How the BBC stole the referendum. There is in reality no such organisation called BBC Scotland, there is only the BBC in Scotland. It may come as a surprise, but the BBC is not subject to Scottish freedom of information law. Submit a Freedom of Information request to BBC Scotland and you will be diverted to the London HQ. Challenge the response and it will not be referred to the Scottish information commissioner. The appeal will fall under English law. The BBCs management in Scotland cannot be summoned by members of the Scottish Parliament. In January 2013 BBC Scotland chiefs had to be ordered to appear before a Holyrood Committee after initially refusing to do so. The Head of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, stepped in to force BBC Scotland director Ken MacQuarrie, head of news and current affairs John Boothman and head of 2014 Commonwealth Games coverage Bruce Malcolm to appear in order to face questions from Holyroods Culture Committee. The intervention by Patten followed not one, but two refusals by the management team to appear before the Committee which wanted to question them over cutbacks in staff at the BBCs Scottish operation and deterioration in quality. The BBC acts with near impunity north of the border and is virtually indistinguishable from a colonial broadcaster. Scotland is the only country in the world which has a government that has no authority over its own national broadcaster. Its against this backdrop that the Scottish independence referendum was presented. When the SNP won the 2011 Scottish election by a landslide, it meant an independence referendum was guaranteed. However the massive support for Alex Salmonds party was not reflected in independence polls which showed an overwhelming lead for the No campaign. There was no sign of any improvement for the Yes campaign over the next two years, as poll after poll suggested No was comfortably ahead. In August 2013 a survey by pollsters Yougov gave the No campaign an incredible 30 point lead – 59% to 29%. However towards the end of 2013 pollsters started picking up a discernable shift to Yes. But had the pro-independence campaign left it too late? In the early months of 2014 and into the Spring of that year Yes continued to eat away at the No campaign lead. But No maintained a clear, although slowly diminishing, lead right up until the final few weeks of the referendum. Then came the news Unionists had been dreading and independence supporters had been praying for. In the final days of the 2014 independence referendum campaign, Yes suddenly moved ahead. A shock Yougov poll put independence ahead by 51% to 49%. The No campaign had been criticised for its relentless negativity. In January UK Chancellor George Osborne had announced that he would block a newly independent Scotland from using the pound. Labours Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls joined his Conservative counterpart and insisted Labour would also refuse to share the pound if Scotland voted Yes. Labours stance did not go down well with traditional Labour voters. The threat backfired spectacularly. The Yes campaign had also highlighted threats to the Scottish NHS from creeping privatisation and budget cuts from Westminster. The strategy had proved effective. Now with barely two weeks before the vote, the pollster which almost exactly one year earlier had given the No campaign a thirty point lead, revealed Yes was now two points in front. A BBC reporter - Laura Kuenssberg - would later reveal that a private poll carried out on behalf of the pro-Union No campaign showed an even bigger lead for Yes, 53% against 47%. The polls sent shock waves throughout the UK establishment. Should the result be replicated less than two weeks later then Scotland would become independent. The 307 year old Union with England would end. North Sea oil revenue would flow into a Scottish Exchequer and the Trident Nuclear weapon system would be removed from Scottish soil. The poll caused panic amongst the three main London based parties. It also triggered one of the biggest propaganda efforts ever witnessed in a peacetime UK. At the centre of the propaganda was the BBC. Speaking to former BBC reporter Derek Bateman in November, eight weeks after the referendum, Head of the NUJ Paul Holleran revealed that the day after the Yougov poll which showed Yes ahead, the BBC went into panic. Holleran, who had been down in broadcasting house on the Monday following the poll, described how the London based BBC had invaded Scotland in the final days in an attempt at preventing the outcome the Yougov poll suggested was imminent. He described the BBC as mobilising to come to Scotland to ensure that the vote never went that way. With less than two weeks campaigning left, the BBCs reputation in Scotland was already in tatters. Examples of biased and one sided reporting of the referendum had led to protests outside the broadcasters Scottish HQ. Thousands had taken part in demonstrations and marches and there were calls for a mass withholding of the TV licence fee. The broadcaster had repeatedly denied being anything other than balanced and impartial. Complaints were routinely dismissed and few people were prepared to go through the marathon, and at times impenetrable, complaints process. However evidence in the form of academic studies and one-sided news reports had lent weight to a growing feeling that the London controlled corporation had taken the side of the No campaign. Now with the surveys showing Yes in the lead, the BBC ditched any pretence of impartiality. With the Union under threat it turned itself into a campaign vehicle for No. It was widely believed that the traditional Labour vote was key to the Yes campaign succeeding. A significant number of Labour voters were known to support independence, however a mistrust of the SNP meant that there could be no guarantee these people would back Yes. Moreover the Labour party was vociferously opposed to independence and one of its most high-profile Scottish MPs, Alistair Darling, led the official No campaign. Despite this, survey after survey found Labour voters were increasingly attracted to Yes. Now a survey showed Yes in front. Within 24 hours of the Yes campaign taking the lead in the polls, a pro-Union speech from former Labour party leader Gordon Brown was broadcast live by the BBC into homes throughout Scotland. TV sets and radios were relaying apparent pledges of Home Rule from the former Labour leader. In his speech, the Kirkcaldy MP made a series of pledges to the Scottish people. Two key guarantees were made. That legislation for new powers would be drafted within a timetable set out by Brown himself and that these new powers would amount to Home Rule. Browns pledges were broadcast unchallenged. His speech was, in essence, a state broadcast to the nation. Key sections of Browns speech were repeated at regular intervals on BBC news bulletins. Few seemed to question why the BBC was treating a backbench Labour MP as though he was the nations elected leader. Fewer still sought to determine if the pledges Brown was making had been agreed by the leaders of the three UK parties. Gordon Brown was the former UK Prime Minister and former leader of the Labour party. However he had long since left front line politics and rarely even turned up in the UK Parliament to represent his constituents, earning criticism from opponents. Browns absence from the Commons allowed him to indulge his lucrative speech-making events. In 2013 Brown generated £1.37m from talks and writing and, in a trip to Qatar that same year, had even joked that he was now an ex-politician. He held no official position in the anti-independence campaign. Not only was Brown powerless to speak on behalf of the No campaign, he no longer held any official position within the Labour party. Yet here he was live on the BBC making vague promises he had no authority to make and on which he had apparently sought no guarantees. Browns relationship with the BBC throughout the referendum campaign was peculiar. His sporadic statements and speeches were regularly relayed to the public by the broadcaster in a manner normally reserved for elder statesmen. Despite this readiness to headline the Labour MP, the corporation routinely failed to question him. The broadcaster accommodated Brown to the point of helping portray a second launch of a Labour party initiative he fronted as though it was its first launch. Brown had launched the anti-independence initiative United with Labour in May 2013. The BBC had provided high-profile coverage of the launch at the time. It was afforded a top spot on that evenings Reporting Scotland. So it was odd that in June 2014 Gordon Brown appeared again on the BBC at the launch of an anti-independence vehicle called … United with Labour. This was the same organisation he had launched in 2013. Bizarrely the BBC, despite having covered the original launch, reported the re-launch as though it was a brand new Labour initiative. The coverage of Gordon Browns Home Rule speech was in keeping with BBC Scotlands obsession with the former Labour leader. The day after Browns unchallenged pledges were broadcast live by the BBC, a now notorious interview took place. The pre-recorded interview on Reporting Scotland featured Mr Browns party colleague Alistair Darling who led the pro-Union Better Together campaign. Interviewing Mr Darling was long time Reporting Scotland presenter Jackie Bird. The interview was unremarkable until Bird decided to introduce a term which was, and still is, critical to the constitutional debate. The term was Devo Max. Here is a transcript of the crucial segment of the interview: Jackie Bird: OK, lets assume that you do all come together and you agree these proposals. Lets call them Devo Max for example [Bird smiles wryly]. Now Devo Max, a third option, is something that the coalition in this Better Together group to which belong throughout, didnt want. Now it seems you are offering effectively voters a chance to vote Yes or for Devo Max. Alistair Darling: Yeh, when I launched our campaign… [Darling then meanders into campaign speak.] Were voters being offered the chance to vote for either independence or Devo Max? Devo Max is also known as independence light because it involves the devolution of considerable power to Holyrood. The widely accepted definition of Devo Max is the return to Scotland of all powers with the exception of Foreign Affairs and Defence. This - crucially - means control over oil and gas revenue. The term Devo Max was defined by the BBC in November 2011 when the broadcaster commissioned pollsters ICM to carry out a survey. The poll showed Devo Max was the most popular choice of three options. The other two options were full independence or the status quo. The image below was used in an item which was broadcast by the BBC in November on the Politics Show and very clearly shows the accepted definition of Devo Max. Also appearing on the same 2011 broadcast was Alistair Darling who explained what he believed to be the pitfalls of implementing Devo Max. It is therefore inconceivable that Bird and Darling were unaware of the implications of using the term when describing what extra powers people could expect in the event of a No vote. In essence, Scottish voters were - courtesy of the BBC - being told; Vote No and youll get Devo Max. That the Bird/Darling interview was beamed live at tea-time into homes the length and breadth of Scotland ensured it received the widest possible audience. Many of those who watched the interview relied on Reporting Scotland for their main source of referendum information. The importance of the interview cannot be overstated. Reporting Scotland is the most watched TV news programme in Scotland, commanding a total of almost one third of TV viewers. In January 2012 the evening news programme was watched by over 900,000 people. Bird had anchored the programme for almost twenty five years. Both the presenter and the programme are trusted by its legions of regular viewers. But Devo Max, as Jackie Bird well knew, was not on offer. The truth was of course that Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems had consistently rejected Devo Max. Indeed at the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement which legitimised the referendum, David Cameron had specifically ruled out Devo Max as a third option on the ballot paper. Two weeks after the referendum result, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson confirmed this when she demanded Devo Max be removed as an option from the commission chaired by Lord Smith which was to examine what new powers might be devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Theres no doubt the injection of the term into the prime-time interview was misleading. Given her role as a newsreader and presenter of many years, Jackie Bird would have been all too aware of the effect her choice of words would have. It is therefore a distinct possibility that the BBC Scotland presenter deliberately sought to mislead viewers by describing powers being offered by the No campaign as Devo Max. Darling, in refusing to deny Birds suggestion, was a party to what amounted to an act of deception. The interview raised further questions relating the role of the BBC in the final days of the campaign. Darlings interview, coupled with Browns Home Rule speech, ensured that pledges made by senior Labour party figures dominated the news agenda in the final days of the campaign. Both promises - Home Rule and Devo Max - were presented to the public as though fresh new offers from the pro-Union camp. Nine days later the entire Scottish media joined the act of deceit. No one is absolutely sure who was behind The Vow. What we do know is that two days before the independence referendum the leaders of the three Unionist parties appeared together on the front page of the Daily Record newspaper in an apparent joint declaration to the Scottish people. On September 16th the newspaper published on its front page what appeared to be an official document which it said had been signed by all three UK Party leaders. It bore the signatures of Ed Miliband, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. The document pledged extensive new powers for the Scottish Parliament which would be set out by the timetable agreed. The Vow took on a life of its own. It wasnt long before the entire Scottish media were portraying the document as a meaningful pledge of more powers and a significant contribution to the independence debate. Voters would find out after the vote that the vow was in fact completely worthless. There was no document. Cameron, Clegg and Miliband had in fact signed nothing. Their signatures had been sent electronically to the newspaper along with the text of The Vow. The BBC headlined the newspaper front page. News bulletins and reports repeated the claims contained in the Daily Record. In an online article the BBC said: The leaders of the three main parties at Westminster have signed a pledge to devolve more powers to Scotland, if Scots reject independence. The pledge, which appears on the front of the Daily Record newspaper, has been signed by David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg. It has three parts and also commits to preserving the Barnett funding formula. The Yes campaign has argued the only guarantee of more powers is a vote for independence. The first part of the agreement promises extensive new powers for the Scottish Parliament delivered by the process and to the timetable agreed by the three parties. The second says the leaders agree that the UK exists to ensure opportunity and security for all by sharing our resources equitably. The third categorically states that the final say on funding for the NHS will lie with the Scottish government because of the continuation of the Barnett allocation for resources, and the powers of the Scottish Parliament to raise revenue. In what was a clear attempt to persuade voters that the pledges contained in The Vow and those made by Gordon Brown were one and the same, the BBC added: The pledges were first outlined by the former prime minister, Gordon Brown, on Monday. The so-called Vow given by the three leaders of the main pro-Union parties and which had appeared on the front page of the Daily Record, dominated the news agenda for the last two days of the referendum campaign. Many believe it was key to persuading enough people to vote No in the referendum. Browns pledge was repeatedly conflated with The Vow. BBC Scotland presenters and colleagues from across the UK also began to make further reference to Devo Max. In news broadcasts voters were specifically told that the Conservatives and the Lib Dems backed a Devo Max package. It wasnt just the issue of more powers that saw the BBC seek to help the anti-independence alliance. In the final week of the campaign, the BBC also broke a story claiming the Royal Bank of Scotland would relocate to England in the event of a Yes vote, the BBC story implied significant job losses. Hours after the BBC broke the story, RBSs chairman was forced to issue a memo to staff insisting a Yes vote would not affect jobs or operations. The following morning an angry Alex Salmond appeared on Radio Scotland and demanded the BBC correct its reporting and clarify that that no jobs were at risk. The story though had already been picked up by other media outlets which were running with the initial BBC line regarding job losses. It later emerged that the BBC had reported the story after having been contacted by someone at the UK Treasury. It also emerged that the Treasury had passed information to the broadcaster whilst senior management at RBS were still holding their board meeting and had yet to make any public announcement. Salmond claimed that by passing market sensitive information to the BBC, the UK Treasury may have broken the law. The RBS story wasnt the only BBC inspired story to appear in the days leading up to the referendum. Two days before the vote, on the same day that the now notorious vow was published, a BBC Scotland reporter claimed to have obtained a document she said suggested the SNP was secretly planning £400m of cuts to the Scottish NHS. Eleanor Bradford also suggested the SNP had reversed its long standing opposition to the closing of Accident & Emergency Departments. Bradford appeared across the BBC spectrum reporting her dramatic leak. However she hadnt been handed the document by a concerned politically neutral official. The document had in fact been handed to the BBC reporter by someone said to be frustrated at the Yes campaigns claims regarding threats to the NHS. In other words someone who clearly had sympathies with the No campaign had handed an NHS document to a BBC reporter. The Yes campaign had highlighted moves south of the border towards privatisation of the English NHS which had implications for the Scottish budget. The strategy had gained traction and had caused problems for the No camp. The document though was not what the BBC reporter was implying. It was a document which contained the concerns and views of NHS managers. Such reports are commonplace and are certainly not secret in the way suggested by Bradford. It was also most certainly not an SNP policy document. There was more though. Bradfords suggestion that the SNP had now reversed its long standing policy against A&E closures was entirely false. The SNP had made no such policy U-turn. It resulted in an official complaint being lodged with the BBC. The response from the BBC was incredible. A BBC official denied the reporter had claimed the SNPs stance on closing A&E wards had changed. Responding to the complaint, the editor of Newsdrive said: ...what Eleanor simply meant was that their continuing, consistent, stated policy up till the present time has been no A&E closures. It was a bizarre interpretation of Bradfords radio report. In the radio news bulletin, talking about the leaked document, the BBC reporter had said: It could mean the closure of things that are very dear to people, like accident and emergency departments, something that the SNP has refused to allow until now. It wasnt the first time the reporter had made controversial claims relating to the Scottish NHS – more on that later in the book – but it was probably the most significant news report of Bradfords career. Two days before the independence referendum and thanks to the BBC, Bradfords secret document and The Vow were both headline news. The SNP - the standard bearer of the independence movement - was portrayed as a party secretly planning hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts to the NHS, and which was going to close Accident & Emergency Departments. On Thursday September 18th the referendum took place. The count showed the Yes lead had evaporated and the final twelve days had resulted in a swing back to No. The campaign against Scottish independence won the vote by 55% to 45%. The BBC had stolen the referendum from under the noses of the Scottish electorate. So bad had been the BBCs behaviour that former BBC reporter Paul Mason tweeted the following: Not since Iraq have I seen BBC News working at propaganda strength like this. So glad I’m out of there. The actions in the final two weeks of the referendum, although brazen and somewhat shocking, were not entirely unexpected. You can support the book by making a small donation - CLICK HERE You must be logged in to post comments. JComments RT @PonsonbyPost: Greetings from The Ponsonby Post. Our first tweet. How The BBC Stole The Referendum t.co/20EE3M60aS #YESAlliance… 6 hours ago RT @YesMidlothian: @ChrisDarroch2 From our FB page... t.co/qFRofn9BaJ 6 hours ago RT @williamsonkev: Thought Id heard all the angles on Willie MacRaes death in 1985 but this is a new one on me... t.co/jtN5Nq6PT9 6 hours ago BBC broadcasting another Gordon Brown speech. Good time for the Ponsonby Post to go live. t.co/PhdS6TGWOV #yesalliance #PonsonbyPost 16 hours ago RT @GAPonsonby: How The BBC Stole The Referendum - Chapter One of a new book which is coming soon. t.co/jW0R9a4pid #yesalliance @Win… 16 hours ago follow us on Twitter Copyright ©2014 The Ponsonby Post Site design and execution by Webridean Web Services
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 04:47:43 +0000
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