Law in Action: how it all began

The first in a series of reminiscences about the BBC’s coverage of law

Law in Action starts its fortieth year on Radio 4 this autumn. That slightly contrived opening phrase doesn’t mean the programme has been on the air for almost 40 years: the first edition didn’t go out until 14 October 1984. But I think our forthcoming anniversary justifies one or two reminiscences this summer about the early years of the programme. In those days, my enterprising producer persuaded the bosses that we simply had to spend a week in Jamaica as well as a weekend in Australia, not to mention a few days at the seaside in our specially installed outside broadcast studio.

But Law in Action goes back much further, at least as a programme title.

Sir Robert Megarry selected 18 talks heard between 1958 and 1963 for this volume, published by the BBC in 1965. Earlier volumes were published in 1954 and 1957.

The Law in Action was a series of talks broadcast in the 1950s and 1960s on the BBC’s Third Programme, precursor of Radio 3. We simply dropped the definite article and recycled the title.

What’s more, 1984 was not the first time we had used it:

Before computers, this is what a file looked like

As you can see, we had recorded a pilot programme some three years earlier. But why was David Pannick involved? And how good a broadcaster was Lord Pannick KC back in 1981? This audio tape — which I have recently had digitised — contains the answer:

A five-inch spool could hold 15 minutes of audio at 7½ inches per second

Our story begins in 1981. Some six years after joining the BBC as a trainee journalist, I was one of the producers making the long-running Analysis programme for a radio department called talks and documentaries.