the state ‘is not a thing’ but a diverse set of interacting institutions, which in his account comprises ‘the government, the administration, the military and the police, the judicial branch, sub-central government and parliamentary assemblies’. The administrative institutions of the state, Miliband notes, ‘extend far beyond the traditional bureaucracy’ and include ‘a large variety of bodies, often related to particular ministerial departments, or enjoying a greater or lesser degree of autonomy – public corporations, central banks, regulatory commissions, etc.’ Though Miliband did not consider the BBC to be part of the state system, the fact remains that it could quite comfortably fit within his definition.33 Thus, the sociologist Tom Burns concluded from his detailed study that the BBC should be understood as a ‘Quango’, that is, a quasi-independent body created to act independently but expected to act ‘in conformity with Government purposes’ and kept under ‘essential instrument[s] of control’.34
Indeed, the BBC is arguably comparable with the classically repressive organs of the modern state such as the police, the domestic monopolists of Max Weber’s ‘legitimate use of physical force’. The Metropolitan Police was formed out of more organic and disparate ‘policing’ practices and rationalised and brought under the authority of the Home Office, a history which bears obvious comparisons to the early formation of the BBC. Despite the incorporation of policing functions under the authority of a secretary of state, a constitutional arrangement emerged according to which the home secretary would not interfere with the ‘impartiality’ and ‘operational independence’ of the police.
While the Metropolitan Police was created by statute, the BBC was formed by Royal Charter. In this sense, it is not even formally accountable to Parliament, but to the Crown. The subsequent renewals of the Royal Charter, as well as the appointment of BBC governors and trustees, have formally been made by an Order of the Privy Council – an arcane and rather mysterious body which exists to advise the monarch on the exercise of the Royal Prerogative, that is, on the exercise of the residential powers of the absolutist state which have never been subject to democratic controls. These powers include, for example, the declaration of war, the granting of honours and the appointment of civil servants. Orders in Council, such as those which appoint BBC trustees as well as senior civil servants, are, in essence, absolutist decrees of the central government, signed-off by the monarch of the day. They are the constitutional basis not only for the BBC, but for hundreds of ‘chartered bodies’, including Oxford and Cambridge and other historic universities, colleges and public schools, hospitals, professional associations, the numerous trade associations and guilds of the City of London, banks and colonial enterprises. Some of these chartered bodies, while thoroughly Establishment organisations, are best understood as part of ‘civil society’. But a good number occupy central places in the cluster of state, quasi-state and non-state institutions which together constitute the central power structures of British society, notably the City of London itself (chartered in 1327) and the Bank of England (chartered in 1694). Where the BBC should be positioned on this spectrum will always remain somewhat indeterminate, precisely because the BBC’s ‘independence’ is so inherently ambiguous.
For the anthropologist Georgina Born, a ‘critical factor in the political character of the BBC is its constitutional status’.35 Somewhat curiously, this status has been seen by both the BBC and the broader British Establishment not as a threat to the Corporation’s impartiality, but as the very basis of its celebrated independence. In 1964, the then director general Hugh Greene wrote that the BBC’s independence, which he considered to be a major reason for its national and international prestige, derived precisely from its ‘constitutional position’.36
The BBC’s claim, which was common in that period, to be both ‘within the constitution’ and yet somehow ‘independent’, or apolitical, may seem contradictory.37 But from the perspective of the British elite, it is an accurate reflection of what is meant by the constitution: those set of institutions and practices that exist above, or perhaps beneath, the realm of official public contestation. To say that the BBC achieved ‘constitutional status’, then, is to say that it attained a position above politics in much the same way as the monarchy or the City of London or the Bank of England. What is remarkable is how quickly the BBC attained this position. Speaking at a time when the Establishment had come under criticism, John Reith recalled this achievement with some pride:
Perhaps if I had thought more or known more I would have tried to avoid the BBC becoming part of the establishment, but perhaps not. Establishment has a good deal to say for itself. And indeed such a charge was surely a considerable tribute to the BBC – that anything of such recent appearance should have attained to such entitliture.38
Of course, this does not answer the question of whether the BBC is part of the state. But this is a question that inevitably descends into semantics. Certainly, the BBC needs to be understood in the broader context of the historical development of the British state, particularly the emergence of a professional and ostensibly impartial civil service and the development of extensive capillary functions, some undertaken by institutions with a considerable independence from ministers of the Crown.
The 1936 Ullswater Committee, one of the many official committees of inquiry on broadcasting, reported that: ‘The position of the Corporation is one of independence in the day-to-day management of its business, and of ultimate control by His Majesty’s Government.’39 This situation has not changed nearly as much since the interwar period as liberal commentators would have us believe. Certainly, the degree of freedom the BBC has enjoyed has been politically significant, and at times it has even served as a site of opposition to powerful interests. But it has always remained, as the future director general John Birt once noted, ‘under the shadow of the state and the other main repositories of power’.40
The former Panorama producer Meirion Jones has written that ‘the fundamental corporate bias is pro-government, regardless of party’:
The only periods when I saw the BBC’s loyalty to the government wavering was under John Major after Black Wednesday, and during the Gordon Brown administration. In each case a cynic might say the corporation could see the PMs were dead on their feet, and the other side was about to be elected and control the BBC purse strings.41
This kind of candour is rare. The journalist and academic John Naughton has described the ‘notion that the BBC is independent of the government of the day’ as ‘one of those quaint constitutional myths by which Britain is governed’.42
For eighty years, the BBC’s legal personality resided in its Board of Governors, only superseded in 2007 by the BBC Trust. The personnel who have made up both these bodies have been independent, but appointed by the Crown on the advice of the prime minister, another quaint constitutional myth. In reality, the Corporation’s governors and trustees have been appointed by the leader and close advisors of the current ruling party. By convention, they have been non-partisan appointments, unable to interfere with programme making. But these appointees, most of all the BBC chair, have often been highly politicised and interventionist. Especially notable in this regard was the Thatcher period. The potential for the powers of the Board of Governors to serve the interests of an authoritarian government was acknowledged with great prescience in 1977 in a speech by the then director general Ian Trethowen:
Governments of both parties have so far been scrupulous in making sure, through the appointments, that the Board [of Governors] reflects a wide spectrum of opinion. In practice, in my experience, the Governors of the BBC have consciously seen themselves as an important part of the defence of our independence, and they have so acted. The fact remains that a Government with more sinister intentions could find in the power of appointment to the Board of Governors an uncomfortably convenient weapon.43
Another convenient weapon in the government’s arsenal has been the control over the BBC’s finances. It is often argued that the licence fee is an important guarantor of the BBC’s independence from government since it affords revenue directly from the viewers and listeners, to whom the BBC is therefore said to be directly accountable. A 2015 parliamentary briefing paper on the renewal of the BBC’s Charter, for example, claims that the BBC has a ‘unique structure’ in that ‘it is largely independent