissons finished his stint on Question Time in a more assured style than when he started, he proved to be a rather tetchy host at times, bringing all the elan one would expect of a dour newsreader. He was certainly different from Sir Robin Day, though not necessarily better. Day himself was a generally rude and bad-tempered chairman who was saved on TV by his many idiosyncracies which made him appear to be more interesting than the politicians, something that shouldn’t have been too difficult. Sissons had little such advantage and tended to blend into the set rather than create his own distinctive style of chairmanship. Dimbleby could go the same way, though his previous experience of the format and his performances on Election Nights suggest he won’t.

The real key — as with Dimbleby’s producers — will be not just how he treats the politicians, but how he interacts with the audience. If the mood took them both Day and Sissons could stop the audience from questioning the politicians and their motives too closely, as some Socialist Party members found out. "Yes, that’s enough of that . . . now to the lady in the blue rinse" was not an uncommon reaction, particularly when dangerous words like capitalism and socialism were mentioned.

Intimidating a TV audience is not difficult for an experienced host, and as Ben Elton would say, it’s not big or clever. Day and Sissons both seemed far too satisfied to be up on the big table with the assorted "statesmen" to be seen to give the underlings much of a say. At times, the audience participation in Question Time has been reduced to the level where members of the public are invited not so much to think for themselves but simply to agree with the pronouncements of the various politicians: yea or nay. Conversely, the best editions of the programme have been those occasions when the studio audience has been able to get on the back of a particular politician and then pepper him or her with focused comments, questions and suggestions that the chair has been powerless to stop.

A Licence to Kill 

Sadly, the candidate for the Question Time post who would have proved the most interesting of all didn’t get the job — namely Jeremy Paxman, from BBC2’s Newsnight. Paxman is foremost among the rottweiler school of political interviewing, and his "yes, but isn’t that just complete bollocks" line of questioning has brought him a certain degree of admiration from those who consider themselves "anti-system" and a fair amount of disdain from those who are very much a part of it. With Paxman, politicians get away with relatively little. The big question mark would be over whether he could restrain his aggressive style with an audience. Paxman can sometimes resort to sneering, and that would be no use at all on a programme like Question Time. Indeed, it has been noticeable that when Newsnight has involved an audience panel the laid-back Francine Stock or Peter Snow usually make a better job of it than Paxman. who seems less effective when unable to directly bait politicians.

For whatever reason, viewers of Question Time are stuck with Dimbleby, but never fear, socialists can point him in the right direction. For one thing that would definitely improve the programme would be the actual presence of socialists. Given the BBC’s past record, a socialist member of the panel might be too much to hope for (though we note that the confusion-mongers of the SWP have had members on more than once). So "Between the Lines" recommends that readers of this column write in to the BBC for tickets to the new series of Question Time so as to make the genuine Socialist case heard on TV. You never know, we might at the same time be able to help turn Question Time from being a forum for posturing and prattle into a Programme for public information.

Dave Perrin

Between the Lines: The democracy show (1987)

The Between the Lines column from the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The democracy show

I watched the 1987 election on the telly. More than any previous one, this was democracy which you watched, like you watch Cagney and Lacey or championship wrestling. It was an election campaign devised for cameras, in which people with minds were temporary screen interferences, which existed to be watched. But that is not what the Chartists fought for over a hundred years ago. Those men and women of the working class who were depicted insultingly as "the mob", unworthy of the right to vote, campaigned for the chance to participate in democracy. They were under no more illusions than socialists are today that the "democracy" which could be squeezed out of capitalism was mean, limited and only a means to a far greater freedom, but, like socialists today, they knew that once they were in on the political act they possessed a means to power in society. But there is a massive distinction which must be recognised between being in on the political act — being active participants in democracy — and having democracy turned into a television show, there to be watched by a passive electorate whose greatest possible function (if they are lucky) is to become invited members of a controlled studio audience. The Chartist movement did not struggle for that: our fellow workers today in dictatorships from the East of Europe to the South of Africa are not struggling for that. What must be recognised, because it has been more apparent in 1987 than it ever was before, is that the democratic election process has been appropriated by unelected, unaccountable media chiefs who have taken it upon themselves not to go as far as to deny workers the chance to vote, but to dominate what workers see before they vote. This gross erosion of meaningful democracy has not occurred as a result of the independent arrogance of the media bosses: they have been aided by the full collusion of the major capitalist parties who have decided to abandon the process of real public debate and opted for stage-managed imagery. In the process the intellectual debate which is fundamental to any kind of meaningful democratic election has been all but stifled. Theatricals have replaced polemics; images have been substituted for ideas; the condescending spectacles of red-rose rabble-rousing and leader-worshipping displays of amorphous masses have compelled even democratic socialists to wonder how seriously one can take a general election which is presented in the manner of The Eurovision Song Contest. What we are saying is that the extent to which the media has taken it upon themselves to lay out the electoral agenda, excluding as they do so all reference to the revolutionary socialist alternative, is a threat to the rights which workers have fought for — a threat which socialists, who regard democracy as an inseparable means and end, will resist.

The show itself

The real election took place away from the cameras. In Islington, where the only Socialist candidate stood, the battle was fought on the streets where literature was sold on stalls and at tube stations; in our manifesto and leaflets which were delivered to all households; on posters and stickers which clearly stated the socialist message; and at our election rally: ours was a battle of ideas. The TV Democracy Show was a prolonged. boring performance, virtually devoid of ideas and totally devoid of fresh thought. There was the torturing experience of endless Kinnock interviews, as the Labour windbag piled on alliterative negatives in description of the satanic evils of Thatcher. The demon Thatcher herself was interviewed rarely, leaving it mainly to Tebbit who looked like a man waiting for an urban riot to break out so that he could squash it. Healey came across, as usual, as an affable lout and Owen as an arrogant phoney. It was an election of characters, not ideas, and as The Socialist Party is interested in ideas, not characters, it all seems hardly worthy of comment. One moment on the election night sticks in this writer's mind. It was when Robin Day, in the middle of one of those utterly empty studio debates which earned him his knighthood, broke off because he had been instructed to cross to David Dimbleby. the linkman. Dimbleby was unable to speak because his mouth was full of chocolate toffee (a Mars Bar. he splurted: "I can't say anything because I'm in the middle of eating a Mars Bar"). Perhaps there lies a clue to the way to finally destroy the stream of banalities which characterise these BBC election specials: stuff their gobs with Mars Bars and give us all a rest. Perhaps the Animal Liberation Front has an historic role to play after all!

Steve Coleman

Passage to Poverty (1997)

The TV Review column from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Dimbleby’s India (BBC2. 12 July) should have been enough to remind anyone with any doubts why this planet needs a social revolution. Dimbleby himself—a pillar of the British establishment— ironically demonstrated how relatively little of real worth has changed in India since the days of the Raj. The social and economic movement that there has been has done little if anything to benefit the vast majority of India’s teeming population.

Dimbleby’s programme started with one or two "success’’ stories brought about by the intrusion of capitalism into India’s backward economic structure. The very fact that these were painted as examples of real progress told the viewer everything one needed to know, both about the programme’s general ideological thrust and the state of the rest of India. "Successful’’ young computer software executives were shown imbibing the dubious advantages of western-style wage-slavery, all for the princely sum of £40 per month. Interestingly, some other would-be wage-slaves showed themselves unconsciously sceptical of the benefits of capitalism, including the schoolgirl who stated when asked about her ambitions: "I want to be an accountant—and apart from that have an enjoyable life." Well, quite.

Where Dimbleby's programme was telling, however was in its portrayal of India’s traditionalist/ modernist dichotomy. The tension between the demands of capitalism and the stifling structure of the centuries-old caste system was brought out quite well and not even Dimbleby—skilled broadcaster that he is—could disguise the awful truth that in many respects Indians are experiencing not the best of both worlds but the worst of both.

Infanticide and gangsterism 
As the need to compete in the world economy pushes down the meagre income of millions of Indian workers so they find it increasingly difficult to meet the obligations demanded of them by their culture and traditions. In many instances this has led to some quite dreadful consequences. Parents with young girls, for instance, are less able to afford the dowry payments expected from them on their daughter’s marriage and so parents look upon the birth of baby girls as a financial disaster waiting to happen. Almost unbelievably, this has provoked the return of mass infanticide as poverty-stricken young Indians, particularly in the north of the country, feel that the only way they can ensure their own survival is by terminating the lives of their own children. Relatively few can bring themselves to do such a deed, so amazingly, they scrape together a few rupees to pay somebody else to take the children away and do it for them. In this way traditional Indian culture meets the joys of Western free enterprise with a vengeance.

The dangerous mix of traditional authoritarian and patriarchal cultures with the market economy has brutally given rise to other social problems too. Many of these are common to the majority of the "developing" world, but as is so often the case. India probably demonstrates them better than anywhere. As the poison of the market soaks in to infect an already cancerous organism, crime, corruption, gangsterism, violence and massacres are the order of the day across huge swathes of this beautiful country. Such is the level of patronage, ignorance and illiteracy that hundreds of thousands have been known to gather to defend those politicians and criminals (the dividing line is hazy) who have been systematically defrauding and robbing them. In these circumstances it has been left to other members of the capitalist class to take action against those—and there are plenty of them— who have been refusing to play the game according to Hoyle.

In several regions of India slavery still unofficially exists. Millions of children are “economically bonded" to shopkeepers, artisans and factory owners, working for nothing apart from enough food to ensure that they can put a bit of wealth into their masters’ pockets the next day. This—yet another happy victory for traditional values in a modern setting—shows no real sign of abating. Even under India’s old neo-state-capitalist economic arrangements child slavery was still rife: anyone who expects a great improvement since the recent move towards a more free market economy would be foolish indeed.

Given that India is in a number of respects so typical of much of the world it is astounding that people exist who still think that capitalism is the best of all worlds, a progressive social system that is the best on offer. If watching TV programmes about India is not enough perhaps they should visit it and open their eyes. Then they might know what socialists have learnt—that capitalism is now a planetary disaster.

Dave Perrin