Normally when top executives leave or lose their posts these sorts of decisions are about pay-offs. But money was largely irrelevant in this case. The BBC would have had to pay up on my contract either way.
While all this was happening, Emma Scott – a feisty project manager who had worked with me from the first day I joined the BBC – decided she was going to rally my supporters by ringing around members of the executive team to get them to come in and support me. She persuaded Caroline Thomson to come back and talk to the Governors, Pat Loughrey stayed around for the whole evening, Andy Duncan, the BBC’s outstanding Director of Marketing and now Chief Executive of Channel Four, turned up to support me, and Peter Salmon, the Director of Sport, phoned in to tell me to hang on in there.
Meanwhile Mark Byford, my recently appointed deputy, had been sitting outside the Governors’ meeting for several hours, like the schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s study. Mark and I have always got on well and I’ve always liked and respected him as a professional broadcaster, but I still wonder why he didn’t just wander up one flight of stairs for a chat that evening. Instead, he just sat there on his own for hour after hour. I suspect he was under instructions from the Governors not to talk to me, which would explain it.
I always saw Mark as a possible successor to me within the BBC, but that evening, and in the days that followed, his chances of becoming Director-General were wiped out. It was clear to me that, with Gavyn and me both gone, any new Chairman would want his or her own Director-General, not someone tainted by the events of that night and the weeks that followed. To be fair to Mark, he was put in a terrible position by the Governors, a position that wasn’t of his own making. I have no doubt he did what he thought was his duty: he is that sort of man.
The pressures of that day finally told and I succumbed. I abandoned both the Atkins diet and abstinence from alcohol and ate a whole pizza and drank at least half a bottle of wine while all sorts of people were coming in and out of my office. I’m not sure I can ever forgive a combination of Lord Hutton and the Governors for forcing me to break my diet.
Gavyn Davies, who had been out of the loop since we left the Governors’ meeting together earlier that evening, decided at about 11 p.m. to go home. I had already told him that the Governors wanted me out, but we’d agreed there was little he could do about it. Before he left, he decided to say a final goodbye to his former colleagues, but when he walked into the room he found the atmosphere had changed completely in five hours. It was a very hostile environment, with the aggression mainly coming from Sarah Hogg, who, according to him, was ‘seething’.
I’ve since discovered that Sarah had told Gavyn the day before that he shouldn’t resign but that I should go. Gavyn had told her then that there were no circumstances in which he’d let me go while he stayed, and I genuinely think that that was one of the reasons Gavyn resigned. Gavyn and I had worked very closely together, particularly on Hutton, and we both believed we were right. I think his view was that if one of us should go it should be him and that way he would protect me. According to others at that meeting, when Gavyn walked in Sarah launched a ferocious attack on him, accusing him of ‘cowardice under fire’.
In the end I announced at about one in the morning that I wasn’t negotiating or discussing any more. I was going home. The Governors were still downstairs, but by then I’d had enough. I would decide whether to resign or be fired in the morning. Either way I knew I’d be leaving the BBC.
Outside there was thick snow everywhere and I remember thinking how sad that I’d hardly noticed it falling. I got into the car and told my driver Bill that I was leaving. He, too, got upset. He told me later that neither he nor his wife Ann slept a wink all night.
The following morning I took the usual precautions to avoid the journalists and the camera crews outside my house. In the car I got a call from John Smith, the BBC’s Finance Director, wanting to know what was happening. I told him and he decided to set about working on some of the Governors. He was confident he could get them to change their minds. But I knew it was too late. Overnight I hadn’t slept a lot, but I had taken a decision. I would resign, but over the next few days I would make it very clear I had been given little option by a bunch of intransigent Governors.
So why did I choose that path? Looking back now I am not sure I know. With the benefit of hindsight, I think I should have stayed and dared them to fire me. But at the time I felt isolated. I also felt hurt and had a deep sense of injustice. I didn’t believe that I had done anything to justify resignation, nor did I believe the BBC had done anything seriously wrong. I wasn’t to know then that the staff would react in the way they did and that Hutton would be dismissed so quickly and comprehensively. What I do remember thinking was that if I was to go, I wanted to do so with some dignity.
If the Governors had only waited another day or two there would have been no need for me to leave: by then, it was Blair’s people who were on the run. By the weekend Number Ten couldn’t understand what had happened. The report had exonerated them and yet the public hadn’t. They had no concept then, and still don’t have, of how fast Blair had lost the trust of the people in Britain, of how quickly he’d gone from being seen as an honest and open man to being regarded as a public relations manipulator, a man without real principles. Iraq and spin had destroyed his reputation.
I got into the office about ten past eight on that Thursday morning and immediately started rewriting a couple of draft statements I’d prepared the night before. The first was the public announcement I would make. The second, much more important to me, was the e-mail I would send to all the staff telling them I was going. I was determined that the staff would learn the news from me and that the e-mail would go out before any press or public announcement.
That morning all feels a blur now. I remember lots of people coming in and out, and lots of people crying. Most of my immediate support staff were either crying or trying to stop. I remember Carolyn Fairbairn, the BBC’s Head of Strategy with whom I’d worked so closely over four years, turning up looking as if she’d been crying all the way from Winchester, where she lived. Melvyn Bragg had been presenting his Radio Four programme In Our Time that morning and he too came up to my office and was there for at least an hour, talking to me, advising me, and reassuring my staff. They loved him for showing so much care. In the end even he got upset.
All morning the e-mails had been pouring in from staff urging me not to resign, but at around 1.30 p.m. I sent out my e-mail statement to the staff. It was typical of my all-staff e-mails. I had started sending them almost as soon as I joined the BBC and found it an incredibly effective way for a Chief Executive to communicate with every member of staff. During my four years I refused to send out long, boring e-mails; I wanted people to read them, so they had to be short, to the point, and interesting. This one would certainly have an impact. It was only a few paragraphs long, free of jargon, and in a language everyone could understand. It said:
This is the hardest e mail I’ve ever written. In a few moments I’ll be announcing to the outside world that I’m leaving after four years as Director General. I don’t want to go and I’ll miss everyone here hugely. However the management of the BBC was heavily criticised in the Hutton Report and as the Director General I am responsible for the management.
I accept that the BBC made errors of judgement and I’ve sadly come to the conclusion that it will be hard to draw a line under this whole affair while I am still here. We need closure. We need closure to protect the future of the BBC, not for you or me but for the benefit of everyone out there. It might sound pompous but I believe the BBC really matters. Throughout this affair my sole aim as Director General of the BBC has been to defend our editorial independence and to act in the public interest.
In four years we’ve achieved a lot between us. I believe we’ve changed the place fundamentally and I hope those changes will last beyond me. The BBC has always