The British Empire - An everyday story of BBC disaster and confusion

AFTER WHAT seemed like an eternity of preparation in fact, three years), the British Empire series, poetically entitled 'Echoes of Britannia's Rule', began its 13-week run on January 11 with a programme devoted to Queen Victoria's Jubilee.

It was not so much an 'echo' as a celebration, a tribute to 1897, the 'high noon' of Empire, the 'zenith', the 'apex'.

Yes, there it was, after all the axings, the knifings-in-the-back, the urgent memos passed down anxious BBC corridors for the past two to three years, in all its pathetic, abject mediocrity-Part 1, The British Empire. And somewhat ill-conceived, poorly executed, reactionary and cheap it was, to be sure.

Stalwart

Not that one had expected that Tom Haydon, writer and producer of this particular section, would necessarily adopt the Leninist thesis of imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism, expensive documentary or even the view ot social all time at the BBC. retormer, J. A. Hobson, that "imperialism is the endeavour of the great controllers of industry to broaden the channel for the flow of their surplus wealth by seeking foreign markets and foreign investments to take off the goods and capital they cannot sell at home' That would have been too much to ask of a BBC stalwart. But what one might at least have hoped for was a semblance of informative coherence, some communication of anything other than 'atmosphere'. But 'atmosphere', that is to say, " feeling about feelings running over the surface of phenomena (largely upper and middle-class phenomena at that) was what we got.

In attempting to convey the feeling of the period, what the film succeeded in doing was in turning into televisual Victoriana, bric-à-brac imagery, politics like potted plant paraphernalia, or in less polite words—a load of Victorian Junk.

But why, one has to ask oneself, did the programme look as though it was thrown together as cheaply as possible? After all, the series consists of 55-minute programmes each of them budgeted at £50,000, which is four times more than the BBC normally spends on such projects.

Part of the reason for the lavishness is that the series is cofinanced by Time-Life (International) the men who make big profits from words and pictures.

Grotesque

It is they who are splashing the pages of the Radio Times and the screens of independent television with grotesquely spuriOus advertisements for the equally profitable booklets they are bringing out to coincide with the BBC series. Selling at your local bookstall at 25p per booklet, of which there will be 98, that should cost you (if you are thinking of buying them all exactly £24.50. The adverts, which should be read in a heavy American accent, are geared to making you feel part of that glorious adventure. They consist of such atrocious slogans as "They seemed like ordinary men •.. till they built the British Empire'l and "History is people ... people like you'!

What they mean is, history is people like you who they hope will buy the British Empire on 'easy' instalments. Fourth International CUT Fourth International TH 1T Volume 7 No. 2, Price 25 pance Winter 1971 72 NOW EDITORIAL The international Committee and the struggle for power On BOLIVIA:

Revolution and counter-revalution • The struggle for LUKACS:

La political itinerary power Marxist theory and class canerinuene Stalinism, Liberalism and British History Queen Victoria the most ВВС, сот commented after viewing series of two of the programmes: blooay -..- man. terrible ... it doesn't look like £100,000 worth of film to me.' group radicals have some very interesting data tran- echo his words. But still his London's squalid East End.

Behind footage in far-flung corners of the world at vast expense and with what looks like vast confusion.

It seems very much as if only one of the four producers of this series has tackled the subject with any attempt at independence and clarity. For his dogged integrity he was awarded with harassment and pressure at every • turn. This was Dominic Flessati, who compiled Part 2 on the Sugar Slaves. His programme distinguished itself from that of Tom Haydon not only by more creative use of medium, but also by its exposure of the sheer brutality, exploitation and profiteering which is the true face of the Empire. The content of the Flessati film justifies a separate view, for we must now endeavour to find a general line of approach in the séries as a whole. also not aware that Ireland 'had ever been part of the Empire. There will therefore not be any mention of Ireland in the series. And, what is more, there will be another grand omission in the shape of the Middle East. Such 'oversight' or ignorance or mishap, call it what they will, would seem to smack of tidy, unconscious policy-making.

Tom Haydon's 'Oh, the Jubilee' reflected all these tendencies. It fell over on the side of the anecdotal — "anecdotal' being a trendy television producer's euphemism for social gossip, the chit-chat of great people.

Endeavour

When Her Imperial Majesty Victoria cried out in the film 'How kind they are!' one had the impression she could have been speaking of her BBC producers. Of course, Haydon contrived just now and then to stick a few not-very-nice statistics over the gradually grandiose, self-congratulatory picture.

Just a few seconds were devoted to such facts as, in 1896, 92 per cent of the wealth of Great Britain was owned by 10 per cent of the people; 70 colonial wars were fought in this period which was known as Pax Britannica; 11,000 dervishes were killed and 16,000 wounded in the year of the Jubilee as Kitchener fought for the Sudan.

Yet Haydon still managed to convey the notion of a vast territorial empire gained largely inrougn the great spirit or VIC- mimie af torian endeavour, its peoples çoming from far and near to pay The working class of England BOOKS cloth {1.87} paperback £1.25 377P £1.50 45p cloth £1.05. paperback 62}p {1.87} paperback {1.12} paperback 75p paperback 75p paperback 60p. cloth £2.00 paperback {1.12} paperback 'subject peoples'. Never was there a hint that, in their own poverty and exploitation, the working class were deluded by patriotic propaganda of a puritan, conservative ruling class which used everything power to conceal the truth of its self-interested brutality behind a of the 'subject peoples'. Abo 1857-1859. Below: Execution 1899-1901.