It's too late to bash Birt

During his 10 years as chairman of the BBC, Marmaduke Hussey said goodbye to two director-generals and now reveals he would have removed a third, given the time. The three men - Alasdair Milne, Michael Checkland and John Birt - could hardly have been more different. Milne, "brutally" fired by Hussey, was a mercurial programme-maker who had risen through the BBC ranks. Checkland was a mild-mannered, popular executive with a background in accountancy. Birt was the commercial-television outsider, an analytical producer and scheduler.

We must assume that Milne wasn't commanding enough, Checkland not radical enough and Birt not popular enough. What kind of superman was Hussey looking for?

The first instalment of Hussey's memoirs plunged me into confusion. He was critical of the BBC management for being an insular club, yet seems to have taken most of his advice from a narrow group of Establishment figures.

He rails against the BBC bosses' penchant for alcohol and cigars, yet carries out most of his own business over "delicious wines" at the Rothschild Bank and meals at the Berkeley and Brooks's club. Michael Checkland's interview for the job of director-general is described as "absolutely superb", yet within four years Hussey was refusing to renew Checkland's contract, provoking even mild Mike into a celebrated outburst that the governors probably thought FM stood for "fuzzy monsters".

Hussey welcomed John Birt to the BBC as Checkland's deputy, giving him the unenviable first task of sorting out the news and current affairs operation which was seen as out of control and continually landing the Corporation in trouble. This was a baptism of fire for the man from LWT, who quickly came up against the BBC's most disaffected, entrenched and anarchic staff - the journalists.

The bloody process of reform won Birt many enemies among the old guard, but undoubtedly left the BBC with a well-resourced international news machine operating to standards admired the world over. The development of a network of foreign bureaux, the recruitment of specialist editors and correspondents and the introduction of a code of journalistic practice, all derided at the time, laid the foundations for rebuilding the BBC's high reputation.

Hussey then installed Birt as DG with a brief to introduce more radical change more quickly right across the Corporation, hardly a recipe for popularity. For many years, Hussey urged Birt on. He backed the introduction of the internal market against tough opposition from the staff, repeat-edly insisted that the headcount should be reduced as the only sure way of demonstrating increased efficiency, and demanded sweeping cuts in studio and resource over-capacity. All this inevitably set in train the painful process of people losing their jobs or radically changing the way they worked. Staff were hardly likely to carry the leader of such change shoulder-high to the canteen.

At the same time, Birt was asked to redefine the BBC's role in such a convincing way that the Government would renew its Charter and increase its licence fee. Even Hussey points out that this was a tough challenge. The BBC's relationships with politicians had hit an all-time low under Milne, yet it was these same politicians who would decide the future of the organisation. Birt and his colleagues set about systematically rebuilding bridges with politicians of all parties. He saw this as an essential part of the job. Just as any captain of industry should be connected to the views of key shareholders, so a BBC chief executive should be aware of the concerns of the parliamentarians to whom he is ultimately accountable. To accuse Birt of "arse licking" as Hussey allowed himself to do in Sunday's paper is an unbecoming and unfair piece of abuse.

But are any of the criticisms of Birt fair? Hussey says he "lacked the two prime skills of managing and getting on with staff ". True, he wasn't a great orator, rarely inspiring the troops; true, he could be ruthless in pursuing his objectives; and true, he sometimes seemed to disregard the bruising effects of some of his policies. But in any programme of change on this scale, it was inevitable that many people would be hurt and disaffected.

Did Birt make mistakes? Of course. Were some talented people unnecessarily lost? Sadly, yes. But was the change necessary for the BBC to survive and grow in the rapidly changing digital age? Absolutely.

So, where did the relationship between chairman and director-general turn sour? Attention has focused on Hussey's fury at Birt's failure to alert him to the Panorama interview with the Princess of Wales until it was too late to stop the broadcast. But what would Hussey have done if he had known? Any interference in the editorial process by a chairman with such strong royal connections would have provoked outrage inside and outside the BBC.

If the anti-Birt abuse is based on this flimsy platform, we can only feel sad that Marmaduke Hussey is, in effect, robbing himself of credit for many major achievements. The modernisa tion of the BBC, the rebuilding of its news and current affairs output, the removal of much scandalous waste of public money, the renewal of the Charter in 1996, to say nothing of truck-loads of awards across all genres of television and radio, were achieved during his tenure.

But he would have sacked the man who led these achievements. Reading the memoirs at a time of debate about the future regulation of the BBC, the key question to emerge is not about the personalities involved, but about the role and constitution of the governing body. Hussey was apparently given no briefing before taking on the job of chairman. "Oh, don't worry about that, you'll find out what's necessary when you get there," he quotes the then Home Secretary Douglas Hurd as saying. Nowhere in the published extract do we learn how Hussey and his Governors knew that they were taking the right actions, and there's little evidence of accountability or transparency in their procedures. In revealing this so vividly, Hussey may unwittingly hasten further reform of the institution he chaired.

Matthew Bannister is former director of BBC Radio.