Not having come into contact with the man I can’t comment on his personality, but it’s fair to say that everyone makes mistakes. I notice it isn’t a characteristic of conservatives to own up to theirs and repent.

I’m also moved to ask how you connotate nasty with being a boor, and how you slip from noting coincidence to concluding causation.

However this is a thread about the media, so I’ll just pause to remind you how everything in the media reflects the culture of its’ surroundings.

Why is Mehdi Hasan so confident that his assertion that the BBC is in fact ‘a right-wing and conservative institution’ cannot be effectively rebutted?

Before I begin I should state that (as he knows) my main complaint against his original article is its ludicrous claim that I believe I am ‘ignored’ by the BBC. I do not think this, which is why I haven’t said it. The article which I wrote (at his request) and which he presumably read before publishing it, (and before publishing his own contribution), makes it clear that I have no such belief. Much of it, in fact, dwells on the way in which the BBC approaches me when it asks me to appear on TV and radio programmes, something the BBC couldn’t do if it were ignoring me. I would be grateful if Mr Hasan would have the grace to admit that he was mistaken, and to withdraw the claim. It makes his argument look silly, and gets in the way of proper debate.

I suspect that his assurance stems mainly from his almost complete misunderstanding of conservatism. He shares this problem – of blank, clueless incomprehension of his opponent – with the BBC itself. The Corporation has not felt the need to take conservatism seriously for many years, for reasons I’ll set out shortly. The same is true of many of the other institutions of modern Britain, where the Left’s long march, begun in the 1960s, is now complete. The result of this is that people whose assumptions are ‘progressive’ (their own terminology) occupy all positions of decisive authority, and never meet or need to justify themselves to anyone who disagrees with them, whom they do not also despise. In fact, they generally despise anyone who disagrees with them, believing for example that a person who supports capital punishment for murderers is beyond the pale of civilisation.

At the same time many millions of BBC licence fee payers do not share these new opinions, and hold largely to the old, dethroned ones. Is the purpose of the BBC to serve them, and to reflect their views, or, by exclusion, derision, obscenity, foul language and triumphalist propaganda, bring them round to its own opinion? If the second, surely that is bias?

There are large arguments to be had about how and why this came about. I’ve tried to address them in my book ‘The Abolition of Britain’ and more recently in another book ‘The Broken Compass’, so won’t dwell on them here. But I think it would be very hard for anyone to argue that it hadn’t happened. The occupiers of significant positions, whether they be Cabinet ministers, MPs, Bishops, Anglican vicars, Catholic priests, Permanent Secretaries, Professors, head teachers, ordinary teachers, judges, editors, producers of TV and radio programmes, heads of broadcasting and media organisations, newspaper and TV reporters, businessmen, publishers, historians, novelists, artists, actors or police officers now hold social, moral, cultural views wholly different from, and often opposite to, those their forerunners of 40 or 50 years ago would have held. There are exceptions, but they are rare and much remarked upon. I am not arguing here about whether this is good or bad (not that my view is any secret), just stating it as an indisputable fact.

The view which has been dethroned in this process is conservatism. This can be summed up as a pessimistic view of humanity and society based on a Christian belief in the imperfectibility of man, demanding the exercise of individual conscience, strong self-restraint, deference to established authority, sexual continence and constancy, patience, respect for age, for hierarchy and for institutions, patriotism and monarchy – generally combined with a strong predisposition in favour of hard work and thrift and a horror of idleness and debt. These views were once held widely by voters on both sides of the political divide. The modern person may recognise all these things under the other names which progressives give to them: ‘repression, religious bigotry, snobbery, sexism, chauvinism, xenophobia, suburban and/or “Victorian” values etc.’ Call them what you like, but don’t imagine that your choice of name doesn’t betoken an opinion on an important issue. They once were dominant and are now despised and rejected. And the BBC is entirely on one side in this conflict, and cannot conceive that any good person could take the other view.

Mr Hasan seems to think that I have personally invented the conservatism I espouse, and it is a quirky, random collection of views which appear contradictory to him. Let me assure him that I am simply the inheritor and continuer of a tradition much older than I, which is only proper for a conservative. Mr Hasan also, for some reason inaccessible to me, thinks the Conservative Party embodies conservatism, thinks that conservatism consists of support for free markets, or for the Iraq war, or a general liking for the United States. In fact some of these positions are those of classical liberalism, while others are those of ‘Neo-Conservatism’, a tendency more attractive to disappointed Marxists, in search of a new Utopia, and to ultra-liberal globalists, than to conservatives. Many, if not all, neo-conservatives are cultural and moral and social radicals, and economic ultra-liberals. Some of these positions are common to both these views. None of them is conservative.

He is also, I think, confused by the fact that the BBC, which was generally sympathetic to the Blair government because of its cultural leftism, could never really cope with that government’s globalist decision to go to war in Iraq. Sentimental Leftists, whose politics are really a series of displaced religious opinions, often misunderstand, and lag behind, the vanguard of their cause. Only the sharper and smarter ones, the ‘hard liberals’, recognise that their aims may be served by bombing a few cities. The Tory Party had a parallel problem. Having sold Britain to the EU and being secretly ashamed of it, it now strives to look ultra-patriotic on every possible occasion by banging the drum for war and supporting ‘our boys’, though it overcame this when we surrendered to the IRA in Northern Ireland, the last actual national conflict in which our armed forces were deployed in British, rather than globalist interests. The neo-conservative liberals, whose reasons for backing these wars are entirely different, thus have an easier time with their backbenchers than do Labour. Sentimental Tory MPs back wars they should oppose. Sentimental Labour MPs oppose wars they ought to support.

As for the Tory Party, the BBC is biased against it only when it shows signs of being conservative. Such moments are increasingly rare. I am not now arguing, and never have sought to argue, that the BBC is biased against the Conservative Party. On the contrary, I state in my article for the NS that the BBC has now completely converted the Conservative Party to its own world-view, and has rewarded it with sympathetic and generous coverage. This is one of the most important political developments of our time, which is why most political journalists, incurious, sheep-like and conformist, have not even noticed it.

The BBC is not a deliberately or consciously wicked body. It does what it does because it believes fervently (like so many harmful people and organisations) that it is doing good. Many of its decision-makers feel a genuine urge to be fair. But they do not know how to do it. Thanks to the successful Gramscian ‘war of position’, described above, they are almost physically repulsed by the opinions and attitudes of people such as me, and also of the Thatcherite liberals described above. They would never have such people in their own homes, around their own tables. Yet they feel they must have us in their studios.

This is to their credit. It is hard. I sympathise. They are too busy shuddering to distinguish between us, hence the blunders described in my New Statesman article. Yet they swallow hard, adopt fixed smiles and try to invite us on, if only to prove to themselves that they are just. Of course there are many different degrees of being ‘invited on’. There are the ‘balanced’ debate programmes where the occasional conservative can be fitted in, permitted to speak but obviously not in any way endorsed by the Corporation. There are also brief discussions on Radio 4 current affairs programmes. But these are concessions, not the real thing.

The real things are the major behind-the-scenes executive positions which give direction to editorial policy and to the appointment of key presenter’s chairs, decisive jobs such as that of Political Editor, influential slots such as Newsnight anchor.

In a few cases, notable mainly for their rarity, presenters’ chairs or regular panel slots go to people who are not full members of the new post-1968 consensus. Andrew Neil is a highly skilled and competent broadcaster and a journalist of great experience. He is, it is true, allowed to present a few programmes. These may be much-watched by enthusiasts, but I do not think we could really call them ‘prime time’ or even ‘mainstream’. Ask yourselves this. Can you conceive of Andrew Neil being appointed as a main presenter of ‘Newsnight’, or of the ‘Today’ programme? If not, why not? (I should point out here that I doubt if Mr Neil agrees with me on many major subjects, and I do not regard him as a conservative). I think it rather touching that Mr Hasan believes Mr Portillo is a conservative. It was in 1999, I think, that I put myself forward for the Tory nomination in Kensington and Chelsea, purely so as to make the point that Mr Portillo is not a conservative. Is he really Diane Abbot’s opponent when they sit together on that sofa?

Then there’s the Nick Robinson argument. Mr Robinson must speak for himself, but I would make one point about comparisons between him and Andrew Marr. Mehdi dwells on Mr Robinson’s student Toryism, a documented fact. But Mr Robinson had, for many years before he became BBC Political editor, pursued a BBC career during which he was not able to express a political opinion, even had he wished to. We do not actually know what his current or recent political opinions are. So we cannot really claim to have any recent information on this.

Andrew Marr, a short time before his appointment, was an opinionated writer for the Daily Express (in its Rosie Boycott manifestation) and in other places. I think it fair to say that the opinions he stated were not generally conservative ones. I don’t think this is a parallel with Mr Robinson’s appointment. Again, a question. Could a conservative columnist on a national daily, whose current views were well-known, with the equivalent experience of Andrew Marr, have been appointed to the job? If not, why not?

The issue is confused by the fact that the political opinions of the leaderships of the two main parties are now so similar (see the recent statements by Michael Gove) that a declared Tory (not conservative) and a declared New Labour supporter would find little to criticise about the policies of the party he supposedly opposes. In fact much of the left-wing media establishment are now entirely reconciled to the arrival of a Cameron government, because they rightly believe the Blairite project is safe in Mr Cameron’s hands.

My own view has long been that BBC presenters and commentators should declare their political sympathies, instead of pretending absurdly that they have none, that the BBC could achieve a true balance by ensuring that it recruited from among conservative as well as among left-liberal journalists, and that programmes should be presented in an adversarial fashion, ensuring (for example) that no politician should be interviewed by a supporter of his party.

If this doesn’t happen, then I think the BBC will eventually lose the necessary consensus of support, politically required for the continuation of the licence fee. I should regret that. I am a friend of the BBC as an institution. I do not think its disappearance would be a good thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually love the BBC, but it’s taken many wrong steps, and hasn’t opened itself up to society at large as a national institution should.

If by ‘left-wing elitists’ you mean ‘the British Crime Survey’ (which depending on the year goes into detail about how misinformed someone is likely to be based on the media they intake) you’d be dead right.

Sounds about right. Wouldn’t be without the beeb, mind. Even if only to fuck off the Murdochs

To be fair to the BBC, they are in show business, no-one can be suprised that they are top heavy with a LGB ‘bias’, show business has been well served with the LGB culture since year dot. Anyone listening to reruns of Beyond our Ken and Round the Horn will testify to that.

I agree with the London centric nature of broadcasting in general (not just the BBC), then then again everything in London is London centric.

Really? How come this then?

“At home there was limited appetite for military action [regarding the nationalisation of the Suez Canal by the Egyptian government]. The Labour Opposition was against it, and the BBC’s view was that it had to reflect that divide.

“No one reflected it more starkly than Opposition leader Hugh Gaitskell in a television broadcast. The Conservative Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden was incensed by the BBC’s decision to grant Gaitskell airtime to challenge his own television and radio broadcasts explaining the Government’s decision to mobilise. He was angrier still when the BBC refused to tone down World Service broadcasts to the Middle East reflecting the divided opinion.

“British troops in Suez Relations between the Government and the BBC became increasingly bitter, and schemes to ‘discipline’ the Corporation were discussed. These are believed to have included the Government taking editorial control of the BBC.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/resources/pressure/suez.shtml

For more details about the row between Eden’s government and the BBC over the Suez invasion:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/resources/pressure/pdf/suez.pdf

It’s a fallacy that the Police have ever been able to guarantee anyone’s safety and anyone who perpetuated that idea (including the Police themselves) is perpetuating the problem.

Don’t you dare suggest I don’t think crime is a problem and that some people do live with having their windows being smashed daily. But these are exceptions to the rule and they usually have other causes. The painful fact is that there are very few innocent victims.

Policy making should be evidence-based, not a knee-jerk reaction to those who scream loudest.

-

“fuck off with your perception bullshit”

Your perception is your reality.

Bollocks. This is the same lame patronizing answer left-wing elitists always give. Sure it’s all in people’s heads! Funny that, my 86 year-old grandmother has had her handbag nicked twice in the last 3 years and the police (directly contradicting you) suggested that she should stay indoors after dark because they couldn’t ensure her safety. Yet when my grandmother came to this country in 1947 she was amazed at how little crime and disorder there was, and this was when she lived in impoverished neighbourhood in a much poorer Britain. I also worked for a while as an assistant to a tory MP in a relatively well off area in SE London. I received piles of letters from pensioners and families besieged by ferals and effectively imprisoned in their houses after dark. I then had to forward on the police’s pathetic reply to ‘make sure all the windows and doors are locked’. So fuck off with your perception bullshit and step out of your front door once in a while.

“I wonder how crime ridden are inner-cities (or anywhere else for that matter) – the crime stats (even allowing for wild inaccuracy) show nowhere in the UK is anything remotely like as bad as Baltimore… time to put up those barricades already, yeah?”

Yeah it’s not as bad as Baltimore so what are these plebs complaining about? Who the hell do they think they are to expect safe streets? Except why are you comparing our inner city areas with those of Baltimore. Wouldn’t it be much more relevant to compare the crime levels in the same country with those of recent history. Even allowing for the inaccuracies, they are not so wild that they can disguise the massive rise in crime and disorder over the last few decades.

“to say the presciptions offered by Hitchens are ‘popular’ with his target audience and that this is a sound way of directing policy-making is just nuts.”

What would a sound way of directing policy making be? Maybe it would be to restore a criminal justice system that is accepted and is respected by the general population, as it once was within living memory.

The BBC has always been pro-establishment. The establishment is currently the left, ergo the BBC is currently left leaning. Pretty surprising really, a Government funded broadcaster being er pro government.

I don’t think ‘the establishment’ or the BBC are left leaning or even ‘pro Government’ either.

I have seen the Labour Party on the wrong end of a pretty well justified kicking too many times to justify that remark.

There is a cultural bias in the BBC, i.e. a bit middle class with a bit too much emphasis on graduates, but that is true of the media in general. I suppose that given that it’s workforce is middle class and graduates then we cannot expect anything else, can we?

Which is why what we get from the BBC is a white, middle class, guilt ridden, Islington based, confused, contradictory form of socialism-light.

Appreciated your post…a good read. I’m not entirely sure whether or not you’re suggesting that I’m a dogmatic, ideologically-pure, inhuman creature of the left. As it happens, I’m not. Although I suppose I’m even more reviled in certain circles these days as I’m what I’d kinda describe as a democratic socialist…”child of the post war consensus”…(generally pronounced “dinosaur” by the new left-liberal identity crown and “unreconstructed Stalinist” by the Tories.)

I’ll admit to remaining fairly passionate in my beliefs and…here’s what pisses a lot of people off (you too possibly?..I like a laugh…you do realise a lot of the above was ironic?…’sarcastic’ if you like, but humour was the intent). Now personally I think there’s room for that in debate and you (“…and drink to our common humanity which greatly outweighed our differences”) can’t really dissent from that view either, can you? Humour, tolerance and compassion being, for my money the greatest humanity has to offer. I’ll admit, it can come across as a little aggressive but that’s just a personal kink.

The reason I’ve started posting on LC is the po-faced, self-righteous attitude on offer at CIF (seem to recall I’ve seen your moniker over there a few times too) which has unfortunately seen me banned several times. Probably, for challenging the editorial line but I think, as much as anything for bursting the bubble of ATL writers who a tend to exhibit a self-regard and sense of authority wholly unwarranted by the quality of either their prose or ideas.

They don’t appreciate ironic jibes aimed at them at all. However, my political stance being what it is and consequently feeling somewhat disenfranchised and unrepresented by mainstream opinion, I feel fully justified in employing irony…in fact I was discussing this just the other day on the climate camp thread…

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/08/27/climate-camp-watching-the-watchers/#comment-60656

I take the Czeslaw Milosz “glory of slaves” view of proceedings. That might sound a little overblown given the fact that I’m hardly under a totalitarian regime, it’s more a case of “what else am I gonna do?”

Anyway, there’s lots in your post that I agree with, if there was an omission in terms of “dogmatic rigidity”, I think you missed that of the modern liberal. I’ve already mentioned the self-righteous, humourless tone of cif but it goes further in that they always exhibit a very one-sided, ‘privileged’ relativism which masquerades as a generous humanity. I think this can best be illustrated with a typical example..

Imagine a bog standard Guardian piece…probably by some enthusiastic and idealistic recent Oxbridge graduate (whose dad plays squash with Rushbridger or someone): Some inner city estate; teenagers breaking windows, snapping wing mirrors and hassling pensioners etc. He/she visits the estates, talks to the kids, empathises, hears they lack facilities, opportunities sense of purpose.

She writes a heartfelt piece ending with the all too clichéd (but no less valid for that) “we should, invest, engage, empower…”etc etc.

Now the comments fly in: “hear hear” from the liberal crowd, “lock ‘em up” and “punish the parents” from the ‘social conservatives’
Now the “intra-poster” dialogue begins…”fascist” from the liberal to the social conservative…”you wouldn’t want to live there, you middle-class muppet” in the other direction. Writer, editor etc naturally side with the liberals..they say as much and continue to commision similar pieces ad nauseam.

What has always struck me about this is that cif will always justify its stance as a basic humanitarian one, and I wouldn’t disagree. However..since it is a human trait to forgive and understand, why is no sympathy ever extended to the “string em up brigade, who are exhibiting a no less ‘natural’ human urge (though a less commendable one) to seek retribution. Now an urge for retribution is not an attractive desire but it’s probably no less attractive than an urge to smash things up and scare pensioners. So why the asymmetry in sympathy?

To my mind, it’s because they know their whole one-sided ‘relativist’ stance is untenable and becomes evidently so without either a bit of progressive posturing or a the ready made “Daily Mail reader” opposition. I can’t take it seriously. I try and burst the bubble with a sarcastic little dig and I’m deleted.

Incidentally, most of the best of the socialists I knew as a youngster would have had no hesitation in knocking my teeth out if I’d ever broken their window or scared their mum on her way to the shops..

Monkeyfish. I know what it means to be a lefty. I’ve been there. I was a fervent lefty in my early twenties in the late-sixties, to such an extent that my brother was nearly thrown out of the armed forces merely because he was my brother. I fumed against the system, reactionaries, the tories, swore I would never let my eyes be sullied by the sight of the Daily Mail and the rest. Now 40+ years of experiencing reality and three more careers later, I have evolved. Oh, and incidentally, I’m probably one of few, if not the only one who peruses this forum, to have lived in the USSR. Human beings aren’t simply representatives of traits on a crude left/right scale. They are complex combinations of paradoxes, contradictions, quirks and nuances. Some of my views you would characterise as extreme right-wing. Others are so “left-wing” they would cause apoplexy in even a moderate tory.
When I lived in a room with three Russian students and cockroaches in the 1970’s we would argue fervently every day about capitalism versus socialism, usually almost coming to blows. At the end of the day however, we would invariably pour out what was left of the vodka and say bollocks to capitalism and bollocks to socialism, and drink to our common humanity which greatly outweighed our differences. But I don’t think most of the denizens of LC and the like are capable of that degree of humanity. For them, there is just us lefties – the noble enlightened ones – and the enemy. For them, people are simply their politics – and no more. You can’t fraternise with, let alone see even one iota of goodness in the enemy. He is beyond the pale. He is The Other.

Many people have lost all sense of proportion regarding crime precisely because they build their perceptions on sensationalist polemic headlines of people like Hitchens, so to say the presciptions offered by Hitchens are ‘popular’ with his target audience and that this is a sound way of directing policy-making is just nuts.

I wonder how crime ridden are inner-cities (or anywhere else for that matter) – the crime stats (even allowing for wild inaccuracy) show nowhere in the UK is anything remotely like as bad as Baltimore… time to put up those barricades already, yeah?

David Semple,

You are seriously deluded if you think that your brand of revolutionary Marxism is comparable in popularity to the views of someone Peter Hitchens, a popular columnist for a major national newspaper and someone who can often articulate the views of millions of disaffected tory and labour voters (and ex-voters), regardless of whether they actually read his columns.

If you think Peter Hitchens is so wildly out-of-touch, try visiting one of the countless numbers of poor crime-ridden inner city districts and ask some of the people there about their views on the death penalty or how the law ought to deal with criminals and drug addicts. I’ll bet very few of them actually read Peter Hitchens, but you’ll find that their views are much much closer to his than to yours!

I think I like you.

(combative attitude aside)

Yes, ‘unacceptable’ to you and other embubbled Guardian reading elitists. On the hand it would be perfectly acceptable to a great many people who don’t like to read your little leftist rag and who are rather tired of being spoken for by the likes of Michael Hestletine presented as ‘conservatives’ on Guardian-radio and TV. When Hitchens was allowed a brief conservative interruption in the BBC airwaves on question time a few weeks ago his remarks on grammar schools (and on every other subject) received a thunderous applause from the audience. Though his views on some issues (such as ADHD, evolution and sexual morality) may be in a minority, his views on crime, immigration, and education are widely held among the population at large, even though they remain a minority in our political class. Though it may seem amazing to Guardian readers, there are lot of people who actually dislike the fact that their neighbourhoods have been transformed in the space of a few years by unbridled immigration. Similarly, there are thousands of parents without the money to educate their children privately, who despair at having to send their children to the indisciplined chaos of the local comprehensive school. There are still millions who who feel oppressed by the high levels criminal violence and angry that much of this crime and disorder goes unpunished. If you want to think such people are just ‘screaming nutters’ that’s fine, but it only shows how utterly disconnected you are with the concerns of most of your fellow citizens. Rather sad for someone who is supposed to be interested in politics.

If you’re supportive of a broad set of principles which you describe as ‘left’ then in order to allow you to be consistent you need to be clearer about what those underlying principles are.”

Liberal Conspiracy (incorporating Pedants’ Corner)

You really ought to make that clear Sunny…I’m sure there’s a whole army of right-wing, anal smart arses out there who don’t even realise there’s a site where they can come and sneeringly correct left-wingers’ grammar and vocabulary then sit back and feel superior. You’d be providing a valuable public service.

If you’re partisan for something other than a party then you’re not partisan.

If you’re supportive of a broad set of principles which you describe as ‘left’ then in order to allow you to be consistent you need to be clearer about what those underlying principles are.

Until then you will remain open to questions over how far you are prepared to go to justify unjustifiable courses of action, and it would be dishonest to avoid accounting for the discrepant interpretations.

The case of the invasion of Iraq is relevant here, as it was justified variously by the ‘left’ as overthrowing an authoritarian military despot, spreading democracy and reducing the threat of terror – laudable aims I’m sure you’ll agree, so how do you critisise the invasion from the ‘left’ when the ‘left’ supported the invasion on these grounds?

What I’m suggesting is that the illusory terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’ are fraudulent means of subverting the aims associated with them and that anyone who uses them with as much abandon as you do should be treated with a massive dose of scepticism – every time I hear them used I think the person using them is harming the quality of public debate and hindering a beneficial solution.

Use of such divisive terms is the prime cause of public mistrust in our political machinery, so in fact you are as much of a cause of the problem as you think you are able to supply the solution.