Australian TV Plays: Party Manners (1950) (BBC)

Party Manners (1950) (BBC)

TV play by Val Gielgud based on his stage play. It was the first time the BBC gave in to political pressyre.

Aired in 1950.

Norman Collins resigned the BBC as a result. See his bio here. He helped set up commercial television as a result. See here

BFI link here. BBC Website has a piece on it here.

Today, politics is fair game for broadcast comedy ranging from Yes, Minister to House of Cards and The New Statesman, and indeed Party Manners, Val Gielgud’s fictional tale of a Labour minister facing a comic dilemma over nuclear energy in 1950, aroused little protest when performed as a play, first on the stage and then on BBC radio.

A first airing on television was similarly unremarkable, but by the time a repeat showing was scheduled, the political landscape had changed. Labour’s previously healthy majority had been reduced to just five seats in the February General Election, and the party was bruised. When it was relayed to the BBC’s chairman, Lord Simon, that the Labour leadership found the play offensive, he ruled that plans for the repeat should be scrapped. The play, he said, was “capable of being misunderstood”.

It was, he quickly discovered, a serious blunder. He was pilloried in the press, carpeted by the BBC’s own General Advisory Council, and criticised in a debate in the House of Lords, where Lord Hailsham accused him of “humourless sensitivity to criticism”.

Lord Simon apologised in the House, admitting he did not foresee the “hurricane” of feeling his decision would stir. The storm, he concluded in his memoirs, was so violent that “quite obviously no Chairman will ever dream of doing anything of the sort again”.

Another one is here

Given his twenty years at the BBC, first as Head of Drama for radio and then television, it is ironic that a play written by Val Gielgud was responsible for what the BBC’s official historian referred to as the ‘biggest “dramatic storm” of the post-war years’.[13] While at the time BBC television was still confined to England’s south-east and most of its 343,000 licences were in middle-class hands, it is still worth exploring this controversy, for it highlights what was considered acceptable for television dramas to say about politics during this period.

Gielgud wrote Party Manners for the stage while on a sabbatical from the Corporation.[14] The play was in most respects unremarkable. If Gielgud’s work had a ‘message’, it was the by-now banal one that ‘the country has had enough of party politics’. Many novels, big-screen comedies and theatrical productions had said far worse things about Britain’s political system. The plot revolved around the dilemma faced by Christopher Williams, an Old Etonian and 110former Labour Cabinet minister who had been appointed head of the National Atomic Board. In this role Williams is given a report outlining how atomic energy could solve Britain’s economic problems. The Labour Cabinet wants him to publish this report, believing it will swing a close election decisively in its direction. However, the document also contains secrets of great interest to the Soviet Union. The Cabinet sends one of its number, a bluff former millworker who cares nothing for national security so long as Labour wins the election, to persuade Williams to do his duty to the party. But, through working at the Atomic Board, Williams has ceased to be a good party man. Exposure to scientists ‘whose sole aim is the achievement of perfect mathematical accuracy, and whose standards are not adaptable to political expediency’ has made him see the world differently. Indeed, at one point Williams declares: ‘I’m sick of the Party machine and the Party point of view. It’s about time the Party grew up … There’s more to this business of Government than just doing the other fellow in the eye!’

Along the way various characters make remarks hostile to Labour, which would have gone down well with the kind of well-heeled West End audience for whom Gielgud intended his play. There are, for example, references to the government over-taxing and over-spending and the extent to which the trade unions now run the country. One character even claims Labour is trying to make life fair by Act of Parliament, ‘though you know in your hearts that life never has been fair, and never can be fair’. Perhaps because they shared such a perspective, most theatre critics did not see the play as controversial. The Evening Standard reported: ‘There is no propaganda in this jolly affair, and Mr. Herbert Morrison need not lose sleep over it.’ Indeed, the play was executed in such a light-hearted manner even the left-wing New Statesman viewed it as ‘passable good fun’ while Tribune considered it ‘an entertaining political trifle’.[15]

The play was transmitted on BBC radio’s Home Service in June 1950. Back as Head of Television Drama, Gielgud decided to broadcast Party Manners on the small screen to kick off his autumn season of dramas, on Sunday evening 1 October 1950, it having been submitted, he claimed, to all the ‘authorities for routine checking’.[16] The performance was live and, as was usual at this time, the play was slated to be performed again the following Thursday. Party Manners was, though, televised at a highly sensitive time. The February 1950 general election had seen Labour’s Commons majority fall from 146 to just five seats and most commentators expected Attlee would imminently call another election to try to increase his majority, which he did in October 1951. To make matters worse, the play was broadcast at the start of the week in which Labour held its annual conference.
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Labour members had long suspected the BBC was hostile to the party and in the late 1940s some had monitored its output for bias.[17] It was perhaps not surprising that the Daily Herald – Labour’s official paper – published a leader the day after the play was televised, demanding it not be re-broadcast. The editorial claimed the drama ‘reeked with snobbishness’ and was thoroughly irresponsible for suggesting Labour ministers would put their party’s interests before those of the nation. A day later the Herald went further and argued broadcasting the play had been ‘wildly inappropriate to the BBC’s traditions of political impartiality and public responsibility’.[18] Indicating the extent to which the controversy was now framed by partisan considerations, the strongly Conservative Daily Express commented: ‘It is perhaps not surprising that many Socialists dislike the play. The cap fits certain members of the government too well.’[19]

Ernest, Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, chair of the BBC governors – the body meant to ensure the Corporation represented the public interest – decided the play should not be re-broadcast. Simon had been an interwar Liberal MP but in 1946 joined the Labour party and a year later was made a life peer and appointed to his BBC post. While Simon’s decision was presented in the Conservative press as reflecting his Labour bias, it was more likely dictated by his developed concern for the health of Britain’s democracy, one he shared with others in the political establishment. In 1934 Simon had, after all, established the Association for Education in Citizenship, with Stanley Baldwin’s support, fearing ‘public opinion in this country is not good enough or wise enough to make Democracy safe in the complex, dangerous and rapidly changing world of to-day’. Through education he and others hoped to induce people to realize ‘what democracy means and to believe in it more firmly’.[20] In 1944 the broadcaster, writer and MP Stephen King-Hall formed the Hansard Society to similarly promote a better popular understanding of Parliament. Like Simon, King-Hall was confident that the more people knew about the Westminster model the more strongly they would embrace it.[21] As Simon said after the Party Manners controversy had broken out: ‘My fundamental interest in broadcasting is its educational side and especially in these days in anything that can be done to strengthen the belief in Democracy.’ In the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union he considered the BBC had a duty to ‘do what we can to maintain and strengthen democracy and the belief in democratic values’.[22]

Simon later claimed of Party Manners that ‘It was strongly represented to me by individuals of weight and judgement that it held leading British statesmen up to contempt in a way which was improper and undesirable.’[23] He was referring to a complaint from Ernest Whitfield, another member of the BBC Board, one 112originally lodged with the BBC Director General Sir William Haley some time before the play was broadcast. Whitfield believed it subjected ministers ‘to derision and contempt’ and imputed ‘improper behaviour and dishonourable motives to Ministers which are quite alien to Ministers of any party in the country’. He also noted that, as the politician exerting pressure on Williams was Gielgud’s only proletarian character, his work implied the working class was uniquely inclined to corruption. Haley responded that ‘normal people’ would not think the play had any deep political significance. With Whitfield threatening to resign if Party Manners was restaged for television, Simon agreed the play was ‘capable of being misunderstood, and it seemed to me that if that came about it could not be in the public interest’. ‘Surely’, he wrote, ‘this is not the moment in world history to weaken public respect for Democracy by jokes of this kind … the integrity of cabinet Ministers … [is] vital.’ Haley reluctantly decided the play should not be performed again.[24]

Such was the splash made by Simon’s decision it was debated in the Lords with contributions broadly following, as luck would have it, party lines.[25] Viscount Hailsham for the Conservatives claimed Simon had betrayed his Labour bias, although his basic point was that democracy could not be defended ‘by a humourless sensitivity to criticism’. Most Labour participants echoed Simon’s view with Lord Strabolgi believing ‘this ridiculous and pernicious play … is a violent attack, if you like by ridicule and satire, on the institution of democracy … on the very essence and theory of democracy itself, and Parliamentary democracy in particular.’ Lord Jowitt, the Lord Chancellor, also described the play as ‘offensive’, ‘because I think the high standard of public life in this country is very much to be praised and I do not like any attempts to decry it, either by an attack on the Labour Party or on any other Party’.

[13] A. Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom. Volume IV:. Sound and Vision (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 686–7.

[14] Quotations from the play can be found in V. Gielgud, Party Manners (London: Muller, 1950), pp. 50–1, 57, 73–6.

[15] Manchester Central Reference Library, Lord Simon papers, W. Haley to Mr. Downes, 2 October 1950, M11/6/8a; New Statesman, 21 January 1950; Tribune, 27 January 1950.

[16] Gielgud, Party Manners, p. xii.

[17] S. Fielding et al., ‘England Arise!’ The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 159.

[18] Daily Herald, 2 and 3 October 1950.

[19] Daily Express, 3 October 1950.

[20] Unless otherwise stated, this section is based on Simon papers, E. Simon to A. Bryant, 27 November 1934, and Simon to the Editor, The Schoolmaster, 26 July 1935, M11/14/14; Simon to A. D. Lindsay, 2 November 1938, M11/14/16; and E. Simon, ‘The lag in mass opinion’, March 1938, M11/18/3.

[21] N. W. Wilding, “Books About Parliament”, Hansard Society pamphlet 1 (1946), pp. 1–2 and S. King-Hall, ‘“The Hansard Society”’, Parliamentary Affairs 1:1 (1947), p. 6.

[22] Simon papers, ‘Party Manners, Personal Statement by Lord Simon of Wythenshawe’, 23 October 1950 and ‘Party Manners: Heading for Lord Simon’s Speech, House of Lords, 7 November 1950’, 5 November 1950, M11/6/8a.

[23] E. Simon, The BBC from Within (London: Victor Gollancz, 1953), p. 329.

[24] Simon papers, ‘Party Manners’, note by Ernest Simon, 4 October 1950, E. Whitfield to W. Haley, 23 September 1950, W. Haley to E. Simon, 30 September 1950, ‘Party Manners, Personal Statement by Lord Simon of Wythenshawe’, 11 October 1950, and ‘Party Manners, Personal Statement by Lord Simon of Wythenshawe’, 23 October 1950, M11/6/8a.

[25] House of Lords Debates, 7 November 1950, volume 169, columns 155–95.