In praise of Sir Hugh Greene

I caught up last night with the BBC2 play Filth the Mary Whitehouse story.

What struck me most about the portrayal was not Whitehouse but the Director General at the time,Sir Hugh Greene.

He was portrayed as a man obsessed with one up man ship over the campaigner,consistently refusing to meet with her and finally forced into resignation ,seen as the first triumph for the campaign.

Greene had become Director General in 1960.Born in 1910 he made his mark as a foreign correspondent of the Telegraph famously telling a disbelieving Polish government that the Nazis were bombing their country.

His appointment was intended to drag the BBC into the new decade and remove the ivory tower concept from the corporation which was battling against its independent rival at ITV.

Sir Hugh brought three new influential programmes to the screen,Z Cars,Steptoe and Son and That was the Week that was all in the space of a few months in 1962.

Robert Carmody writes that

It is hard now to convey the culture shock that these programmes conveyed, but they shattered forever the image of the BBC as a cosy Auntie, never really rocking the boat and always shying away from controversy

At the same time the corporation decided to bring in what it saw as a realism of the streets of the UK and commissioned plays depicting everyday life at the lower end of the class structure.

It was this move which brought it into conflict with Mary Whitehouse.

Carmody says that

Even today, right-wing traditionalist journalists cite Greene as one of the destroyers of their beloved Olde England, while others describe Greene as a “bigoted icon”

Greene left a legacy at the BBC and despite the criticisms of many,was responsible for making the corporation the social that it is today.Without him the BBC may not have survived the 60's