1972: The BBC’s Controversy and the politics of audience participation

In the early 1970s, long before talk of ‘public engagement’ and ‘public dialogue’ was in vogue, the BBC and the Royal Institution (RI) staged a television series, Controversy (1971–1975), that gave audiences an opportunity to participate in debates with scientists on issues in ‘science and society’ – as the Radio Times billed it. ¹ A critical success at the time but now largely forgotten, Controversy was an experiment in science television. As I shall discuss, its format was novel in two ways: first, for featuring expert disagreement, and, second, for introducing audience questions to a television discussion programme specifically devoted to science. As a historical instance of ‘public understanding of science’ (not a phrase commonly used in 1970s Britain), it raises questions about the role of publics in the production of scientific and technological knowledge (Gouyon, 2016). In particular, I shall highlight one moment from the second series in 1972 when a protest of sorts from a women’s liberation group was staged during the audience segment of a programme, as an attempt to subvert the boundary between experts and publics. If measured by the reaction of some of the public to this protest, the attempt could be deemed unsuccessful. But the episode reveals the dominance of the social and political pressures protecting the integrity of this boundary, questioning the reach of television debates on science where the public are given an active, participatory role.

Combining the rather traditional science television genre of the lecture with that of the topical discussion programme, an established television genre since the 1950s, Controversy was probably the first of this latter genre to be dedicated to science-related topics. While scientists occasionally appeared in discussion programmes, rarely did they debate each other face-to-face on television, until, that is, Controversy. ² The experiment, however, was not much repeated. As Carl Gardner and Robert M. Young (1981) observed in their 1981 critique of contemporary science television,

When scientists disagree on television, one talking head is followed by another, and they are almost never in direct conversation, much less in debate. (p. 177)

First broadcast in August 1971, Controversy ran for five series over 29 programmes. Its aim, the series original producer Karl Sabbagh recalls, ‘was to get out an interesting scientific idea that was not settled and therefore the disagreements would allow one to see how science and scientists discussed scientific topics’. The name, format – a speaker presenting a controversial thesis before a panel of opponents and audience in the RI’s theatre – and intention of the series reflected the cultural currents of the late 1960s and early 1970s when the idea of science being controversial was widespread, both in public and in academic discourse (e.g. Nelkin, 1979; see also Agar, 2008). Other television programmes – Doomwatch and Doctor Who in fiction and Horizon and Towards Tomorrow in non-fiction – voiced the prevailing environmental, anti-technocratic and anti-war criticisms present in social movement activism and student protest. Scientists themselves led radical movements critical of science: the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (despite its establishment-sounding name) a notable example (see Bell, 2015). ³ The scientific establishment became increasingly concerned about negative and critical attitudes towards science. Talk of a ‘crisis’ and fears of ‘anti-science’ were widespread.

Encouraging disagreement was a production aim of the programme, inherent in the setting of having a panel of four to six experts (usually, but not always, scientists) especially selected on the basis that they opposed the main speaker’s views. The programmes, running between 50 and 90 minutes each in the edited transmitted broadcasts, followed an established choreography: an introduction of the main speaker and their topic by the chair (usually George Porter, Director of the RI from 1966 to 1985), who sat behind a desk on the side of the RI’s lecture theatre floor; the camera then cut to the lecture theatre door, where the speaker made his entrance before delivering a 10- to 15-minute talk from behind the lecturer’s table, usually illustrated with filmed sequences; the chair would then introduce the panel – sat facing the speaker on the front row of the audience – who would debate the speaker; finally, the audience would be invited to contribute. Audience participation in a discussion programme, then not a common convention (see Crisell, 2002: 237–238), ⁴ added an interesting, political dimension to the expert–public dichotomy in the representation of scientific debate in the series: the format facilitated the idea that scientific experts were accountable to the public and that the public could have a say on scientific issues.

On more than one occasion, the set of Controversy, the RI’s lecture theatre, became a stage for social movement demonstration. When this happened, the confines of the format and the boundary between expert and public broke down, generating a controversy of a different kind: expertise itself was being challenged, thus leading to viewers voicing their concern over such challenge to the order of things. In terms of public complaint, the most controversial programme was ‘A New Look at an Old Animal’ (August 1972), in which the aptly named Robin Fox and Lionel Tiger (who incidentally first met at the London Zoo) argued that human behaviour, including the social roles played by men and women, were governed by evolutionary instincts acquired during prehistoric struggles for survival. They had recently published their ideas in the co-authored book The Imperial Animal (1971), which was in the same trend of popular works on human biology as Desmond Morris’ bestselling The Naked Ape (1967). Radical feminist Juliet Mitchell, who had lectured at the counter-cultural Anti-University of London, was one of the opponents, but the most powerful and lively criticism came during the audience questions.

A women’s liberation group dominated the proceedings. Some deployed the disruptive tactic of reading quotations from Marx and Engels, similar to the ploy used by the 1975 University of Manchester University Challenge team a few years later. ‘Let me tell you something about Engels’, Robin Fox offered in rather patronising tones, in an attempt to engage. He was met with laughter and pantomime jeers, before a heckler shouted, ‘Engels was a sexist, white, Anglo-Saxon male’. ‘Well’, Fox continued undeterred, ‘speaking at least as a white, Anglo-Saxon Male’. ‘Sexist. Don’t forget that one’, interrupted another loud heckle. ⁵ One woman, who introduced herself as ‘Miss Bra of the women’s liberation’, criticised Fox and Tiger of deriving their science from ‘a morality based on aggression and the domination of the man’, thus suggesting that the production of scientific knowledge is not value free and could be different if based on different principles. Similarly, another criticised their patriarchal language and conduct in the debate:

[You] say you’ve been studying ‘men’. I don’t know when you say ‘men’ or ‘man’ whether you always refer to the human race or whether you are referring to your own sex. […] I’ve been sitting here studying you and your relationship to this audience for the last hour. The two people under study, Mr Tiger and Mr Fox, […] they’re very positive to the two males. […] In your relationship to Juliet Mitchell you don’t smile, you put her down, dismiss her arguments. ⁶

The chair, George Porter, then swiftly selected another woman in the audience, who asked with haughty derision, ‘what is the point of this book?’ to which Tiger retorted acidly, ‘what is the point of an apple, a fish, a table?’ ⁷ After Tiger explained the intellectual reasons why they had written the book, a strange and humorous exchange followed. A woman in the audience began,

Are the characteristics of the aggressive male exemplified by the two examples put in front of us? […] I’ve noticed them standing there – why standing all the time? Can’t they sit down? ⁸

‘They won’t bring us chairs’, Tiger interjected. ‘Well why won’t they bring you chairs?’, the woman shot back. ‘It’s a very high desk – it’s a technical problem’, Tiger replied. ‘They can bring you chairs’, the woman insisted’. ‘Get to the issue’, an exasperated Tiger urged. ⁹ The woman continued,

Well anyway, there you two are standing there, getting more and more excited about the questions and getting uptight. You’re worrying yourselves to ulcers and heart attacks in no time. I’m looking at my friends here, sitting here and attending to what’s going on. But they don’t feel the need to compete, to prove themselves successful and right all the time. ¹⁰

At this point, the camera panned out to reveal two cross-dressing men sat behind the woman. ‘They look a much more successful part of the human race than you do’, the woman concluded, to a raucous applause of laughs and claps. George Porter then briskly announced, ‘I’m sorry we’ve come to an end’, which was greeted by jeers. ¹¹ He then offered the final word to Fox and Tiger, although just after Tiger began the protesters walked out through the front of the theatre, picking up the book on the lecturer’s desk before throwing it down dismissively.

Following the broadcast, a flurry of written complaints, all directed at the women’s liberation, were made, including letters sent to Porter, the Secretary of the RI, the BBC, The Times and the Radio Times. The majority, coming from both male and female viewers, complained about the behaviour and conduct of the women’s liberation group. Across the letters, examples of how they were described include ‘abrasive’, ‘discourteous’, ‘an embarrassment’, ‘an insult to the aims and traditions of the RI’, ‘dogmatic believers spreading propaganda’, ‘mindless sub-yippees’, ‘deplorable’, ‘unforgivable rudeness’, ‘extreme narrowmindedness’, ‘appalling manners’ and ‘childish females’. One (male) complaint in the Radio Times letter column (entitled ‘Animal Behaviour’), who claimed to speak from the authority of a ‘practicing sociologist’, dismissed the women’s lib feminist critique of Fox and Tiger as ‘juvenile outbursts of traditional sociological claptrap’. There were even calls for Sabbagh to be sacked for broadcasting the audience segment. ¹² The public reaction to the protest reminds us that the ‘public’ is a multi-vocal entity. Even though the ‘long 1960s’ is often characterised as a time when the cultural climate expressed widespread criticism towards experts and authority, in this instance, many voices surfaced in support of the establishment of science. It is therefore important to pay attention to social stratification when discussing public engagement of science.

Sabbagh published a defence in the Radio Times column of his decision not to exclude any groups from the programme (anyone could apply for tickets) and to open the debate up to anyone in the audience in the final section as a matter of democratic principle. He added that he believed there was a ‘genuine point of discussion’ (without stating what it was) buried behind the language and manner of presentation of the women’s lib group. He did remark, however, that

It was unfortunate that the only contributions from the floor came from Women’s Lib members when there were other more qualified people present, including sociologists, anthropologists and zoologists. ¹³

The implication being that the most valid responses from the audience were those grounded in scientific expertise. The complaints from viewers also suggested there was an appropriate behaviour in which scientific debate should be conducted, as well as an appropriate kind of criticism that could be made. In criticising the gender neutrality of Fox and Tiger’s work, the women’s liberation protesters were interpreted as attacking the values of science itself. Their transgression of the public–expert dichotomy, which ironically the programme’s question-and-answer format intended to reinforce, challenged the idea of scientific authority. There hasn’t been anything quite like Controversy on television since the final series in 1975. We might reflect why such direct scrutiny of scientists by publics, especially in the Question Time audience-panel style format, is absent from science television programming today. Would a protest in the form of the women’s liberation group take place now if such a programme did exist?

Controversy, albeit inadvertently, highlighted the highly political nature of public engagement with science, by which key cultural and intellectual boundaries of science can be challenged: what research should be done; who should be doing it, why and to what ends; and what are the biases and prejudices inherent in its production and end-product. The public backlash to the women’s liberation protest suggests the forces that protect the established order of science were far from vulnerable to mainstream challenge in the early 1970s. What is the situation now? Are we closer to a more widespread – beyond a small coterie of activists – politically charged public engagement of science?