Northern Ireland, the BBC, and Censorship in Thatcher’s Britain: New insights into a bad decision

Soon after he announced the banning of Sinn Féin from British airwaves in 1988, home secretary Douglas Hurd confided to his diary “It is a poor decision ... I’m not proud of it”. Historian Robert Savage’s carefully researched and insightful study confirms this rueful assessment.

The book examines the confrontations between Margaret Thatcher’s government and British broadcasters that culminated in the 1988 ban, offering new insights into episodes such as the attempt to prevent the screening of a Real Lives documentary about Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness and the DUP’s Gregory Campbell.

Through a close analysis of BBC and British government archives Savage, whose previously published books on the origins of Irish television and on the BBC during the Troubles are based on similarly wide-ranging archival research, shows how Thatcher’s government repeatedly pressured the corporation. In 1985 the BBC was stampeded into breaking a long-established convention by showing Real Lives to its board of governors before broadcast.

After the showing vice-chairman William Rees-Mogg, a political appointee, denounced the programme as “totally unacceptable”. A majority of governors agreed. After a long struggle the programme was finally broadcast with some minor edits, but it was a sign of things to come.

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The broadcasters pointed out that the ban was unnecessary. Their coverage was always broadly supportive of the British government and hostile to the IRA and Sinn Féin. But they did sometimes question certain state actions and this agitated Thatcher who sought to control the narrative much more tightly than her predecessors.

At one level the ban worked. It led to a sharp reduction in coverage of Sinn Féin at a time when the IRA campaign was in full flow. But it also eroded the authority of the BBC and opened the government to ridicule.

When broadcasters hired actors to dub the words of Sinn Féin spokespersons the British government complained that they were synchronised so carefully that viewers couldn’t tell it was an actor’s voice. Worse still, it made them sound well-spoken and articulate.

Savage outlines how the BBC then instructed its editors to ensure the dubbing was out of sync, making the interviews look farcical and inviting mockery. Satirical news show The Day Today took up the invitation with relish, broadcasting a short sketch in which Steve Coogan plays a Sinn Féin spokesperson who has to inhale helium “to detract credibility from his statements” (available on YouTube).

[ Margaret Thatcher’s moods, Garret FitzGerald’s outburst – a diplomat looks back ]

Neither Thatcher nor the broadcasters regarded the ban as a trifling matter: “To beat off your enemy in a war you have to suspend some of your civil liberties for a time,” Thatcher explained to The Times. As Savage clearly demonstrates, that “war” in Northern Ireland provided opportunities for the Thatcher government to move against “the enemy within” in Great Britain, tightening control over broadcasters.

Opponents of the ban in BBC Northern Ireland argued that it reduced opportunities for dialogue, especially at local level. There’s some irony, then, in the fact that, just a couple of years later, the British government itself would begin talking “secretly and indirectly” to Sinn Féin about a possible peace settlement.

Niall Ó Dochartaigh is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Galway and the author of Deniable Contact: Back-channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2021)