I have been watching The Hour, a four-part series transmitted by BBC2. On the face of it, it's about an incipient one-hour television evening news and comment programme confronted with the realities of the Suez Crisis in 1956. On one side, Anthony Eden's government desperately keen to restrict the BBC's coverage of events to the strictly official version. On the other, a vast and popular protest against an illegal act of war.
I remember the circumstances so well. In particular I remember the Sunday evening sermon preached by the vicar of St Barnabas, Pimlico, where I was organist. I sat horrified in the organ loft as I listened to his impassioned tirade against the British Government. Had I had a copy of the music with me, I would have played Land of Hope and Glory at the end of the service as my own personal protest against the unpatriotic words I had heard from the pulpit. I was a very different person in those days. I had been too well conditioned by my Public School education. We were brought up to cherish the ways of the Conservative Establishment.
As I switched off at the end of the final instalment, I wondered what motive had driven the BBC to show The Hour. Was it simply to give themselves a pat on the back for standing up to the threats of an authoritarian government? Or was there some more immediate motive? What, indeed, had provoked the writer to compose the script in the first place?
For my part, I am glad to have seen an extract from Anthony Eden speaking on the television – and the clip of Opposition protests in Trafalgar Square. Television is potentially a much more powerful medium than the printing press even, perhaps especially, when the pictures and the sounds condition themselves as part of Showbizz.
francis cameron, oxford, 25 august 2011
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