Back to the future: 1979-1989
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That's life in the 1980s

The positive power of television

Essay

I look back on the 1980s with real affection.

Born in 1940, I married in 1977, and had my children in rapid succession. So I spent the decade juggling my work with the delight of three toddlers, taking them to nursery school, watching them playing hide and seek in BBC dressing-rooms when I was getting ready to present my strangely memorable consumer programme 'That's Life!', and enjoying idyllic holidays together as a family. So my personal life was extremely happy.

Of course the news covered terrible tragedies during the decade, from the death of John Lennon, to the Miners' Strike, and Hillsborough. But there was also good news, and a major landmark in my professional and emotional life, the launch of 'Childline' in 1986. The helpline that for the first time offered children the possibility of reaching out for support and help themselves owed everything to technology, then the telephone, now the internet. And technology, television, launched it into millions of homes, straight into the heads and hearts of the children who needed it the most. The national launch of Childline, October 30 1986, was made possible because of the huge part played by television in everyone's life at that time.

our TV campaigns were enormously influential and hit home

These fragmented days, when there are so many different channels and media to watch or stream, five million is regarded as a huge audience. In the 1980s 'That's Life!' regularly reached audiences of between 15 and 23 million viewers, topping the ratings. That had its downside. When I was filmed being arrested in 1981 for wilful obstruction, conducting street interviews and handing out bat soup in Hammersmith, that moment of notoriety meant from then on people shouted 'Guilty!' at me wherever I went.

But it also meant that our TV campaigns were enormously influential and hit home. MPs who usually criticized programmes they had never seen due to their long working hours actually managed to watch television on Sunday nights. They knew their voters watched 'That's Life!', so they did too. When we called for reforms on behalf of our viewers, parliamentarians acted to change laws.

For example, when a doctor tipped me off about the lethal danger of children unbelted in the backs of cars ('You wouldn't leave your fine china loose on the back seat, so why let your children run the risk?') the morning after our broadcast the Minister for Transport was sitting with his ministerial red box in our office, asking 'Can I help your campaign?' And Peter Bottomley did help, by commissioning film of what happened to a child dummy unbelted in the back of a car colliding with a wall at 25 miles per hour. The dummy went straight through the windscreen, we broadcast the film, and a new law compelling children to wear seatbelts was passed in 1989.

Similarly, when we told the story of Ben Hardwick, an adorable toddler who was dying of liver disease and could only be saved by a liver transplant, we changed public attitudes to transplant surgery and there are generations of people alive today thanks to Ben Hardwick, his donor Matthew Fewkes, and their brave families. 15 million viewers tuned in to see each new instalment of Ben's story, the book I wrote with the then-researcher Shaun Woodward became the number one best-seller, and we launched a charity in Ben's name.

Childline reaches young people

The creation of Childline, though, was the most far-reaching consequence of all the campaigns created by 'That's Life!'.

We were preparing a documentary for BBC One called 'Childwatch', and decided to base it on a survey of 'That's Life!' viewers who were prepared to describe their experiences of abuse or neglect in their own childhood. (We already knew 'That's Life!' viewers would trust us with confidential material, because we had used a similar survey as the basis of a previous documentary, 'Drugwatch').

children felt supported and empowered by their calls to our counsellors

But I also realised that, because our programme was such an extraordinary mixture of comedy and tragedy, with talking dogs, and cats that played ping-pong accompanying stories of injury or injustice, a great many children watched the programme. So after an edition of 'That's Life!' when we included a report about child abuse, we opened a children's helpline for 48 hours, and in that time it was swamped with calls from young people, almost 100 of whom reported sexual abuse they had never been able to disclose before.

I will never forget the morning after our programme had transmitted, listening to the social workers describing how children felt supported and empowered by their calls to our counsellors, and realising that this way of reaching out to suffering children was more important than anything else I had been involved with.

As I write 33 years later, when Childline has been copied around the world, has helped more than four and a half million children in the UK, has 12 bases around the country with 1,400 trained volunteer counsellors, its creation in 1986 is still a landmark in my life, and perhaps also in the history of child protection.

Childline in its earliest days was helped and supported by two iconic women of the decade, Margaret Thatcher and Diana, Princess of Wales. Shortly after Childline launched, Mrs Thatcher held a reception for the charity in 10 Downing Street, to which all the relevant Ministers were invited, along with potential supporters. And among the early donations was a personal cheque from the Princess of Wales, who remained a crucial supporter, and opened the charity's bases in London and in Glasgow, and launched the 10th Anniversary Appeal in 1996, the year before she died.

A decade of giving

I am well aware that the 1980s are supposed to be the selfish, 'Me' decade. But for me, it was also the decade of giving. After Childline was launched, and urgently needed support, the 'New Musical Express' created a contemporary version of 'Sergeant Pepper' to raise funds, and as the result, the Wet Wet Wet version of 'With A Little Help from my Friends' went straight to number one and stayed there for five weeks, paying for Childline to open a base in Glasgow. The launch of 'Live Aid' and 'Band Aid' also used the power of television to tap into public compassion and generosity. And 1980 launched the telethon version of 'Children in Need', which has become not just a national carnival, but the most effective fund-raiser for children's charities. I was lucky enough to co-present that first show with Sir Terry Wogan, live, once again a landmark moment I will never forget.

Is it sexist, special pleading also to point out that in the 1980s women were making a serious mark on worlds which had previously been closed to them, with the first female Prime Minister in Britain, a royal princess (married to Prince Charles in 1981) who dared to do far more than cut ribbons, and I was allowed as a BBC presenter/producer to bring to the screen issues like mental health, child safety from dangerous cots to stillbirth, which had not been taken seriously in the media before? As a working wife and mother, I was given the opportunity to bring my emotional life into the office as men were rarely allowed to. So for all its faults, I look back at the 1980s as a decade of giving, of using television as a force for good, and giving women valuable new opportunities, with real affection.

See also:

Further reading

  • 'A secret life', by Esther Rantzen (London: Century, 2003) [National Library of Scotland shelfmark: N3.203.0695].
  • 'Ben. The story of Ben Hardwick', by Esther Rantzen and Shaun Woodward (London: BBC, 1985) [shelfmark: HP2.85.3035].
  • 'Children and racism: A ChildLine study', by Mary MacLeod (London: ChildLine, 1996) [shelfmark: QP2.97.1331].
  • 'Feel safe at home: What to do if violence is happening around you', by ChildLine and NSPCC (London : NSPCC, 2009) [shelfmark: PB1.209.50/16].
  • 'Listening to ten-year-olds: A ChildLine study', by ChildLine (London: ChildLine, 1996) [shelfmark: QP2.202.3603].
  • 'Promoting the use of seatbelts in Wessex', by Wessex Positive Health Team (Winchester: Wessex Regional Health Authority, 1980) [shelfmark: QP4.83.1739].
  • 'That's life!', by Esther Rantzen (London: A Barker, 1978) [shelfmark: H8.78.388].
  • 'Why me?: Children talking to ChildLine about bullying: A ChildLine study', by Mary MacLeod, Sally Morris, and Valerie Howarth (London: ChildLine, 1996) [shelfmark: QP2.97.3203].

 

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