Birt: 'You don't deserve a Scottish Six until after independence';

This week sees the publication of former BBC director general John Birt's memoirs.

During his eight-year tenure Birt alienated many in the corporation with his radical reforms, and made few friends in the Sottish establishment with his refusal to devolve production of the six o'clock news bulletin.

Scotland should not have its own six o'clock news programme on BBC1 until it has chosen to be independent from the UK, according to the corporation's former director-general, John Birt.

Speaking to the Sunday Herald yesterday from the Cheltenham book festival, in advance of the publication of his autobiography this week, Birt said his fight against the Scottish Six was one of the most bitter of his eight years as director-general.

"This was a very important battle because at risk was the premature break-up of the BBC," said Birt. "The wishes of the people of Scotland were paramount. If we had reached the day where Scotland was intent on independence then it follows, as night does day, that different arrangements would have been needed.

"I think the arguments at the time were the right ones and unless and until it is clear what the settled will of the Scottish people is, then everybody is better served by having a UK-wide six o'clock news."

In his book, John Birt: The Harder Path, Greg Dyke's predecessor reveals in detail for the first time how he set about persuading Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Robin Cook and other members of Labour's Scottish elite to resist calls for a separate news bulletin.

"A few days after the election was won, Jane [Birt's wife] and I were invited to a private party in honour of Tony and Cherie Blair, and we sat by Derry Irvine, who was to supervise Labour's devolution plans. I was reassured to discover that Derry and I saw eye-to-eye on the issue."

Birt says he was convinced that once Scotland opted out of the Six, Wales and Northern Ireland would follow suit. Then London would not be able to resist calls for separate one and nine o'clock shows, and soon the whole of the BBC's output would be devolved. In the process, one of the world's most successful cultural institutions would be destroyed, reduced to the English Broadcasting Corporation, a rump organisation headquartered in London.

The break-up of the BBC, Birt argued yesterday, could in turn have led to the collapse of the union.

"Quite quickly there would have been no UK-wide BBC news and that would have been totemic of the break-up of the UK."

He decided to write to the Prime Minster and then met Blair to convince him to resist a devolved BBC.

"I argued we should follow constitutional change; it was not our role to lead it. Blair was quick, as ever, to grasp the case. 'Let's fight,' he said."

Blair enlisted the help of Peter Mandelson, at the time minister without portfolio and his most trusted aide-de-camp. Mandelson worked with the BBC secretary Michael Stevenson on a plan of action.

The Prime Minister's backing ensured that over the next 12 months, Labour held the line. Gordon Brown was enlisted to write a series of articles for the Scottish papers "advocating the virtues of the union from Scotland's perspective".

Birt writes: "We feared at the BBC that Donald Dewar, the Scottish Secretary of State, widely seen as father of the Scottish nation, might break ranks - but he refused repeatedly to be drawn into the argument."

The director-general was less successful in enlisting the help of the Scottish Tories. Although William Hague, then leader of the Conservatives, supported the case against news devolution, he was unable to stop the Scottish Tory Party leader, David McLetchie, from calling for a Scottish Six.

The argument led to what Birt claims were the only "harsh words" he exchanged with the BBC chairman Christopher Bland. "He chided me for carrying out the wishes of the London politicians. I denied vigorously that we were dancing to their tune - I protested that I was acting only in the long-term interests of the BBC."

Birt says Bland was afraid of resisting the Scots lest he found himself presiding over the mass resignations of the BBC's governor for Scotland, Norman Drummond, the controller John McCormick and the Broadcasting Council for Scotland, which was leading the battle for a devolved Six.

"From experience," recalls Birt, "I knew that nobody liked saying no to the Scots, and doubts about victory began to enter my mind."

The argument raged throughout 1998, culminating in a two-hour meeting between the BBC governors and the Council during which, Birt claims, the governors were "exposed to an incessant tirade of bile, vitriol and abuse". The governors eventually voted in favour of the status quo, and Scotland was instead handed the sop of its own add- on to the weekday current affairs show Newsnight.

The biography recalls how throughout the 1990s Birt found himself on the sharp end of some memorably barbed comments from the Scottish establishment.

During one dinner with Council members in Glasgow, he was told: "We've just had an accountant [Michael Checkland] as director- general. Now we've got an engineer. When will we have someone creative running the BBC?"

Birt, whose management style had already led to him being lampooned as a Dalek at home, took offence and the dinner ended abruptly. It was to be his last social encounter with the Scottish Broadcasting Council.

In the mid-1990s he returned to Glasgow, to make a speech. Saying grace for the meal which preceded his talk, a senior cleric intoned before the assembled guests: "May the good Lord protect us from whatever John Birt is about to mete out to the people of Scotland."

There was no love lost between Birt and the Scottish establishment, and he still believes that they were at odds with the will of the Scottish people in calling for a Scottish Six.

He said yesterday: "The leaders of opinion in Scotland ran ahead of public opinion. In the end we were able to settle it because we convinced enough people that that was what the people in Scotland wanted."

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