TRANSCRIPT
Roger Hayward - Chairman of the PR Standards Council
Rhoddri Morgan - Welsh First Minister
Tony Benn - Labour MP
and James Naughtie
James Naughtie:
I spoke to Roger Hayward, Chairman of the PR Standards Council, earlier. Is he surprised at what happened?
Roger Hayward:
Terrible. Many people think public relations is about froth and frivolity but really it's strategic. It's all about what an organisation does, and the policies it has, not just about how it talks about itself. To have public relations people in the headlines like this is very bad.
James Naughtie:
But of course, as we say, it reinforces the worst image of the trade. Do you think this outfit behaved in the sorts of standards that you'd expect to see within your industry?
Roger Hayward:
Absolutely not at all. Public relations is about building good strategies, strategies that will win public goodwill fundamentally so it's what the organisation does and not just what it says. It's got nothing to do with fixing, nothing to do with sleaze, nothing to connections and so on. It's very disappointing particularly - I know Murray Harkin because he worked for me some time back and I thought he was a highly promising, intelligent, capable chap so to speak - but the Countess herself, she's worked for two or three of the best people in the public relations business and it's really a great disappointment to see her behaving in this way.
James Naughtie:
You say it's not a matter of connections, but it's pretty clear isn't it, reading the words, leaving aside what the News of the World got up to. The words are there, it's pretty clear that the peddling of connections was part of the business.
Roger Hayward:
Yes, that's right. A year or so ago there was a lot of debate in the public relations industry about this and in fact I defended her position because I thought that the peripheral members of the Royal Family do in fact have an intelligent, sensible job to do and at that time it seems as if she were heading in the right direction. But you shouldn't be using connections like this and it's not good for the business and it's certainly not good for the clients and I think it damages public relations in general.
James Naughtie:
I suppose it's easier to imagine a member of the Royal Family doing some other sort of business where obviously their name might have some cachet and might have some business effect, but in PR of course it's particularly true that it can be used as a sort of come on, because of the nature of the business.
Roger Hayward:
Yes, that's right, but 90 per cent of good public relations is not seen by the public and it shouldn't be because we're supposed to be strategists, advisers, working in the boardroom, helping companies get their policies right. Generally, when the public relations person gets into the headlines, it's bad news and this is a very good example of it and it's very sad that she's been using this connections.
James Naughtie:
It's extraordinary in a way, just to go back to the fundamental point that somebody can go and have a meeting with someone whom she'd never met, Mr Harkin had never met before, turned out to be a fraud of course, and start chattering away in this fashion.
Roger Hayward:
There had been some concern in the industry that their business was rather lightweight and superficial. To have a meeting of that nature without doing basic checks would seem to suggest that because you automatically, with any client, particularly one that you don't know, you do a check, you do a credit check, you do a rating check. You don't want to be working for somebody who's not ethical. That would suggest that the organisation was working at a pretty superficial level, in other words they were skating on very thin ice.
James Naughtie:
Roger Hayward, thanks very much. That's the chairman of the PR Standards Council, from inside that industry some surprise and as he said disappointment. In the political world of course there's fierce criticism as well. The question is raised once again perhaps more sharply than before where it leaves the monarchy. Rhoddri Morgan, the Welsh First Minister, believes "the Sophie Episode" is a blow for modernisation in the institution.
Rhoddri Morgan:
This latest incident has been a bit of a knock for those of us like me who believed that the best way for the House of Windsor to survive would be to adopt the Scandinavian model, namely for the younger royals to take up professions, to get on with a job of some kind, to find a useful way to make a living, having a profession, being schoolteachers, nurses, whatever it might be and going to work as normal. I still think there is a kind of mid-way third way if you want to call it that between republicanism and old-fashioned royalism. I still think the Royal Family does need to modernise or it will not survive probably the death of the present incumbent. I must admit that the Sophie Wessex escapade has set back that cause by perhaps, well, ten years.
James Naughtie:
That's the Welsh First Minister Rhoddri Morgan. With us now the Labour MP and republican, Tony Benn. Mr Benn, is there a third way, or is it a question of going on as things are at the moment with all the inherent difficulties that we've seen in the last few weeks as opposed to abolition?
Tonn Benn:
To understand this you have to differentiate the monarchy and the Royal Family. The monarchy is absolutely essential to control this country. You're not allowed to elect the head of state, I'm not allowed to, Sue isn't allowed to, we're taught from birth that we're unfit to elect our head of state. Secondly, it protects privilege. If you've got privilege at the top everyone with privilege down the line is covered. Thirdly, it controls everybody. I'm a republican. I have to tell a lie to sit in Parliament.
Jim Naughtie:
To take the Oath of Allegiance?
Tony Benn:
To take the Oath of Allegiance, which I don't believe in. Why should I tell a lie? The 91热爆 has a Royal Charter for that matter. The Prime Minister needs the monarchy more than anyone because the Prime Minister couldn't stuff the House of Lords with his friends if it wasn't for the patronage.
James Naughtie:
You're talking about the Royal Family?
Tony Benn:
Then when you look at the Royal Family, the guys at the top don't give a damn about the Royal Family. Look they sacrificed Edward VIII, the King, in 1936. I heard his farewell broadcast as a child. They're prepared to get rid of the king, get rid of Sophie Wessex. So long as you can keep the monarchy. It's very unfair to attack the Royal Family because they didn't pick the job. After all, the Queen was born in the right bed, to the right parents, at the right time, why blame her? I'm absolutely opposed to attacking the Royal Family.
James Naughtie:
I understand that. What's your assessment of the way the political argument about the place of the monarchy in the stratosphere is going to go as a result of this and other episodes.
Tony Benn:
As I say, the Royal Family has nothing whatever to do with it. We should lay off the Royal Family and if the Queen wants to live at Buckingham Palace, change the Guard every hour, paid for by the tourists, fine. I want to live in a democracy where I can pick the head of state, where the Prime Minister can't send us to war without consulting Parliament, where he can't put people in the House of Lords, and the bishops elect themselves. That's what I want and it's nothing to do with the Royal Family so in a way this is a diversion.
James Naughtie:
It may be a diversion, but you've watched Labour politics in a long life as a participant for most of that period. You're looking now at an argument which has been promoted by what you may regard as irrelevant personality questions, but none the less the argument has been promoted and sharpened by that fact. Where do you think the republican argument in the Labour Party stands now compared with what it was in the past?
Tony Benn:
I think there are several roles, which would replace the Queen as head of state by an elected head of state. You can't even debate a bill you know about the monarchy without the consent of the Queen. I've sent it to Buckingham Palace, I've had letters back ...
James Naughtie:
She's never refused ...
Tony Benn:
Saying perfectly alright you see and that's what we'll concentrate on. Forget the gossip, after all everybody gossips. This idea that her saying something would be any different than you'd catch any Cabinet Minister saying privately to his mates. I think it is about privilege and to blame her for wanting privilege - after all only four lives lie between Sophie and the Queen - if Prince Charles and his sons died, and Prince Andrew died, she'd be queen. And so if to say how unfair that she should want privileges - the system would make her queen. And I think if you could just lay off the Royal Family and concentrate on the institution and have a democratic society it would release them, they could then go and work in PR firms, go on television, and we would have a constitution that we elected. One day that will happen.
James Naughtie:
Tony Benn, with that republican view, thank you very much. Let me bring in our political editor Andrew Marr who's on the line. Andrew looking at the politics of this in the Labour Party which after all is the governing party at the moment, how do you assess things?
Andrew Marr:
I think the interesting thing is that if you get almost any minister, not all of them, but most of them, in private, late at night and you're talking about this kind of thing they'll be pretty robust about the need for the Royal Family to slim down a lot, there worries about Prince Charles becoming king eventually with his strong opinions. The Queen has held this together by saying nothing quotable for 40 years. It's iron self-discipline and of course it's much harder for the younger generation, but in public they say almost nothing at all. Tony Blair sets the tone for this and he's a genuine monarchist I think, just as much as for instance Gordon Brown sets the tone for the economics. So to talk out about republicanism now is a bit like calling out for the nationalisation the top 100 monopolies or something, in economic terms, absolutely unsayable.
James Naughtie:
Anyone who thinks that the word is going to be mentioned in the next Labour manifesto better think again.
Andrew Marr:
They certainly had. There's no doubt there's going to be change and reform in the Royal Family, but the government is almost standing aside from it at the moment. This is a battle between the press and the monarchy.
James Naughtie:
That's the interesting question isn't it. The issue is whether this episode, strange and frothy and bizarrre though it is, is going to change that, whether some people around the Prime Minister and some people around the Royal Family sit down together and say look if we don't sort this out, then this all may get beyond our control.
Andrew Marr:
Well, you may say that the brave thing would be to do that. That it's not enough to stand aside and allow endless stories like this to craw away at the authority and position of the system without the government doing something about it. Even if it's dangerous, even if it gets them into trouble with other parts of the press. But at the moment ministers won't criticise the system, they won't discuss individual members of the Royal Family and above all, when they're asked, they don't dare criticise the press. So we see two kinds of authority, the royal authority and the power of the press in this kind of grim armlock with the government standing to one side with its arms folded.
James Naughtie:
Andrew Marr, thank you very much.
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Please Note:
This transcript was typed from an on-air broadcast and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the 91热爆 cannot vouch for its accuracy.
