Alasdair Milne
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Alasdair David Gordon Milne (born 1930) was Director-General of the BBC from July 1982 until a forced resignation, under intense pressure from the Conservative government and a Board of BBC Governors dominated by Conservatives, in January 1987.
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Career
Milne's background was in current affairs and he was a founder producer of the BBCs Tonight programme in 1957, becoming its editor in 1961. Milne was later Controller of BBC Scotland and Managing Director, Television.
He became Director General at a difficult time for the BBC, following the Falklands War when the government had criticised Newsnight presenter Peter Snow for using the phrase "if you belive the British" and news broadcasts referring to the opposing forces impartially as "the British forces" and "the Argentine forces" rather than "us" and "the enemy".
Shortly after he took office, another public service broadcaster, Channel 4, was launched.
During his era a number of BBC programmes caused outrage among Conservatives, not least the Panorama documentary "Maggie's Militant Tendency", broadcast in January 1984, which suggested that a number of Conservative MPs had had connections with far-right groups (drawing analogies in its title with Militant, a far-left group within the Labour Party which was causing great worries for Neil Kinnock at the time). In a situation which now seems to have prefigured the Hutton Inquiry, the BBC's reporting was criticised in a court case brought against the Corporation by Neil Hamilton, one of the MPs named in the documentary, who would later be publicly disgraced and lose his seat to the independent candidate Martin Bell, himself a former BBC reporter.
In August 1985, when the BBC caved in to government pressure and banned a Real Lives documentary "At the Edge of the Union", profiling and interviewing the Sinn Fein politician (and alleged senior IRA figure) Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson, the deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. The National Union of Journalists called a one-day strike in support of the principle of BBC independence from government control; an amended version was shown later that year.
Later that month, the left-leaning Observer newspaper revealed the full extent of MI5 vetting of BBC employees, the so-called Christmas Tree list, which earlier that year Milne had been denying (something he later regretted). It was subsequently agreed that MI5 influence should be reduced, which could not have pleased many Conservatives. Nor could the highly-praised 1985 series Edge of Darkness have pleased those of a Conservative bent who supported nuclear power and the presence of the US military in the UK. A Panorama programme in 1986 about the US bombing of Libya caused a storm of accusations from the Right, most vociferously from Norman Tebbit, that the BBC had become inherently anti-American.
Board of Governors
The Thatcher government had been deliberately appointing Conservatives to the BBC Board of Governors in an attempt to undermine Milne's influence, but Stuart Young (brother of a Conservative Tory cabinet minister), appointed chairman in 1983, had "gone native" and become a defender of the BBC's independence. After his sudden death in 1986, the government appointed Marmaduke Hussey, a former chairman of Times Newspapers before the company's sale to Rupert Murdoch in 1981, as chairman, with the specific agenda of "get Milne". In September 1986, as Hussey took over, there was outrage in the right wing sections of the press after BBC1 controller Michael Grade passed a press release claiming that Alan Bleasdale's series The Monocled Mutineer was historically accurate — in reality it was an account of the First World War seen from a distinctly left-leaning perspective.
Simultaneously, the first series of Casualty was viewed by many Conservatives as Left-Wing propaganda in favour of the National Health Service, and even the recovery in BBC1's ratings after a low point in 1983-84 did not please the government; the Conservative position argued that the BBC's pursuit of mainstream, populist broadcasting encroached on the territory of ITV. Besides, the BBC's top-rating series, EastEnders, was also viewed by many Conservatives as immoral, especially when it introduced the first gay character in a British soap.
Pressure on the BBC increased still further after Michael Lush was killed while attempting a stunt for Noel Edmonds' Late Late Breakfast Show, which revealed inadequate safety procedures, and in late 1986 Dennis Potter's series The Singing Detective caused moral outrage on the Right.
Secret Society and Milne's fall
The opportunity to destroy Milne came in early 1987 after police had raided the headquarters of BBC Scotland in Glasgow, removing research material for a programme in the Secret Society series, presented by the Left-wing journalist Duncan Campbell, concerning the secret Zircon reconnaissance satellite. This was condemned strongly by Douglas Hurd, who was emerging as one of the less Thatcherite and more pro-BBC members of the government, but Milne was still effectively sacked (the idea that he resigned was always more spin than anything else).
Most of the Secret Society series was eventually transmitted, although an episode concerning Cabinet secrecy in government was banned, and when Channel 4 wanted to show it in 1991 as part of their "Banned" season they were turned down, and had to reconstruct the programme themselves.
Alasdair Milne was replaced as Director-General by Michael Checkland, who along with his deputy (and eventual successor) John Birt, set about making the BBC conspicuously less radical and more amenable to the Conservatives, not least in the form of Birt's market-driven reforms of the Corporation's internal structure during the 1990s.
Such is Milne's antipathy to the contemporary BBC that he now regards himself as its last Director General, and regrets the marginalisation of programme makers at the organisations more senior levels. Controversially, in October 2004, he argued that the BBCs alleged "dumbing down" is the responsibility of the corporations growing number of women executives[1] (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9071-1300053,00.html). Adherents of the "dumbing down" argument might, in any case, point out that this has been a long drawn out process.
His son and daughter are the journalists Kirsty and Seumas Milne.
| Preceded by: Ian Trethowan 1977-1982 | Director-General of the BBC 1982-1987 | Followed by: Michael Checkland 1987-1992 |