Lisa O'Carroll
Monday December 12, 2005
The Guardian

The BBC was in an extraordinary and forceful political vice-grip. It was living under a long shadow cast by the rows over its coverage of a controversial war. The director general had already suffered several nasty and acrimonious encounters with politicians who had boasted about "roasting the BBC alive". The US and the UK were on edge over terrorism, the popular press was fervently patriotic and the BBC could seemingly do nothing right.

Two decades on and only now can the full extent of the crisis be revealed: documents obtained by MediaGuardian from the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act show the extent to which the corporation was torn apart internally by the affair, with a craven board of governors, weak management and divided staff. Current BBC employees remember Hutton; but the lessons of Real Lives are worth recalling as the BBC prepares to replace its current system of governance with a new model.

The row can be traced back to June 1985. Thatcher had already warned that broadcasters must "starve" terrorists of the "oxygen of publicity". At the time the Irish question was deeply entrenched - there had been a spate of kidnappings in the Republic, attempted assassinations and the Brighton bomb. Into that polarised atmosphere stepped Paul Hamann, an experienced documentary maker on his way up the ladder at the BBC. He had, by chance, secured an at-home interview with Sinn Fein's McGuinness and his wife, and his unionist counterpart, Gregory Campbell, leader of the Democratic Unionists.

Against BBC guidelines, the programme was kept secret from the director general Alasdair Milne; news leaked days before it was due to be broadcast and the storm blew up in his face. Thatcher was furious and the BBC was sent into a tailspin even worse than the crisis two years ago when Alastair Campbell led the sustained attack on the Today programme that led to the cataclysmic Hutton inquiry.

In an unprecedented intervention the then home secretary Leon Brittan fired off a letter to the BBC demanding, on security grounds, that the programme be pulled. That letter, never before published, reveals Brittan was concerned that the interview with the main "apologist" for the "murder and maiming of innocent people" would cause "profound distress" and "materially assist the terrorist cause".

The letter caused deep anxiety among the board of governors, long seen by many in the BBC management as packed with political appointees. At the time the board comprised 12 men and women including William (now Lord) Rees-Mogg; Malcolm McAlpine, brother of the Tory party treasurer; and Lady Faulkner, the widow of Ulster Unionist Brian Faulkner. The governors decided to view the programme prior to broadcast - a rare step and a major vote of no confidence in management.

Previously unpublished notes of a snap governors' meeting called by then chairman, Stuart Young, on July 30 show the extent of the chasm between management and board. One governor, Daphne Park, found particularly offensive the "domestication of the IRA", with the film showing them as "lovable people with babies".

Rees-Mogg, deputy chairman, described the programme as "totally unacceptable"; Lady Faulkner said she had been "frightened" when viewing the film and thought its contents were "utterly horrifying". Watson Peat, another governor, said he felt the "soft questioning" of McGuinness had enabled him to adopt a "Scargillite demeanour". Lord Harewood, cousin of the Queen, branded the programme "smooth and odious ... hateful".

The management was hobbled: it had only found out about the programme from the press a few days earlier. Milne was stuck on a Scandinavian cruise and in pre-mobile days, uncontactable - the "regret" felt by the board concerning his absence can be read as fury. His deputy, Michael Checkland, struggled in vain to persuade the governors that to ban Real Lives in the face of government pressure would affect the "media's future ability to transmit material relating to terrorism" and impact adversely on the corporation's "actual and perceived independence".

The governors rejected his pleas, and their decision to ban the programme was announced on July 31. Their apparently craven behaviour resulted in a press mauling, and BBC staff called a strike. Journalists and production staff at ITN, TV-am and the BBC's World Service and Independent Radio News were planning to come out in force too on August 7. The BBC was in meltdown. Six days later the panic-stricken board held another meeting - this time summoning Milne. He went into the meeting full of fire, telling governors that staff reaction was "truly horrendous". In a startling admission of his own weakness, he said the BBC was "out of control in many respects". Defiant, he told the board he had decided Real Lives was transmittable. The board of management had even drafted a statement for the press announcing it would go ahead.

The governors were furious. If he made the statement, Milne was told, he would have to resign or he would be fired. "The chairman said that, if the DG wanted to state publicly that he believed Real Lives should be broadcast, that would be a 'resignation statement or a firing statement'." Once again, the governors prevailed, issuing a lengthy statement explaining they had to pull the programme because of the failure of management in Northern Ireland to refer the programme up to the director general's office as required by guidelines.

Within a month the board did a U-turn, deciding the programme could be shown with minor changes. It was transmitted in October. But the mistrust between management and governors was never repaired; within two years Milne was gone. "It was an unpleasant time, but it was an honourably made programme and the governors' minutes bear that out," said Hamann after seeing the documents for the first time last week.

Although now a tried and tested format, an "at home" interview with extremists at the time was pioneering. "If there was any mistake, it was that this was years too early. If you look back now you would find the programme tame. I was surprised by the furore because I didn't think I had been easy on McGuinness and allowed Campbell to attack him. It was a classic documentary - if you give them enough rope they will hang themselves, you just let them speak freely.

"In a funny way they were both similar - church-going, teetotaller family men but they hated each other. I wanted to show what drove them. Half of the Nine O'clock News every night was about Northern Ireland but it struck me we didn't understand what made them tick. They were ruthless bigots who hated the people on the other side of the road because of history and the programme exposed the futility of their positions in a way the normal questions and hours of reportage from Northern Ireland didn't do."

The irony was that while the board of governors found the programme unacceptable, Hamann had word back that both the loyalist and republican camps thought it fair and enlightening.

So successful was the "at home" technique that years later when McGuinness heard the programme was going to be repeated, he phoned Hamann at home requesting him to "consider strongly" removing the interview with his wife, Bernie. Unlike the board of governors Hamann did not succumb to the pressure.