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Appointments
Governors were usually appointed from senior positions in various walks of British society. Appointments were part-time positions and lasted for four (formerly five) years. Four governors were given specific responsibilities: for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the English regions.
Governors were nominally appointed by the monarch on the advice of ministers. In practice, governors were chosen by the government of the day. This has led to claims of political interference, in particular during the years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership.
Controversy
The Thatcher government appointed a succession of governors with the apparent intent of bringing the BBC "into line" with government policy. Marmaduke Hussey was appointed chairman of the Board of Governors apparently with the specific agenda of bringing down the then-Director-General Alasdair Milne; this government also broke the tradition of always having a trade union leader on the Board of Governors.
BBC director general Mark Thompson said "staff were "quite mystified" by the rise of Margaret Thatcher but that there was "less overt tribalism" among its journalists.[1]
"Conservative commentators have long criticised the BBC for being a hotbed of Left-wingers and an internal report from 2007 said it had to make greater efforts to avoid liberal bias."[1]
It has also been suggested that Harold Wilson's appointment of the former Tory minister Lord Hill as chairman of the Board of Governors in 1967 was motivated by a desire to undermine the radical, questioning agenda of Director-General Sir Hugh Greene - ironically Wilson had attacked the appointment of Hill as Chairman of the Independent Television Authority by a Conservative government in 1963.
In January 2004 Gavyn Davies, who had been appointed chairman of the Board of Governors by the Labour government in 2001, resigned in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry. Lord Ryder, previously a Conservative Member of Parliament and a member of Margaret Thatcher's personal staff, replaced him as Acting Chairman. It has been claimed that Ryder and other Conservatives on the Board of Governors were effectively responsible for "forcing out" Director-General Greg Dyke, who had not initially believed that his offer of resignation would be accepted by the Governors."
From 1922 to 2006 there were 21 Chairs of BBC Governors;
6-Barons,
6-Knights,
2-Lords,
1-Viscount,
1-Earl
So, Trots the lot of them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Governors_of_the_BBC