The Problem of Apathy

A YouTuber called ChilliJonCarni argues in the below video that the TV licence will never be scrapped.

Our comments on the video:

1. First, while we completely oppose the TV licence and agree that non-payment is the right tactic, we believe political campaigning should be focused on the BBC itself.  We argue for abolition rather than reform.  It is our view that reform, including ending the TV licence, will only make matters worse.

2. Petitioning is not an automatic law-making process.  You don't collect 125,000 or however many signatures and then simply secure the desired change in the law.  Parliament is sovereign and can do what it likes.  Petitions are just a method of campaigning and Parliament is free to accept or reject the case made in a petition.  We explain more about petitions here.

3. The issue with the BBC as a state broadcaster isn't that it can take over the airwaves and dictate editorial content in times of national emergency.  In fact, even in an entirely private sector broadcasting environment, we would expect there to be provisos in place that reserve state control of the various media outlets for the purposes of emergency broadcasting, as part of the usual civil contingencies.  The real issue with state broadcasting is the influence that it has on society under normal, everyday circumstances.  State broadcasting is offensive in concept and indubitably leads to political influence on the broadcaster and its content.  That is the problem, not the extreme, fictitious scenario referred to in the above video.

4. The issue with bias - to the extent that exists - is not that the government-of-the-day is dictating to the BBC what it should broadcast.  Nobody with a proper understanding of the matter would suggest that the government does that in most ordinary circumstances.  While we do call the BBC a state broadcaster, we acknowledge that there is editorial and operational autonomy.  What we do say, however, is that the BBC is a state broadcaster because the government can and does set the tone and institutional culture of the BBC, influences key appointments and uses its own appointees to determine the BBC's strategic direction.  Furthermore, in extraordinary and unusual circumstances, it is open to the government to intervene more closely in the BBC's editorial policies - usually this happens in times of war (most recently, that we know of, it happened during the Iraq War of 2003).

5. It is perfectly true that the BBC, as a massive bureaucracy and state media conglomerate, is a source of lucrative employment for the political elite and the broader Left, and we make that point ourselves as part of our case for abolition.  But again, the issue there isn't specifically that the relevant people are paid a lot - they could be paid a lot elsewhere, the Left have bases in the private sector too - it is more fundamentally that the BBC is a base of support and secure employment, contracts and prestigious titular roles for the Left, and acts as a pivot for the Left's cultural war against the rest of the country.  The line of 'Look at how much they pay Gary Lineker or some ex-government minister' is a good populist talking point, but at the same time, we can't really begrudge the BBC for paying people their market worth. (Note: How 'market worth' is defined and determined is quite another matter - some of it may well be pay-offs and bribes, and some of it certainly is subtle influence-buying).

6. This man, ChilliJonCarni, has sadly slipped into being negative and defeatist.  We hope we are not being too harsh in saying so, and we hope he recovers his enthusiasm, but he is basically telling anti-TV licence campaigners (and us, by extension) to give up any active campaigning and instead just rely on not paying.  We disagree.  If anything, we think the time is ripe to step up the campaign of non-payment and resistance.  Our only point is that the political direction should be explicitly towards abolition and a campaign with that goal is needed, with a street movement, petitions, posters, events, legal activism and policy work.  The aim will be to persuade a major political party to adopt abolition of the BBC as policy, and thereby head-off the BBC and influence the strategic direction of the debate once it becomes clear that the TV licence system is no longer sustainable.

7. It is true that the political and parliamentary system is rigged and there are very strong vested interests among the political class in keeping the TV licence system and the BBC itself.  The outrageous 2017 parliamentary debate - mentioned in the video and also mentioned several times on this blog - demonstrates this, but that is not a reason to give up.

There will have been a time during the mid-19th. century when anti-slavery campaigners in the United States were convinced that they would never succeed.  They will have been told that slavery is natural and that there are too many vested interests in the American South against abolition and so emancipation will never happen, but it did and the slaves were legally freed.  Likewise, campaigners for women's suffrage at the turn-of-the-century will have been told that female participation in public affairs is unnatural and wrong and that there are too many vested interests ranged against it, but they didn't give up, they carried on - and eventually won.

We were once told that Britain's withdrawal from the European Union would never happen, that too many people favour the EU, that business is vested in our membership and that anybody who proposes withdrawal is a fruitcake.  Yet here we are in a national conversation about how to withdraw from the European Union - not whether to, but how to.

We must fight on.  One day we will win.