The BBC postpones Steptoe and Son and David Coleman has an unlikely interviewee

It was the satirist Juvenal who famously declared that the only two things his fellow Roman citizens longed for were panem et circenses – ‘bread and circuses’. As long as those in power kept them fed and entertained, he opined, his countrymen would never get around to examining their lives or, the gods forbid, rise up against their emperor. It’s a cynical viewpoint but it does perhaps offer a more astute insight into human nature than we would care to admit.

In 21st-century Britain, where a public poll on a television talent show can generate more excitement and passion than a vote in a parliamentary election, the observation seems to have lost none of its relevance. It also lends credence to a rather extraordinary story about a decision that looks likely to have changed the result of the 1964 general election. It involves a would-be prime minister, the director-general of the BBC, and a cup of tea in a kitchen.

In 1947, at the age of 31, Harold Wilson had been drafted into Clement Atlee’s Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, making him the youngest Cabinet minister since William Pitt the Younger. Sixteen years later, after the death of Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, Wilson was elected to head the party. The Conservatives had been in power since 1951 and the still relatively youthful Wilson was keen to end their reign.

He was aided by the fact that his opponent in the general election of October 1964 was Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home, an aristocrat rather lacking in charisma who, like Wilson, had taken over the leadership of his party in 1963 (from Sir Harold Macmillan).The Conservatives had also been struck by a series of very public scandals, including the Profumo affair, in which the eponymous member of parliament had been discovered to be in a relationship with a woman – Christine Keeler – who was also entangled with a Russian diplomat.

However, the Tories had successfully styled themselves as the natural party of government and Wilson knew that despite their ill-advised choice of leader and the air of sleaze about them, they would be difficult to beat and that he would need everything to go his way if Labour were to win. Perusing the television schedules for the evening of the general election, he noticed something that filled him with dread. At 8P.M., the BBC was showing a repeat of an episode of Steptoe and Son.

Over 50 years later it’s difficult to imagine how this could have seemed such a devastating blow to the Labour leader. However, in those halcyon days before the internet, before video recorders, and when there were only three channels to choose from – BBC One, the newly launched BBC Two, and ITV – television programmes could accrue massive ratings. In 1962, the comedy-writing team of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson launched Steptoe and Son onto an unsuspecting British public. The tale of two impoverished West London rag-and-bone men, played by Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett, was an instant success, frequently drawing 14 million viewers and sometimes up to 20 million. This is all the more remarkable when one considers that the total population was not quite 54 million at the time.

Back in 1964 the polls closed an hour earlier than they do today. In an interview given to the BBC in 1981, Wilson told of his fears that Labour voters might have been sorely tempted not to turn out to cast their vote if the alternative was half an hour in the company of the nation’s favourite scrap collectors. ‘Polling then ended at 9 o’clock,’ he pointed out, ‘and a lot of our people – my people – working in Liverpool, long journey out, perhaps then a high tea and so on… It was getting late, especially if they wanted to have a pint first.’

Not one to beat about the bush, Wilson called at the home of Sir Hugh Greene, the director-general of the BBC, in order to discuss the matter over a cup of tea.

Greene gave an interview to the BBC in 1982 explaining what happened next:

Harold Wilson that evening began by accusing the BBC of plotting against him. I told him that he must really know in his heart of hearts that that was untrue, and unless he withdrew that remark there was no point in our discussing anything – we could just have a drink and that could be that. He did withdraw and we talked about the Steptoe and Son problem.

The next day I discussed the matter further with the controller of BBC One and we thought a good idea would be to nudge it from early in the evening until 9 o’clock, when at that time the polls closed. I rang up Harold Wilson and told him about this decision and he said to me he was very grateful – it might make a difference of about 20 seats to him.

As it happened, Labour won 317 of the House of Commons’ 630 seats, an extremely narrow victory that gave Wilson the smallest parliamentary majority since Lord Stanley’s Conservative win in 1847.

The episode of Steptoe and Son that was moved to 9P.M. that night was ‘The Bonds That Bind Us’ (featuring June Whitfield), in which Albert wins £1,000 on the Premium Bonds. There’s a pleasing symmetry in old man Steptoe’s windfall and the bonanza that the shifting of the programme by an hour delivered to Harold Wilson. The prime minister was able to call a snap election two years later and increase his majority to nearly 100, securing him a further four years as the leader of the nation (he won a further two from 1974–76).

During those six years, Wilson was socially very liberal, abolishing capital punishment and easing laws on abortion, censorship and homosexuality, while bringing in laws to help in the fight against discrimination on the grounds of sex or race. He kept Britain out of the Vietnam War but was forced to devalue the pound. He also applied for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) but was turned down. Under his premiership Britain also saw the expansion of higher education, including the establishment of the Open University which the Wilson government legislated for (it opened in 1971, by which time Labour had been swept from power). Its model of teaching has been imitated all over the world.

It’s worth noting that, to a great extent, Harold Wilson’s undoing in the 1970 general election can be laid at the door of another television show that also had nothing to do with politics. When the deeply unpopular leader of the Conservative Party, Edward Heath, won the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race in December 1969, he was interviewed by David Coleman on a programme called Sportsnight.

The appearance suddenly showed Heath in a completely new light – until then he had been generally viewed by the public as a posh, stiff and emotionless man who was hopelessly out of touch with the concerns of the average Briton. Although he doubtless remained all of these things, his new image as a successful sportsman gave the party a more appealing veneer, and Wilson – who was reportedly angered by his opponent’s Sportsnight slot – crashed to unexpected defeat at the polls just six months later.

As a result of Heath’s win, Britain experienced the miners’ strikes of 1972 and 1974 and the consequent three-day week caused by electricity rationing. An ardent Europhile, Heath succeeded where Wilson had failed, signing the treaty of accession that sealed the UK’s entry into the EEC on 1 January 1973. He also introduced Value Added Tax (VAT). This quickly became the Conservative Party’s stealth tax of choice, with subsequent Tory governments raising it from Heath’s initial 10 per cent on most products (some were subject to a higher rate) to 15 per cent, 17.5 per cent and now to 20 per cent. This, one of the most enduring elements of Heath’s legacy (even more enduring than Britain’s membership of the European single market, it would seem), affects the life of every Briton pretty much daily, particularly those at the poorer end of society who spend a greater percentage of their income on goods that attract VAT.

As such, Sportsnight can perhaps make a greater claim to changing the political face of the nation than many a television programme dedicated to politics.

But we should leave the last word to Harold Wilson and Steptoe and Son. In Wilson’s 1981 interview, he recalled his meeting with Sir Hugh Greene:

I said I didn’t want a popular programme between 8 and 9 o’clock. It was the equivalent of bringing Morecambe and Wise back. Hugh didn’t think much of this argument. He said what would you prefer to put on between 8 o’clock and 9 o’clock? I said, “Greek drama, preferably in the original.”

It would have been highly appropriate had the BBC filled the slot with such a play: a module on Greek drama is offered at Wilson’s Open University today.