Greg Dyke: Inside Story

I had arranged for most of the members of my seventeen-strong executive team, which was known around the BBC as Exco, to watch Lord Hutton deliver his findings in a room in Broadcasting House where my office was based. We had arranged for lunch to be delivered and once again the Atkins dieters, of whom there were at least two others on Exco, were well provided for. So far Atkins had survived the crisis, and so had my abstinence from alcohol.

I warned my team it was bad news and on a confidential basis told them that Gavyn was seriously considering resignation. We all watched Hutton and then the statements in the House of Commons from the party leaders. I marvelled at how good Blair was. It is a great shame that his skills at people management and strategic leadership have never matched his skills as an orator or in public relations. If they had, he would have been a great Prime Minister.

The new Conservative leader, Michael Howard, had an impossible task, having only had the report for four hours; but I believe he made a crucial mistake in accepting Hutton’s findings immediately. If he had delayed and given himself another forty-eight hours I believe he would have taken a different approach. In particular, he accepted Hutton’s view that Blair had said nothing inappropriate to journalists about the naming of David Kelly when he was on the plane from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Anyone who had followed the inquiry would have known that Hutton never questioned a single witness on that issue.

My own team were pretty badly shaken. I remember John Smith, the Director of Finance, saying something about resignations being needed (though I don’t think he was referring to me) and Jenny Abramsky, the Director of Radio, sitting looking terribly serious in the corner, in the way that Jenny did. We all discussed the proposed statement I and the team had written. Virtually everyone wanted me to take out the more aggressive paragraphs, one of which said: ‘We do have serious reservations about one aspect of the report which we believe could have significant implications for British journalism.’ In effect I let them water down the proposed response. In retrospect I wish I hadn’t because I believed then, as I do today, that the BBC had got the story largely right and that Downing Street’s behaviour had been unacceptable. I was also convinced, as were our legal team, that Hutton had got the law wrong.

At 3.30 p.m. I recorded the statement and made it available to all news outlets. On BBC News 24 it was immediately interpreted as ‘a robust response’ from the BBC. Personally I thought it was conciliatory, but then being conciliatory is not necessarily one of my stronger points so perhaps I wasn’t the best person to judge. I certainly wasn’t going to roll over in the way Lord Ryder did the following day. Like Gavyn, I’d rather have resigned. I remember thinking at the time that it was a good job News 24 hadn’t seen my original draft.

What did make me and the BBC look foolish later in the afternoon was the final paragraph of my statement, which said: ‘The BBC Governors will be meeting formally tomorrow and will consider Lord Hutton’s report. No further comment will be made until after that meeting.’ Everyone had agreed that paragraph, but within half an hour of the statement being broadcast Andy Marr was back on the screens saying that he had it on very good authority that Gavyn Davies had resigned. Of course he only had a single unattributable source for his story, so under Lord Hutton’s rules of journalism one wonders whether he should have broadcast it without corroboration. His source was a pretty good one though. It was Gavyn himself.

Gavyn was taking advice from his wife Sue, one of Gordon Brown’s inner circle. Sue was very much of the view that it is better to resign on principle after being criticized than to be forced out later. As a strategy it only made sense if you believed you would be forced out in the end, which Gavyn now did.

Gavyn believed that by resigning quickly it would be contrasted with the Government’s ‘awful’ behaviour and help turn the tables on Hutton, which in many ways it did. And as he had made clear the night before, he was not going to apologize because he still believed the BBC had largely been right. Some people believe Gavyn’s early resignation cost me my job and that he should have done a deal with the Governors that I should stay before making his resignation public. That may or may not be true, but he took his decision for the best and most honourable of reasons.

It was by complete chance that the Governors were due to meet that evening in a private session starting at 5 p.m. The meeting had been set up some time in 2003 when the annual BBC calendar was drawn up; when I discovered, a week or two earlier, that the meeting coincided with the publication of the Hutton report I urged Gavyn to cancel it. I told him I feared the Governors would rush around and make rash decisions, which is exactly what they did. Gavyn was against moving it and so was Simon Milner, the BBC Secretary who organized the Governors’ meetings. Simon should have had the political nous to understand the dangers but unfortunately, while Simon had many talents, he lacked political judgement. Despite my efforts, the meeting stayed in the diary and I continued to tell them both it was a mistake.

The Governors started their meeting at 5 p.m. and virtually never left the room until the early hours of the following day. They didn’t see Jon Snow on Channel Four News at 7 p.m. raising the question of whether Hutton was a whitewash. This was significant because throughout the inquiry we thought that Channel Four’s news coverage of Hutton was the most authoritative, better than the BBC’s Six O’Clock News. The Governors didn’t see the same theme continued on Newsnight; they didn’t see the BBC’s former chairman Christopher Bland saying that one resignation was enough; and they didn’t see the early edition of The Independent with its blank front page simply saying ‘Whitewash’.

The Governors didn’t want to see anyone. They wouldn’t even meet Andrew Caldecott, the BBC’s own QC, who sat outside all evening waiting to be called in to give his detailed and informed legal opinion on Hutton, which was very critical of the report. Andrew knew more about Hutton than all the Governors put together, but they never saw him. After waiting for five hours he went home. At Andrew’s hourly rate, keeping him waiting outside the meeting was criminal.

Later in the evening the Governors did agree to see the BBC’s Director of Policy, Caroline Thomson, so she could give them a briefing: she had spent all evening gathering intelligence at Westminster. The BBC’s Director of Human Resources, Stephen Dando, demanded to be seen and was allowed in. He told the Governors that getting rid of me would be a terrible blow to the staff and the BBC. But by then it was too late. The Governors had already made up their minds before speaking to either of them. They did what people under pressure often do: they turned inwards, talked to each other, and panicked.

I was there for the first forty minutes of the meeting. When they arrived, the Governors knew that Gavyn was going and some turned up with the view that they too should resign. In retrospect I should have let them. Instead I argued what I believed to be right: that the BBC couldn’t be left without a Chairman and Governors because, in those circumstances, it would have no effective constitution. They agreed to stay.

When it came to discussing what should happen to members of the management team who had been criticized I offered to leave the meeting. I leant across to Simon Milner, who was sitting next to me, and reminded him what Gavyn and I had told him of our conversation the night before. It was his job to tell the Governors that if I was to continue I needed them to support me publicly. Gavyn and I then left the meeting for what I expected to be a half-hour discussion. As it turned out, I never went back that evening, and I will never have to go to another meeting of the BBC Governors again. There are some upsides in the whole affair.

As I walked down the corridor with Gavyn I saw Sarah Hogg scam-pering down the corridor the other way. She was late for the Governors’ meeting. Sarah was never my favourite Governor. She had been Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit in John Major’s Conservative Government and was the person who had invented ‘Back to Basics’ – one of the most disastrous policy initiatives introduced by any prime minister in the post-war years. She was recruited as a BBC Governor as a Tory, the view being that we were short of Conservative supporters on the Board. The irony was that by the end of my time at the BBC the Governors were dominated by people from the political Right. Virtually all the powerful players were Conservatives, with the exception of Gavyn, who in his capacity as Chairman bent over backwards to hold the ring by being politically neutral. It was so typical of Blair’s New Labour. They were so worried about newspaper charges of ‘Tony’s cronies’ that they allowed the BBC’s Board of Governors to be dominated by the Right. Could anyone have imagined Margaret Thatcher allowing the Board to be dominated by Labour supporters?

While being a strong supporter of the BBC, Sarah Hogg never left her politics or prejudices at the door of Governors’ meetings, not that there was anything wrong with that. She was married to a patrician, land-owning Tory MP, Douglas Hogg, and lived in a political world. When we tried to change our political coverage to make it more appropriate for the twenty-first century it was Sarah who led the opposition on the grounds that we shouldn’t upset the politicians. She was also upset by the lack of coverage of the Countryside March in September 2002 (probably the only march she’d ever been on). She insisted that the BBC was not covering rural affairs properly and demanded a full Governors’ investigation, which she got – at the cost of many thousands of pounds. It always struck me as a classic case of special pleading from a Governor who lived on the family estate in rural Lincolnshire.

Sarah always gave the appearance that she was superior to most other people at Governors’ meetings, sitting nodding in obvious support when she agreed with another Governor and shaking her head when she didn’t, as if her opinion was the one that mattered most. Given that some of the other Governors were not as confident as Sarah, and didn’t give the impression that they were born to rule, her opinions probably did matter a lot. Sarah and Pauline Neville-Jones were by far the most vocal Governors and I nicknamed them ‘the posh ladies’. It was always clear to me that neither liked me much and Sarah, I now know, actively disliked me. The feeling was mutual.

Sarah’s term as a Governor was due to finish at the end of January and she didn’t want it renewed, which was just as well because neither did Gavyn or I. We both believed the right-wing bias of the Governors was unhealthy and that we needed more Governors without strong political views. So as Sarah ran past us in the corridor that night she only had a couple of days left as a Governor. It was her last chance to settle old scores. I now know that she came to the meeting determined to get rid of me.

I had been sitting in my office for maybe an hour and a half when Simon Milner came in and said that Pauline and the Deputy Chairman wanted to see me downstairs. I’d thought their meeting was taking a long time, but it never crossed my mind that they would want me out. When I met them, Richard Ryder was pretty blunt. He said that the Governors had discussed the position and that they had decided I should go: if I stayed I’d be a lame-duck Director-General. It was a ridiculous argument: anyone who knew me well would know that there was never a chance of me being a lame-duck anything. I asked if this was the view of all the Governors. Typically, Richard told me he hadn’t expressed a view but was reporting the views of the rest. Pauline said nothing.

Of course I should have seen it coming, but I hadn’t. I was completely shocked. I had absolutely no idea what to say. I pointed out that I had a contract that they would have to honour, but I made it clear that if they didn’t want me I wouldn’t stay. It all took about five minutes and I said I needed to talk to Stephen Dando, the Head of Human Resources.

I went back to my office and sat there stunned. I had worked flat out for four years to try and turn round a deeply unhappy and troubled organization and was now being thrown out by the people I respected least in the whole place, the BBC Governors. I sat there in disbelief. Fancy being fired by a bunch of the great and the good, people whose contribution to the BBC was minimal to say the least, and who, in recent months, had become more and more obsessed about the survival of the Governors as an institution.

I asked Fiona to come into my room. We’d been together a long time at LWT, Pearson, and now the BBC. She’d arrived later than me at the BBC because Christopher Bland believed that her friendship with the Blairs would be a political liability for me and the BBC. That night I got up and gave her a hug and told her it was over, that the Governors wanted me out, and that I was going to resign.

Over the next hour or so I talked to Stephen Dando at some length. When he learnt what was happening he told the Governors that they were making a disastrous decision and warned them how the staff would react. Pat Loughrey, the Director of Nations and Regions, came in and told me not to go. He too went downstairs to demand to see the Governors, but they wouldn’t let him in. Several members of my immediate team also came in and urged me not to resign.

Around 9 p.m. I changed my mind. I decided I wouldn’t give the Governors the satisfaction of getting rid of me without a fight. I asked Simon Milner to come and see me. He looked horrified when I told him that I didn’t intend to resign and that they would have to sack me.

Ten minutes later I was back in a meeting with Ryder and Neville-Jones. I told them I wasn’t going willingly and that I had never intended to resign, a veiled reference to the discussion Gavyn, Pauline, and I had had the night before. Richard Ryder got angry and slightly threatening, the sort of approach he must have adopted almost daily as a Chief Whip. I stayed firm and told them they must inform the other Governors that I wasn’t resigning. I then went back to my office.

During that evening I talked on the phone with the three people who probably have more influence over me than anyone else. Firstly I reached Sue and told her what was happening. Her response was predictable: ‘Fight the bastards, and if it means you get sacked, get sacked. Who cares?’ That’s my girl. She summed up the very reason why we’ve been together for twenty years. Sue was never very fond of my being at the BBC anyway. She thought the job was too time consuming, and she didn’t like some of the senior people she met there. She thought they were lacking in fun, highly political, and falsely sycophantic.

I also phoned Christopher Bland, my former Chairman at LWT who’d gone on to become Chairman of the BBC and who, in turn, had persuaded me to join the organization in the first place. He had given up being Chairman two years earlier after he became the Chairman of BT, but before he did so he put his future in my hands. He told me: ‘I brought you here so if you want me to stay I’ll turn down BT and stay.’ I thought he was right to take the BT job: he was in his sixties and he obviously fancied one last big challenge, so I advised him to go.

Christopher and I had been in battles together before. Some we’d won and some we’d lost, but he was great to have on your side. He never lost his nerve and I’ve known times when he supported me even though it was not in his personal interests to do so. I’d like to think I’d do the same for him. I loved working for him over the years, and he was always one of my two mentors. When I rang him and told him what was happening he couldn’t believe that the Governors were trying to get me out and promised to do all he could. He appeared on Newsnight later in the evening. He also agreed with Sue and told me that I should tell them to ‘fuck off’.

The third person I rang that evening was Melvyn Bragg, a close friend and my other mentor. Melvyn is probably the cleverest person I know; he knows so much about so many subjects. I first met him many years earlier when I was a young researcher at LWT and he was the famous Melvyn Bragg, editor and presenter of the South Bank Show. I remember being very flattered when he even remembered my name, but as a boy from a working-class background Melvyn had never lost the ability to relate to all around him, no matter what job they did. Much later, when I was Director of Programmes at LWT, I elevated the Arts Department into full departmental status just so that I could have Melvyn on my immediate team.

Melvyn was also one of the people who had encouraged me to join the BBC and had supported what I was trying to do there, although not uncritically. During those last three days at the BBC, he gave me all the support you could ask for from a friend, including writing a wonderful appraisal of what I had achieved in four years in that weekend’s Observer. I got hold of him late on the Wednesday night, by which time I had had a further meeting with Ryder and Neville-Jones. They told me that the Board was adamant: I either resigned or was fired that night. Melvyn recognized that I was terribly upset and asked me how would I want it to be seen in six months’ time: would I rather be seen to have resigned or to have been sacked? I answered ‘Resigned’.

Normally when top executives leave or lose their posts these sorts of decisions are about pay-offs. But money was largely irrelevant in this case. The BBC would have had to pay up on my contract either way.

While all this was happening, Emma Scott – a feisty project manager who had worked with me from the first day I joined the BBC – decided she was going to rally my supporters by ringing around members of the executive team to get them to come in and support me. She persuaded Caroline Thomson to come back and talk to the Governors, Pat Loughrey stayed around for the whole evening, Andy Duncan, the BBC’s outstanding Director of Marketing and now Chief Executive of Channel Four, turned up to support me, and Peter Salmon, the Director of Sport, phoned in to tell me to hang on in there.

Meanwhile Mark Byford, my recently appointed deputy, had been sitting outside the Governors’ meeting for several hours, like the schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s study. Mark and I have always got on well and I’ve always liked and respected him as a professional broadcaster, but I still wonder why he didn’t just wander up one flight of stairs for a chat that evening. Instead, he just sat there on his own for hour after hour. I suspect he was under instructions from the Governors not to talk to me, which would explain it.

I always saw Mark as a possible successor to me within the BBC, but that evening, and in the days that followed, his chances of becoming Director-General were wiped out. It was clear to me that, with Gavyn and me both gone, any new Chairman would want his or her own Director-General, not someone tainted by the events of that night and the weeks that followed. To be fair to Mark, he was put in a terrible position by the Governors, a position that wasn’t of his own making. I have no doubt he did what he thought was his duty: he is that sort of man.

The pressures of that day finally told and I succumbed. I abandoned both the Atkins diet and abstinence from alcohol and ate a whole pizza and drank at least half a bottle of wine while all sorts of people were coming in and out of my office. I’m not sure I can ever forgive a combination of Lord Hutton and the Governors for forcing me to break my diet.

Gavyn Davies, who had been out of the loop since we left the Governors’ meeting together earlier that evening, decided at about 11 p.m. to go home. I had already told him that the Governors wanted me out, but we’d agreed there was little he could do about it. Before he left, he decided to say a final goodbye to his former colleagues, but when he walked into the room he found the atmosphere had changed completely in five hours. It was a very hostile environment, with the aggression mainly coming from Sarah Hogg, who, according to him, was ‘seething’.

I’ve since discovered that Sarah had told Gavyn the day before that he shouldn’t resign but that I should go. Gavyn had told her then that there were no circumstances in which he’d let me go while he stayed, and I genuinely think that that was one of the reasons Gavyn resigned. Gavyn and I had worked very closely together, particularly on Hutton, and we both believed we were right. I think his view was that if one of us should go it should be him and that way he would protect me. According to others at that meeting, when Gavyn walked in Sarah launched a ferocious attack on him, accusing him of ‘cowardice under fire’.

In the end I announced at about one in the morning that I wasn’t negotiating or discussing any more. I was going home. The Governors were still downstairs, but by then I’d had enough. I would decide whether to resign or be fired in the morning. Either way I knew I’d be leaving the BBC.

Outside there was thick snow everywhere and I remember thinking how sad that I’d hardly noticed it falling. I got into the car and told my driver Bill that I was leaving. He, too, got upset. He told me later that neither he nor his wife Ann slept a wink all night.

The following morning I took the usual precautions to avoid the journalists and the camera crews outside my house. In the car I got a call from John Smith, the BBC’s Finance Director, wanting to know what was happening. I told him and he decided to set about working on some of the Governors. He was confident he could get them to change their minds. But I knew it was too late. Overnight I hadn’t slept a lot, but I had taken a decision. I would resign, but over the next few days I would make it very clear I had been given little option by a bunch of intransigent Governors.

So why did I choose that path? Looking back now I am not sure I know. With the benefit of hindsight, I think I should have stayed and dared them to fire me. But at the time I felt isolated. I also felt hurt and had a deep sense of injustice. I didn’t believe that I had done anything to justify resignation, nor did I believe the BBC had done anything seriously wrong. I wasn’t to know then that the staff would react in the way they did and that Hutton would be dismissed so quickly and comprehensively. What I do remember thinking was that if I was to go, I wanted to do so with some dignity.

If the Governors had only waited another day or two there would have been no need for me to leave: by then, it was Blair’s people who were on the run. By the weekend Number Ten couldn’t understand what had happened. The report had exonerated them and yet the public hadn’t. They had no concept then, and still don’t have, of how fast Blair had lost the trust of the people in Britain, of how quickly he’d gone from being seen as an honest and open man to being regarded as a public relations manipulator, a man without real principles. Iraq and spin had destroyed his reputation.

I got into the office about ten past eight on that Thursday morning and immediately started rewriting a couple of draft statements I’d prepared the night before. The first was the public announcement I would make. The second, much more important to me, was the e-mail I would send to all the staff telling them I was going. I was determined that the staff would learn the news from me and that the e-mail would go out before any press or public announcement.

That morning all feels a blur now. I remember lots of people coming in and out, and lots of people crying. Most of my immediate support staff were either crying or trying to stop. I remember Carolyn Fairbairn, the BBC’s Head of Strategy with whom I’d worked so closely over four years, turning up looking as if she’d been crying all the way from Winchester, where she lived. Melvyn Bragg had been presenting his Radio Four programme In Our Time that morning and he too came up to my office and was there for at least an hour, talking to me, advising me, and reassuring my staff. They loved him for showing so much care. In the end even he got upset.