Douglas Carswell On The BBC

We agree and disagree with Mr Carswell.  We know that all politicians, including Mr Carswell, are bare-faced liars who conceal their true motives and beliefs behind semantics and word play.  It has come to something when such a sweeping statement can be made publicly, but this is where we are.  We have a feeling Mr Carswell will not be suing us.  

The cat is out of the bag.  There is no going back to some mythical era, itself based on official lies, in which we all more or less implicitly trusted in authority.  It’s over, and while we still have to put up with these people, the nuances of what they say always need to be considered carefully.

Mr Carswell is right that an organised boycott of the TV licence is on the horizon, however we would hope that the issue is ultimately resolved by Parliament in the form of an orderly dissolution of the BBC.  That is what realisation of our goal will bring about. 

Yet, despite his apparent antipathy to the BBC, clever Mr Carswell does not actually argue against the BBC, he only says that he thinks a boycott is coming and laments the prospect.  For all we know, he is a BBC defender and sympathiser who would stop us in our tracks, if he had half the chance.

Anti-TV licence campaigners should consider carefully the record of the Establishment in duping the public.  Brexit is but one example in a sorry tale that goes back decades and decades.  Politicians like Carswell will say the right things, but when it comes to the crunch, they will not hesitate to organise a stitch-up that preserves the status quo in some form.

That is why we have organised this independent political campaign for abolition of the BBC.  We must not make the same mistake as the Australians and end up saddled with a Soviet-style broadcasting monolith funded out of taxes.  As it becomes clear that the TV licence is no longer sustainable and has become indefensible, there must be a strong and unified political initiative for complete and total abolition, dissolution and dismantlement of the BBC itself. 

That means:

The Royal Charter must be revoked.

The statutory Corporation must be dissolved by Act of Parliament.

All BBC television and radio transmissions must cease and the BBC must end as a going concern (with all its commercial goodwill nullified). 

The government must appoint receivers to break-up, fragment and dispose of the BBC’s assets: every nut and bolt must be, variously, sold or leased on the commercial market.  Except that the state should retain ownership of the BBC brand to deter re-use.

The money recovered must be reinvested by the government in trust and used to fund legacy wage obligations and pension commitments, with any surplus returned annually to the taxpayer.

In short, the BBC must cease to exist. 

Additional optional measures, which we would support, include the privatisation of Channel Four - a mere formality and in itself relatively uncontroversial.  We would also support strong structural regulation of broadcasting, the press and the media to ensure a domestic market that is free of cross-media ownership and actual and shadow monopolies, and bans foreign ownership, while re-affirming a commitment of the state to withdraw from state involvement in ownership or content. 

Beyond the minimal regulatory necessities of maintaining the conditions for a functioning market, the state has no business in media and information.  To that end, we would support further privatisations of all state media and information functions within the sort of regulatory framework we have just outlined.  If there is no viable business model for a particular government information operation, then it should be shut down, the assets disposed of, and any surplus recovered should be returned to the taxpayer.  If ministers and civil servants cannot explain to the public their policies and actions, then they should not be undertaking their duties.

That is where we stand.

The following cop-outs and half-measures are not enough:

Somehow make the BBC unbiased. 

How this astonishing feat will be achieved is never explained.  Perhaps it’s proposed that the government should give the BBC a jolly good telling-off?

End the TV licence. 

Campaigners never tell us how they will persuade Parliament and the government of the day not to simply fund the BBC out of tax – the obvious thing to do and exactly what happened in Australia – or, alternatively, how commercialising the BBC will cure its problems.

There doesn’t see to be any sort of strategy beyond simply ‘not paying’.  It’s not enough.  We will end up in the same position as we have over Brexit – outmanoeuvred by cleverer people in the Establishment who do plan and prepare and will see us coming.

Privatise the BBC. 

This depends on what exactly is meant by ‘privatisation’ – we have learnt over the years just how deceptive and misleading the word is – but unless it means a break-up and pluralisation along similar lines to, or analogous to, the railway privatisation of the 1990s, it’s difficult to see how this can be regarded as any sort of fundamental change.  It just strengthens the BBC’s position, as it then (we assume) becomes entirely a profit--making enterprise, therefore virtually immune from political attack, yet with all the dignity and credibility implicit in the ‘BBC’ brand.  On reflection, privatisation seems like the worst option of them all.

The Options

Here's a summary of the major options for dealing with the BBC:

1. Keep the status quo

Under this option, the BBC retains its Royal Charter and remains a statutory Corporation, and the TV licence system remains in place.  But this does not necessarily mean the status quo pura.  Perhaps there will be some further cosmetic reforms, as has happened in the past.  Or possibly under a 'status quo' avenue the TV licence could be ended and replaced with funding out of general taxation.  Or the Establishment might double-down and develop a tougher enforcement regime for the TV licence.  We would also include the Labour Party's latest proposals for the BBC (and the wider media) in this category.

2. Marketisation (the 'Status Quo Plus' option)

Under this option, the BBC retains its Royal Charter and remains a statutory Corporation, but the TV licence system is replaced with market-based funding, such as subscriptions or advertising (or a combination of such).

3. Commercialisation 

Under this option, the BBC loses its Royal Charter but remains a statutory Corporation (or a public enterprise on some other legal basis), thus notionally under public ownership (a quite similar situation to Channel Four).  The TV licence is ended.  Presumably funding would be by subscription or advertising, or a combination of these.   

4. Privatisation and re-chartering ('Privatisation-lite')

Under this option, the BBC retains its Royal Charter in some form but is no longer a statutory Corporation, instead one or more public limited companies that people buy shares in.  Presumably under this model a mandatory TV licence fee would no longer be considered necessary, as the new company(ies) would be free to seek private funding in the same way as any other listed concern.  That said, as chartered status is retained, the government would probably establish a commissioning body modelled broadly along the lines of the former BBC Trust.

5. Privatisation and dechartering 

The BBC loses its Royal Charter, which is revoked, and is no longer a statutory Corporation, instead it becomes one or more public limited companies that people buy shares in.  This is a complete break: no TV licence, no superintending bodies beyond those that apply to any other broadcaster.

6. Privatisation and pluralisation 

As with 5 above, this is a complete break: the BBC loses its Royal Charter and is no longer a statutory Corporation, therefore no TV licence and no superintending bodies beyond those that apply to any other broadcaster or media organisation. There is the added change that the BBC's services are 'pluralised', which is to say, split between a number of different businesses that operate independently of each other, taking the neo-liberal Birt reforms to their logical conclusion.  To get a picture of what this could look like, think of the privatisation of railway and train services (the British Rail group) during the 1990s, in which the government set up a private company for running the infrastructure, various operating companies for rolling stock, etc. and lots of train operating companies to run the actual train services.  One difference with a media/broadcasting privatisation and break-up is that, unlike with trains and railways, the new spun-out enterprises could potentially compete with each other, hence the disaster of this model for the trains and railways should not necessarily inauspicious.

7. Abolition 

This is what we want.  Find out why here and here.  Under this option, the BBC's Royal Charter is revoked, the statutory Corporation is dissolved and not replaced with anything else, transmission is ended and the BBC ceases to be a going concern; then, receivers take over management and control of the assets and commence, variously, selling-off and leasing these on the commercial market, etc., as they would with any other business.  Wage, salary and pension entitlements are protected and paid-out in the usual manner according to general law and contract, underpinned by a state guarantee.

To be clear, under this option the BBC ceases to exist.  That means all transmissions end.  That's a very important point because the ensuing receivership must not facilitate a privatisation by the backdoor.  The Corporation must be dissolved, must cease operating on a fixed date, must cease to be a going concern (save to the extent that management have a duty to assist the receivers and civil servants, as necessary), and the Corporation must be brought promptly under the management of government-appointed receivers with a view to complete asset fragmentation and disposal.

Further Comment

We would assume that most people involved with or supporting the BBC would want some version of Option 1, with quite a few favouring Option 2 (which could be seen as the 'Status Quo Plus' option).  That's fairly obvious.

But we also think there will be a sizeable minority within the BBC - maybe forming a majority of its very senior management and among its more shrewd and intelligent supporters - who would quite like the look of Option 3 ('Commercialisation') or Option 4 ('Privatisation-lite').  A commercialised BBC would be freer to seek private investment, while at the same time enjoying the stability and influence of a public enterprise with the 'BBC brand'.  The privatisation-lite option would retain the prestige of the Royal Charter, while allowing considerably greater commercial freedom than a public enterprise could have, albeit within the parameters of whatever commissioning agenda the government saw fit to impose as a condition of continued chartering.  With either option, the TV licence system is gone and much of the more meaningful criticism of the BBC is thereby neutralised. In that situation, the BBC's future is secured and its sinister agenda against this country can be pursued anew with vigour.

The BBC's greatest fear is the option we favour, Abolition - for obvious reasons.  They would also not like the more hardline privatisation options very much, especially if it involves a break-up of the BBC into discrete and competing entities.