Kenneth Clark

by James Stourton

  Although he was the establishment safe man, the announcement surprised everybody, including David Attenborough, who later became controller of BBC2: ‘It was a great shock when Clark took the chairman job. To us at the BBC, ITV was the Devil – low and commercial to the Reithian outlook – so when K sanctified it we were very surprised, but he had an appetite for public service.’7 Denis Forman suggested that ‘nobody thought it would work. I did not support it – he was a rich dandy – he was not in electronics or entertainment. The engineers ran television, it was created by them and they owned it until 1960. People were both sceptical and delighted by Clark’s appointment – he knew nothing about television.’8 Clark’s friends were equally surprised and appalled, but he rather enjoyed that.

  He explained his decision to accept the job to Janet Stone: ‘I couldn’t resist the temptation of seeing what could be done with it. However one may dislike television, it is the way in which people’s minds are going to be formed, and I am still sufficiently Victorian to feel that if one is offered the opportunity of contributing to such a colossal task one oughtn’t to refuse it…we start from nothing. I have to organise the whole set up – staff, offices – everything…what a strange, unexpected change of fortune!’9 He was right: the Authority initially had nothing except an inexperienced board, and during the first year its meetings took place at the Arts Council.*4

  In October 1954 Clark went to the United States to find out as much as he could about the operation of commercial television there, meeting senior officers and technicians at CBS and NBC. He enjoyed the process of setting up the Authority with its eventual staff of fifty, but nothing could be achieved until the appointment of a director-general. Clark amusingly described how the Treasury tried to fob him off with various retired members of the armed services, including nine admirals and seventeen generals – but he already knew who he wanted: Bob, later Sir Robert, Fraser, with whom he had worked at the MoI, where he had been a very successful head of publications. Clark persuaded him to put in for the job, and later recalled how he had to ‘push his name past my exhausted colleagues at one sitting’ before they could investigate Fraser’s socialist record.10

  Bob Fraser turned out to be a brilliant appointment. An Australian who had originally come to London to sit under Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, he had become a leader writer for the Daily Herald and had stood as a Labour parliamentary candidate. As Colette commented: ‘Bob Fraser was a bit off-centre, being Aussie, and like David Webster at the opera got on very well with my father.’11 Fraser was a professional communicator, and he and Clark were to be the prime movers in the establishment of the ITA. Bernard Sendall, Fraser’s senior civil servant and later the historian of Independent Television, was in no doubt that these two men in that first year – ‘there was never to be another year like it’ – made excellent decisions, with the able assistance of their board, and established the shape and structure of Independent Television for a quarter of a century.12 But Clark and Fraser’s extremely warm and cooperative relationship would be severely tested by the trials of the coming year.

  The first problem was one of design. What kind of franchises should be offered to the competing companies applying for licences? Regionalism became so well established as the basis of Independent Television during its first decades that today we take it for granted, but it was a far from obvious approach in 1954. Many models from overseas were examined: should the companies be given a ‘horizontal’ slot, i.e. one company producing all the morning programmes, another the women’s programmes, a third the children’s programmes, a fourth the news programmes and a fifth the entertainment programmes? Or should the design be ‘vertical’, so that there was a Monday-to-Friday company and a Saturday-to-Sunday company – which could perhaps be rotated? As Fraser noted, these would be ‘cages in which we would be caught forever’. What was eventually created was a regional federal system, clearly differentiated from the BBC, which in those days was entirely metropolitan and had no presence in the regions.

  On 14 October 1954 the ITA initially chose to have three regions – London, Midlands and Northern, with one or two companies appointed to each station to operate a ‘competitive optional network’. Much trouble was taken to introduce competition between the contractors. Clark wrote an important memorandum on the subject: ‘Although I want the system to be vertical in control, I want to see it largely horizontal in operation, in the movement of programmes – that is, I want a network connection technically capable of giving an unlimited introduction of programmes from any one region into either of the others. I want London to be in full competition with the Midlands in selling programmes to the Northern, Midlands with Northern in selling to London etc.’13 But as Bernard Sendall pointed out, the reality of what later came to be called the ‘carve up’ never conformed to this vision of a state of perfect competition, and tendencies to regional monopolies in Independent Television soon began to emerge.14 ‘Vertical control – horizontal competition’, however, became the mantra.

  The role of the ITA was threefold, constructing and operating the transmission stations to be used by the network, awarding franchises for the making of programmes to commercial broadcasters, and regulating programme content. It would have a landlord–tenant relationship with the contractors. One of the ITA board’s anxieties was putting the news in the hands of commercial companies, and some advocated handing it over to Reuters. Clark opposed this, and always claimed that it was his contribution to insist on a separate channel to handle news for all the companies; but as the historian of ITV cautions us: ‘This story of the origins of Independent Television News affords no corroboration of any individual claims to parentage.’15

  In the second half of 1954 the Authority invited applications from programme contractors. Clark’s initial fear was that ITV would fall into the hands of the Conservative press, something he perceived as ‘disastrous for the future of Independent television’.16 Twenty-five applications were received, and four companies were chosen, to give as far as possible similar value in terms of air time and population coverage. The most controversial application was from the Kemsley Newspaper Group (which included the Sunday Times), causing Herbert Morrison to ask in Parliament if the government was giving preference to its friends.17 However, Morrison was not looking at the whole picture: one of the successful companies was run by Sidney Bernstein of Granada, who was a fully-paid-up member of the Labour Party. But this episode was a reminder of the fragility of ITV, and the fact that Labour had given a warning that the Television Act of 1954 might well be repealed after the next election. The City financiers were very sceptical, and in the first year profitability eluded the contracting companies. In August 1955 Clark and the ITA moved into grand offices at 14 Prince’s Gate, the former London residence of J.P. Morgan and afterwards for a time the American Embassy residence.

  All doubts were put to one side for the launch of Independent Television at a magnificent banquet at the Guildhall on 22 September 1955. At 7.15 p.m. the first transmission began, and millions of viewers watched the arrival of the five hundred guests in white tie. The guests enjoyed a dinner of smoked salmon, turtle soup, lobster chablis, roast grouse and peach Melba. Speeches were made by the Lord Mayor of London, the Postmaster General, and finally Clark, who announced that hitherto television had been controlled by a single public corporation, but that ‘ten minutes ago that weapon was placed in the hand of companies who are hardly controlled at all’. He added, ‘The ITA is an experiment in the art of government – an attempt to solve one of the chief problems of democracy: how to combine a maximum of freedom with an ultimate direction.’ It was the first time Kenneth Clark was seen by a mass public, and they heard him speak in a clipped, measured accent.*5 He was followed by the first ever British television advertisement, for Gibbs SR toothpaste.*6

  The problems that Clark and Fraser faced during their first year were perfectly expressed by John Spencer Wills, chairman of Associated-Rediffusion: ‘Never in
all the thirty-five years I have been in the business have I come across a case in which the task of the entrepreneur has been made more difficult. A limited security of tenure from the Conservative government, a threat of extinction from the Labour opposition, an excessively high annual payment to the ITA, an obligation to put on “minority” programmes of small advertising value, a host of restrictions imposed by Statute and by licence, threats of additional competition from the BBC – all these must daunt the wildest optimist.’18 During the first year, the problems that beset Clark over the birth of ITV were immense: the complex problems of transmitters and masts, the non-profitability of the companies,19 and their inevitable power struggles with the Authority. Clark described it to Janet Stone: ‘Pandemonium at ITV…several writs threatened and one actually served…I consoled myself by thinking that for once I qualified for a beatitude – I mean “Blessed are the peacemakers.” ’20 He got no sympathy at Saltwood: ‘culminating in J[ane] saying last night…that she sympathised with the Programme Contractors, that the ITA were just a lot of governessy civil servants, that we didn’t know what we were doing…I can face any attacks from outside, but not from within. How well Ibsen understood this situation.’21

  The nadir of ITV’s early crises was reached with the resignation of the charismatic news chief at Independent Television News, Aidan Crawley, and his deputy. Morale sank to its lowest, and Clark agreed to be interviewed on the evening news bulletin. This was Robin Day’s first important interview, and – despite his astonishment that Clark had agreed to appear – it is clear from the chapter ‘Personal Milestone’ in his book Day by Day (1975) that Day regarded it as a turning point in his career: ‘Though Sir Kenneth Clark avoided giving direct answers to some of these questions, the interview drew from him several important declarations of ITA policy. He defended the amount of entertainment on ITV: “You must capture an audience first of all. When you are established and secure you can gradually build up to a higher level.” ’*7 Clark’s appearance did something to raise morale at ITN. However, by the end of 1956 ITV was starting to win the ratings war with programmes such as the talent contest Opportunity Knocks. An upturn in advertising revenue followed. The contractors entered a more confident and prosperous phase, and the dawn of the era which Roy Thomson, who owned the Scottish station, famously described as ‘just like having a permit to print your own money’.

  Clark struck up a warm relationship with the company bosses, including some of the most famous entertainment moguls of the time. He already knew Sidney Bernstein at Granada from MoI days, and he formed a particularly fruitful friendship with the colourful duo at Associated Television, Val Parnell and Lew Grade. As he told a BBC director: ‘I must confess that I like the people I have to deal with – I suppose I was helped by my non-academic (and non-military) background, which made me feel more at home with Val Parnell and Lew Grade than I often did/do with my colleagues in the museum world.’22 In a later interview he went further: ‘I get on best with showbiz people. They are larger than life and always doing absolutely unexpected and incredible things. They are monsters, total egomaniacs – far more appealing to an old sinner like me.’23 No doubt they reminded him of his naughty father. Lew Grade – who could be shameless – greatly respected Clark, and described how one day Clark said to him, ‘ “Lew, you will never get away with that,” so I turned to him and said, “K, what do I have to do to get away with it?” He told me and I did it.’24

  Clark would divide his week between his two impressive offices, at the Arts Council in St James’s Square and ITA in Prince’s Gate. When he met the contractors he was usually by far the youngest person in the room, but he was able to hold his own intellectually. Denis Forman, despite his initial doubts, came to regard him as ‘a successful chairman with a strong analytical mind – he could chair a meeting. However, he was not interested in the economics or technical aspects. Clark was better on general matters, i.e. religious views. He cultivated an attitude which told you that he had a superior mind.’25 In fact, the most surprising things revealed by the ITA archives of the time are the level of detail and the technical nature of so many of Clark’s interventions, and his ability to dictate long, detailed memos about so many aspects of the organisation: engineering, legal, admin and finance and the programme sections.26 While the vast majority of memos are by Bob Fraser, Clark clearly grasped enough of every aspect of the industry, from regional news questions to masts and transmitters. The last were to be a particularly vexing, expensive and time-consuming problem.*8

  Once financial stability was established in the network, Clark began to worry more about the ‘higher level’ he had spoken about to Robin Day. Quality control of the programmes was, after all, the principal reason he had been appointed in the first place. But did the ITA actually have the powers to influence programme planners and creators to keep up quality? As Clark put it: ‘The Act, on this point, is as ambiguous as the Elizabethan prayer-book, and it is really for the Authority to interpret its ruling.’ But he was nervous that ‘any attempt we made at an extended interference in programmes would be resented as unwarranted and unfair…an appeal decision would go against us’.27

  Although Clark expected that ITV would display what he called ‘a vital vulgarity’, he was appalled by the low quality of output, as he told a lecture audience: ‘And to watch a whole day’s television right through, as I have had to do, is a really terrible experience and leaves one asking the old question, is it lack of talent, or commercial exploitation or a correct assessment of public taste that is responsible for this avalanche of vulgarity? Probably a combination of all three.’28 Part of the problem was a built-in parochialism. Hollywood films and well-made American programmes like I Love Lucy were popular, but there was a statutory requirement that 80 per cent of programmes transmitted were to be of ‘British origin and British performance’.

  The last year of Clark’s term at the ITA was dominated by his attempt to try to hold the government to its promise of £750,000 for quality programmes. He protested to Lord De La Warr’s successor as Postmaster General, Dr Charles Hill – whom Clark found sly and slippery: ‘The appointment of the Chairman of the Arts Council as Chairman of the ITA clearly implied the government’s intention to maintain standards and balance. The present programmes are often extremely embarrassing but, as you know, I have defended them because I have always assumed that the means of improving them would be forthcoming.’29 The matter was all the more galling as the Exchequer was holding the full £750,000 in readiness. Clark would accept even a token payment as a foot in the door. Dr Hill asked for concrete proposals for how the money would be spent, which the ITA felt was its business. The areas Clark and Fraser initially identified were religion, royal occasions, children and news,30 and this broadened to discussion programmes and classical music. Clark set out a detailed memorandum of the types of series he envisaged: ‘Window on England’, ‘Window on the World’, ‘Person to Person’ (great scientists, wise men, athletes, etc.), an arts programme ‘under some general title such as “Omnibus” rotating within it a great play one week, an opera the next, then music and so on’.31 Elsewhere he made a plea for Shakespeare, while recognising that the plays would have to be cut to work on television.

  As the months passed, the ‘£750,000 gift horse that bolted’, or ‘the grant that never was’, as it became known, came no closer to reality. Clark wrote in a melancholy mood to Janet Stone: ‘I think I had better go. I am really very sad, not only because I was proud to be entrusted with such important work, but because I love action and I now see myself condemned to moulder.’32 He decided to leave, and sent copies of his resignation letter to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Kilmuir and the Lord Privy Seal, Rab Butler. Hill, who was on holiday at Sandwich Bay, thought this was all a storm in a teacup, and was rather cross to have Butler on the telephone asking what was to be done. Clark agreed to defer his resignation until Hill returned from holiday. His gloom did not lift, as he told Janet: ‘My semi-detachment fr
om ITA has brought home to me how awful 9/10 of it is, and like the widow in Peter Grimes I go round singing to myself “This is no place for me”.’33 Colette remarked that this phrase was almost an anthem for Clark when depressed. Hill persuaded Clark to continue holding off his resignation while he saw what he could do.

  In November 1956 – by which time Britain was engulfed in the Suez Crisis – Clark went off to attend a UNESCO conference in India. He enjoyed India but hated the conference, as he told Janet: ‘Really absurd and futile…750 people simply wasting their time and their country’s money. I suppose the church councils of the 15th Century were something of this kind – all meaningless abstractions and appeals to precedent so complex that no one can dispute them.’34 He was appalled by the Suez fiasco, and felt embarrassed to be in India representing Britain: ‘I simply couldn’t hold up my head. But then I reflected that now above all was the time to go, to show that there was something more permanent in England than this disgusting re-ignition of 19th Century jingoism. Of course if the Govt. falls, I shall have to stay [at ITA] – but incredibly enough I don’t now believe that it will.’*9