How the BBC found itself facing an existential crisis

Does the BBC have crisis in its bones? Its story is certainly strewn with the rubble of political bombardment - from above and from the sides.

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It was during the May 1926 General Strike that the BBC got its first real taste of malevolent interference from powerful outside forces. With the newspapers shut down, the BBC, barely equipped at all for the role of newsgatherer, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight as the only purveyor of strike news. It lashed together a makeshift newsroom and worked around the clock to put out long, detailed bulletins that tried to report both sides of the conflict with reasonable fairness.

This vague - and far from perfect - attempt at even-handedness was precisely what irritated a government that was vehemently opposed to the strike. The chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, was particularly incensed. He'd just launched the British Gazette, a crudely partisan newspaper full of hysterical reports about misbehaving strikers. Why, he wondered, should the BBC not be turned into a radio version of the same publication?

Word reached the BBC's general manager, John Reith. He knew full well that under the terms of the licence, Stanley Baldwin's government had the ultimate power in a national emergency to commandeer the BBC outright and require it to broadcast certain messages. With the threat from Churchill left hanging over him, Reith had a choice to make. He could resist all pressure and carry on as before. But this carried the very real risk of a complete government takeover, and with it the end of the BBC's as yet fragile independence.

Or he could fudge.