The BBC Empire Service: the voice, the discourse of the master and ventriloquism

Abstract

This article uses psychoanalytically derived perspectives on the voice – in particular Lacan's work – to shed light on the political functions of the BBC's Empire Service and the foreign language services that developed out of it. Focusing on the formal qualities of the voice, it analyses how the voice as broadcast on the Empire Service was deployed as a means of linking up the British Empire, and above all the British diaspora. It examines how – with the emergence of the BBC's first foreign language services directed at indigenous, colonial populations – the voice came to play a rather different role, as an instrument of imperial administration. The article concludes by applying the model of ventriloquism to illuminate how these services allowed the imperial centre to speak in the voice of its peoples.

Keywords:

• BBC
• Empire Service
• voice
• Lacan
• British diaspora

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Centre for Research on Socio‐Cultural Change for its support in producing this article and also his CRESC colleagues and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. The dominions were the self‐governing domains of the British Empire, a term principally used to refer to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

2. Sartre notes the capacity of listeners to respond to broadcasts by for example writing in, while contending that this is only likely to have an effect if more than one listener does so. As such the individual listener remains practically mute in their capacity to respond to the broadcast voice itself. (Radio phone‐ins offer a more recent form of listener response.)

3. ‘Imperial Conference 1930: appendices to the summary of proceedings’, in ‘Empire Service: conference proceedings’, E4/4 (All file titles and numbers refer to files held at the BBC Written Archive, Caversham Park, UK).

4. ‘Opening of the Empire Service’, John Reith, 19 December 1932, in ‘Empire Service Policy 1932–1933’, E4/6.

5. Or ‘the British “Dispersion”’ as this was referred to in ‘Memorandum on Empire and World Broadcasting’, June 1929. The size of this diaspora was estimated at 211,000 (not including the population of the Dominions), ‘Memorandum on Empire and world broadcasting’, 23 July 1929, in ‘Empire Service Policy 1928–1929’, E4/2.

6. John Reith, letter to The Under‐Secretary of State for the Colonies, 16 February 1931, E4/4.

7. These ‘discourses’ should not be viewed as crudely reductive. While each presents a model of communication, they remain open in the sense that the content of each element of these discourses remains context‐specific.

8. For a more detailed analysis of the functioning of the four discourses in Seminar XVII, see Zizek (1998).

9. See for example, Memo ‘Empire Broadcasting’, 26 February 1929; and ‘Extract from Control Board Minutes, 7 August 1929’, E4/2.

10. ‘Opening of the Empire Service’, John Reith, 18 December 1932, E4/6.

11. ‘Colonial Office Conference – notes of the fifteenth meeting held at the Colonial Office’, 20 May 1927’, in ‘Empire Service Policy, 1927’, E4/1.

12. Memo ‘Foreign languages and the Empire Service’, 17 June 1936, in ‘Empire Service Policy, 1936’, E4/9.

13. Artaud's work was to be broadcast in 1948, yet was cancelled as a result of its scatological and political content.

14. As Briggs outlines there were 927,000 licensed receivers in Australia, 226,000 in New Zealand, and just over one million in Canada (Briggs does not mention South Africa).

15. ‘Empire Service’, in ‘Empire Service – historical notes’, E4/51 (a timeline, undated).

16. ‘Meeting with Mr Leeper’, 29 September 1932, in E4/6.

17. Memo, 28 February 1933, in ‘Empire Service Policy 1932–1933’, E4/6.

18. See for example, letter from HR Palmer, Governor of Cyprus to Malcolm Macdonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 22 November 1935, in ‘Empire Service: Colonial Committee on Broadcasting, Papers 6–21’, E4/23; Memo ‘The Empire broadcasting service transmissions 2 & 3’, 26 November 1936, E4/9.

19. Although the popularity of news was also pointed to, see ‘The BBC Empire Broadcasting Service – a report on certain public relations aspects’, November 1937, in ‘Empire Service Policy 1937–1938’, E4/10.

20. ‘Notes on Overseas Service’, 5 January 1940, in ‘Empire Service Policy, 1939–1942’, E4/11.

21. ‘Committee on Broadcasting Services in the Colonies – Gold Coast, report on the broadcasting department for 1937–1938’, in ‘Empire Service Policy 1935’, E4/8; and ‘Vernacular educational broadcasting for backward races – particularly as applied to Africa’, LA Notcutt, 23 July 1936, in ‘Empire Service Colonial Office Committee on Broadcasting Papers 22–34’, E4/24.

22. ‘Committee on Broadcasting Services in the Colonies – extract from proceedings of East African Governors Conference, June 1936’, E4/24.

23. See for example ‘Committee on Broadcasting Services in the Colonies’, Paper No. 18, ‘Draft Interim Report’, [undated], E4/23.

24. Governor of British New Guiana, G Northcote, letter to Colonial Office, 18 November 1935, E4/23.

25. Letter from Arnold Hodson, Governor of Sierra Leone to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 10 May 1934, E4/23.

26. Memo ‘Colonial Broadcasting’ from EB Bowyer, 27 January 1936, E4/23.

27. Lacan (2007, p. 148) suggests that the discourse of the university has come to replace that of the master as the dominant political discourse in late modernity, as traditional authority has been eclipsed by assertions of superior knowledge.

28. ‘Committee on Broadcasting Services in the Colonies’, Paper No 18, ‘Draft Interim Report’, [undated], E4/23.

29. Letter from AG Waughope, High Commissioner for Palestine to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 10 January 1938, in ‘Empire Service Colonial Office Committee on Broadcasting Papers 35–41’, E4/25.

30. Orwell's broadcasts were also translated into a number of other Asian languages.