Is BBC ‘climate of fear’ putting diversity over merit?– David Behrens

That’s how Rees saw it, anyway. The Corporation had “politely insisted” that he book “certain types of guests” for the programme, he said in a valedictory interview. It wasn’t the principle of diversity to which he objected but the prescriptiveness.

He wasn’t the only one. Back in October, an unnamed “senior figure” within the BBC was quoted as saying there was “a climate of fear” in Broadcasting House about stories on race and diversity, with a small but significant number of staff acting as self-appointed censors.

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Dame Maureen Lipman, the wonderful and socially aware actress originally from Hull, struck a similar note last month when she said that comedians were living in fear of being forced off the airwaves because someone might take offence at something they said.

And in society at large, more than half of us now stop ourselves from expressing political and social views for fear of being judged to be at the less politically correct end of the spectrum. That’s according to pollsters at YouGov.

Is this good or bad? No-one likes to be made to feel uncomfortable, but there is a broad line between gratuitous insult and intelligent debate, and the culture of woke-ism is all about erasing that line.

The proof of this lies in closer inspection of some of the “contentious” material that went into Quote… Unquote. And, by the way, the fact that an upper class parlour game should now be considered incendiary is a revelation in itself.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Noel Coward’s 1930s take on an observation by Rudyard Kipling, is not, for instance, the kind of party piece that would previously have exercised the censors. It’s hardly the Sex Pistols, is it? Yet it was deemed inappropriate to be dissected by Rees and his diverse guests.

Perhaps Coward’s pronouncement that “Hindoos and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one”, or that “in Bengal to move at all is seldom, if ever done” implied lethargy on their part, even under the beating heat of the midday sun. Or maybe the BBC was suddenly sensitive to the feelings of the mad Englishmen at whom Coward was taking a satirical swipe. The official explanation was that the song betrayed “colonial attitudes”, and was therefore an embarrassment – but not nearly as embarrassing as the censors apparently believing that Argentina was ever part of the British Empire.

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The fact that Coward revelled in political incorrectness, skewering pomposity and stupidity in some of the most articulate lyrics of the 20th century, is of course lost in the woke-ism debate, where nuance and context are merely impediments to the right to be morally outraged.

Indeed, the risk of rubbing anyone up the wrong way – and there’s a phrase you probably can’t use on TV any more – is now so acute that the BBC has even banned the use of an acronym coined for the specific purpose of being inclusive. The Corporation has been forever banging on about the importance of embracing BAME communities, meaning Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups – yet BAME itself is now deemed insulting because it treats minorities as a single group.

All of this presents the BBC with a problem as it prepares to celebrate its centenary, for how much of its back catalogue can it unashamedly show off in the present climate? Wartime news bulletins? Disrespectful to Germans. It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum? Too many racial stereotypes. The Black and White Minstrel Show? You must be joking.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with inclusivity. But the Quote… Unquote affair is the latest in a litany of misjudgments by the BBC. Can we really trust it to be the chief arbiter of what is and what is not acceptable?

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