To what extent was the political independence of the BBC threatened by the Conservative governments of the 1980's?

One of these incidents, mentioned above, was the panorama program real lives which in 1985 allowed IRA terrorist leaders a voice in interview terms. The purpose of the program was to ‘explain rather than confront’ the issues and terrorists actions. However the government saw it differently and the home secretary wrote a scathing letter to the head of the BBC accusing the BBC of being ‘left wing’ and at the ‘edge of the union’.  A board of vetted governors set up by Thatcher also weighed in, meeting with the home secretary, and then as the director general away was away at the time viewing the program and apprising Leon Britton of its total content. The result was the program was not aired for two months until the anger of the director general was finally yielded to.

This showed a marked influence controlling the board of governors to the interests of the government.

However there is some evidence that the BBC remained politically independent from the government during the 1980’s. The mere fact that documentaries such as ‘real lives’ were allowed to be shown shows that, if grudgingly, the Government did yield to the BBC. Moreover what seemed to be serious infringements on the BBC’s independence such as the attack on the BBC reporting the events of Libyan bombings factually rather than with political alliances in America were actually PR stunts which never lead to serious prosecution. Furthermore the peacock inquiry showed that the BBC was an institution not willing to bow to the privatisation of industry which Thatcher was intent on.

Since the BBC was not to be out of governmental control and could not be influenced to hold a party line on reporting, the next and perhaps only avenue for the government was to feed the BBC news stories that already showed the government in a good light. One such story was the militarisation  of the police force to deal with miner’s strikes, however while the police were shown to be a strong arm of the government this did little to assuage public opinion to their side as police were seen quite factually as unnecessarily  violent while protesters as starting the demonstrations. In essence this ‘finished up angering both sides’.

In conclusion while the BBC certainly had its political independence threatened by governments of the 1980’s, this suppression rarely lasted long, caused out cry and was resurgent. The latter alone means one could say the BBC’s political independence was not truly threatened because people at the core of the BBC such as Milne continued to affront this suppression. However, symbolic of the fall of this opposition was the true loss to the independence of the organization the loss of Milne in 1987, ‘the last true director general of the BBC’, then board members and the new director general gained more confidence in their actions at the very end of the 1980’s. This is Marxist as the dominant conservative ideology, traditionally held by elites as well, influenced working class people through the new conservative BBC eventually.