THE FALKLANDS PLAY

At a small secondhand bookshop in Birmingham, I was fortunate enough to come into possession of a copy of The Falklands Play (ISBN 0 09 170611 4) by Ian Curteis. For those who believe the BBC is a bastion of impartiality and fairness, it makes chilling reading. On this page are set out the events surrounding the non-broadcast of the play, which brought such shame on what was once one of Great Britain's greatest institutions.

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By the early eighties, to call relations between the BBC and the government strained was like calling the Atlantic Ocean slightly damp. The BBC had coasted through the post-war years on its reputation for fairness and impartiality acquired during the Second World War, but in 1979 they had infuriated the new Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher when their flagship current affairs programme, Panorama, had secretly filmed and then tried to broadcast republican paramilitaries in Ireland. The fact that this came in the same year those same republicans had blown up Airey Neave MP in the House of Commons car park was, to the producers, irrelevant, and although the broadcast was stopped, it left a lot of bad feeling all round.

People have short and (often conveniently) forgetful memories, and few now remember the dreadful state the country was in back in 1979 when the Thatcher government came to office. Labour and Conservative governments alike had always buckled under the might of the trade unions and had continued to fund hopelessly inefficient state industries. The new government backed away from an early confrontation with the miners in 1980, but through new legislation gradually strengthened their position. The BBC felt increasingly threatened by this, and was to react accordingly.

When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982, the BBC made several very bad errors of judgment over their coverage. They decided that our brave soldiers should be referred to as 'the British forces', so the BBC could not be accused of bias (hah!). By far the worst thing they did was when they broadcast details of the our forces' attack on Goose Green - before it had happened. As a result a number of British soldiers were needlessly killed; naturally the BBC denied reponsibility for this. The chairman and director-general of the BBC were summonsed to the Commons and over 100 irate MPs made their feelings clear in decidedly plain language. Don't be silly now; of course there was no apology from the always-right but politically-Left BBC.

In 1983 playwright Ian Curteis, who had written for television for many years, started considering the idea of a play based on the Falklands War, an idea the BBC welcomed wholeheartedly. However, when he tried to research into what had actually happened, he ran full-tilt into a barrage of anger against the BBC from virtually all those involved in the conduct of the war. He wisely decided to drop the matter for a while and allow tempers to cool. Two years went by, after which he finally started work. When he was happy with the draft, he dispatched it to the BBC (1986). Studios were duly allocated for the making of the play, and a slot was reserved in the schedules. There was some question as to whether its broadcast should go ahead with an election in the offing (this was then expected sometime in 1987, and the latest possible date was 1988), but the BBC told Curteis this would not affect transmission in any way.

In the time between the war and the finishing of the book, it seems the BBC had lurched further towards the Left. In 1984, with the Labour Party being torn apart by the extreme-Left Militant Tendency, Panorama (again!) broadcast Maggie's Militant Tendency, alleging extreme-Right members of the Tory party in the same way. The programme was immediately shown to be a complete fabrication, and the BBC had to pay the Tories an out-of-court settlement. The affair only served to worsen relations between Broadcasting House and Downing Street, and calls to abolish the licence-fee (the means by which the BBC get its money) increased.

The first crisis over The Falklands Play (Curteis' play) occurred when the BBC's new Head of Plays, Peter Goodchild, met Curteis and implied that the character of the prime minister should be recast and portrayed in a bad light. One thing he was particularly unhappy about was the fact of her writing personal handwritten letters to all the families of dead British soldiers, which he wanted removed. That this was a true fact was, in his eyes, irrelevant. He also wanted to put in that ministers conducted the war in regard to the next election (an allegation which all military commanders had long confirmed as untrue), and to take out references to Britain's long-standing fight against aggressors around the world. Curteis' contract with the BBC gave him the final say over such matters, and when he questioned Goodchild over this, the Head of Plays backed down immediately. However, on returning to the BBC he sent Curteis a letter telling him the changes were mandatory if the play was to go ahead. Curteis flatly refused.

On August 3rd, 1985, the BBC transmitted The Queen's Arms, which portrayed British soldiers as drunken, jingoistic warmongers. This did not prove a popular move, much to the BBC's surprise. A few days later, whilst Curteis was on holiday in Ireland, they cancelled TFP because (they claimed) of the forthcoming election. The BBC then broadcast The Monocled Mutineer, which they claimed was the 'true' story of the Etaples Mutiny of 1917, a claim they later denied when it was shown to be blatantly untrue. This produced a classic quote from the BBC, who said that just because they had advertized it as a true-life story, that didn't mean it had actually happened. Yes, I had to read it a second time too. Ironically this proved to be their undoing, for too many people knew of the TFP scandal, and with BBC bias so much in the news, in September it inevitably exploded onto the papers.

The BBC was caught in a terrible position, one made worse when it emerged a third anti-war film, Tumbledown, was in production and would again show the Falklands War in a bad light. Worse still, the BBC had cancelled the budget ceiling for this film, increasing the impression of rottenness at their core. And this film was to be broadcast in October 1987 - one of the favoured dates for the forthcoming general election! (The BBC had covered May 1987, the other most likely date, with another anti-Tory play about a past scandal). Yet although the BBC was not going to broadcast Curteis' play, they were also making sure no-one else could. Anglia TV approached the BBC to ask if they could buy the rights to TFP, but the BBC flatly refused, and tried to prevent the press from finding out. The BBC then started to put it about that the play had been cancelled not because of the election but because it was so awful - strange, because if that were true, why had they allocated a spot in the schedules for it and why did they not jump at the chance to sell it on?

The BBC was in a no-win situation. Tumbledown was postponed until after any possible election date, and when it finally emerged in 1990, it proved it was to quality tv what Elizabeth Taylor was to marriage security. What little reputation the BBC had for honour in broadcasting was destroyed. At the price of one programme, fifty years of reputation was gone forever.

TFP was finally broadcast on the digital BBC4 (watched by two men and a dog) in 2002, and later that year was slipped out late on Jubilee Tuesday on BBC2. There was none of the usual heavy advertising that matched other programmes, nor did the BBC use their then-current trick of sending out messages to advanced video recorders forcing them to record it. Biased, Bankrupt and Corrupt.

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