Anthony Eden objected to the way the BBC reported dissent

The BBC’s External Services are paid for by what is called "grant-in-aid" from the British Foreign Office.

In the austere post-war years, with financial cuts being made in government departments, it was almost inevitable the BBC would suffer.

The 1950s began badly for the Corporation.

In spite of support from the Foreign Office and Colonial Office, the Labour Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell said he could not afford “frills” as he faced much-increased defence spending on the Korean War, and the BBC’s grant-in-aid was cut from £5.3 million to £4.75 million.

Even though the Conservatives opposed this, they refused to reverse the reduction after winning the 1951 General Election.

In fact, in 1952 they froze the figure, meaning finances were even tighter.

The 24-hours-a-day General Overseas Service, the forerunner of the World Service, was cut to 21 hours, and there were big reductions elsewhere, particularly in daytime broadcasts to Western Europe.

The outcry led the Conservatives to promise an inquiry, led by Lord Drogheda, which recommended that the General Overseas Service should be restored to 24 hours a day.

It also criticised heavy cuts in the Latin American service and called for a new building programme to transmit BBC broadcasts around the world.

But the inquiry also proposed cuts in some services and put more emphasis on English language broadcasts, aimed at opinion formers, something with which the BBC disagreed.

The proposals were never published in full, and after the Suez crisis of 1956 the report was shelved.

Listen to the sounds of the World Service during the 1950s

The Suez Crisis

Suez split a nation - and brought relations between British government and the BBC to a new low. The crisis came after Egypt’s President Nasser nationalised the Anglo-French Suez Canal Company in July 1956.

In retaliation, Britain and France secretly supported an Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula. The crisis escalated when the Soviet Union offered its support to Egypt.

As this was the Cold War, the United States wanted to stop any expansion of Soviet influence. So it put pressure on Britain and France to pull out, which they did in November.

What made this an awkward time for the BBC was that, unlike during the Second World War and later conflicts such as the Falklands and Iraq, there was no broad consensus in Parliament.

The two main parties at Westminster were split, and though the Labour Party, led by Hugh Gaitskell, began by opposing Nasser’s nationalisation of the Canal, they swung round to being highly critical of the Conservatives under Anthony Eden.

The Prime Minister made a broadcast to which Gaitskell demanded a reply. Eden opposed the idea, believing the country should be united in what he regarded as war and feared troops’ morale would be undermined. But asked to arbitrate, the BBC agreed to Labour’s request.

Listen to Anthony Eden's speech

Listen to Hugh Gaitskell's speech

The government backs down

Gaitskell’s broadcast on the Suez crisis played up the divisions that Suez had caused - so much so that Antony Eden’s PR adviser, William Clark, called for parts of the speech to be edited out when it was broadcast on the Arabic Service.

The problem, as Anthony Eden saw it, was the way the Arabic service in particular reported dissent.

Even before military action began, reviews of the British newspapers that reported the critics were broadcast - something the government believed undermined its position.

To drive that point home, director general Ian Jacob was called to the Foreign Office and was told that ministers planned to cut the BBC’s grant by a million pounds.

Over the following weeks, under regular attacks from the Foreign Office and Conservative MPs, the BBC stuck to its principle that it did not broadcast one story to Britain and a different one to the rest of the world.

When it reported an editorial in the Manchester Guardian, describing the Anglo-British invasion as “an act of folly without justification”, the decision was backed all the way up to the chairman, who ruled that press reviews should continue as before.

In the end, it wasn’t the BBC that backed down, it was the government. International pressure from the US and the United Nations forced Eden to withdraw British troops and shortly afterwards, an ill and exhausted Prime Minister flew to Jamaica to recuperate.

The following year, he resigned.

The 1956 Hungarian uprising

The Suez crisis overshadowed the 1956 uprising in Hungary, which was brutally put down by the Soviet army. But the BBC’s role in broadcasting to Hungary was acknowledged by Budapest Radio on the day before Soviet tanks moved in.

It offered its thanks for the BBC’s "objective information about the people’s struggle."

As refugees fled Hungary, a survey suggested that 90 per cent of them considered the BBC to be the most reliable outside broadcaster in Hungary - even though Voice of America and Radio Free Europe had more listeners there.

While some Western stations might have hinted that help was on the way, the BBC was more blunt: the West would give only moral, not military support.

After the uprising, the BBC’s Hungarian Service broadcast personal messages from refugees that had left Hungary for Britain.

In their messages, the refugees used code names so that the Hungarian authorities would not be able to identify their families.

Listen to messages from Hungarian refugees (Hungarian)

Credibility items catch on

The BBC was not short of Hungarian expertise.

A joke among émigrés at the time was that there were only three kinds of Hungarian in London: "One who used to work for the BBC, one who works for the BBC and one who will work for the BBC."

A vital aid to the BBC’s accuracy during the time of the Hungarian uprising was the head of the British legation in Budapest, Sir Leslie Fry.

Reports he sent to the Foreign Office, if they had no security implications, were passed to the Hungarian Section.

The BBC’s standing among Hungarians was investigated by American broadcasters. They sent a team to Bush House to study the BBC’s methods.

Their conclusion was that the BBC was not afraid of including items that were not flattering to Britain.

As a result, the Americans started including a “credibility item” in all their overseas bulletins, reporting something critical about the US.

More money troubles

Suez may have been a success for the BBC’s integrity, but as the 1950s rolled on, the External Services were still struggling to juggle their finances.

In 1957 the BBC director general Sir Ian Jacob reckoned that cuts in grant-in-aid from the British Foreign Office since 1949 amounted to £1 million a year - more than 20 per cent of the annual budget.

Over that time 400 staff had lost their jobs, while transmitters were underused and in need of modernisation.

Also in 1957, the Government issued another White Paper of proposals.

They included doubling the output of the Arabic Service to 9-and-a-half hours a day – in order to restore Britain’s battered reputation after Suez – and daily services to Africa in Hausa, Swahili and Somali, to counter broadcasts from Radio Cairo in Egypt.

Also agreed were new transmitters and relay stations. But European services in particular were badly hit.

The Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Austrian and Portuguese services were scrapped (although Portuguese would be revived six years later), along with Afrikaans for South Africa.

The French and Italian services were both cut back, along with the North American service. Overall there was to be a net increase in spending of £58,000, but that contrasted with what the BBC had wanted: £500,000 to restore the cuts earlier in the decade.

The result was that Poland was now broadcasting more hours to Western Europe than the BBC.

Listen to the last broadcast from the Afrikaans Service (Afrikaans)