White Paper, 1952

Abstract

The Conservative Party’s group on broadcasting policy was reconstituted shortly after the October election victory, some of its former members having become ministers. But it still included Ian Orr-Ewing (now Lord Orr-Ewing), John Rodgers and John Profumo, all of whom had spoken in the July 1951 debate on the Labour Government’s abortive White Paper. In its new form this Conservative Party Broadcasting Study Group included also Anthony Fell, an employee of Pye Radio, Captain L. P. S. Orr, a member of the Executive Council of British Chambers of Commerce and Sir Wavell Wakefield, who, besides being vice-president of the National Union of Manufacturers, was a director of Broadcast Relay Service (Overseas) and Rediffusion Limited. Another member of the group was Kenneth Pickthorn, an academic whose dislike of Beveridge, of the BBC and of all monopolies, especially in ideas, combined with a rare gift for acid phraseology to make him a most able advocate of the cause. Encouraged by the response of the Postmaster-General, Lord De La Warr, when they met him at dinner just before Christmas 1951, the group prepared a paper setting out their views on The Future of British Broadcasting’ for presentation to the Cabinet. It was arranged that the group’s relatively modest and cautiously worded proposals should be discussed at a meeting of the Party’s uniquely influential ‘1922 Committee’ in February 1952, at which both Salisbury and Woolton of the Cabinet’s Broadcasting Policy Committee would be present.