It is well known that Lord Reith, the first Director General of the BBC and the Wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill didn’t really get on with each other, in fact they often hated each other. Sometimes this was down to Lord Reith’s views being different from that of Mr Churchill his fear that Churchill would turn the BBC into a government propaganda outfit during times of crisis such as the General Strike of 1926. At other times this antipathy was down to Churchill feeling that the BBC had excluded him because of his imperialist views on India and a general distaste for Churchill among BBC executives during Churchill’s political wilderness years.

Many of the arguments that occurred between Winston Churchill and Lord Reith are now history that is beyond living memory but some of what Sir Winston Churchill said about the BBC chimes very clearly with the world of today. In the 1950’s when Parliament was debating the issue of breaking the BBC’s monopoly on broadcasting and introducing commercial television, a subject that Sir Winston was allegedly ambivalent about, Churchill had a conversation with his doctor that went something like this:

I am against the monopoly employed by the BBC. For eleven years they kept me off the air. They prevented me from expressing views which have proved to be right. Their behaviour has been tyrannical. They are honeycombed with socialists—probably with communists.

As time has passed, it certainly seems to be the case that Churchill may have been correct about the BBC. It does appear to be honeycombed with left wing extremists and the sort of Middle Class cultural Left that hate Britain and Britons and this group seems to particularly hate the British working classes. Just look at the BBC’s identity politics guff for example. In the BBC’s eyes it all too often seems to be the case, judging by the BBC’s output, that everyone is entitled to have an identity and have it celebrated, except for the working classes. There is a form of Left wing snobbery that pervades a lot of BBC output and maybe this comes from a Middle Class metro-Left that would rather be French than British and despise the British working classes.

Churchill was right about the BBC. It’s run by Leftists and provides entertainment infused with Leftist nostrums, even though this is not what the general public want and the reason that they can do this is because of the licence fee. Without the licence fee the BBC would be forced to be commercially and culturally responsible and produce programmes that the British people want.