Anti-TV licence campaigners sometimes cite the example of Australia as justification for non-payment and civil resistance as tactics for bringing down the BBC, but a closer examination of the Australian experience will show why a campaign for abolition of the BBC is vital.
As in Britain, the Australian licence system funded the major public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The problem is that on abolition of the licence, the Australian government decided that ABC should instead be funded out of general taxation. This, surely, was a defeat. Australians are now saddled with the worst of all worlds - a state-owned broadcaster funded out of taxes, and probably next-to-impossible to get rid of: a situation you would think better-suited to the former Soviet Union than a supposedly liberal-democratic society.
We think the same could well happen in Britain unless there is a strategy for something to replace the BBC. Our proposal is that the BBC should be dissolved and dismantled and replaced with a free market.
Toppling the TV licensing system may seem like the easier approach, but that is only because it does not in and of itself threaten the Establishment's precious dogma of ‘public broadcasting’. For evidence of this dogma, please watch the 2017 parliamentary debate on the TV licence. In that debate, it is openly and explicitly acknowledged
that TV licensing is a bad system, but it is justified nevertheless on the basis of the old Churchillian dictum because of a religious belief in the BBC. Every single speaker believes in the dogma of public broadcasting and facts, arguments and reason are subsumed in favour of
upholding this dogma.
We are clear that, at least in a British context, ending the TV licence
will not end the BBC itself. The elite will
just change the funding method and keep the show on the road. That's what happened in Australia; it's what will happen here too, and we may yet even see the day when the BBC is funded largely out of general taxation.
Some non-payers will respond that if a mass campaign of
non-payment builds up then confidence in the BBC will be fatally undermined and
it will have to fall, but what this forgets is that:
(i). different people will have different motives for
non-payment; some non-payers even enthusiastically support the BBC, they just don’t want
it funded with a TV licence; and,
(ii). the BBC has strong support from a large and
influential minority of the population who will push for reform rather than
abolition.
In view of these factors, and considering everything in the
round, our view is that a political strategy for abolition is needed. Our aim is to be persuade a major political
party to adopt abolition as policy.
Obviously none of the above is to rubbish non-payment campaigns. Obviously civil resistance tactics help and non-payment (for varying motives) is becoming popular. It may be that a civil resistance movement against the BBC now gains ground. We hope so.
In summary, what we think is that:
Intentionalist non-payment and civil resistance are tactics.
A political campaign for abolition is strategy.
The two things go together, and each needs the other.
Without the non-payers, our case for abolition may be
weakened, so we are hoping that the non-payment campaigns can step up their pace.
Conversely, without a strategy for what happens after the TV
licence system ends, you could well find that the BBC’s position is stronger
than ever, either funded out of general taxation or on some commercial
basis. Those who doubt this would do
well to pay close attention to the 2017 parliamentary debate and reflect on what we have said here.
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