After all the very first anti-nuclear demonstration I ever went on was

After all, the very first anti-nuclear demonstration I ever went on was in 1967. It was a grey March day at Aldermaston, and I was two months old. I may not remember the event, but I’ve got a photograph that my father took to remind myself of the day – me in a pushchair, my mother pushing it, and my sister in a little cart draped with banners. “Aldermaston ‘67!” says one, “Swords Into Ploughshares!” says another. My parents were rebels with a cause, and it was quite a while before I realised that other families didn’t spend their bank holidays carrying banners and singing protest songs.Then my teens coincided with the resurgence of the peace movement as a response to the siting of Cruise in Britain.

I wasn’t a much more active participant the second time around, but at least I got to the demonstrations under my own steam and got to hold up my own banners.How, then, can I be so sure that if the prospect of a renewed nuclear arms race came any closer, people would be getting out again and lining the streets? Wouldn’t the years of failure hold them back? I don’t think so. Because in fact peace movements rarely fail completely, even if they never succeed completely. You can say that the Sixties peace movement failed, but then you can read that American military top brass were thinking of dropping nuclear bombs on Vietnam until they realised that their own public wouldn’t take it. And if the British government is already worried about the prospect of anti-nuclear demonstrations, that shows that the peace movement has a force that its own participants rarely recognise.The peace movement hasn’t disappeared, even if it has drifted out of the news. CND is planning a big demonstration at Fylingdales (where the equipment for the new national missile defence system could be based) in July, and it was only last year that the three women who tried to disarm a Trident-related installation in Scotland were acquitted in a sheriff’s court. Sure, many peace campaigners have drifted away or gone into other protests, such as GM foods or anti-roads protests or events such as the Seattle protests.

But those protests are breeding a new generation of activists, and the old guard will no doubt come back if the threat of a renewed nuclear arms race comes nearer.My father, Nicolas Walter, an inveterate peace campaigner, died last month; looking back through some of his articles and pamphlets, I am struck by their energy and optimism in the face of all the odds. “We are living in a world where faith is always misplaced and hope is always betrayed,” he wrote in 1963, “but somehow we contrive to keep faith and hope alive.”Another man who has just died, Alex Comfort, is being remembered primarily as a sex guru But many people remember him more as a persuasive pacifist. “In peace as in war,” he wrote in 1945, “the only final safeguard of freedom is the ultimate willingness of the individual to disobey.” Those two individuals may not be here to take part in future protests, but I don’t think that spirit has died out yet.. I hope to learn three things from the statement that Greg Dyke, the new director general of the BBC, is due to make to his staff this morning. I want to know what his vision is for the long- term future of the corporation. I should like to see whether he has devised a management structure that favours creativity.

And I do wish to have resolved a conflict of interest that continues to niggle – that the BBC now has an editor- in-chief (the second of Mr Dyke’s roles) who has given substantial sums of money to the political party in power. I hope to learn three things from the statement that Greg Dyke, the new director general of the BBC, is due to make to his staff this morning. I want to know what his vision is for the long- term future of the corporation. I should like to see whether he has devised a management structure that favours creativity. And I do wish to have resolved a conflict of interest that continues to niggle – that the BBC now has an editor- in-chief (the second of Mr Dyke’s roles) who has given substantial sums of money to the political party in power.
The “vision thing”, as President Bush memorably called it, is the most difficult. For we are rushing towards a world in which we can all be broadcasters. That will happen shortly, when a satisfactory combination of moving images and sound can be transmitted from one home computer to another via the Internet.

It is possible to imagine that somebody may create a website that carries a daily episode of a soap opera. If bright young film-makers can create good entertainment much more cheaply than the standard fare – see the box-office success of The Blair Witch Project – we can expect to see the same phenomenon on the Internet.What that means is that Mr Dyke will be in charge while the last vestiges of the BBC’s original monopoly finally disappear. It will have happened in stages over a 50-year period – starting with the creation of commercial TV and including the three advances in delivery systems – satellite, cable and the Internet.And, of course, when the BBC has become just another broadcaster, large and respected though it may be, with a superb brand image, yet in competition with an infinite number of other suppliers, it will become much more difficult to justify the licence fee. If we don’t have a state newspaper and magazine publisher, nor a state book publisher, nor a state film company, why should we have a state broadcaster?Mr Dyke could choose to ignore all that. If he is conservative by nature, he could argue that until the shape of the new world is apparent, it is best to go on as before. The levying of a licence fee is still uncontroversial – at least for the time being – and the natives aren’t getting restless. Frankly, they haven’t thought about it, so why arouse them? Let’s get on with the world as it is in these, the first 12 months of the new millennium.