Until the BBC respects the UK's diverse communities, it will never be able to represent the country's diversity

Essay from anthology: "The BBC at 100: Will It Survive?" edited by John Mair.


“I want to be Head of BBC Diversity”

I was talking informally to a very senior executive of the corporation over a coffee in a restaurant just off Carnaby Street in London a few years ago.

The executive’s response was direct and to the point.

“Why on earth do you want to do that Marcus?”. The exec took a sip of their drink and explained their thinking by way of a compliment, “I see you as having a really bright future at the Beeb. You are one of the few Black people with news and current affairs experience at an executive producer level, you’ve overseen some really complicated investigations, and you’ve had to make some really tough Political calls in Scotland.”

Then came the killer punch.

“Head of Diversity will take you away from all of that - it will lead your career up a blind alley. It’s not where you want to be, if you want real power.”

I have no delusions of grandeur regarding my career in British broadcasting in general, and the BBC in particular, but I had heard his argument before and given it some thought.

I responded with what I felt at the time was a power move:

“I guess you and I see diversity slightly differently,” I replied. “Think of it this way; Kenny (I was referring to Ken MacQuarrie) is a major player on the BBC’s executive board as Director of BBC Scotland. He is effectively in charge of one of the most important parts of the BBC - and overseeing over a thousand members of staff and millions of pounds worth of programming budget.

“I don’t want to be Head of Diversity if it’s just as an extension of Human Resources, or Head of Diversity simply advising on how to get a few more Black people or women on screen, or even behind it. I want to be Head of Diversity at the BBC in the same way Kenny is head of Scotland - with real power.

“The BBC needs to restructure - it is not only vital for media diversity, it is essential for the corporation’s survival”.

My power move that day was unnecessary.


Restructuring the job…Widening the core.


Needless to say, I did not become Head of Diversity, and although the BBC did go on to raise both the profile and position of the Head of Diversity role it did not restructure in the way I believed was so vital.

That said, I still believe that restructuring is necessary. To understand why, we first have to understand the BBC’s current structure and charter.

The BBC’s Charter in 2007 states that one of the core purposes of the corporation is to represent “the UK, its nations, regions and communities”.

But this is not new. The BBC has always recognised the importance of representing the UK’s different Nations and the Regions. The 1952 Charter formalised the idea of National Broadcasting Councils and Regional Advisory Councils. These represented the interests and culture of Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and different geographic regions both in terms of output and in the running of the corporation.

The importance of the Nations and Regions is seen as so intrinsic to the structure of the BBC that Ken MacQuarrie (then Head of BBC Scotland who I spoke about earlier) who was later promoted to Head of Nations and Regions, described the role he left in 2020 as “one of the BBC's largest and most high profile divisions”.

Then, when Rhodri Talfan Davies took over from MacQuarrie in December 2020, the BBC Director General said Davies “brings considerable editorial and strategic experience [to the role]” (my italics). Note the word “editorial”.

This was precisely the quality that the senior BBC executive in the restaurant told me the BBC Head of Diversity lacked, and why they saw it as a “dead-end” for my career.


What’s missing from the job description?


Now if you hadn’t noticed it already, let me point out the glaring omission from Ken MacQuarrie and Rhodri Talfan Davies’ job titles. Despite the BBC Charter explicitly highlighting the importance of the UK’s “nations, regions and communities”, the job which is meant to be specifically in charge of ensuring this, only includes two out of these three areas: the nations and regions.

Despite it being written into the charter since 1952 there is (still) no one explicitly responsible in the BBC for the UK’s communities.

Many people working in the field of diversity and inclusion have previously seen reference to “communities” in the charter to implicitly refer to diversity.

In 2017, after campaigning and lobbying by Sir Lenny Henry, myself and others this implicit understanding was made explicit when the Charter was updated to include the principle of “diversity”, stating one of the corporation’s core public purposes is, “to reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all of the United Kingdom’s nations and regions” (my italics).

While the BBC Charter correctly identifies diverse communities on par with the nations and regions, the corporation seems to have consistently overlooked them. Diversity at the BBC is fundamentally framed as either an HR problem, or one of influencing the creativity of the corporation. People working in diversity have little or no editorial power, and importantly there is no diversity role on the BBC’s News board. Yet, no one would ever suggest taking this approach to how the BBC oversees the nations and regions.

This is a mistake.


Accept the reality of Britain in 2021.


The reality is that in 2021 the UK’s diverse communities are increasingly and possibly as important to British people’s identities than their nationality (English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish) or IN which geographical region they live.

While the BBC’s structure embedding the importance of the nations and regions, while overlooking communities, might have made sense 50 or even over 15 years ago, it looks increasingly arcane and out of touch with the needs of a modern public service broadcaster in the UK.

The fact is, Britain is a fundamentally different society to the one it was when the BBC was born, in a multitude of ways.

Let’s look at this chronologically.

In 1971 the UK census recorded ethnicity for the first time. That year, the White population made up roughly 97.7 percent of the population. According to the 2011 census the non-White population in the UK is 13 per cent, and the 2021 census is expected to show that it has grown even larger.

In 1980, homosexual acts in private between two men in private were finally de-criminalised in Scotland, despite the Sexual Offences Bill 1967 de-criminalising homosexual acts between two men in England and Wales.

It took until 1995 for the many of the rights we now take for granted of disabled people to be recognised in the UK under the Disability Discrimination Act.

Put simply, how Britain now formally recognises these different communities both in terms of law, and in general public discourse has undergone a rapid transformation over the last fifty years.

Yet, the BBC structures still places communities as an afterthought at best, and completely ignores them at worst.

The BBC has survived, and even thrived, over the last 100 years because it has recognised the importance of reflecting how society and its audience view themselves. Without an organisational structure that prioritises the UK’s diverse communities it is failing to do this.

This is not just my assertion. An Ofcom report in 2018 suggested that many communities in the UK are increasingly dissatisfied with the broadcaster and simply switching off. While another report, Mind the Viewing Gap, in 2015 by digital.i showed that non-White people made up only 6% of PSB viewing despite making up 14% of the population.

Reflecting on my conversation that day in the restaurant with the senior BBC executive I think I made just one mistake. I do not want to be head of BBC Diversity.

I want to be head of BBC Diverse Communities. And when the BBC creates the position - which I believe it will have to one day in order to survive - I hope I will be just about young enough to send in my CV.


This essay originally appears in the anthology: "The BBC at 100: Will It Survive?" edited by John Mair, and is available to order now.