The last two licence fee settlements the BBC has received – one each from Conservative and Labour governments – have been the most generous and most pro-Corporation for more than 30 years. There was a consensus that the BBC was a good thing, all the more remarkable because of the previous 15 years of battles with Mrs Thatcher’s administrations. As we enter the treacherous waters of the new Communications Bill and Charter renewal, the Corporation seems to have managed to provoke a political consensus again – but this time one that appears to have united Labour and Conservatives against it.

There were many mothers of this particular engagement. To begin with, resentment in the Corporation about long-term political attempts to manage news. In Mrs Thatcher’s years, Bernard Ingham (her rottweiler press secretary) would attempt to get the Government’s way. Recently, Labour have taken the battle right down the food chain to young producers, often using threats, late at night, in attempts to secure favourable running orders and the “right kind” of coverage. This has led to a simmering hostility. It also led to a kind of chippiness on the BBC side.

On the Government side, there was resentment about the difficulty in having a discussion with the British public about its reasoning as it took us to war, a sense that there was no public space to argue in. The Government presumably does not like the feeling that politicians are often treated as deceitful liars (while Royal butlers are taken seriously). For example, during the run up to the war the Prime Minister was subjected to the self-righteous and contemptuous insults of a not especially well-informed audience in Newcastle – one did not have to agree with his policy to think his position ought to be treated with greater respect – in “the interests of democracy”.

Another factor was the resentment of the BBC’s Chairman and Director- General at being branded politically partisan by a malicious press. Then there are issues about reporting standards and different kinds of journalists. There are constitutional issues. Quite apart from the detail of the Dr Kelly affair itself, it is a feverish brew. But what will be the consequences?

Let us consider the past history of rows between governments and the media – not just the BBC – and what has followed from them. Take the newspapers. Although governments are always wary of joining battle with the agenda-setting, generally hostile national press, at times they have been so riled that they have been willing to run the gauntlet. The 1949 Royal Commission on the Press was prompted by the way in which the majority of the newspapers had backed the Conservatives in the 1945 election – totally out of step with a public who voted in Labour on a landslide. It was also propelled by the NUJ, which was incensed at the way the press barons of the period ran the newspapers as personal fiefdoms.

Atlee was cautious at first, as he did not want to antagonise the press. But, secure in his majority, he was persuaded that intervention was possible and necessary and set up a wide-remit committee that was the first to scrutinise press finances. Apart from subjecting both Beaverbrook and Northcliffe to humiliating interrogation, the Commission recommended that a body outside the industry should regulate the press. This led to the setting up of the first Press Council. It was a weak and ineffective body, but the press hated it and felt it an imposition. The Government also decided to tax the press more harshly. A substantial Labour majority in the House of Commons pushed it all through.

The 1961 Royal Commission on the Press emerged from a different kind of crisis – it was a response to a period of rapid newspaper closures and amalgamations throughout the country. There was a genuine anxiety that the reservoir of potential political expression was being diminished, and that a key aspect of local democracy was disappearing. The greed of proprietors such as the Cadburys, who closed the national News Chronicle (despite a circulation of considerably more than a million), and the London evening Star, seriously curtailed the range of political views represented in the press. Yet proprietors were still claiming all sorts of political and commercial concessions because of what was seen as newspapers’ role in the democratic process.

A Conservative “one nation” administration set up a Royal Commission to look into preserving a range of newspapers. This led directly to press specific anti-monopoly legislation in 1965 – because the owners were seen to be irresponsible, they were to be restricted by government intervention – and an all-party majority in the Commons passed legislation to limit the press barons’ commercial and economic freedom. In other countries, Scandinavia for example, governments responded to the problem by producing subsidies for papers offering minority opinions.

Relentless hostility

The historical evidence in broadcasting is also pretty stark. Rows always have repercussions. Either people go, or the money gets cut, or there is an attempt to alter the governance. However, the biggest caveat is that until now, on the whole and despite some mistakes, government regulation of broadcasting has worked very well. It has produced an industry that has delivered high quality programming to the British public and has also made money. It has forced broadcasters to compete to make programmes, not just to milk audiences for profit – and this has been to their commercial advantage. Look what happened to ITV and ITN when regulatory control was weakened.

Broadcasting policy is always driven by all governments’ sense that they have the right to affect the broad commercial and political climate within which broadcasting operates. The rows and their consequences offer salutary lessons. The argument is not about whether the consequences of these conflicts were just or not. Being in the right does not mean you win. In many cases broadcasters were treated unfairly. In some at least, governments had justification for feeling aggrieved. In any case, as broadcasting organisations usually survive beyond the life of any government they have some advantages that they ought not to abuse.

The argument therefore is concerned with exactly what the consequences of conflicts have been. The 1949 Beveridge Report had recommended that the BBC’s monopoly of broadcasting remain, but in 1951 the new Conservative government preferred to follow the recommendations of the minority report – written by just two dissidents – and introduce commercial broadcasting. This was the right decision, but it was also motivated by animus against the BBC. “The BBC acts as an arrogant, left liberal fiefdom,” observed the then Postmaster-General, Earl de la Warr, “and we need competition.” In 1956, before Suez, the feeling that the BBC was refusing to reform how it managed broadcasting to the world led to one suggestion that there be a major reduction in the funding of the World Service “to administer a psychological shock to the Corporation”. During the Suez crisis, the Prime Minister also threatened to reduce the licence fee. Neither of these threats was actually implemented. However, the Government did get its way over World Service policy. The World Service turned towards Eastern Europe with a new remit – regarding itself as, in effect, broadcasting into enemy territory, it came to see itself as being in the front line of the Cold War.

Very often broadcasting-versus-government rows quickly degenerate into disputes about process. That is to say they escalate from an individual programme to complaints about control mechanisms which tarnish the whole institution. Usually individual programmes are perceived as the issue, when really they are symptoms of deeper, more sustained conflicts that then go ballistic. Saying “no” to politicians is not the problem; frustrating them over a long period often is. A whole weather system of conflict ought to be avoided. Frequently the broadcasting authorities (the BBC Governors, the IBA) claim some version of “freedom of expression” – that they could not interfere because it is not their job to preview programmes. To which the reply is clear: it is their job to ensure the quality of the decision-making structure.

In 1971 the BBC broadcast a trendy looking but utterly conventional programme about the Labour opposition – called Yesterday’s Men. It was actually indefensible, in the sense that it merely repeated a lot of unsubstantiated press smears on members of the Wilson government: Jenkins, Crossland, Callaghan, Healey and Wilson himself. Its tone was contemptuous. What the programme got wrong was that Labour had won the General Election by the time it was shown. Safe with a majority, the new Government imposed Charles Hill as Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors. Hill, who had previously been a Conservative minister – and, even more insultingly for the BBC, Chairman of ITV – duly disposed of the Director-General, Hugh Greene.

On the other side of the political fence, the BBC reporting during the Falklands war, although well defended and expert, infuriated the Conservative Government. Then followed a whole range of niggling disputes about the tone and balance of plays and news that led to what were, in effect, cuts in the licence fee. Throughout the 1980s the BBC’s finances were made increasingly difficult. The Corporation’s position, just like those of other organisations committed to impartiality, became more delicate as Conservative electoral success was repeated. There are real problems about having to become, rather than fairly represent, the opposition.

Bitter conflicts

This is a simplistic interpretation of many complex arguments. I am not really interested in the rights or wrongs, although being right may help mobilise the public – another part of the ongoing equation – in support of broadcasters. What is most important at present is that the public trusts the BBC and likes its programmes and must continue to do so. Moreover, the present Government also understands and wishes to protect what it sees as a valuable tradition in broadcasting. But in a public climate where the judgment of groups such as the BBC Governors is constantly queried (even though over the long term it has been resoundingly successful), in which the Government is feeling offended, and in which a questionable Communications Bill is being passed, there are many opportunities for interference.

It remains essential that the governors have to be seen to govern, the processes of governance tightened and made more explicit. But it is important to realise that outcomes are the result of politics, not justice. Yes, rows between the media and governments have consequences. They have only occasionally been fatal.