BBC Third Programme: Post-War British Cultural History

[00:00:02][Music] out of the second world war came an idea that the best in art and culture should be not just a luxury but part of the Reconstruction of Britain all over the cultural map there was a feeling that more human beings than ever before should be given access ESS to what was best in art science philosophy possible these years produced organizations like the Edinburgh Festival The Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Arts Council the whole new structure of cultural life was created and these things still exist today so it was an enormously decisive moment in British cultural life in 1946 the BBC launched the third program a radio station devoted to high culture the SD program crystallized these very complicated and diverse social philosophical and let's ever forget political hopes and aims whilst the third program spoke to the postwar egalitarian Spirit its tone was unashamedly highbrow the third program in retrospect has often been called elitist and that's exactly what it was precisely the best um for those who wanted the best that was the idea that if it appealed to two people instead of two million that it was worth doing this is the story of a brief moment when the idea of elite culture for all didn't sound like a contradiction but it didn't last within 10 years profound changes in society had broken the consensus and altered forever attitudes towards High culture in Britain the third program began broadcasting on the 29th of September 1946 with a surprisingly tongue-in-cheek feature on how to listen this is the BBC third program how to listen including how not to how you ought to and how you won't how how how are they ready are they listening here the house is empty there the set is Switched Off but here license number 86543 2 Mrs Moss is she listening turn up the wiress Mrs Moss Yes dear is chilly tonight let's turn the wiress up a bit beneath the comic tone of the script by writer and humorist Steven Potter lay a crucial message the third was not background listening the program on the first night done by Joyce grin and Steven Potter how to listen uh was in a sense a new kind of program uh it was light uh and there was a light element in the uh third program uh a lighter element than the very serious talks I can't bear it he's found him I can't believe it here he is at last perfect listener the perfect listener somebody really listening what shall we give him the hole of Shakespeare the whole of BET Now one essential thing that people forget about the third program is that it only ever broadcast in the evenings and that was a fundamentally different sort of radio broadcasting from the radio 3 of today or the radio 3 of 10 years ago each evening could be constructed as a work of art in its own right and people were expected to attend to the third program with the sort of concentrated fervor that they would give to going to the theater or going to the cinema or going to a concert it wasn't something that you just casually had on in the background I remember having an evening party a Cheese party and this meant everybody brought their cheese ration to hear from Venice the premiere of Stravinsky's Rees progress with a text by Orton being explained and commented on and one suddenly had the feeling that one was very rich very elegant very sophisticated um and it blew open a whole world in what was still a materially very constricted and very du time the third program set itself up as an enormous idealistic experiment in making the best of culture available to everybody and that was culture not just music for the opening night the third program commissioned Festival Overture from Benjamin Britain and the first week included Jean Paul S's weeko and George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman it was just a wonderful idea uh that you should simp put on uh the best of whatever it happened to be it was a very enlightened notion and never mind if not a great many people were listening that wasn't the issue at all in fact in the early years the third program was claiming up to two and a half million listeners its high-minded approach was in tune with the times the labor government of 1945 saw the Arts as part of post-war reconstruction and prime minister Clement Atley spoke of culture's power to unify during the last two decades especially during recent years the heritage of culture which was so long the possession of the few has been more widely available to the masses of the people the spiritual as well as the material resources of the western Nations have been more equitably shared and had this not been so we should have not had that unity in the struggle against totalitarianism this new faith in culture had its roots in the wartime experience during the dark days of the blitz artistic activity in Britain had virtually ceased soon the government saw that culture would be needed in the war effort [Music] like just about everybody in Wartime the arts and culture were conscripted even pacifists like Benjamin Britain found that they were actually needed for the war effort because in a sense even as early as 1940 people realized that culture was one of the things that the British were fighting for what do you think of this one it's not too bad but what's the point in all this here out pretty pitches don't with anything not now anyway we all know what we're fighting against but don't you think we sometimes forget what we're fighting for not pretty pies yes but they're part of it we've got to fight because if we didn't we wouldn't be free free to work to play to listen to look at what we want to and it was decided that it was necessary to fund the Arts basically the first time ever that uh public patronage had been set up on such an official scale so in 1940 a group of people were brought together and they became known as the council for the encouragement of music and the Arts SEMA which supplied an enormous amount of Art and employed artists during the war really gave rise to the whole idea that public subsidy of the Arts wasn't good idea and that through a really well-thought out system of encouraging and supporting artistic institutions you could actually make the best of everything available to everyone and that's really the idealistic spirit that underpins artistic life in the late' 40s it was John Maynard KES The Economist behind the welfare state who took charge of SEMA in 1942 K's Vision came out of his his own experience of doing things like setting up the Cambridge Arts Theater in Cambridge and being married to a ballerina and his was a Bloomsbury set of values which certainly regarded the high Arts as his responsibility one of the last acts of the wartime coalition government was to give SEMA a peacetime role as the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1945 at the end of the war the consensus was that culture mattered culture had been successfully preserved for 5 years during the war there had been a fantastic appetite for culture I think at no time in British history did people actually need culture they needed it like they needed religion at that time they needed it for as a spiritual resource so the feeling was this must [Music] continue [Music] public demand for culture was high in 1945 publisher Alan Lane launched penguin Classics with Homer's Odyssey it became a bestseller The Odyssey was the first of our Classics if we'd known then what we know now we'd have been perfectly safe in printing 100,000 or even quarter a million Alan Lane was not an intellectual anything that makes him seem like a a highbrow trying to educate the country is wrong but he did erode erode a kind of dream of his own that books matter and and that more people should have them I was swept off my feet by the fact that in the train between Oxford and London often freezing often late everyone was reading this was the new world that produced the third program the BBC's director General William Haley was convinced that the station had a key cultural role to [Music] play Sir William Haley had a sense of mission for the BBC he thought that it could do an immense amount to improve the cultural standards of the nation and he thought the BBC through the third program which was the top of his priorities could really um achieve more than any other institution but while the light program might well play the Wales from De Rosen Cavalier and the Home Service do a live broadcast of an act from coven Garden the third program will devote an evening to the whole Opera the differences will be in approach in treatment and in emphasis the third program wasn't there to make difficult material more accessible but simply to make it available Haley believed in education but he didn't want the program to be there to teach people how to improve their taste it was there to make them improve their taste through listening it sounds of course now very elitist and indeed it was it was deliberately based upon the conception of elite as was uh the conception of culture held by other people particularly TS Elliott to whom uh Haley always listened very attentively the poet and critic TS Elliott held influential views on Art and Society believing High culture should remain The Preserve of a closed Elite he s the third program as a Bastion against cultural decline he imagined culture like most people did in those days in the shape of a pyramid with the high arts and probably TS Elliot right at the top and the the low Arts of of Folk Music and Dance music and so on right at the bottom while respecting the fact that the British were now committed to supporting the high Arts at the same time he I think he was very suspicious that these values would be diluted if they were spread too wide such fears gave the third program its flavor its rarified air its refusal to popularize this approach even found support on the left where Elliot's belief in a hierarchy of culture was shared Elite culture it was thought could improve and educate all classes the very definition of radicalism is to have the best to have it for more people the radical emancipation of the humbled and the UN privilege lies also on the road to culture I think the right was astonished sometimes certainly negative particularly in the question of opening privileged institutions such as certain schools and universities to a much larger field but at that time there was an amazing I think amount of consensus even in the open political divisions a great deal of underlying consensus and a great deal I can only put it this way of that we've got to help Hope along the third program Drew support from this consensus as a Haven for elite values and a vehicle for self-improvement it was beyond reproach we intellectuals in the in the provinces we relied on it it was almost a lifesaver the third program was a great gate there's no question about it um we were up in the North Yorkshire Midland near Middlesboro and we we just were third programmers Alan sililo was another workingclass writer for whom the third program proved a lifesaver in 1948 just returned from fighting in Malaya he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis I remember going in one very gloomy November night being wheeled in put into bed and listening to the chaps around me who were saying oh yes tonight there's shoets unfinished on the on a third program and I thought oh well maybe I'll listen to it we asked ourselves why was it called The Unfinished you know what what was unfinished about it and why didn't he finish it and so on so we had a discussion it very much ameliorated my attitude my condition and I began to feel less gloomy more optimistic more positive because I had this thing to um help me in a sense with its [Music] music music was crucial to the Third program's success the station expanded a once limited repertoire we go ahead with the second movement in 5 seconds from now it's not enough for the better known and more popular works of the great Masters to be broadcast with varying degrees of regularity there are many great works which Escape public performance for long stretches of time the BBC can ensure that this doesn't happen the third program revived interest in early music played all of Varner's ring cycle over four nights broadcast premieres of the most modern music from Bok to sherberg and showcased British composers from tippet to Walton and you cannot dissociate the explosion of Genius in British music suddenly all over the map British music becom what we now know it to be and not only uh Britain and tip but but many others through broadcasts this wave of creativity also brought New Life to public performances towards the end of the decade you begin to get the idea of of the festival as an annual event emerging you get the chelton Festival of literature you get the alra festival set up by Benjamin Britain who is really riding on a high as a result of his his National and international reputation the festival stems from allb itself and is organized by the local people The Local hall is converted into a theater where operas are performed with settings by such artists as John Piper and osber lanaster and crucially in 1947 you get the International Festival in Edinburgh now again the important thing about the the Edinburgh Festival was the International in the title because this again was part of the idea of postwar reconciliation so it was very important that German artists German musicians and so on came to Edinburgh the Edinburgh International Festival was to be a version of the famous salsburg Festival it was intended to broaden the horizons of the British and improve international relations ideals also behind the third program you've already heard or read possibly too often how it will broadcast concerts operas plays and other works of art in full and how it will be all so experimental and strongly International Charles Munch Nikolai Malco Elizabeth Schuman cetti are all coming during the war German culture had been excised from the airwaves now from Vagner to brch the third program was bringing it back between 1945 and 1950 there was a Revival of interest in Germany and the third program actually devoted itself so much to Gerta uh that there were one or two people who felt that they never wanted to read a line of Gerta the third program also brought new voices to the public a mass medium which radio is always has the capacity to generate household names someone like Isa bin who would broadcast talks and so on he would be able to reach an audience Way Beyond the seminar room or the lecture room Dylan Thomas the poet actually I think owes a great deal certainly to the BBC in general but certainly to the the third program which employed him a lot the policy of encouraging experiment attracted directing and acting Talent we were given the chance to broadcast material that had never been broadcast before imagine the privilege of being directed by Louis mnes Douglas clev and Raymond Rees Terence tiller they were inspiring and I was hungry for it the third program also felt a duty to the classical Cannon leading poet C Lewis was commissioned by controller Harmon gwood to make a new translation of Virgil's iner no winds the seventh summer since the destruction of Troy and still over land un watery roome over a world of unh harboring rocks as we steer by the stars and around the wide Seas from wave to wave chase after that Willow The Wiz Italy my husband C lis was summoned and Harmon gwood said to him would,000 be appropriate and my husband was absolutely poxed because he'd never earned that much all at once in the whole of his life and so poxed was he at the thought of it that he remains silent for a moment which made Mr gwood think that it wasn't enough so he he upped it to 1500 no expense spared the anid was the centerpiece of the third program's contribution to the biggest cultural event of the decade the Festival of Britain the festival H site was nearing completion on the South Bank I hope that this concert hall will long endure to give the opportunity for the finest music the greatest singers players to be heard and to give pleasure and refreshment of the soul to generations of londoners yet unborn the postar labor government had been enormously influential in in setting up support for the Arts and that really culminates in the Festival of Britain in 1951 which is uh supposedly to Mark the centinary of the great exhibition of 1851 but he actually about creating a New Britain [Music] the festival is mostly remembered for promoting modern technology and design but it also celebrated the culmination of the labor government's cultural project I know the Festival of Britain is now generally derided at the time for many of us it was a a tremendous occasion it was a feeling look Europe has survived which was not at all clear and here in Britain there was a sense of let's have a creative good time I can't put it any other way the creativeness and the fun went together here was modernity here was the fruit of the 1930s modernist movement at last after the ghastly nightmare of the war at last coming true Henry Moore is the most important of living British sculptors in 1950 he was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain to create a piece of sculpture which was first to be shown at the festival of Britain there were a lot of sculpture commissions some of the sculptur is still there and of course it wasn't just in London it was also all over the country so a whole number of Arts festivals were set up H some of these Arts festivals still continue There was the land traveling exhibition highly mobile it called in at the big cities of Britain to bring the festival theme to The Nation the irony of course is that by the time the Festival of Britain closed in 1951 the labor government was out of power and the conservative government one of the first things they did was to raise the site so all we have left from the Festival of Britain is the Festival Hall on the South Bank the new conservative government did not share Labour's commitment to making high art more available other forces too were undermining the consensus money was running short for cultural projects and television which in 1947 had been available only to London was spreading fast the 50s was a time of huge democratization television showing the coronation something that the establishment was totally against before it happened but everybody knew it was the right thing to do the growth of Television was bringing a different form of ENT entertainment straight into people's homes and I think all that begins to undermine the cultural consensus the austerities of the war are are now an unpleasant memory there is full employment there's this new phenomenon called the teenager who suddenly has money to spend on clothes and record players and records and there is Leisure and there are uh organizations there to provide Mass [Music] entertainment the rise of mass entertainment seemed to pose a direct threat to the cultural ideals of the 1940s and there are people whose values are not those of of the purveyors of mass entertainment who are absolutely horrified by this because they they see that the particular pressures of scarcity and austerity which had made High culture especially valued are slipping away ooh I love you so hey hey I love you [Music] so the painter Augustus John voiced the fears of the Arts establishment under the ceaseless tiation of light entertainment journalistic gossip the poison of commercial films cheap pornography and governmental paternalism the man of the future will have lost his personal dignity and become a kind of robot functioning happily enough in a secondhand world will art flourish in these conditions not thatly the new Americanized mass culture provoked concern amongst intellectuals of all political stripes the big cultural Figures were absolutely convinced that their culture was the right culture and some of them were very aggressive towards mass culture others of the them had a Live and Let Live attitude but they still fundamentally believed that their area of cultural activity ought to continue to be supported at the level it had been but others saw in the new consumer Society an antidote to the enclosed Elite World typified by post-war institutions like the third program there had been criticism and satar from the start about the third program's esoteric dry content many people on the left couldn't care less about it and and and thought of it as a topy no Channel leftist intellectuals very often thought it was a good idea but that it had to be rescued from the Assumption so common in England or else it would become the the channel for high Bros now the station's very existence came into question in 1953 The Express Newspaper launched its scrap the third program campaign The Daily Express took against the third program very much in the same way that popular press has taken against High culture ever since because it felt that an enormous amount of BBC resources were being spent on a very small number of people accessing this service it wasn't just the third program that was losing favor the post-war demand for high art was drying up even subsidized theaters and orchestras began to struggle the money we spend on the Arts is resented by some people as a needless expense and criticized by others as pitiably small they remind us that the annual Grant to the National Gallery is one tenth of the annual Pig subsidy the Opera and the theater on the continent are regarded as cultural Necessities whereas over here they're regarded as a luxury and uh in industry is always favored critics of the third program did indeed see culture as a luxury the Oxford and Cambridge unions jointly debated the motion this house would abolish the third program are honorable gentleman opposite aware of how many listeners share my tastes in 18th century musical the on is 1% I think the third program from the start did suffer from the attempt of some of the people who were producing for it to develop avangard taste which obviously couldn't even reach the minority that Haley uh wanted to reach it may be that some honorable gentleman officite with the maddening smugness of the intellectual warmly wrapped in his F coat of superiority will say that the general public can with better education be improved and upgraded so as to become capable of understanding these programs but the general public does not want to be improved and upgraded it wants to be entertained I suppose people who paid license money might have thought that um too much was being spent on too few people but then they did have the Alternatives didn't they in 1955 these Alternatives expanded the government removed the BBC's television mon commercial TV was born the third program's audiences were totally unaffected by the arrival of commercial television but the BBC's finances were badly affected there were people inside the BBC who began to talk about the possible sacrifice of the third program within a few months of the BBC third program celebrating it 10th anniversary there's an inquiry into its structure and organization and it comes out against it Ian Jacob now director general of the BBC announced a number of cuts to the third program it would have its budgets reduced and lose 50% of its air time what are these new proposals for sound broadcasting and why do you consider them necessary well we felt we ought to review uh the shape of sound broadcasting which has remained more or less the same for 10 years uh and to make certain that radio gives to the public what it requires in this television age the third program will retain all its normal characteristics uh the flexibility uh the power to extend its time but it will be somewhat shortened as a general rule normally it will run from 8: to 11:00 p.m. the reduction in hours would make way for a new Channel network 3 for education and hobbies not culture when they suggested replacing an hour or two of the third program with this new thing called Network 3 which would give you instruction in Woodwork and piano playing and various practical activities uh the great cultural and intellectual figures absolutely went up in smoke about that because here they were being lumped together with uh minority interests of a practical nature whereas what they were interested in were great great intellectual ideas they were interested in Bertrand Russell and cofl and jesuitical debate about the meaning of life the Great and the good of British cultural life turned out in force to fight the cuts they sent a delegation to the BBC asked questions in Parliament and publish their objections they come from almost every conceivable kind of arts background acting is represented by Lawrence Olivia Michael tippet is the representative of music but also vaugh Williams comes back in in a way towering above them is TS Elliot who is emphasizing the fact that the spoken word which the BBC had done so much to uh bring into the world is just as important as the written word particularly G to them was the BBC's suggestion that the audience for high culture was a minority like any other it was a marked change from William Haley's idealism the once strict hierarchy of high brow and low brow of high culture and popular culture was dissolving new poets novelists and playwrights from working class backgrounds were challenging established taste and values the Royal Court theater opens in London dedicated to new writing and amazingly actually discovers a play written by a completely unknown young man called John Osborne which articulates all the frustrations of the postwar generation Look Back in Anger opened in 1956 and became both a popular and a critical success it heralded the arrival of a new sort of writing well it all came about by coincidence and uh it as if it had been um synchronized by some beneficent or Maleficent if you like God there were so many people in England who didn't like to hear what they' written or what we'd written if you like and they called it Rebellion they called it angry but U it was simply they were following the ground currents of a changing climate I think without even knowing they were doing it the Arts establishment was not wholly hostile to this new class clate but those who had found favor in the years after the war sometimes found it unsettling I suppose there came a moment when uh I for one felt um inadequate when the new movement of people from the provinces came and there was an inverted snobbery and I I stress that against anybody like me who talked received pronunciation and uh I began to regret that I hadn't been um born in Liverpool or somewhere else the notion of culture began to change and you felt that culture was if you like uh as it had been thought of earlier in the 19th century that it represented in a sense the whole expression of a society and not some veneer uh or set of tastes which were in a way imposed or even merely publicized you felt that culture had an integral element in it the Defenders of the third program failed to stop the BBC cuts on the eve of the changes they held a last tribute to the old third program ironically the venue was the Royal Court theater on Sunday the 29th of September 1957 I just knew that we had to be there had to be I felt so strongly about the third program and all that it meant to me and and my husband uh that I was glad to take part in a an evening of protests at the Royal Court theater when we were trying to save it I suppose or to not to have it diminished Jill bulin and Cay Lewis read contemporary poetry John gilg good and Peggy Ashcroft performed Elizabeth and drama the allegri quartet played Mozart and makoni [Music] and the assembled audience heard a speech from TS Elliot for some people a symphony orchestra may be more entertaining than a dance band most of us are capable of being entertained by both but would be very sorry if we were only allowed to hear the band The Assumption behind the attitude of the BBC is alarming because when generally unquestioned and accepted such an assumption tends to demoralize democracy discourage excellence and innovate the nation it is the last great demonstration of high culture uh uninterested in other forms of culture assertive powerful uh but inevitably in a position which is precarious given all the changes in society the cultural institutions born of the 1940s had been the product of an extraordinary moment fleetingly Elite culture made available to all and social equality seemed to go handin hand within a decade this consensus had crumbled the third program itself eventually became radio 3 but the vision that created it now belongs to a lost [Music] era