"Due to technical problems..." - Stuart Pinfold's Blog

You are listening to the BBC. Good evening, this is London.

The encirclement around Gaddafi is getting tighter. Tripoli is still under his control, but conflicts between armed groups loyal to Gaddafi and his opponents are going on in the capital’s vicinity…”

This is how usually all the BBC World Service programs in Serbian would start until 25th February 2011. From today, both announcements and programmes in which you could hear “This is London” will become history due to major changes at the BBC World Service.

“Balkan service: Albanian, Macedonian, and Serbian…”

Due to the economic crisis and the need to save money, 5 foreign language services out of 32 are closed, the Serbian service among them.

This is the last broadcast of the BBC World Service in Serbian. A programme that after exactly 71 years, 5 months, and 10 days of broadcasting through the wireless and the Internet closes its sliders, turns off its microphones and shuts down its computers. Therefore, do not hold it against us for dedicating the remaining 30 minutes of our radio life to our memories and mementos. Because this is, we guess, what should be done in situations like this is.

“This is London calling.”

“You are tuned to the general overseas service of the BBC.”

“This is London. British Radio Transmitters are broadcasting today’s last programme for Yugoslavia.”

“This is Radio BBC in Beijing. Kampala. Reykjavik. Delhi. Wherever you are, you’re with the BBC.”

This is how history of the BBC World Service programme compressed into thirty seconds might sound. The history of the programmes for Yugoslavia, and later for Serbia specifically, was much longer, as my colleague Jelena Bogavac reports.

Da-da-da Dum… Da-da-da Dum…

This signal, Morse code for the letter V – the first letter of the English word “Victory” – was at the beginning of all BBC broadcasts to Europe during the war years. In Yugoslavia it was first heard on 15th September 1939, only ten days before Britain declared war on Nazi Germany.

Da-da-da Dum… Da-da-da Dum…

In those first years of the war, although not officially participating in the conflict, Yugoslavia was strategically a very important region, considering the seemingly unstoppable expansion of German occupation. But soon Yugoslavia too was drawn into the conflict. Milan Suđić, editor of the Belgrade newspaper Pravda, was hired as one of the first announcers for BBC Programme for Yugoslavia, and he was on duty on 6th April 1941. Once he recalled that dramatic morning:

“I was sleeping here, in this building’s shelter, when the officer on duty woke me up, early in the morning, about 4 a.m. What? He said ‘Yugoslavia is under attack!’ And what else he could say? We all cried, all of us who were here at that time. We did not separate from each other, neither as Serbs or Croats, nor as ones and the others. We were all united, and we got along as well as we could. We were consoling each other.”

During the Second World War, British politics greatly influenced orientation of the BBC Programme for Yugoslavia. In the first years there was a strong connection and co-operation with the representatives of the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London. That is how the young king Petar came to BBC by the end of 1941 to encourage his people with his speech.

“I firmly believe that the upcoming generation, my generation, will get together to work with me, to achieve the great aims of this war: justice for the people united with co-operation, justice for the man protected in his dignity.”

However, the politics of the British government changed in respect of Yugoslavia during the course of the war. Churchill decided to support Tito and the Partisans, who, as he predicted, resisted the Germans most successfully.

“This is London. British Radio transmitters are broadcasting today’s last programme for Yugoslavia, on one wavelength.”

The first British liaison mission was sent to Yugoslavia in 1943. Its head was Sir Fitzroy MacLean. Army representatives were soon followed by journalists. By the beginning of 1944, the BBC broadcast its first story from warring Yugoslavia. Its author was Dennis Johnston, who also interviewed a young Partisan girl.

“We, women of Yugoslavia, have been fighting for more than two and a half years for our liberation from the slavery under fascists; fighting together with our sons, brothers and husbands.“

The following year, 1945, brought victory over fascism. On 8th May, all programmes of the BBC World Service, including those for Yugoslavia, started with the Winston Churchill’s statement, announcing surrender of the German forces.

“Yesterday morning, at 2.41 a.m. at general Eisenhower’s headquarters…”

London and rest of the Europe celebrated the victory of the Second World War that day.

The war was over, but BBC programme for former Yugoslavia continued to broadcast.

“We are starting this broadcast with the overview of the most important news. The Soviet Union claims that the United States of America…“

In the mid-80s, when this programme of then BBC Yugoslav Service was broadcast, the Berlin wall was still firmly standing in its place, and the West and the East were on their opposite ideological and media positions. That was true for the former Yugoslav region too.

And then followed the 90s: The blood-shedding fall of Yugoslavia, conflicts and destruction from Slovenia, through Croatia and Bosnia, to the conflicts in Kosovo and NATO attack to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

“NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia, long-threatened, is tonight under way with massive force…”

“Last night the Federal Government declared the state of war in Yugoslavia.”

Throughout, programmes by the BBC and other similar western radio stations were treated either as propaganda instruments of the bully politics of the western countries plotting against Serbia, or as a channel to hear and learn something different, and for those in Serbia – who at that time opposed the rule and politics of Slobodan Milošević – to show their opposition to the West.

“The whole of Belgrade is full of people wandering around as if…”

“Day after day, most of the people in Serbia begin to understand that we are aiming for something that is good for them also, not only for us and our party, for some our rule, but mainly for them, for the people of Serbia.“

“Dear, liberated Serbia…”

In those and such times the work of all of us in London was simply inconceivable, inseparable, and finally, impossible without the contribution of our dear colleagues from the BBC Belgrade bureau.

The question to pose at this moment is not whether BBC had influence onto happenings in Serbia and the region, but how important it was to those for whom it had existed – the listeners.

“I think that people in Serbia will be deprived of an objective and impartial image of the happenings in these territories…”

“I am absolutely not moved with that story because I think that generally, same as any other foreign news service, they contributed to a bit negative connotation of our country…”

“I think it is a big mistake.”

“I think they should have kept it, that those were excellent journalists who provided lots of information, so I think they are making a big mistake and they will find out only later about it.“

All periodical reviews showed that is was important, but it is best comprehended with an actual example, of course. Jovan Ćirilov, surely an important person of local cultural life, was one of the regular listeners.

“…and I am personally affected because I am of opinion that BBC Serbian Service was a standard for our journalists, a model for objectivity, impartiality regarding its country of residence – which means it was critical of Great Britain also – and personal loss because I know that those professionals, our journalists and listeners had a lot to learn from the BBC Serbian Service.”

It was only after the news that the programme is being closed that we found out about the interest of the listeners for our broadcasting. Journalist, writer, literary and film critic, Milan Vlajičić:

“I understand the internal policy of BBC; they are cutting down some costs; but I also think that in the long run that empire – and I am talking about empire in a positive sense, not a historical colonial empire – that empire which still sets some high standards, will lose the battle in the world; and I also think that it will come back to hit them in a bad way. But, what is important now, it is that we are at loss here, in this region, and I cannot but express my sorrow and my loss.”

It is easily noted that in this last broadcast there are no politicians. There had been enough of them, and they are an unsteady category also, today they are here yet tomorrow they aren’t, in contrast to our colleagues, friends, listeners, analysts, public figures.
“For me, as a journalist with 30 years’ experience, closing BBC Serbian Service is a sad news, because it has become a media heritage of this region,” explains the FoNet News Agency Editor-in-Chief, Zoran Sekulić:

“As a man who, for seventeen years, has been running his own private news agency, that has been co-operating with BBC since its very first day, I am expressing a real great content because of the fact that we had exceptionally successful mutual professional co-operation, exceptionally successful collegial and personal co-operation with the BBC, that we had often used BBC as a relevant and trustworthy news source, and I hope that BBC also could rely on FoNet as a source of impartial and above all correct and reliable information.”

An expert in Kosovo affairs, Dušan Janjić, was a frequent guest to our Belgrade office:

“Firstly, a serious bridge between Serbia, West, and, before all, London; secondly, it was, in hard times that passed and that are also coming – but we will, unfortunately, not have it from now on – it was a voice of freedom. A chance to speak out. With this, Serbia, considering the political situation, media situation, and media control – and this was one of rarely professional services – Serbia is entering a zone of darkness. Informative darkness. And, I would like for this closure of the service not to be accepted by the rulers of Serbia as an omen that the time has come for all lights in Serbia to be turned off.”

And now, let us pass to the other side of the microphones.

Miloš Janković, former BBC correspondent from the south of Serbia, during the last years helped his Belgrade colleagues whenever necessary, and remained with us until the closure of the service.

“I must emphasize that in the BBC office I met my wife Jasna, who came to the Belgrade office for practical training, same as the numerous ones before her. Therefore, this overshadows any other beautiful moments I had with the BBC. I believe that our life together will be as exciting as the work in Serbian Service was.

A trademark of the Belgrade office were surely the ‘Platters’, which was the name all colleagues gave to the most experienced among us, to Slobodan Stupar and Đorđe Vlajić. After eighteen years working for BBC, Đorđe recently became Editor-in-Chief of the Radio Belgrade First Programme. He says that closing language services shall leave a dramatic hole in the media space both in Serbia and in the rest of the Balkans.

“I felt then, and I still do, as someone whose favourite toy had been taken from him. We had made here such a working ambience that least looked as a place for work, although we had had a lot of work here, quality work, and I dare say lot of work. This was more of a sanatorium. No one had ever had a quarrel here, with anyone. Besides being place where, I dare say, all major figures from Belgrade and Serbia eagerly came, it was also a place where colleagues liked to come, and a place where people who worked here liked to come to.

“Any family, and this small Belgrade family also, has its pillar. Journalists think only of their own work, and all other work – ranging from organisation to finances – was managed by Slavica Ivanović, who did not recognise the word “impossible”. Her new nickname, Yugoslavitsa, she was given from our British colleague, Mark Lowen.”

“Well, guys, I don’t know what to say… It’s very hard, but I’ll try in my very bad Serbian: The team here was my second family and I shall never forget any of you. Good bye and good luck to the whole Serbian Service, from me, Markić Lovenović. Come one, toast for the BBC Serbian!”

“Mark is right, toast should be held both to all that had been and to all that is awaiting for all of us, in Belgrade and in London alike.

“Zorka Đukanović, Mairjana Živković, Slobodan Stupar, BBC Belgrade”

All that time, reports about happenings in Kosovo had an important and essential place in our programmes, before all thanks to our correspondents there. Our Tanja Vujisić used to report from Kosovska Mitrovica.

“Before any question to those whom we interviewed we tell them all who we work for. In Kosovo, reactions to BBC were so different, and they ranged from pleasure to breaking your reporter’s recording equipment. One had to be skilled to report on all those happenings, which here were more than enough, and to win their right to have all active sides in the political stage heard, because it was not so rare to have a politician trying to, as they say, clarify why his opposing politician should not be either asked or heard.

“… it is prejudicing of the status…”

“… the point is that it loses its future… “

“… we are expecting favourable outcome…”

“… and I shall thoroughly co-operate with the Hague Tribunal…”

“… but, I think there is no,…”

“… Serbia supports defence of its people and its territory…”

“… Kosovo will be a failure of a country, it is more than obvious…”

“… We are doing our job, which is to maintain safe and secure environment…”

“… I will say it quite frankly: Kosovo north is keeping as hostages…”

Still, the one thing that probably left the profoundest impression are the stories – reporter accounts of so-called common people. Besides being thankful to all those who shared their life stories with the listeners of the BBC through all these years, we are also content that some of our story heroes were helped right after having their stories broadcast.

“… We are shortest with flour. It is sad, my child, what I am speaking about…”

“… It was 13, 14, up to 15 degrees below zero, so that most of the people here were freezing, because they did not have furnaces…”

“… It is a gang! Gangsters!”

“… Does anyone see, has anyone got eyes to see?”

“… With handcuffs on our hands, a treatment as if we had been animals.“

“… Everything is possible. There are two nations only: the man and the monster!“

“… I love when you talk, in all this insanity…

Working for the BBC Serbian Service for the past seven years was my honour and pleasure, and this last report, 1080th, ends with the same words: for the BBC, from Kosovska Mitrovica, Tanja Vujisić

Experiences gained through work in Priština are described by our colleague Violeta Oroši:

“It is hard to describe in a few sentences the experience I gained through working for the BBC Serbian Service, but what I am sure of is that always here in Kosovo we receive reports on the poor situation in media and on their subordination to the current politics, individuals, businessmen, I say to myself that it is good that I am not in the same pot and that I work independently. And what is also important, the trust that was established between myself as a correspondent and my colleagues in London, as well as the broad audience, had never been questioned.

Surely, occasionally there had been issues of authenticity of the information, trustworthiness of the source. And what always made me happy is that we could always provide more information to our listeners. Dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo held in Vienna, the declaration of Kosovo independence, various accusations and judgements, institutional crises, elections, various protests – both peaceful and violent – but also a true endeavour to reach the truths of the two still unreconciled communities of Kosovo – the Albanians and the Serbs – they were always main focus of the BBC’s attention and the attention of myself as the correspondent.

There was another thing which used to make me very excited. Something that is seldom felt in any other profession but this one, what made me feel privileged to work for the BBC: the growing adrenaline just before I am to report live with the happenings still going on, where one needs to remain correct, precise, when simply one cannot forget any important detail, because the omissions are inadmissible. Or situations where I realise that I had sent my report in the very last moment, only a few minutes or seconds before frequent and often unannounced power restrictions in Kosovo; electricity, naturally, being necessary to establish an Internet connection.

However, with a sincere hope that our paths will meet somewhere once again, the only thing left to me is to respond from these well-known radio waves: for BBC, from Priština, Violeta Oroši.”

Time passes quickly, and today there aren’t many left who have worked in this service during the past seventy one years. However, although few in number, their memories are abundant and vivid.

“This is London, BBC radio transmitters are broadcasting this programme in Serbian.”

The voice of David Wedgwood Benn who, from 1975 to 1984, was head of then Yugoslav Service of the BBC World Service. But, his friendship with Yugoslavia and its people dates far back before that time.

“I first visited the country in 1945, as a student. I came with my father who was chairman of the world Inter-Parliamentary Union. Serbia seemed to be a Soviet satellite, if we talked about politics all we did was repeat what was in the newspapers.”

David Wedgwood Benn visited Yugoslavia once more, three decades later, this time as a head of Yugoslav Service of the World Service, at the time when Britain and Yugoslavia shared very friendly relations.

“In spite of that, we did not adhere to the censorship conducted by the regime. For instance, we reported excerpts from Milovan Đilas’ book ‘Warring time’ (Ratno vreme), as well as the news that Tito was not living together with Jovanka Broz any more. Authorities sometimes protested against that. We did not try to advise our listeners. Our wish was to gain their trust as a source of quality, trustworthy information, of which, in my opinion, they were often deprived.”

Our correspondent emphasises that at that time, the BBC was neither against Tito not for him, but that it solely reflected the attitudes of the British public and the British government. Wedgwood Benn admits that he and his colleagues had great difficulties at that time to find out if anyone was listening to what they were working about.

“For a long time, even members of the staff thought that no one listened to the Yugoslav Service, and then, in the early 80s, my colleagues on holidays in Yugoslavia were told by their friends and relatives that they had listened to them a couple of days before. I was worried about conducting inquiries about rating of our broadcast, because that would have to be approved by local authorities first, and even then people might be intimidated to acknowledge their listening to foreign radio programmes.”

David Wedgwood Benn remembers that the Yugoslav Service was an environment with Serbs and Croats working together not only as colleagues, but to a great extent as friends also. And an environment where smoking was allowed.

“I smoked a pipe all the time, but I had a habit to lose it often and forget where I had put it, and then all my Yugoslav translators stopped their work and started to look for my lost pipe. It was only when they found it that they come back to their typewriters and continue to translate.”

David Wedgwood Benn, former editor of the Yugoslav Service of the BBC World Service.

A voice of the BBC in former Yugoslavia, Vladeta Janković is now the Serbian ambassador in Vatican City. He says that for him closing the Serbian programme awakens mixed feelings, and somewhat induces two different interpretations.

“When you take a look at this today, a sentimental moment of farewell, on one side, one is surely saddened. It is a beautiful institution with huge tradition, almost a century long, that is being closed; but everything comes to an end eventually. And, on the other side, it could be regarded optimistically. Serbia is no more in the focus of the world attention as a centre of negative energy. We are now like everyone else. It is not only we who are being closed, but also many other services, in other languages. If only the crisis came to the end. This is what I want to say, that it was a lighthouse in the world of politics and information.”

Our former colleague, now ambassador Vladeta Janković, tells about his memories of the work in the BBC Serbian Service, in a style characteristic to this medium:

“It is one part of life where one felt that he was contributing, I hope not to sound pathetic, contributing to the general welfare.”

A significant impression to our programme and a deep trace in history of the service was left by one of the greatest Serbian writers of the twentieth century, Borislav Pekić. He used to read into the BBC microphone his Letters from London, transformed later into his books ‘Letters from Abroad’. Excerpts from Pekić’s letters are read by my colleague Miodrag Vidić, and the story of how the letters appeared for BBC is told by Pekić’s wife Ljiljana.

“His programme started in 1985, 150 letters recorded in total, within 6 months. The agreement was for him to come to BBC every other week, to read his letters, his impressions about London, the English and so on. I think that was a simple way to have another look at the English, and us, and anyone else, to include someone who could note such things, some characteristics of the English and us, the Yugoslavs.

“In contrast to other nations, the English feel certain kind compassion to foreigners, sort of missionary compassion, inherited from the colonial time and the experience with the savages of the Empire. The savages were to be tamed, while, if possible, remaining alive yourself. And, same as the only chance for the savages was to get actually tamed, without complete loss of their own spontaneous savageness, sometimes also including the inclination to the cannibal diet, because otherwise the English compassion could not be expected, exactly the same is your only chance to start feeling well here – to remain the savage, i.e. the foreigner. Tamed foreigner, naturally, but still – the foreigner.

“For him, the hardest thing was to conclude how much time he actually needs to compact one topic into five or six minutes, because it was rather detailed. Another problem was to find his own approach to the topic; and then he found the solution in confrontation of the two characters. One was an imaginary Živorad, who was personification of Yugoslavs, and he was confronted to the other man, Mr Jones, who represented a typical Englishman.

“Well brought-up Englishmen – every one, as it is considered here – never really quarrels, except in the Parliament. He merely clarifies misunderstandings. Well brought-up Živorad, as soon as they start quarrelling, they stop being well brought-up and return to their origins with visible excitement of someone who was long kept in the quarantine of the civilisation.

“When quarrels are among the Italians, the Greeks, the French, our Živorads, you can see them not only as experts of the skill but as people who enjoy what they are doing. When you catch an Englishman quarrelling, the first thing that catches your eye is that he is doing it reluctantly and lamely, and next you see that he cannot quarrel at all.

“Of course, he was glad to receive some letters through the BBC. He used to receive letters from listeners, and he was surprised how many people listened to that programme and how much it meant to them, how much they found it interesting to hear another opinion, a different view of the world, and especially to learn something about England, about London, about everything and anything that he described in such a vivid and interesting way, and of course, always either with some irony or some humour, so that it was welcome to the people to hear something different and some other opinion.

“From the fact how the man from the Balkans sees the world one might understand how we see ourselves. In the others, as if in the mirror, we shall see ourselves; in their virtues we shall see our vices; in their capabilities we shall see our disadvantages; in their skills, our limits. And we only can hope, although that hope is not so strong, that in their vices, limits and disadvantages, we might see certain chance for self-respect.“

The words and the thoughts of the great Borislav Pekić.

You have listened to the BBC from London. Our next programme will be broadcast at exactly… Pardon us. It is rightly said that breaking a habit is harder than getting it. And that is why we all should accept the new reality, although not so light one.

You have listened to the BBC World Service in Serbian, prepared and realised by the last generation of its journalists and associates:

Feđa, Lidija, Miodrag, Daša, Aleksa, Jelena, Dejan, Nataša, Slobodan, Nenad, Arijana, Milica.

I am Dejan Đulovski. Thank you, good night and good bye!

And that, as a colleague of mine likes to say, is exactly that. No ending is easy. Every farewell is hard and painful in its own way. That is why we should “be radio” – brief, clear, and above all, sincere. This time we did not talk long and much about ourselves. Because we are of opinion that it was best told by the programmes we had prepared, the interviews we had conducted, and the stories we had sent from the different fields, which all concerned the Britain, Serbia, the Balkans and the territories of the former Yugoslavia.

Thank you for listening the BBC programme in Serbian.

Good bye.

(Song: “London Calling” by The Clash)