Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Patricia Hodgson
Oration given on 12 July 2001
Chancellor, the Senate of the University has resolved that the degree
of Doctor of the University be conferred upon Patricia Anne Hodgson.
Patricia Hodgson began her lengthy career with the BBC in 1970. After
several years of programme-making, by the early 1980s she had become a member of
the BBC Secretariat and in 1983 was appointed Deputy Secretary. It was at
that juncture that she was told, by one of the BBC’s then Governors, “I just
need to tell you my dear, that you shouldn’t think you could ever aspire to be
the Secretary”.
This remark is a striking example of the way in which women, however talented
and capable, too often find that they have hit what we now call the ‘glass
ceiling’ long before they’ve exhausted their potential. In this case,
however, it simply made her all the more determined to go higher, and in 1985
Patricia Hodgson was indeed appointed Secretary of the BBC. Secretary, she
once said, was like being the “keeper of the BBC’s conscience”. Two years
later, in 1987, she became the BBC’s Head of Policy and Planning, and
subsequently Director of Policy and Planning, one of the most powerful positions
in British Broadcasting. It was in recognition of this that, in 1995, she
was awarded a CBE.
Patricia Hodgson does not mind being described as an ‘Essex Girl’. Born
in Ilford, she was educated at Brentwood High School, followed by Newnham
College, Cambridge, where, the first member of her family to receive a
university education, she took a degree in history.
After Cambridge, her career was a mix of freelance journalism, broadcasting
and politics. There was a brief spell in the Conservative Party’s Research
Department - where she was desk officer for public-sector industries, and,
later, she became Chairman of the liberal-leaning Bow Group, and from 1976 to
1980, editor of its journal, Crossbow. She once contested an Islington
Seat (for her a hopeless prospect) in a parliamentary election, and later served
as Conservative member of Haringey Borough Council for three years. Just
imagine then, the astonishment of an interviewer when she replied that, “I never
joined the [Tory] party. I’m from Essex. I’m an outsider. I
feel it’s healthy to keep a view that is slightly detached”. Detached from
what? she was asked: “From the received wisdom”, she replied. “I’m
against whatever is. The liberal certainties of the Sixties, the Thatcherite
certainties of the Eighties, and the New Labour certainties of today”.
This detachment and cautious scepticism was doubtless an advantage the higher
she climbed the BBC hierarchy. As Director of Policy and Planning, she was
responsible for the BBC’s corporate strategy, policy and relations with
government. Her experience of politics must have been useful, too, when
she was put in charge of lobbying on the Corporation’s behalf at Westminster and
Brussels. Not only that; for over ten years she was responsible for the
BBC’s technical research and development and corporate engineering.
Particular highlights of her successful leadership were negotiating a
licence-fee agreement for a seven-year period; the ten-year renewal of the BBC’s
Charter, and, perhaps above all, planning the launch of the BBC’s digital and
on-line services.
It would however, be a mistake to think of Patricia Hodgson as being solely
an administrator. Her first job with the BBC was back in the 1970s, when
she worked as an education producer for the Open University. She was part
of the founding team that pioneered distance-learning techniques: a novel
concept thirty years ago, but crucially important today in an age of widening
educational opportunity. Most of her production career was spent in the
realms of education, history and philosophy; but she also had spells in current
affairs, including working on the Today and Tonight programmes. As a
programme maker, she was responsible for series such as English Urban History,
Conflict in Europe and Rome in the Age of Augustus. Later, she was to
publish two important studies, Paying for Broadcasting and Public Purposes in
Broadcasting.
Patricia Hodgson’s current job is her biggest and most challenging assignment
yet. It is no exaggeration to say that we are in the midst of a
revolution, the communications revolution. There are doubtless those in
the audience today who can remember when there was radio, but no television
(parts of northern England were without ‘The Box’ until the early 1950s).
Now we have fax machines, cellular ‘phones (remember how until not so long ago
business people ostentatiously carried around a kind of enormous knapsack
containing their ‘mobile’, whereas today everyone seems to have one!).
There is e-mail and the World Wide Web, and we are now entering the digital age.
In the not-too-distant future, every household in Britain could have digital
television, and the entire population could be linked to the internet more
simply and more cheaply than it is now by personal computer. There could
be more than two hundred commercial television channels available to everyone.
It is considerations such as these, and many more, that fall within the
purview of Patricia Hodgson’s job as Chief Executive of the ITC, the Independent
Television Commission, to which she was appointed just a year ago. If
anyone has the credentials to take on that task, she has: experience of
programme making, working at the interface between government and broadcasting,
a successful career in a large corporation, and a record of attainment that
would be hard to beat.
It is a challenge. Commerce and standards, freedom of expression and
the setting of boundaries, quality and viewing figures, advertising and
programme choice, technical innovation and social responsibility - the tensions
and possible contradictions are readily observable in these juxtapositions.
Already, Patricia Hodgson has been tested by the issue of the timing of ITN’s
Evening News (the so-called ‘Battle of the Bongs’), and there will doubtless be
other tribulations ahead. But, whatever happens, we may be certain that
Patricia Hodgson will remain true to her commitment to education (she believes
passionately in “giving something back”); she will be sustained by her delight
in the arts, culture, theatre and drama; her instinctive understanding of
politics will also stand her in good stead; and, above all, she has the support
of her husband, George, and their much-loved son. If anyone can pilot us
through the turbulent shoals of commercial television in the age of the
communications revolution, she will.
Chancellor, I present to you PATRICIA ANNE HODGSON.
Orator: Professor Peter Frank