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Abstract
This article challenges some of the received opinion about the failings of BBC coverage of the Suez crisis. Using a novel focus on radio as opposed to television coverage, it aims to show that despite the factual nature of the radio news bulletins, they did succeed in representing some dissent towards the military action as well as provide evidence of the military build-up. Although the flagship radio current affairs programme, ‘At Home and Abroad’, was tentative in its coverage, it did provide a platform for critical voices and raised important concerns about government policy. It is argued that a close reading of news bulletins and the transcripts of ‘At Home and Abroad’ lends support to the more sympathetic and pro-BBC position of the corporation's official historian, Asa Briggs, while sounding a note of caution regarding Tony Shaw's otherwise exemplary account of Suez and the media. The article also makes the case for the continuing importance of radio in the 1950s despite the growing importance of television.
Notes
1. Peter Madgwick writing in the English Historical Review quoted on the cover of the 2009 edition of Shaw's book.
2. Eden resigned as Foreign secretary in February 1938, partly, but not entirely because of Chamberlain's appeasement policies (Clarke 186).
3. BBC Handbook 1956 (London: BBC); BBC Handbook 1959 (London: BBC).
4. BBC WAC Suez Crisis Historical 1, November 1956, R34/1580/1.
5. BBC Radio news bulletin 9 pm. 9 October 1956.
6. BBC Radio news bulletin 6 pm. 15 September 1956.
7. BBC Radio news bulletin 6 pm. 26 September 1956.
8. BBC Radio news 9 pm. 23 October 1956.
9. This compares with the period from 15 to 25 September when each day Suez was the lead story at 6 pm.
10. Shaw is clear that media coverage of Soviet repression in Hungary was diversionary, ‘this acted as a most welcome distraction for the Eden government at a time when many ministers and members of the public questioned whether the planned operation to wrest control of the Suez Canal militarily should go ahead’ (Shaw 78).
11. BBC Third Programme, ‘Meanwhile in Hungary’ 25 July 1966.
12. BBC Radio news bulletin 6 pm. 30 October 1956.
13. BBC Radio news bulletin 6 pm. 30 October 1956.
14. BBC Radio news bulletin 9 pm. 31 October 1956.
15. BBC Radio news bulletin 9 pm. 1 November 1956.
16. BBC Radio news bulletin 9 pm. 3 November 1956.
17. BBC Radio news bulletin 9 pm. 3 November 1956.
18. BBC Radio news bulletin 9 pm. 3 November 1956.
19. BBC Radio news bulletin 9 pm. 4 November 1956.
20. I have attempted a fuller account of the history of news, talks and current affairs radio in my own work on the subject (Chignell).
21. The strength of feeling against recording was expressed with particular force by the Controller, Talks (Sound), John Green who defended the ‘moral value’ of ‘the immediacy of communication’ while arguing that ‘the broadcast word has a special integrity in public affairs’ (BBC WAC, Green to C.F.O. Clarke, 12 June 1957).
22. BBC WAC, Bonarjee on 50th anniversary, R44/22.
23. ‘At Home and Abroad celebrates its first birthday’ Radio Times 7 January 1955.
24. BBC WAC At Home and Abroad transcripts.
25. BBC WAC, Churchill to Cadogan, 22 October 1955, R44/22.
26. BBC WAC, Cadogan to Churchill, 26 October, R51/107.
27. BBC WAC Arbuthnot to Lawson Dick, 31 August 1956, R34/1580/1. There is no record of the proposed programme being broadcast.
28. Director of Sound Broadcasting, Lindsay Wellington.
29. BBC WAC, Board of Management minutes, 5 November 1956.
30. A survey of programmes at the time reports that between 27 July and 17 August of eight BBC radio talks on Suez, six were on At Home and Abroad. A one off discussion, ‘The Significance of Suez’ took place on 9 August (BBC WAC, Suez Canal Crisis Talks Output, R34/1580/1). During September, however, the Light Programme's Topic for Tonight increased its coverage and broadcast six separate items on Suez.
31. At Home and Abroad, 9 October 1956.
32. At Home and Abroad, 12 October 1956.
33. At Home and Abroad, 16 October 1956.
34. At Home and Abroad, 30 October 1956.
35. At Home and Abroad, 2 November 1956.
36. At Home and Abroad, 2 November 1956.
37. At Home and Abroad, 2 November 1956 (emphasis as in the original).
38. In reality there were ‘considerable military and civilian casualties, perhaps 1,000 in all’ (Morgan 147).
39. At Home and Abroad, 6 November 1956.
40. At Home and Abroad, 6 November 1956.