Posted by: Lucie
MI5 Behind The BBC?
Hat tip: JBalzer.
Now there has always been a minority of people who retain suspicion of the BBC and the organisation’s claim to impartiality. Being an institution essentially entirely reliant on the British government, the potential vested interests there were often cited as a reason for establishing commercial television in the 1950s. What a barrel of laughs and shining paragon of virtue that idea turned out to be. But the link between BBC content and governmental influence rarely seems to be explicitly stated. I’ve no doubt that some of you must have heard the general echoes that the BBC is a government propaganda instrument – however, it is often anecdotal. And so here is my modest attempt to connect the dots, a little bit.
So is there more to the concept of the BBC and the security services in collusion with one another? Does the BBC feel a conflict of interests; their duty to the public on one hand, their duty to uphold the image of our country and government on the other?
Apparently during the mid 80s there was somewhat of a big scandal going about regarding MI5′s involvement in vetting applicants for positions in the BBC. Other accusations involve special information being passed to the BBC board of directors, and censorship. And apparently, this was going on as early as 1937.
So, I may be a bit late to this party, but it bears repeating. (Try searching for ‘BBC scandal’, or any variation online).
In 1983, two years before this scandal broke, Stuart Hood published his book, “On Television”. Hood has worked as a controller for both the BBC and ‘independent television’, as a Professor of film and television at the Royal College of Art, and Vice President of the ACTT. That is to say, I don’t think he’d bullshit us about. Now this is quite eerie because a month or so ago I actually picked up his book from the deletion pile at one of the university libraries. Allow me to quote from it:
“Once the board has made it’s choice the applicants are submitted to a further filtering process – vetting by the security services of the state, which also report on performers employed by the BBC. At this point those who have been politically active on the left can expect to be turned down – as can others who have without political commitment been associated with persons known to be active in this way. Occasionally it happens that the BBC commits itself to someone before vetting has been carried out; when the vetting is negative the BBC then discovers ‘organisational reasons’ why the appointment can no longer be made. The rejected person then goes on a blacklist and is unlikely to ever be employed by the BBC.” (Hall, 1983: 29-30)
And so I don’t believe he could have put that much more clearly and plainly.
If that’s not enough to make you seriously concerned, read this. It would certainly give more credibility to the ‘established 1937′ accusation. In 1939, Joan Littlewood, and later her husband Jimmy Miller were monitored by MI5 in direct connection with the work she was doing for them during the war. Joan was considered to have left-leaning political views. Supposedly, some of her work amounted to “thinly-veiled communist propaganda”. She was consequently banned from the BBC for two years.
Later, after doing my own digging, I found these four articles using Nexis. Click on them to download if you’re interested.
Now to understand the context of the results of my search, let me just explain Nexis a little bit. The search yielded roughly 1,000 results – of course mostly the BBC reporting on public scandals. You have the option to narrow down to newswires or newspapers, other sources etc. I didn’t do that. Instead I selected all 1,000 and searched chronologically. Meaning that these four pieces are the only things that exist on this issue in the entire online newspaper database. Three of them are Russian broadcasts, the other Polish. Fair enough, you might say, the British press may not have been inclined to report on something so embarrassing – but they did. If you downloaded the articles above, you will have noticed that the second broadcast mentions British paper The Observer, and there is also reference to the British press in general being outraged by the situation. Why then, only four results? Why then, are none of them British? Lest we forget, this is a very comprehensive searching program that allowed me to dig up this stuff from years before I was born based on two vague keywords. It is “the single, most powerful, global news and business information service” (Taken from the Nexis website).
And so let’s turn a little bit of that suspicion towards our modern BBC – who have just launced a ‘Spooks‘ spin-off, ‘Spooks code-9‘. As if the original series wasn’t quite racist, sexist, and scare-mongerist enough, it appears there’s just a bottomless desire for this kind of crap in Britain. It revolves around super young and sexy MI5 agents, in post-nuclear 2013 Britain. Why are we not worried yet?
Further stuff from which you may derive enjoyment:
- This guy claims that MI5, in collusion with the BBC, are persecuting him personally, persistently – and have even tried to kill him. Apparently there’s a conspiracy to make him look crazy. He nevertheless, does appear crazy. But interesting reading!
- Room 105: Why the BBC can never be trusted.
- Pseudo-Occult Media: Analysis of ‘spooks code 9′ and fun guessing games about illuminati and freemasonic symbolism.
- David Shayler – former MI5 agent who went to prison for leaking secret documents suggesting that MI5 was vetting Labour party members. He now apparently believes himself to be God incarnate.
12 Comments so far
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Hat off to you, Lucie…
For following this up!
This is the first thing I’m reading about that since the 1980′s.
I was beginning to believe I was living in some sort of parallel Universe were the ‘BBC-scandal’ was something to do with gameshows…
There are still signs and miracles.
Glory be to the gods !
Yes Lucie, it is most interesting. Not surprising really, it’s essentially the same way here in the US.
@ JBalzer: Thanks to you for jogging my memory. I can’t believe I read Hood’s book (quoted above) and didn’t make the connection or bother to look for articles. It’s pretty bad, really. Well at least it’s there now for people who want to look.
@ Richard: Thanks for your comment. Yeah, it’s pretty pessimistic all round, sadly.
Quote:
“Now this is quite eerie because a month or so ago I actually picked up his book from the deletion pile at one of the university libraries”
Deletion-pile,huh??
Well-as they say in Dublin:
“Jayzus,Mary and Jozeph…”
I hope this thing gets plastered all over the internet.
It’s the first (and maybe the only) real proof that it’s not only *possible* for western intelligence-services to try and get direct control over the media.
It’s proof that they already *did* get control before…
Back then…
Yes, deletion pile. It’s my favourite thing in the world. An expensive book give-away! I can never carry home all the books I want.
Re: The lack of information – When researching this, I have to be honest, all I came across were vague articles written in 2006 (20 years later wtf?) or personal sites that could easily be knocked just because the owner is conducting themselves like a crazy. I really don’t understand the logic in that. If you want to be heard, you gotta play along with how a credible person usually behaves. It works, I know.
That said, I’m sure there are other books like it lurking in one of the 17 libraries. Dusty and unlooked at, though.
Mmmh…Nice idea, isn’t it:
You are a politician about to get hit by a corruption-scandal ?
No problem.
Get someone wearing clown-shoes and a red nose to level the allegation against you before anyone else can.
And poof- it’ll dissolve into thin air…
Who will believe it once it gets associated with clown-shoes and a red nose…?
That concept should work especially well if there’s a menthality in place which says “Ah- but he or she *can’t* be corrupt…He or she wears a halo !”
Halos like that have a tendency to grow so big that the wearer has to tilt it in order to fit through the door after a while….
Yeah. Sadly there always seem to be more ‘nutters’ than articulate people trying to expose things. Either that or somebody makes sure that the nutters get 1000% more exposure than the sensible people.
Maybe some feel like there’s no point in standing up. Do it, damnit! Be respectable in all the ways they want you to be and tell the truth at the same time. That’s a mind fuck for the general public.
I think there is great resistance (especially in older generations) in the UK to doubting the ‘integrity’ of an institution like the BBC for exactly the same reason as, for example, the British legal system and other social mechanisms that the public have been told since a young age are ‘World Leading’.
The British public still see certain publically funded establishments such as ‘The Beeb’ as sacrosanct and ‘uncorruptable’. However, we all know that whether the source be corporate advertising or public money, he who controls the funding will inevitably exert a bias on the output! And in this case, it is government money (not public money, it is money taken by the government from the public and with their own controls put in place, not ours, given to the BBC).
You cannot control public opinion without controlling a source of propaganda as large as the BBC! It’s that simple! A very recent example to back this up, is when I caught a tiny segment of the BBC Breakfast news show last tuesday about the Russia/Georgia ‘conflict’ – the female newsreader was interviewing an Ossetian woman by satellite, who was clearly nervous about the interview, because of what she was about to do, which is very unusual but there are an increasing number of these ‘surprises’ happening nowadays. Anyway, she diverges from the script and gives an answer, for her the truth, but NOT what the BBC had been told that she WOULD say, which was that Georgia bombed her town in the middle of the night with no provocation. The BBC interviewer was obviously thrown by this – and after a brief pause so that her producer had 2 seconds to think on his feet and yell something in her earpiece for her to retort with – she said “Surely Russia isn’t totally without blame though is it?” – which was obviously by the way she said it, NOT at all the response that she had expected to give in preparation for the interview! It was a very strange thing to watch as it virtually never happens.
See the film Network (1976) if you haven’t already done so! A funny and prophetic film. TV is for the vast majority of the public, evangelical in nature – they bang the drum and tow the line on 9/11 to Iraq and back, the Tony Blair and his stunt-double successor, David Cameron, from Global Warming to GM foods… If you keep repeating something often enough and with enough ‘sincerity’ people will eventually believe it!
“The chief function of propaganda is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time in order that they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind.” – Mein Kampf
Great work on this site BTW… really really excellent.
Seth: Thank you for your thoughtful comment and huge compliment on the site. I am definitely inclined to agree with you regarding the hesitation to turn a critical eye towards the BBC. Infact, I used to believe this has some basis in reality until recently when I discovered (aside from everything listed above) that every single Board of Directors for the BBC has been hand picked by our government – and the fact that technically the PM has the right to convert the BBC into a propaganda instrument ‘in times of national emergency’. Of course we all know that this perpetual emergency will go on as long as it needs to, perhaps for a very long time yet. And so the BBC was flawed from the beginning.
With regards to the interview you mentioned on the BBC, I believe I saw that clip too. Those are always the best TV news moments, aren’t they? See also this post, and this clip for some classic deviations from the script. Both really excellent examples of how much thought goes into presenting normality. The presenter dealing with Galloway actually graduated from the same course I am currently working on – something that has always amazed me. How can somebody know these things and still systematically deny an objective perspective?
Yes – I know of both those too. More mind-boggling than what Galloway says on the program is the fact that Sky LET him come on without someone there having a brain-cell count in double figures that was enough to know better or at least know roughly what he would do to Sky’s ‘Received Opinion’ (I love that phrase! It’s right up there with ‘Collateral Damage’ or when Mervin King says ‘Negative Growth’ because he can’t say the ‘R’ word, even though that IS the definition of ‘Recession’ – Zero growth!)
Ah but they usually manage to batter their guests down, they probably thought she was up to it but evidently not. I love how she resorts to repeating “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter!” in a really nervous tone…
Epic fail.
I just stumbled upon this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/26/alqaida.uksecurity
Quote:
‘The document also shows that Whitehall counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit new media websites and outlets with a proposal to “channel messages through volunteers in internet forums” as part of their campaign.’
Ah, yes.
“The Internet: Threat or opportunity…”
What comes to mind is- to whom, and for whom…
BTW:
I never realised that the ‘war on terror’ had been re-defined as a (negative) advertising-campaign. When did that happen…?
And does this mean that Bin Laden can sue them for loss of business now…?
Anyways. Beware of travelling salesmen.
Or blog-mongers. Whatever the case may be…