Mark O’Brien, head of Committee broadcasting in the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit—our sister team in the Official Report—reflects on the tumultuous journey of parliamentary proceedings from Chamber to sofa.
The day is Tuesday, 21 November 1989. The Berlin wall fell less than a fortnight ago. In Prague last night, 200,000 people thronged the streets around the Charles bridge, crying “Away with the communists!” On the other side of the globe, it was only this summer that Chinese students were locked in a stand-off with tanks in Tiananmen Square.
All those events were captured on film, with iconic pictures broadcast to living rooms the world over.
Here in Westminster, a rather more traditional scene was playing out, as the 63-year-old Elizabeth II walked through the Norman Porch to open Parliament. But amid the ancient pomp and ceremony of the occasion, a startlingly modern revolution was about to unfold on the green benches.
“I have always voted against the televising of the proceedings of this House, and I expect that I always will.”
When Ian Gow proposed the Loyal Address that year, his name was etched in history for giving the first televised speech in the House of Commons.
Gow was not much of a fan of those new-fangled cameras. In his speech he shared that he, like other MPs, had been approached by consultants on how to come across better on telly. They’d recommended a new hairstyle (Gow had very little of his left to style) and finding the right glasses to suit his face. His speech that day reflected some fears that MPs had about the televising of this place, and which successive Parliaments had long fretted over before that moment.
A long and bumpy road
John Reith, the first Director General of the BBC, called repeatedly for broadcasting in Parliament, but was rebuffed every time. Clement Attlee’s post-war Government launched an inquiry into broadcasting, but concluded that putting proceedings on the airwaves would be detrimental.
In 1959, Nye Bevan called for the televising of parliamentary proceedings, and almost a decade later in 1968, at the same time that the Lords trialled cameras in their Chamber, the Commons experimented with radio coverage—but it was judged too expensive.
The Commons voted against cameras in the Chamber as recently as 1985. Sir Philip Goodhart was the Chair of the Sound Broadcasting Committee, and voted no because he thought MPs would use gimmicks to liven up their speeches. The vote was lost by just 12, after Mrs Thatcher had a change of heart and joined him in the No lobby.
It was only on 9 February 1988 that the House voted for a “control experiment”, appointing a Committee that would take evidence from broadcasters, observe demos on lighting and cameras, and watch foreign legislatures at work to see how they were already doing it. Winding up the debate, Merlyn Rees called the Commons,
the House of Pitt, Fox, Gladstone, Disraeli… great men who were never afraid of change.
The vote was expected to be a close one, and when the House divided, the Ayes had it with a majority of just 54.
Today, 35 years after the cameras were finally switched on, the idea of a world where the House of Commons isn’t on TV seems unfathomable.
An Olympic undertaking
The Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit is responsible for keeping the Commons, Lords and Committees of both Houses on our screens, ensuring that people can access the work of Parliament. We’re part of the Official Report team in no small part because the video coverage of proceedings also serves as a record of who says what. Indeed, the idea of a parliamentary broadcasting unit took hold when the Commons started to consider taking to the radio airwaves. The idea spooked the BBC and independent broadcasters, who wanted editorial control over their material and feared that an in-house department managing the TV output could end up censoring their journalists and producers.
That fear turned out to be groundless. We now stream and record all public proceedings, and provide access to high-quality feeds to media outlets across the planet, for as many as 20 different events at the same time. It’s a little like the summer Olympics in scale, but rather than broadcasting for two weeks every four years, we’re on the air every day.
Whether you want to watch the sprint relay of Prime Minister’s questions, a marathon Committee evidence session about an international crisis, or an adjournment debate on your local non-league football club, we make it possible—live, free-to-air, unspoilt by any broadcast editor’s hand.
We provide subtitling for Commons and Lords Chamber business, and British Sign Language on around 50 hours of parliamentary business every month. We stream everything on Parliament Live, our very own live and on-demand service—something the broadcasters could only have imagined back in 1989 when the very first commercial internet service providers launched. Indeed, the internet, far more than big expensive black boxes in living rooms, is what made it possible for the work of Parliament to be brought to a viewing citizenry at scale.
“Genuinely good television”
On that day 35 years ago, when Ian Gow stood up to make the first televised speech from the Commons, democracy in this country took a leap forward. It may not have had the drama of bringing down a wall, and people might not have chanted in the streets or faced down tanks for its implementation—but it revolutionised the way that a nation understood its politics and saw its politicians.
Inevitably the cameras provided much fodder for sketch-writers. Matthew Parris observed in The Times the next day that, “It was genuinely good television.” That day’s leader joked about the Gilbert and Sullivan quality of a bewigged Speaker calling the House to order, although conceded even the entertainment potential had its place in public life. But above all, The Times wrote that, “the televising of Parliament should enhance the value of the citizen’s right to choose between the rivals for his voting affections by this addition to their sources of information.”
You didn’t hear them chanting that in the streets in 1989. Nevertheless, as mission statements go, it’s pretty good.