The BBC has decided to abolish the BBC Singers, who are the only full-time professional chamber choir in Britain. There is no particular evidence that "The Government" put the BBC up to this, and in fact the whole plan seems quite arbitrary and devoid of costing, or indeed anything beyond closing the singers down. Those responsible for the decision claimed, to an over-trusting press corps, that they were closing the singers down in order to do something "much better" in support of choral music across the whole of the country etc. etc. but when challenged they provided no details before walking away, leaving a senior colleague in tears, and it's quite apparent that the "better alternative" simply does not exist and probably never will.
There is a petition against the decision, which is still open and which I have signed. Here is a link to an update to that petition which includes a long letter to the BBC leadership detailing the true facts behind the decision and the shockingly disrespectful conduct of certain of the individuals concerned.
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-planned-closure-of-the-bbc-singers/u/31407371
This shorter link should allow readers to add their own signatures:
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-planned-closure-of-the-bbc-singers
The decision matches the templates of recent decisions to cut back ethnic community radio programming and local TV and radio news programmes in favour of "regional" news. If you live in Peterborough, Milton Keynes or Leighton Buzzard, the "regional" news is the world as it appears from Norwich, which is sometimes very distant indeed. There were petitions against those decisions too, which I also signed. However, since I'm not part of an ethnic minority it's hardly for me to comment on, let alone lead, a campaign to preserve ethnic community programming, but I would say that although it undoubtedly feels to many of those affected as if they are being singled out for cuts by the BBC on racist grounds, the mere fact that the presentation of so many different cuts to BBC community and cultural services conforms to the same template indicates pretty strongly that this is a purge against distinctiveness in any form and that excellence is just another unwanted "distinction" in the eyes of the BBC's managerial elite. And it probably is "managerialism" rather than socialism or conservatism which is behind all this.
The thing about managerialists is that it's a bother to them to see us as belonging to different ethnic, religious, social or even geographical groups and they are affronted when asked to perceive us as individuals. Whereas Bolsheviks and even NAZIs were capable of recognising, nurturing and exploiting talented individuals when it suited their purposes, managerialists simply cannot grasp the concept of a member of the "irrational masses" having a talent, or any other property, unique to them. So, in circumstances where Lenin, Stalin or even Hitler might have given Mr Simon Webb a few words of polite recognition or kind encouragement, a BBC executive, whom we shall call "Ms Kreb," simply left the room. And it probably was the realisation that the accumulated talent and learning of the BBC Singers, which he had helped nurture and was pleading for, meant nothing to Ms Kreb and her peer group which reduced him to tears.
So why, given that this post is really about what to do next if the BBC managerial elite refuse to change course or even acknowledge that they have pursued an arbitrary policy in a supremely arrogant manner, do I recommend that everyone who reads this signs the petition and supports the campaign to save the BBC Singers within the BBC, to the bitter end?
There are three reasons for this:
Firstly, though I believe a change of heart where no hearts beat to be profoundly unlikely, it would be a famous victory if it happened and the positive ramifications might rumble on for a gratifying amount of time.
Secondly, campaigning to the bitter end will not only raise public awareness of the BBC Singers and their genuine worth to the nation (rather than provoking fleeting sympathy over how foully they are being treated); it will give the managerialists the maximum possible number of opportunities to show the public -and even elected politicians- their true face. That is both a benefit and a duty.
Thirdly, what the BBC Singers will need to do next if there is no change of heart is going to take some steel and a lot of resolve. A bit of a fight will teach them about themselves and each other and how much support each of them will be able to give and how much each might need. And taking the matter to an industrial tribunal might even shake loose a few useful shillings.
What to do when the BBC relinquishes control
The first principle is that the funds needed to keep the Singers flourishing as a creative and artistic community must be raised separately from any redundancy payments or compensation for breaches of contract or other forms of corporate misconduct. Money owed to individuals by the BBC must be reserved for the needs and comfort of those individuals and their dependents. The second principle is that the Singers and their trusted managers and support staff are the talent and as such they must be given and retain control of any donated funds and the entity created by combining funds and talent.
There are some popular business and especially "charitable" structures which will conflict with the second principle and must therefore be avoided.
The purpose of the exercise is to allow the Singers to practice, develop, teach and pass on their art, for their own good as well as that of the public. It could be done on a non-profit basis, but any attempt to conform to the laws governing registered charities would make it more or less impossible for the talent to keep control of the enterprise for their own benefit. Indeed, conforming to charity laws, some of them rewritten in the past couple of decades by Gordon Brown, could well put the Singers back in the hands of the managerialists.
A partnership might allow greater privacy than a company, but is it really desirable to allow the management of the Singers and their finances to disappear into a dark corner like those of the Blair Foundation? The discipline of a company, filing accounts, on time, where they are available for scrutiny, is often a protection rather than a burden. I wouldn't take advice from any financial expert who advised me to write my accounts in invisible ink, shall we say: because that might benefit the expert a lot more than me!
Cooperatives, trusts, endowments and so on are all prey for the sort of highly-organised people who regularly pore over archive records looking for trusts and endowments they might take control of. A company can defend itself against that sort of thing whereas in practice trusts and endowments often prove to be sitting ducks. The benefits of a public limited company in this instance are non-existent: the scale is all wrong and the Singers would be exposed to speculators and take-over artists manipulating traded shares.
A private limited liability company can be constituted either to make a profit or to be a non-profit. In either case, it can issue both preference shares and non-preference shares which actually come with a vote. The issue of non-preference shares should be limited (by a clause in the articles) to the talent and their trusted managers and support staff. Preference shares should be issued (if at all) sparingly and only to raise funds for a clearly-specified and agreed need.
It makes sense for each Singer to have the same number of non-preference voting shares as the others. If a Singer wanted to invest more money than the others, they'd probably benefit financially by taking preference shares in any case, if the company had to be wound up.
And if the company (profit or non-profit) did need to be wound up, the Singers would be able to retrieve at least some of their invested funds for their own benefit or for a further venture. This would be more complicated (and very time-consuming) in the case of a trust, and potentially illegal in the case of a charity.
In the case of a non-profit company, remuneration would be on a salaried basis, related to work done. This might not be as tax-efficient as many schemes popular with certain highly-paid BBC figures, but it's pretty simple, transparent and also pretty safe: "tax-efficient" schemes do tend to end up in court, where the Crown has a uniform tendency to triumph over smooth-talking financial advisers, to the surprise and dismay of the clients who have to pay the resulting bills.
PS:
Those who think that George Orwell had it in for NAZIs, Bolsheviks and "Intellectuals" might want to read his remarks about James Burnham and the cult of managerialism which he founded!
