In May 1980, the BBC tried to disband several musical ensembles, including the BBC Scottish Orchestra. As a result, the first twenty concerts of the Henry Wood Proms were lost and the dispute became a major story for every newspaper and broadcaster. (The bald facts may be found at the link below.)

By 1980 the new world of permanent symphony orchestras had been established for some twenty years, with each one increasingly dependent on state funding, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra being the last one to be admitted to the magic circle in the mid-1960s. The BBC’s orchestras were always funded by the State, via money received from the annual Licence Fee. No new symphony orchestra has since been formed by the BBC, nor has any outside the BBC been allowed to join those in receipt of the Arts Council’s annual shot of plasma. In short, the suppliers of orchestral music came to form a neat bloc of supplicants, whose principal goal was, and still is, that of survival. If, given these conditions, it is widely held to be insane to form a new symphony orchestra, then any attempt to close one is regarded as an act of vandalism. In short, the supply and delivery of professional orchestral music is as stiff as a Norwegian Blue.

Until the BBC Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1930, no orchestra in Britain had ever offered year-round contracts to its players and certainly not salaries with associated pensions. At a stroke, musicians became civil servants and acquired a number of their bad habits, including the one which sees the customer as a nuisance. For instance, when tape-recording arrived, the players of the BBCSO wanted to work office-hours and pre-record their evening performances during the day. Fortunately, nothing came of that proposal, and the BBCSO continues to give evening concerts, often at ticket prices seriously lower than those of its competitors. Precisely how much damage has been caused by treating orchestral music as a branch of the social services must wait for another day, although its Marxist origins need to be stressed to the generations which never knew the spontaneous combustion of a Beecham.

Indeed, one of the most shocking aspects of British post-war life has been the ease with which a whole swathe of ‘the people’ has been steered into becoming objects of the State’s pity, in order for politicians to have the opportunity to display their passionate concern for the ‘disadvantaged’. So it is with orchestras, whose grants are paid because their existence is meant to demonstrate Britain’s ‘cultural place’ in the world. Oh! I nearly forgot, and also because no-one knows how to close them down without being accused of vandalism: ask Chris Smith, who, when Culture Secretary, tried to tie a knot in the life-support system that sustains the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.

Thirty years ago, serious music still generated enough commercial activity for the major orchestras not to be classed as complete creatures of the State. Even so, I have to tell you that the London Symphony Orchestra’s policy, when I became its first Managing Director in 1975, was to go bust and be bailed out by the government. How the Arts Council would welcome such an offer today! My own view of dependency was as clear then as it is today, because freedom from interference is more valuable than being a slave to bureaucratic diktat. In the 1970s, London orchestras could still improve their finances by recording film scores, making albums, appearing on television and giving publicly-funded concerts. Unfortunately, in the case of concerts, a significant number were performed with second-rate conductors and soloists who just happened to want to make a commercial recording the following morning and had the cash to pay for it. This habit was a serious blot on the integrity of London’s principal orchestras, as audiences had a right to expect something better from organisations dependent on the public’s taxes. I remember the LSO’s chairman telephoning me one morning to say that the players wanted to pull out of that night’s concert in the Royal Festival Hall because the conductor was inept. I had to remind him that the Orchestra was contractually committed to the event and that if its members didn’t want to work with duff conductors they should stop making deals with them. Another chairman, this time of the RPO, once told me of the time they locked a visiting maestro in a room, backstage at the Royal Albert Hall, to prevent his “getting in the way” of his own concert. I often think of the poor sap, locked-up, listening to echoes of what was to have been his big night.

So, given the stability of this musical house of cards, you will appreciate the depth of the scandal when the ‘Beeb’ sought to wind-up the BBC Scottish. Cries of philistinism were heard from all sorts of people, but especially from politicians and public figures who had never been to a concert, and whose musical appreciation had been infantilized by that decadent mess of ‘sex ‘n’ drugs’ known as “Rock ‘n’ Roll”.

As you would imagine, hostility towards the BBC was enormous and made worse by the MU’s blacking the Proms. Unsurprisingly, the BBC’s attempt to liquidate its own Scottish Orchestra was binned. At this point I was invited by the said orchestra to help raise the money needed to exploit its new profile and become less of a burden on the Corporation. I shan’t bore you with the details of what happened, except to say that I got the Number Two man of IBM, a Scotsman based in Southampton, up to Glasgow for lunch with the top people of the BBC Scottish. My proposal was for two performances of Verdi’s Requiem to be given in public, one in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh, and for each to be televised. At that time, orchestral concerts were still regularly programmed on ‘prime-time’ television, but not by regional orchestras. I also suggested that Carlo Maria Giulini, that great lover of lost-causes, should be invited to conduct. IBM was happy to stake these events. But, sadly the BBC’s office-wallahs, so recently mauled on BBC Radio 4 by P. D. James, was fully functioning, and the chance was missed.

Now, this is where the story gets really interesting. After a meeting in Broadcasting House, in London, I was told that the Director General, Sir Ian Threthowan, wished to see me. When I entered his office, I had no idea why I had been singled out and wasn’t the least surprised when he asked me what I would do with the BBC’s orchestras. I suggested he should hold onto the BBC Welsh, because it received money from the Welsh Arts Council, replace the BBC Symphony Orchestra with an aggressively avant-garde ensemble, turn the Northern Orchestra into a classical band and the Scottish into a Baroque ensemble. After all, as I pointed out, why have four orchestras that sound the same, share aspirations, play the same repertoire, compete with one another head-on and appeal to a single segment of the market. While I talked, Sir Ian scribbled. And that was that.

Some twelve years later I had dealings with Bill Relton, who had spent years with the BBC and who was now running the Eastern Orchestral Concerts Board. At one of our meetings, I told him of my chat with Sir Ian. “Oh, it was your idea,” he exclaimed, and he went on to tell me how my recommendation had gone the rounds with general approval. But that nothing had happened. I asked him why not. “You’re very innocent about places like the Corporation”, he told me, “you come from the commercial world where action is taken when money is being wasted. Here, it’s a different world. By the time a chap has the power to change things he is so close to retirement he does nothing for fear of upsetting the apple-cart and jeopardizing his pension. So, everything is left for Buggins.”

So, there we have it. With great music in the grip of bureaucrats with no vision of what might yet be possible, orchestral life in Britain got stuck. Good isn’t it? God Bless You All.

• The Proms That Nearly Weren't