Out of Time: BBC Northern Ireland and the Paradoxes of Partition

Abstract

This article considers the contradictions of British broadcasting in northern Ireland. Established in 1924, following war and partition, the BBC in the sectarian state of Northern Ireland was permitted to develop at an arm’s length and out of sync with the national model of British broadcasting. Structured on the colonial presumption of neutrality on the part of British interests in Ireland, British television, during the Troubles, took for granted the legitimacy of partition and, as a result, misconstrued the causes of conflict. Throughout the period up to negotiation of the 1998 settlement – the Good Friday Agreement – and down to the present era, British perspectives on the crisis neglected the precedence of parallels in the Irish experience of partition, notably, since 2010, when confronted with the resurgent forces of ethnic nationalism (aka Brexit). In its post-public-service dotage, the BBC has responded poorly to a constitutional crisis from which the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (that is, the UK) may not recover. So much so that, by now, amid a series of politically awkward centenaries, it is argued, the BBC and the partitionist project of NI, are each in their own way manifesting signs of morbidity, and both are running out of time.