THE Second World War ended as it began – with a broadcast. It wasn’t a news programme that brought the UK details of the last moments of the conflict, but Kurt and Willi, a programme going out to Germany. When Kurt said to Willi: “I must go now and see if there is any news”, an announcer grabbed the microphone and told the world Hitler was dead.

The BBC followed with a statement: “As streets tonight fill with the sound of joy and laughter to celebrate our victory in Europe, we know we are safe in the knowledge that in years of peace to come, the BBC will build its programmes on the moral basis on which all successful external broadcasting must ultimately stand. A whole phase of broadcasting, setting loose on the world deliberately misleading propaganda with the express purpose of enslaving public opinion and causing strife among nations, has now come to an end.”

Seventy-five years on, can the BBC still claim the moral high ground? Or is the state broadcaster again causing strife among nations? This time, not among the nations of Europe but the nations of the United Kingdom.

When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced on September 3, 1939 that the UK was at war with Germany it came as no surprise. Two days earlier, Germany had invaded Poland and brought the UK into a world war where each country, irrespective of which side it supported, was fighting to preserve its political philosophy.

In the UK, it wasn’t the only war that was going on. A huge battle raged between the government and the British Broadcasting Corporation as each fought to defend its own philosophy as to how the airwaves should be used. The BBC maintained its moral stance that truth should be told at all times, whilst the Black Radio stations that emerged in 1941 only existed to practise deception. In 1938, a shadow Ministry of Information was formed. At its head was Sir Stephen Tallents, public relations controller at the BBC. He drafted a paper outlining his fears that not enough thought had been given to the use of broadcasting as a weapon of propaganda. In 1933, Hitler had introduced the Volksempfanger VE301, a radio designed without a shortwave band and only marked for German frequencies. He was determined Germans would only hear a Nazi voice. This was a problem the UK radio stations would need to overcome in order to send messages to Germany.

In the 1920s and 1930s John Reith, the director-general of the BBC, acted as its spokesperson. Although he resigned in 1938, the corporation still upheld his beliefs. Reith believed it was the responsibility of broadcasting to “carry into the greatest possible number of homes everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour or achievement”.

This view was not one shared by the Ministry of Information, which complained of “wireless voices too impersonal and language too academic to affect poor people personally”. There was talk of the BBC being taken over by the government and again Tallents prepared a paper, entitled The Case Against Absorption of the BBC by the Government. He laid it aside.

A need for this document arose when the anonymous Nazi broadcaster William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw, caused much concern to the government. Joyce’s uncomfortable truths, distortions, and propaganda appealed to elements of the population the government couldn’t reach.

The problem was alleviated when radio critic Jonah Barrington transformed the pompous, English speaking announcer delivering poisonous propaganda into a harmless comedian. The BBC followed with Arthur Askey’s Baron Hee-Haw in the Band Waggon programme, after which Joyce’s interruption did no more than arouse derision among his millions of listeners.

The BBC then argued successfully that to take it over to counter Nazi propaganda would only be to dignify his broadcasts. The crisis was averted, but Churchill, who once called the corporation “the enemy within the gates” continued to hate its monopoly as much as Reith hated Churchill for striving to end it.

Encouraged by the listeners’ love of light entertainment, the BBC put out programmes it thought people wanted to listen to. By 1943, a quarter-of-a-million workers were singing along to Workers’ Playtime with comedians Elsie and Doris Waters and the comic Tommy Handley. It’s That Man Again also starred Handley and won popularity with its Ministry of Aggravation and Mysteries sketches that were a thinly disguised lampoon of the unpopular Ministry of Information.

MEANWHILE, a man who specialised in “black propaganda” was on his way to the UK. Unlike “white propaganda”, which used such words as you and us, black propaganda used “we” and imitated the same rhythms and intonations of speech as the enemy station it was professing to be.

Born in Berlin, Denis Sefton Delmer had the extraordinary ability to empathise with the German mind. In 1940, while waiting for security clearance, Delmer gave talks over the BBC

to Germany.

One caused uproar in both Germany and in the House of Commons. Delmer, of his own volition, replied to Hitler’s final peace offer by telling him that “we here in Britain hurl it back at his evil-smelling teeth”. Delmer had met Hitler.

After Churchill demanded a propaganda war be waged against the Nazis, the Political Warfare Executive was formed, running many of its operations from Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

One of those operations was a top-secret, state-of-the-art radio station built at Milton Bryan in Bedfordshire. Its purpose was to record “black propaganda” radio shows. Here, Delmer created a right-wing shortwave station called Gustav Siegfried Eins which starred a Prussian officer called Der Chef who pretended to support Hitler and his war. This approach appealed to the German people and Delmer was able to inject some items into the programme that would make the listener act contrary to the efficient conduct of the German war effort.

The BBC continued to fight for its “straight” news and resisted all efforts by the government to “corrupt” the corporation.

During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, it became apparent that the principles and standards of the BBC’s first controller, Reith, were long forgotten. In an interview with Emily Maitlis on the day the Yes campaign was launched, Alistair Darling was allowed to answer soft questions without interruption. The interviewer challenged all of the SNP’s Stewart Hosie’s replies, interrupting him five times. The precedent was set for future interviews involving Yes politicians.

Unionist bias did not stop after the referendum. Before the 2015 election, BBC reporters doorstepped Nicola Sturgeon, claiming quite falsely that she favoured David Cameron over Ed Miliband. As a champion of Scottish independence, it was obvious that while she was going to be lumbered with one or the other, she favoured neither.

Far from being doorstepped by the BBC, the leader of the Tory Party in Scotland was treated as if she’d won the 2017 election single-handedly after 13 Scottish Conservative MPs were elected. Ruth Davidson was continually allowed to make a statement to camera without facing any awkward questions.

The BBC seems to have seen the outbreak of the coronavirus as an opportunity to “persuade” Scots to stay in the Union. On May 20, the programme Our Finest Hours went out on BBC Scotland. Scots were told that “once again we can be proud to be British”. Note throughout the programme, the continual use of the word “we”, so much favoured by black propagandists.

Has the BBC become one of the black broadcasting channels it once despised?

Annie Harrower-Gray is a Scottish author of fiction and non-fiction