There was a real BBC hatchet job carried over the holidays concerning Margaret Thatcher and her approach to Liverpool in the early ’80’s and B-BBC contributor Alan picks up on the detail;
“And aren’t we luckythat we are forced, under threat of imprisonment, to pay the salaries of thosewho lie to us so grievously? One man’s suggestion to the Conservative government in 1981 has been spun asanother example of a wicked Thatcherite policy imposed upon the downtroddenworkers by the BBC.
‘The trend for transforming other people’s struggles into self-serving moralityplays has led to an alarmingly casual attitude towards the distinction betweentruth and lies….and a preference for simplistic moralism over the tough taskof reporting.’
‘Thatcher told to abandon Liverpool’ says BBC…not ‘Thatcher spent hundreds ofmillions regenerating Liverpool’. Every BBC news broadcast stated that Lord Howe had urged Thatcher to abandonLiverpool to decline. There was no context, no explanation….if you listened to the BBC you wouldalmost certainly believe that this was in fact Tory policy that they actuallycarried out.You might not realise in fact that Lord Heseltine spent 18 months transformingthe situation and pumping millions of pounds into Liverpool.
In 1981 Sir Geoffrey Howe acknowledged the suggestion that the city could beleft to a “managed decline” was potentially explosive.“This is not a term for use, even privately,” he warned Mrs Thatcher. “It ismuch too negative.”
The BBC knows such a charge is highly provocative and socially dangerous andfeeds the stereotypical image of the Tories…..the BBC fully intend to stir upas much anti-Tory anger and hatred as possible to make them unelectable…andseem quite happy at the prospect of any possible riots….caused by Tory’neglect’. Lord Heseltine rightly says…”The judgement should be about did we do theright thing?”
But the BBC aren’t interested in that. Or the fact that Howe was merely suggesting that the limited amount of moneyavailable might be more wisely spent in other ares more deprived and morelikely to benefit….if all the money went to Liverpool surely other towns andcities must be at least partially ‘abandoned’ then?
In an interview on 5Live Steven Nolan was talking to a community worker fromLiverpool who stated Liverpool had been in decline not because of centralgovernment so much, but because of local politicians…Labour and Liberalones…that the Tories did a lot to help. Nolan instead of asking in what waythese politicians destroyed Liverpool’s economy ignored this and rapidly movedon….to claim that we saw riots on the streets of Liverpool this summer causedby social deprivation as in 1981…….feeding into the BBC belief that theriots were all about social injustice and greedy bankers….
He was rapidly put right…there were no riots by the people of Toxteth thissummer.
Such casual and intentionally selective ‘reporting’ is designed to infuriatethe people of Liverpool and confirm the idea of the Tories as the ‘Nasty Party’to everyone else.
The Labour and Liberal politicians thanked God for the BBC narrative and joinedin, quite happy to lie about this story for their own political benefit and ofcourse trying to make comparisons with today‘s situation….
Just two examples from many of the opportunistic bottom feeding politicians whoslither out to spread their odious lies and all given credibility by the BBC…..
Former Liverpool Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle commented to the Echo: “I think thepapers show an honest reflection of Tory thinking….I frankly do not thinkthey cared. ”
Labour MP Louise Ellman said ‘Lord Howe typifies a Tory attitude that is deeplyunpleasant.’
It is highly provocative and politically damaging nationally for the BBC tofeed these lies and give them any credibility at all. The BBC is supposedly thegold standard upon which the people can rely on for accurate and unbiasedreporting of events.
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The attitude of the BBC types can be neatly summarised in this story about ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’….The true author of A Gay Girl in Damascus is Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American Middle East activist studying at Edinburgh University .
‘That serious journalists fell for MacMaster’s fiction speaks to a profound crisis of objectivity in the modern media, and a preference for simplistic moralism over the tough task of reporting.
The trend for transforming other people’s struggles into self-serving morality plays has led to an alarmingly casual attitude towards the distinction between truth and lies.
MacMaster justifies his fake blog by saying that he was ‘trying to enlighten people’. The Guardian says his blog might have been a hoax but it nonetheless ‘[drew] attention to a nation’s woes’ ‘
‘Okay, we might have toyed with the facts, but we got at some deeper truth.’
Wasn’t that Lenin’s justification for killing anyone opposed to Communist policies……the future is all that matters…sacrifices now will bring us a better future?
The end justifies the means.
What the public gets is a shallow, prejudiced and highly inaccurate view of the world …such distortion leads to a political system out of kilter and, as intended by the BBC, essentially a one party state as all opponents to the BBC world view are shouted down or denied a voice…and one party politics is not a state of affairs conducive to a free and liberal culture…ironically.
We all remember Paxman in 2007 saying …”you rely upon second-hand information-quotes from powerful vested interests, assessments from organisations which do the work we don’t have time for, even, god help us, press releases from public relations agencies. The consequence is that what follows isn’t analysis. It’s simply comment, because analysis takes time, and comment is free.”
but not free of consequences….consequences that lead to an entirely new world, one that is inherently dangerous and without safeguards developed over centuries to ensure our freedoms, safety and fair government.
All that is at risk because of distorted, misleading reporting flooding out from the world’s most trusted source of information…the BBC
Great post.
This is not a complete bBC point, but gives evidence of the truthfullness of points made by Labour politicians. On SKY Jaqui Smith is reviewing the papers. The subject was the 4 deaths in county Durham. She says, I do not want to make a party political point but the approval of gun licences need to made much better. This point is made as the suicide/killer being brought to the police’s attention in 2008; showed himself to be mentally unstable.
Jacqui Smith was HOME SECRETARY at the time, Labour politicians are shameless. So why should the bBC as their mouth piece be any different from the way they operate.
Yes, an excellent post.
I was constrasting the report with others in national newspapers. For example, the Daily Telegraph reported the same story accurately, but they reported several other pieces of information that came to light at the same time which put Mrs Thatcher in a more positive light.
The BBC reporting is very predictable and extremely tiresome. It is the BBC verses the ‘Tories’ again. I really think the BBC news and current affairs should be shut down – it conveniently glosses over, or ignores, any facts that go against its core biased principles.
“The BBC reporting is very predictable and extremely tiresome. It is the BBC verses the ‘Tories’ again. I really think the BBC news and current affairs should be shut down – it conveniently glosses over, or ignores, any facts that go against its core biased principles.”
Agreed, by all means keep the music and entertainment but they clearly cannot be trusted to report the news.
Excellent post.
On the subject of Liverpool’s decline as a port I remember that ( I was involved in an importing company in the 70s ) that exporters from abroad started to insist that goods were not consigned via Liverpool. Unreliable and prone to what was called natural wastage. The pressure came from the insurers. Draw your own conclusions.
The two stalinist monoliths that Thatcher didn’t privatise – the NHS and the BBC. One butchers the elderly, the other butchers the truth.
Ian Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms, as depicted by the BBC –
Off-topic but important.
Please open a BiasBBC Facebook page so that people can ‘like’ it and thereby easily spread knowledge of this excellent site with ease.
You’d be surprised how effective it will be.
Ah Liverpool, the world of Derek gobshite Hatton, solid Labour to the end, whose only remaining heavy industry is producing left wing comedians. I would say Mrs Thatcher – in that immortal phrase coined by the BBC – “got it about right”.
Yes but most of those involved are still alive yet I saw very little push back about the BBC’s coverage (and C4).
If these Tory morons are happy to let the BBC tell lies about them then so be it.
Others have said it – so will I. Great post!
In answer to one of the contritbuters on the last open thread who asked why this site coninutes – this is the answer.
Look out for the BBC’s anti-Thatcher stance on the sad day she passes on. It will be disgraceful. I can hear the knives being sharpend now.
‘Okay, we might have toyed with the facts, but we got at some deeper truth.’
Fake, but accurate.
Its the BBC ‘year zero’ mindset isnt it?
Liverpool was in decline years/decades before Thatcher came to power, the BBC isnt interested in that at all. The unions moved heaven and earth to destroy industry in the area, they created an economic wasteland by their actions, industrial action was common, Marxist left agitiators within unions some in the pay of the USSR played an active part in destroying the areas economy.
The left needed an excluded poverty stricken unemployed class so they simply manufactured this class, they certainly got what they wanted didnt they? The hard and corrupt left combined to destroy a wonderful city, they left behind a post industrial wasteland and pulled the classic leftist ploy of blaming their enemies, the BBC obviously worked hard to peddle that falsehood.
Its strange that there are tens of thousands of film reports in the archives about the useless strikes from the 60s/70s, the industrial unrest whipped up by hard left union bullies and agitators that closed so many factories, yet these thousands of reports remain hidden away. The BBC will not be airing this archive, looking back to the time when strikes were called for the pettiest of reasons, overmanning and the opposition to multi skilling and retooling of factories and modernising of working practices. All this meant that when the WW2 tools failed the factories closed, unable to compete as a direct result of union sabotage. I remember one strike where workers were called out on strike because the management sacked night shift workers who took beds into the factory to sleep the night away.
We all remember the reports of strikes and Liverpool led the way, was a major player in the planned industrial and economic sabotage by the unions. The show of hands outside the factories that ignored the result and the union thugs going round intimidating anyone not voting the right way. We all remember who was really responsible for the industrial decline of the 70s that led to Thatcher being elected. The BBC choose not to remember, choose to hide the evidence of who was really to blame.
Creat post Cassandra. Yes, I remember the constant strikes of the sixties and seventies even though I was a child through most of it. You couldn’t avoid it, it dominated the news for years and was directly responsible for the decline. I thought that the UK would never recover economically and that constant industrial unrest was a permanent state of affairs.
That’s why I was amazed and delighted to see how Mrs. Thatcher rescued the country from being an economic disaster area. It was unfortunate that the unemployment rates went up so much during her early years, but without the actions her government took the unemployment situation would eventually have been far worse and much more intractible. As it was, those in work – even those at the bottom end of the wage structure – were generally much better-off.
Liverpool is one of the examples of the disaster that can befall a place when the left-wing decide to use it to create a permanent client-base. That is by deliberately making people long-term unemployed and poor they will be much more inclined to vote Labour or support an even harder-left party. Socialists in a democratic-society get no benefit from people becoming richer – once people are better off they tend to look at under which party their money is more likely to be safe.
And the champagne-socialists in the Beeb, the education establishments, the church etc. have no interest in the poor becoming richer as that would mean they would have less of a power-base and, also, they don’t want the workers to be getting the same luxuries as them as they are the worst snobs we have.
Great not Creat.
Still a Creat post though!
Ta muchly I must say 😀 .
Thatcher simply cleared away the rubble left by the leftists, took on the job of renewing the nations economy after the decades of wilful vandalism by the left.
The left blamed Thatcher and the BBC actively played and still plays a role in hiding the evidence from us, we crumblies and coffin dodgers who lived through it remember it vividly but the younger generation have no idea of the damage the unions inflicted over so many years.
A few home truths. Thank you.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have either forgotten all this, or are simply not old enough.
One of my childhood memories is the farce surrounding the construction of the QE2 at John Brown. Again, pre Thatcher. 30 years later I found myself working for the company that owned John Brown and I visited the wasteland at Clydebank. Didn’t come as a surprise.
A couple of words evoke for me the era of constant strikes and strife brought vividly to mind by Cassandra’s post. One is Halewood. The other is Dagenham.
This is the BBC at its very worst, stiring up sectarian hatred. It does not desreve its position. Just why is this allowed to go on unchecked.
‘“The judgement should be about did we do the right thing?”
But the BBC aren’t interested in that.’
As it happened long enough ago they may think they got away with it, but this latest dire example of narrative enhancing has provoked another stink, and one which usually see la Boaden rush to The Editors to show that, at least, the BBC is always interested in claiming doing the right thing is their sole preserve.
Newswatch may be worth a gander. There has to be a box somewhere that needs ticking if enough complaints come in.
I am pushing this one up the BBC dung pile.
If what the BBC reported was true (and it was reported elsewhere) then it is in itself newsworthy. It’s all a question of emphasis.
Mature and responsible reporting knows that as part of any discussion ‘left-field’ proposals have to be looked at, if only to give them the firm ‘no’ they’re likely to deserve.
What was very noteworthy in the BBC’s reporting was that there was no codicil that Geoffrey Howe’s alleged proposal/devil’s advocacy was given short shrift and instead the Tories put unprecedented investment in.
I heard Michael Heseltine interviewed on 5Live in the morning I believe, he just discarded the issue as it wasn’t what happened and to the interviewers credit he left it parked and just focussed on what Heseltine did do.
There was some scouser who worked as an anti-racism officer in Liverpool at the time, which always induces an inward groan, but he actually cast the blame on Liverpool’s decline on local politicians and paid tribute to Heseltine as a “gentleman” who was very sincere. When he tried to make out though that Hezza had his hands tied by Maggie, Hezza made perfectly clear that he had Maggie’s full support in everything he did.
I can’t comment on overall BBC coverage though, but the headlining certainly smacked of ‘same old, same old’. ..
Not a mention of Militant then?…of Heffer, Hatton, Mulhearn or the awful Deggsy Hatton…Kinnock and his “grotesque chaos” speech then?
A real nasty air of entitlement over Liverpool and its politics….a truly great city that has let pigmies and self-seeking scum treaders get into City Hall and speak for The Party(never for the people!) in Parlaiment.
No mention either I suppose of what Prescott(Lord John to you , serf!) and his Pathfinder Scheme did to some fine housing it once had in its centre?
Hopefully the good people of Liverpool will be able to get down the A57 to Salford in order to deal with the media gobshites who use their city as a constant sandbag filled with socialist grievance-just to play at Pyongyang Parlour games for the likes of Hatton and Jane Garvey.
Good article from Bruce Anderson regarding the guilt of Geoffrey Howe in todays Telegraph…not for Liverpool, but for not applying the same standards to the whole Europhile project!