BBC ban Andrew Marr interview on Radio 2 show after ‘inaccurate’ discussion over major trade union dispute
JOURNALIST Andrew Marr is at the centre of fresh row about an “inaccurate” portrayal on a radio broadcast of how a workforce was treated during the Grunwick dispute of the 1970s.
The BBC has banned the re-broadcast of an interview with the Glasgow-born TV presenter on Radio 2’s The Jeremy Vine Show who was discussing his book Elizabethans: How Modern Britain Was Forged.
During the discussion the BBC said that Mr Marr referred to one of the book’s subjects Jayaben Desai, who was a prominent leader of the two-year strike at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories.
She resigned from the factory after being ordered to work overtime, and instigated a strike among the mainly Asian and female workforce. During a decade of industrial unrest, the Grunwick dispute became a cause célèbre of trade unionism and labour relations law, and at its height involved thousands of trade unionists and police in confrontations.
There were more than 500 arrests on the picket line during the course of the lengthy dispute. But the son of the late George Ward, the owner of Grunwick, complained that the October 6 discussion repeated a statement about Mr Ward’s treatment of his workforce which “were in conflict” with the findings of the inquiry conducted by Lord Scarman, and for which the BBC had apologised when they were broadcast “on previous occasions”.
The BBC refused to further clarify what the particular objection was about, but the Scarman inquiry ultimately concluded that physical working conditions in the company before the strike were good and that although the rates of pay were low prior to the strike, the company increased financial benefits paid to workers in November 1976 and April 1977 until the rates of pay were broadly comparable with, and in some respects, slightly better than those paid by comparable firms in the industry.
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Radio 4 on December 2, 2016 and January 10, 2017, reference was made to the Grunwick dispute and in one programme it was stated that management had been racist, calling workers “monkeys”. The BBC, in a correction and clarification, said then that “this was not correct”.
And on January 10, it was said that the management lost and the striking women won.
The BBC said that in fact the strikers called off their action on July 14, 1978 without their demands for collective bargaining being met.
The BBC considered the latest complaint in the light of its editorial standards of due accuracy. As its Executive Complaints Unit was presented with no evidence which would have allowed it to discount Lord Scarman’s conclusions, it accepted that the statements in question “would have misled listeners and did not meet the BBC’S standards of due accuracy”.
It concluded: “The finding was reported to the board of BBC Radio and discussed with the programme-makers concerned.”