BBC FOCUS ON COMMUNISM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 633, 17 August 1951, Page 6

BBC FOCUS ON COMMUNISM

HE Overseas Services of the BBC presented last year a series of talks under the general heading, Communism in Practice. The series gave a survey of the problem of Communism in its many aspects and tramifications-Rus-sian Communism with its orthodox rigidity, the still somewhat "moderate" Communism of the satellite countries which is quickly approaching the Russian pattern, and International Communism operating in many parts of the free world and struggling for power. There was -an explanation of the working of the collective farms, the essence of the FiveYear Plan, the true meaning of the Russian Revolution and what the regime meant to the farmer, the worker and the individual and ‘its effects on human and property rights. A little later in the year in its Focus series the BBC set out to give the massive audience which favours the Light Progremme a clear objective picture of Communism. In two programmes, which will be broadcast on transcriptions from four NZBS stations in the next fortnight, there is a search for answers to a number of questions asked today in New Zealand as well as the rest cf the free world about Communism. For instance, what causes it? What sort of people are Communists? What do they want? What

are they trying to do? What makes countries go Communist, and what are they like when they do it? Maurice Gorham and, Hugh SetonWatson, who collaborated on the scripts, shaped their programmes, each lasting half an hour, as discussions, with some

dramatised illustrations between an authoritative narrator, a knowledgeable man and a woman, uninformed, but with an inquiring mind. The first part describes the birth of Communism and its basic tenets as propounded by Karl Marx. It examines the means by which

it established itself in power in Russia under the leadership of Lenin, its growth inside the Soviet Union, and the emergence of Stalin as the unchallenged ruler of the U.S.S.R. after Lenin’s death, "Without Propaganda or Hysteria" The second part traces the progress of Communism throughout the world since the Revolution of 1917, dnd discusses the relationship. between Russian expansionism and the international Communist movement. They have tried, the authors say, to tell the story fairly, without propaganda or hysteria. The programme has been described by an English radio critic as one of the most ambitious and determined efforts on the Light Programme to rouse the public mind, and the script as a cool, factual assessment of the origins of Marxist doc-trine-as "a tight-rope demonstration of absolute and confident balance." The first broadcast of Focus on Communism will be by 1YC on Tuesday, August 21, at 9.30 p.m., and the second half of the programme will be heard at the same time on Tuesday, August 28. Dates for broadcasting by other stations are: 2YA, 8.30 p.m., Friday, August 24, and August 31; 3YC, 9.30 p.m., Sunday, August 26, and Monday, August 27; and 4YA, 4.0 p.m., August 26, and September 2. D. G. Bridson, the producer of Focus on Communism, went into business after leaving school, but, after seven years trying to like it, gave up the struggle and started out as a free-lance poet. Eventually he became a regular feature writer in the BBC’s North Region, and then joined the staff as a producer. He wrote and produced the first radio verse play, March of the ’45, which was specially broadcast to America as representative of the more ambitious work of the BBC. He produced many of the Window on Europe survey programmes, and visited South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in search of material for programmes on life in the Dominions. Maurice Gorham has been with the BBC since 1926. He was for periods on the staff of the Weekly Westminster and the Westminster Gazette. He has travelled extensively, is a boxing fan and amateur criminologist. Light on Yugoslavia Another BBC programme somewhat similar to Focus on Communism is Window on Yugoslavia, which will be broadcast by 2YA at 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, August 26. For 1500 years invasion and conquest have been the uninterrupted lot of the nation that became Yugoslavia in the post-war settlement of 1919. Today Yugoslavia is once more a potential trouble spot, governed by a Communist regime that has been banished by the Cominform for heresy against the true faith as. propounded by the Kremlin. During the autumn of last year W. Farquharson Small of the BBC, and Matthew Halton, Canadian commentator and writer, travelled through Yugoslavia collecting material for Window on Yugoslavia. They were given interpreters, so that they could talk to people in their homes and they say they found everyone extremely frank, from Marshal Tito downwards. No attempt is made in this programme to judge the way of living in this land of contrasts and contradictions; it presents facts as Small and Halton found them.