So it’s over – for now. After two weeks of unprecedented protest, the BBC has bowed to the inevitable and suspended immediate plans to disband the BBC Singers. There are caveats, though: the funding to keep them afloat has been offered by external organisations, which would be a new model entirely for a BBC ensemble and raises a number of questions. These options are only being “actively explored” – no done deals yet. And let’s not forget the orchestras, over whom the axe of redundancy still looms. But we can be cautiously optimistic. The BBC is committed to the Singers and “still plans to invest more widely in the future of choral singing across the UK”.
If this all works out then – a big if – we could be looking at a win-win for choral singing in this country. That we have got to this point is testimony to the extraordinary surge of activism over the last fortnight, uniting protest across the musical world and forging unlikely common cause across the political spectrum: when did all major newspapers – even the Spectator and the Morning Star – last agree on anything? It’s worth taking a moment to recall the breadth of opponents to the BBC’s plans: a worldwide coalition of conductors, composers, choral directors; music teachers and academics; professional, amateur and children’s choirs; most major UK music organisations and colleges; and 150k petition signatories. Nor was this opposition behind closed doors, but played out in furious newspaper columns and most of all in the bear pits of social media, where ingenious methods of coordinating action and awareness delivered huge responses.
In other words, we did it. Collective protest on a huge scale is what made the BBC U-turn. The battle may not be over, but we now know that we can fight back against these and other cuts, that we can make ourselves heard, and that we are many.
That’s an important lesson to draw from this exhausting episode. After the Arts Council cuts in November, the sense of fatalism that has blanketed the UK’s music scene since the twin disasters of Brexit and Covid has seemed nigh-on stifling. Perhaps the BBC thought another kick wouldn’t make much difference to an already disheartened sector, but it miscalculated, for two reasons.
First, it’s the BBC. Unlike ENO and Britten Sinfonia, world-class and deserving of support though they are, the BBC is part of our national DNA, an essential part of how we see ourselves as a nation and a culture. Culling the Singers and decimating the orchestras felt to many people like lopping off a limb, or at least (as composer John Adams sardonically put it, in reference to The Banshees of Inisherin) a couple of digits.
Second, it’s singing. In proposing to close the BBC Singers, the BBC inadvertently reminded us that we are a singing nation: that we have proud, diverse and – yes – world-leading choral traditions, deeply rooted in communities and intrinsic to the lives of those who participate as singers or their audiences.
So the rebellion was forged and the BBC climbed down. Good. Now we need to take the energy and love for choral singing that the last fortnight has unleashed and turn it into a great, nationwide movement. The BBC could be at the heart of this, with its new choral strategy: hopefully this time round they will manage to achieve the wide consultation they egregiously failed to do before. And they’re dead right that widening access and diversity needs to be at the centre of its plans.
Which brings us to the government. The last few weeks may have been a fiasco for the BBC (and in the light of the shocking revelations of mismanagement, several should be considering their well-remunerated positions) but it was a fiasco born of the government’s vindictive cuts to the corporation’s licence fee settlement in the first place. Any true cultural recovery in this country will only come about when the government starts viewing culture as the priceless asset it is and funds it properly. Most of all, we need music and singing back in schools and at the heart of a curriculum that truly nurtures our children.
Amid the outrage, the last few weeks have witnessed a heartening reassertion of our cultural values and the beginnings of a glimmer of hope for the future. We must build on it, and next time, remember that we are not alone.
