Director and producer Debbie Christie considers the success of campaigns against racism and sexism at the BBC in the mid 1980s.
In 1985, I was working in a BBC building with over 1000 staff, and almost everyone over the grade of assistant producer was a white middle class man.
A group of us decided to set up an Equal Opportunities Network. It was a vague, high-spirited idea. We wanted to collect information about sexism and racism and to propose bold new changes. There was a woman prime minister, but there were no women in decision-making roles in the building. The racism was obvious. There were no Black, Asian or people from any minority ethnic background in the building, either in front of, or behind, the camera. Manchester has always been a multicultural city but, behind the doors of the BBC, it was very white.
We produced a report, that we presented to management, about how we viewed our working conditions, along with suggested action points. On the last page of our 9 page report to the management we wrote: “We look forward to swift and clear changes in the BBC“.
What started as a thought became, for a few months, a shout, a protest and a campaign.
Did we achieve anything and what did we learn?
I wish I could say that our campaign now looks like an outdated piece of social history but, sadly, it does not. Although there has been a huge change in the TV industry over the past 30 years, much of what we highlighted in our report remains unresolved today.
As I have moved through the ranks of TV production, from being a stroppy researcher to becoming a producer on a high profile weekly current affairs programme, to being an Executive Producer, the issues of lack of inclusion, equality and diversity have remained all too apparent.
While the faces on screen have become more diverse, the people in charge of decision making haven’t changed much. Diverse life experiences, views and perspectives, are still rarely reflected in the content.
The politics of feminism and Equal Opportunities were loud and active in mid 80s Britain. The Industrial Society commissioned a report on ‘Women and Power’ and the NUJ was actively campaigning for Equal Opportunities Officers in the workplace.
We were fortunate with our noisy campaign, because it came off the back of the Sims Report. Monica Sims was a well-respected Controller of BBC Radio 4 who had been invited to conduct a report on Women in the BBC. She requested and analysed the data on women. The statistics were shocking. She also identified what she called “a macho style of management” and “the difficulties presented because the child-bearing years from 25-35 coincide with those years considered crucial in career terms”.
Sims wrote: “Real power, even in production departments where there are a number of women producers, was in the hands of men”
When things got a little tough for our campaign, it was extraordinarily helpful that we not only had the statistics, but that this quietly spoken successful woman had explicitly identified the problems.
Our campaign took anonymised testimony from a wide range of women. Now, post #MeToo, they read quite shockingly, but, at the time, we thought they were small things that made life uncomfortable.
Here are some of them from our document, which was sent to the management on 12th July 1985:
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2 women at job interviews had been asked whether they planned to get married.
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A woman had been asked by her male Colleague not to wear trousers at work because they were unfeminine (these were smart trousers, not scruffy jeans).
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Women felt they were often ‘rewarded’ by being given a peck on the cheek or by being bought a drink. They would have preferred to have been told more directly, as their male colleagues had been, that they had done a good job.
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A woman’s contract was terminated when she said she was pregnant.
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We found that there were no women in production who were combining TV production with bringing up children.
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In TV production, there were only 2 women above the grade of assistant producer.
My own experiences echoed this patronising attitude to women. During my initial job interview, the HR representative asked whether I had a fiancé in Manchester, and whether I would be lonely, as a girl moving to a new city? I had by that time been to university, worked in Kenya, and had also worked in a refugee camp in the Middle East.
Our report highlighted that this bias was not only verbal, but also that people declared it in print. We quoted from an article in the BBC’s in-house magazine, Peter Hill, the editor of Rough Justice, talks about the production team: “It’s an all-male team. I’m not sexist, but situations can develop which a woman couldn’t handle. Even if I was prepared to expose one to the kind of risks we take, which I am not”.
We found that the lighting crew in the studio were routinely using the words ‘Darkies’ and ‘Winston Kdogos’. When challenged, they explained that they needed to ask if there were any ‘darkies’ in advance of a lighting set up, because if the musicians were dark skinned it altered their lighting rig. We understood that, but we asked them to modify their language. They did.
Did our findings shock people at the time? Yes, they did.
Some of our ambitions were combative and probably ill-judged. We asked to turn the subsidised bar, where people gathered to drink at lunchtime and after work, into a subsidised crèche. That certainly met with the wrath and ridicule of many of the staff.
We demanded 5 years (unpaid) maternity leave, with the job being held open.
But we also asked, more realistically, for flexibility for part time work and job sharing, and for race awareness courses for all managers and editors.
Those should have been easy to achieve, but when I returned to the BBC 10 years later, as an Executive Producer, they were still not happening.
Our eagerness for change did achieve something important. Many women took strength from realising that this wasn’t just their own, individual problem. It showed that discrimination was not just happening occasionally, but that it was a widescale, persistent and embedded problem.
I wish, of course, that we had pushed harder and looked for more evidence. We missed the most significant abuse of young women in the building. We all used the BBC canteen. It was a joke amongst some of us that Stuart Hall, the BBC North West News presenter, who famously wore a pink shirt unbuttoned to show his medallion, stood a little too close to us in the queue, and sometimes rubbed into us ‘in a jokey way’. We didn’t even put that in our report. Now, of course, we know that he also invited school girls who were interested in working in television into his office, and he indecently assaulted them. In January, 2013, he pleaded guilty to historic charges of indecent assault involving a 16 year old, a 17 year old, and a 9 year old in 1983, and a 13 year old in 1984 .We didn’t suspect at the time that he was doing that. And we didn’t look for it.
We did meet some hostility.
Many of the women in the building sent us information, but they didn’t want to be seen coming to the meetings, because they felt it would damage their chances of employment and promotion.
I was a researcher. I had no responsibilities. I was on a short-term contract. I was ‘fired up’ and, with the zeal of youth, I just knew we were right. I also had a decent boss, who I knew wouldn’t succumb to any pressure around the renewal of my contract. He knew which direction society was travelling in, and he was sympathetic.
One small story. One of my sympathetic bosses employed a secretary who was Black British. I think he managed to do this by circumventing the BBC pool and going to a secretarial agency. She was not only excellent at her job, but she brought a perspective. She mentioned, in passing, that her boyfriend, who had lived in Manchester all of his life, was being deported. We were shocked. These stories were rarely reported. We did an item on it. We asked questions of the Home Office. He got a reprieve.
We were challenging a culture, and perhaps that challenge was easier because, in 1985, sexism and racism were more overt.
I think some of what helped me to navigate a culture that wasn’t welcoming to women was that I had grown up in a family, and at a girl’s grammar school where it was unthinkable that a woman wouldn’t be as clever as a man. I am very aware that people who have been brought up in disabled, non-white, or low-income households, have often not lived in a society that has given them those confident messages.
I was discussing our 1985 campaign with a friend who was involved at the time. She said that, in hindsight, she felt much more intimidated in the BBC building by her working-class background and Mancunian accent than by her gender. We weren’t even asking questions then about socio-economic inclusion. Although, interestingly, her experience was that she came in as a secretary and has since progressed to work as an executive in a major multinational media company, she was at least in the building back in 1985.
Within a few years of our report, the statistics on Women in Television were shifting fast. They reflected huge societal changes for women, but I think it was significant that there were already women in lower paid jobs in BBC buildings in the ‘80s who knew they were capable of doing the better paid jobs. That wasn’t the case for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people, who weren’t even in the building.
This societal lack of confidence remains, I think, an issue for all recruitment of diverse staff. It is now particularly true for people from low-income families. They don’t see themselves being employed in TV.
What did I learn?
I wish we had pushed harder. I wish we had done more. I am embarrassed that we didn’t seek out non-white voices outside the TV industry, who could have informed our campaign.
I have since been involved in many campaigns and initiatives as an executive, but I am still not sure what will create change in the TV industry. I fear that a largely freelance short-term industry, and a society that hasn’t improved statistically for young Black British people, will prove to be tough challenges.
I have continued to sporadically campaign and to seek to influence and improve recruitment as an executive in TV. I am proud that evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee identified my success in recruiting a predominantly Black Asian and Minority Ethnic production team, but our industry has problems that well-meaning executives cannot solve on their own each time they are recruiting for a new series.
My suggestions would be to get the statistics, to persuade as many important and influential people as possible to go on record with their commitment; to collect ‘off the record’ testimony so as to look at the patterns that emerge; to shout and complain whenever you feel safe to do so.
However, I don’t think we will see significant shifts in employment without clear, targeted recruitment and training, accompanied by 2 year contracts for these new recruits. This should be a priority.
The TV industry needs to welcome not just the people, but the perspectives and ideas that they bring.
For commissioners, I would suggest that the focus now needs to be on shifting the lens. I have recently Exec’d a series of monologues for BBC4 that is called ‘Crip Tales’, and that is written, directed and performed entirely by disabled people. As well as achieving critical success, every one of our writers, who had previously never written for TV, have been offered more work. We have hopefully started them on a career in TV.
If you seek out different voices, there is a richness of content and creative energy which not only enhances the offering to the audience, but that also offers one route along which to broaden the range of people who work in TV.
Debbie Christie is an Emmy and RTS award-winning television director and producer.