VE Day – it was the BBC wot won it

On THE night of the 1964 General Election, the Labour leader Harold Wilson successfully managed to persuade the BBC to postpone an episode of Steptoe And Son. He was worried that voters would stay at home to watch the popular comedy show rather than go to the polling station. At its peak, the series attracted audiences of up to 28 million viewers.

In an interview newly released from the BBC archive, the director-general at the time, Sir Hugh Greene, admitted that he had caved in to Wilson and pulled the programme from the schedules.

‘He came around to have a drink. He had been very much upset because the BBC had planned the beginning of a series of repeats of a very popular light entertainment programme, Steptoe And Son, on the evening of polling day. He t hought t hat would keep away particularly Labour supporters from the polls,’ Greene said.

‘The next day, I discussed the matter further with the controller of BBC one and we thought a good idea would be to shift it from early in the evening until nine o’clock, when at that time the polls closed.

‘I rang up Harold Wilson and told him about this decision and he said to me he was very grateful — it might make a difference of about 20 seats to him.’

Wilson, then MP for Huyton on Merseyside, confirmed the story. ‘Polling then ended at nine o’clock and a lot of our people — my people — working in Liverpool, long journey out, perhaps then a high tea and so on, it was getting late, especially if they wanted to have a pint first.’

When Greene asked what Wilson would prefer the BBC to broadcast between 8pm and 9pm on polling day, he replied: ‘ Greek drama, preferably in the original.’

I love the archaic language and Lost World imagery of this story, especially Wilson’s patronising description of ‘my people’ — cheery Liverpudlians enjoying ‘ high tea’ and a swift pint after a hard day at the docks.

EnouGH of them must have turned out, though, because Labour scraped home by just four seats. Wilson became Prime Minister and subsequently confirmed that the decision to postpone Steptoe had been ‘very helpful’. It was the BBC wot won it! Fifty-one years on, the BBC is still going out of its way to be ‘very helpful’ to Labour.

It isn’t just the institutionalised cultural Marxism which infests the BBC’s news output. Left- wing, anti-Tory bias runs through everything from quiz shows to dramas and documentaries.

Take this week, for instance. on Wednesday night, I sought refuge f rom the election coverage in I nspector George Gently, the splendid Sixties police series, set in Durham and starring Martin Shaw.

They generally get the period detail right, from the Ford Corsair to the Watney’s Red Barrel beer mats. But like all the rest of the Beeb’s retro dramas, Gently is written from a modern, metropolitan political perspective.

This week’s chief villain worked for a Swiss multi-national, which had deliberately ignored health and safety laws and had been killing off the working class by pumping asbestos dust into the air.

He murders his estranged wife, a campaigning nHS GP, to prevent her exposing the company’s crimes.

He is shacked up with the factory’s i ce- maiden Swiss director in a sprawling country ‘mansion’. Gently explains to his sergeant that these are the kind of people who give money to the Tories.

We first encounter the evil couple on horseback in full Berkeley Hunt rig, haughtily informing the police that they are trespassing. Later, we meet the company’s l awyer, a pantomime Bulli ngdon Club character who is, we are informed, ‘posher than the Queen’.

It was a Miliband speechwriter’s dream, conjuring up everything from Tory toffs and foxhunting, to a typically selfless nHS doctor and evil multi-national Swiss tax-haven capitalists (non- doms, obviously) murdering salt-of-the-earth schoolchildren in pursuit of profit.

Earlier, I’d watched the BBC’s VE Day documentary on iPlayer, which f e at ured t he wartime recollections of celebrities such as Parky, Brucie and that wonderful actress Anne Reid.

THE first hour or so went swimmingly. As Parky always says: ‘You meet a nicer class of person down Memory Lane.’ The footage of celebrations from Edinburgh, Dumfries and Aberdeen was particularly poignant, a timely reminder of the colossal achievements of our united Kingdom, which is about to be torn apart by the SnP’s Toytown Tartanistas.

But after VE Day i tself, the programme then concentrated on what c a me next: a Labour government building a better world — homes, schools and hospitals and opening Britain’s doors to mass immigration.

Eventually, the magnificent Miriam Margolyes explained, Britain was transformed into a liberal, tolerant society where she could finally come out as a lesbian.

By the end, the whole thing had turned into a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party.

You came away with the impression that the whole point of World War II was to transform Britain into a land fit for lesbians, run by a benevolent Labour Party, committed to ending austerity, increasing ‘investment’ in the public services, encouraging i mmigration and celebrating diversity.

So no surprise there, then. As Tom Conti wrote in the Daily Mail this week, you can’t get a job at the BBC unless you dress to the Left. new Broadcasting House is the exclusive preserve of like-minded, metropolitan Guardianistas.

They are indistinguishable from, and increasingly interchangeable with, the higher echelons of Labour.

Which brings us back to Steptoe And Son. Galton and Simpson, the show’s creators, wrote a brilliant episode which anticipated Labour’s future direction of travel.

First broadcast in 1965, My old Man’s A Tory featured son Harold buying a Gannex mac and a pipe, just like Harold Wilson, and attempting to become a Labour councillor — much to the disgust of his Conservative- supporting father Albert.

His dream of a political career falls apart when the local party agent tells him he’s far too working class for the modern Labour Party.

It’s truer now than it was back then. And still funnier and more accurate than just about anything the BBC puts out today.

Harold Wilson must have hated it.