As is the case with most of us, I receive daily requests from groups who use social media to add my signature to any number of on-line petitions aiming to bring pressure to bear on those in power to rectify some new injustice perpetrated on the powerless. Today, the number of such requests had reached seven by the time I was drinking my morning coffee at nine thirty, a fairly typical haul for me. I usually end up adding my signature to at least some of these whilst simultaneously feeling that this is symptomatic of all that is wrong with our engagement with politics, and, perhaps, the world more generally. Nothing more is required of me than the click of a mouse or the swipe of a screen from the comfort of my desk or armchair and I can feel that I have in some way fulfilled a necessary duty as a thinking and concerned citizen. How could I ignore the plight of a group of tenants about to have their social housing sold off to an American investment group, or to Palestinian children being arrested and arraigned in high security prisons for throwing stones at armed military vehicles protecting the interests of American and European Israeli settlers colonising their stolen land? I can sign a petition and feel that I have done my bit for justice and humanity. I might even make an on-line donation via my debit card to help the cause. Politics can take place entirely on-line and at very little inconvenience to myself. No human contact with my fellow citizens is required, let alone active participation in debate or confrontation with power. The democracy of the net expands endlessly, encouraging an increasingly passive involvement with the outside world whilst simultaneously suppressing the other meaning of net - confinement and constraint as we redefine political engagement and participate within parameters that are constantly monitored and recorded on behalf of the very forces with whom we are in conflict. 

One petition that I regularly receive concerns the government's current inquiry into the future of the BBC. Clearly this government, ideologically, would be antagonistic toward a broadcaster that is funded from public funds and that competes with commercial organisations in both entertainment and news reporting. Secret meetings have taken place between the relevant government ministers and representatives of the Murdoch empire. The Murdoch press regularly attack the BBC in a determined attempt to undermine public support for a broadcaster that has been at the heart of the British media since the 1920's and has an unrivalled reputation as the pre-eminent global media organisation. The Cameron government's raison d'etre is to promote the interests of business and the private sector, whether in the banking or the corporate world, though, curiously, not in manufacturing other than armaments. All areas of public sector provision, and this would include the BBC, are fair game for private sector intervention where huge profits are potentially available, made even more desirable since they come as a transfer of existing public investment paid for with taxpayer funding, directly to the speculators of the private sector world. 

The BBC, through its funding system- the amount being determined by the government of the day- has always been subject to political pressure, though in the past, it has been more resolute in standing up to this. It is now a cowed organisation, simply awaiting the inevitable assault to come, seemingly incapable of mounting a defence of its position (witness the meek acceptance of the government's change of responsibility for over 75's licences from government to the BBC's budget with little attempt to challenge this transfer of social policy from government to broadcaster). Although the nature of the relationship between the government and the BBC has historically seen frequent conflicts emerge between the two, and I have often been dismayed by the way in which successive Director Generals of the corporation have either cooperated or capitulated to government pressure, I have, nonetheless, always supported the principle of a publicly funded, public service broadcasting organisation. The thought of an entirely commercial broadcasting network, with perhaps only a subscription service surviving with a public service remit, (it is clear that the government is actively preparing for a sell-off of channel 4) would be a disastrous loss to our cultural life .

You would think that, at such a time, the BBC would be anxious to retain all the support it can get from a public that, generally, holds the corporation in high regard. People, like myself, who have always seen the public sector, in all its manifestations, as an essential part of civil - indeed civilised - society and a necessary bulwark against the unfettered and uncaring power of capital, should be preparing for a powerful and sustained defence of the BBC from the inevitable attempt at dismemberment that will follow the government inquiry and its utterly inadequate public 'consultation'. The sad fact is that, for many reasons, it is more difficult now to defend the BBC than at any time in its history.  And the fault for this lies entirely with the pusillanimous management of the corporation over the last fifteen years or so. The dismaying proliferation of endless spin-offs and ever more tedious variations of programmes with similar formats is bad enough in the 'entertainment' remit of public service broadcasting, but it is in the requirement 'to inform' that the most egregious decline in the BBC's output is most obvious. BBC news has become little more than a mouthpiece of the establishment - indeed of government itself. Many would argue that this has always been the case (witness founding Director General Lord Reith's famous diary entry during the general strike in 1926 "They know (the government) they can trust us not to be really impartial" But the appointment of Laura Kuenssberg as political editor has seen an abandonment of even the pretence of impartiality.

Ever since her appointment she has obsessively focussed on what she continually presents as the destructive effects of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party, despite having the most overwhelming mandate to lead of any Labour leader. In fact, she has barely commented on any other aspect of British politics since her appointment. She finally moved beyond any pretence at simply reporting when she actively arranged for the resignation of Stephen Doughty from the shadow cabinet to take place, live, on The Daily Politics show just a few minutes before Prime Minister's Questions, thus knowingly and wittingly handing the Prime Minister a clear advantage in the actual political arena of parliament, which he duly used. This was arranged and set up hours before the event with in order to do maximum damage to the Labour Party. The mask of impartiality has now not just slipped, but been shredded and cast aside. The Political Editor of the BBC has assisted the Tory government with the full support of her editorial superiors who were crowing on-line at their success. In such circumstances, to go on supporting the BBC in its current state is fast becoming impossible. 

The BBC's approach to its public service responsibility has often been an area of confusion and controversy. We didn't have a television set when I was a child - we couldn't afford it - so I relied on my friends parents to let me in to watch theirs. Actually, Mr. and Mrs. Carmichael, the retired couple who lived in the flat opposite ours would often let us in to watch their set after school as we waited for my mum to get home from work, and we would watch 'Popeye' and some very good children's shows on the young ITV. One used to be introduced by the folk singer Wally Whyton featuring a wryly ironic puppet owl called Ollie Beak, that was particularly engaging for us kids. After almost sixty years I can still remember one exchange: Wally finds Ollie with a book of jokes numbered from one to a hundred. Ollie says, "I know all these by heart. Just give me any number and I'll know the joke and it'll make me laugh." Wally proceeds to reel off a series of numbers but Ollie makes no response whatsoever. "I thought these would make you laugh" says Wally. Pause. "It must be the way you tell 'em" replies the bird. Cracked me up when I was eight and still makes me smile.  I also remember being terrified by a series called 'The Red Grass' that concerned an attempt by a deadly outbreak of fast growing grass discovered on a remote island to take over the world by killing anyone who got too close. Yes, this really did scare me.
 On Saturdays, we were dependent on the kindness of any parent who would tolerate us. And this was important, because Saturday was 'Six Five Special' day. As I said in my last post, music was central to my life from a very early age and 'Six Five Special' was the first attempt by the BBC to present rock music on TV for a youth audience. Often I would end up in Georgie Burton's flat in the company of his younger brother, Jimmy. Georgie usually simply ignored me as acknowledging me was clearly beneath his dignity and this was fine by me. All I wanted was to see the only TV show that presented rock 'n' roll music. Of course this was a pretty tame version of rock 'n' roll. There were none of the American stars, just anaemic British wannabes  like Jim Dale, Tommy Steele and The Dallas Boys, but at least there was some acknowledgement that teen culture existed. Of course, the BBC couldn't just leave it at this. They had a duty to the nation's youth to leaven the potentially subversive effects of this primitive music by intercutting short films showing young people hiking in the Cairngorns or climbing a rock-face in Derbyshire in scouting uniform. The Beeb was, as it so often was and continues to be, out of step with the changing zeitgeist of the nation. The ITV soon hit back with its own rock show, 'Oh Boy' that was much better than 'Six Five Special' but still far removed from the elemental excitement of the sounds we tuned into on radio Luxembourg on the big old radio receiver my brother had under his bed at night (he was on the bottom bunk). On TV you would never experience the astonishingly visceral excitement of 'wop bop a loo bop a wop bam boom' as Little Richard thundered out the opening to 'Tutti Frutti' that left both my brother and I simply speechless the first time we heard it. It was like being hit by lightning. And for those who think that gender bending was a phenomenon of later rock music - songs like the Kinks 'Lola', the rise of glam-rock and, most importantly, David Bowie, its worth going back to look at Little Richard's stage presence in the 50's and looking at the song's original lyrics. He wasn't the Georgia Peach for nothing. It's significant that you had to turn to commercial radio at this time to hear the full force of American rock music. The BBC simply couldn't cope with the new radicalism of the developing youth culture. Plus ca change.

Since I've mentioned David Bowie, and in the light of his sad death a few days ago, I'm going to break with the chronology of these autobiographical segments and move ahead a couple of years. When I moved from Junior to Secondary school I found myself at Bromley Technical High School for Boys. I'll come back to the process in a future post. I'll only say at this point, that I hated every moment of my time at this school. The school would become known for being the Alma Mater of, not only Bowie, but also the guitarist Peter Frampton who at one point had the world's biggest selling live album, and the writer Hanif Kureishi, who once wrote an article in 'The Guardian' about a music lesson at the school that exactly mirrored my own experience. David Bowie was then simply David Jones, an older boy who I saw occasionally around the school. He was a striking presence even then, but his friend, George Underwood, was generally better known since he looked more like the fashionable rock artists of the period. He also had a band, 'George and the Dragons' who impressed my twelve year old self when they played at the school's Christmas concert at the end of 1961. David also had a band who I heard play outside at the school's summer fair at the end of the academic year.

This is a picture of Bowie at Bromley Technical High School. Unfortunately, as a first year boy, I'm not there!! But the uniform made me stand out on my estate and made life even more difficult.

One day, I arrived at the school entrance to find a small group of boys gathered together outside. The school had a long concrete drive leading into the grounds, lined with hedges. At this entrance, two of the older boys were squaring up to each other. One was David Jones and the other George Underwood, who I recognised immediately. There was a scuffle, and then some real punches that rather shook me, since one landed hard in Jones' face. He staggered slightly and swung round towards me, with one eye apparently glowing red. It's a sight I've never forgotten. The eye was now simply a luminous pool of blood, but it seemed like the face had suddenly taken on an eerie, unearthly glow as the red eye seemed to fix on me. Obviously he could actually see nothing out of it, but I was really shaken by this sight. I had no idea then that this fight would play some significance in the later David Bowie's life, since his eye never returned to its original colour. And not only his life.
Later on, when I had become a teacher in a Sixth Form College, I was taking a class where some students were reading their own choice of book for some exercise to come. I noticed that one girl was reading a biography of David Bowie, so I asked her why. She explained how Bowie was central to her life and that she followed everything he did. I mentioned that I'd briefly attended the same school as Bowie, and that I'd seen the fight between him and George Underwood. She looked at me for a second or two and then burst into tears. The simple presence of someone who had had a fleeting encounter with the great man was more than she could take. It was a lesson to me of the power of rock music to consume people's lives when they are young and how important it can be, particularly when there are difficulties in their lives. 
Later on, my daughter was working in Australia as a PA to a professor of ophthalmology at Melbourne University. She mentioned to her that I'd seen this fight between Bowie and George Underwood and that it was widely believed that this had permanently changed the colour of one of Bowie's eyes. The professor said that this was not possible and that it must be a kind of myth. My daughter emailed the rest of the department and three or four of them replied saying that such a change was perfectly possible and that there were several recorded cases of this phenomenon. Now I've read, since Bowie's death, that this change of eye colour is certainly the product of the fight I witnessed. I've also read George Underwood's recollection of the fight that does not completely accord with my own. He says he simply pulled Bowie round and hit him. I know it was a bit more than that, but we all have our own versions of the past, and they are all equally true to our subjective selves. As I said, I will return to Bromley Technical High School, but with little enthusiasm.