John Reith

John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith KT GCVO GBE CB TD PC (20 July 1889–16 June 1971) was a Scottish broadcasting executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. He was the founder of the BBC.

Early life

Born at Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, Reith was the youngest, by ten years, of the seven children of the Reverend Dr George Reith, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was to carry the strict Presbyterian religious convictions of the Free Church forward into his adult life. Reith was educated at the Glasgow Academy then at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk. Reith was an indolent child who had used his intelligence to escape hard work but he was genuinely disappointed when his father refused to support any further education and apprenticed him an engineer at the North British Locomotive Company. Reith had been a keen sportsman at school and only learnt to tolerate his apprenticeship through part-time soldiering in the 1st Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers and 5th Scottish Rifles.

In 1914, Reith left Glasgow for London, largely in pursuit of a 17 year-old schoolboy, Charlie Bowser, on whom he appears to have formed something of a crush. Though he readily found work at the Royal Albert Dock, his commission in the 5th Scottish Rifles soon found him serving in World War I, being invalided out when struck in the cheek by a bullet in October 1915. He spent the next two years in the United States, supervising armament contracts, and became attracted to the country, fantasising of moving there with Bowser after the war.

On his return to the UK, Reith and Bowser both fell in love with Muriel Odhams. Reith won Muriel's hand but warned her that she must share me with C. He sought to redress the asymmetry by finding a partner for Bowser but Reith's subsequent jealousy interrupted the men's friendship, much to Reith's pain.

However, the end of the war saw a reconciliation, with Reith's return to Glasgow as General Manager of an engineering firm and Bowser becoming his assistant. But the lure of London proved too much for Reith and in 1922, he returned there. Dabbling in politics, despite his family's Liberal Party sympathies, he ended up working as secretary to the London Unionist group of MPs in the United Kingdom general election, 1922. Perhaps prophetically, this election's results were the first to be broadcast on the radio.

The BBC

On 14 December 1922 Reith became the general manager of the British Broadcasting Company, an organisation formed by manufacturers to provide broadcasts to foster demand for wireless sets. Reith oversaw the vesting of the company in a new organisation, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), formed under royal charter and became its first Director-General from 1 January 1927 to 30 June 1938.

Reith had the vision to charge a Post Office licence fee of ten shillings (50 pence)half of which went to the BBC, ensuring that the BBC was not financially dependent on the Government of the day nor on advertising revenue. "Reith was passionate about public service broadcasting. He was a strictly moral man who believed that radio should offer national coverage and high-quality programmes. Furthermore, radio should be publicly funded to avoid commercial dumbing-down, whilst remaining politically independent."

He expounded firm principles of centralised, all-encompassing radio broadcasting, stressing programming standards and moral tone. When asked whether he was going to give the people what they wanted, Reith replied: "No. Something better than that." To this day, the BBC claims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain".

In 1922 Reith felt that King George V should use the new medium of radio to speak to the nation as one family. The King declined as he felt that radio was still too experimental to be used for a royal message. The King was asked again in 1932 by which time the BBC has begun its overseas service and the King had the opportunity to talk to his subjects around the world. At 3:00pm on 25th December 1932, the King made the first broadcast live from Sandringham. Since then King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II have continued the tradition. In 1957 the broadcast moved to television

In 1926 a General Strike broke out across Britain. When the value of broadcasting as a governmental and political instrument became apparent, Winston Churchill and others in the Government wanted to commandeer the organisation for the emergency. Reith refused to comply, maintaining the BBC's independence. He won the argument but made an enemy of Churchill for years to come. This enmity was enhanced when the BBC refused Churchill air time to outline his controversial views on Indian policy and rearmament during the 1930s. Regardless of his personal disagreements with Churchill over editoral control during the General Strike, Reith regarded the BBC as a tool of the British Parliament and allowed the broadcasting of material unfavorable to the strikers. Workers’ representatives were not allowed to broadcast their side of the dispute and the BBC came to be labelled the 'British Falsehood Corporation.'

In 1927 the British Broadcasting Company became the British Broadcasting Corporation under Reith when it was granted its first Royal Charter. Reith was subsequently knighted.

Reith introduced the BBC's Empire Service - later renamed the BBC's World Service - in 1932. He was less than enthusistic about its launch as he declared 'I doubt that the Empire Service will be either very good or very interesting.' Regardless of his opinion Reith was correct when he remarked in the Inaugural Empire Service Broadcast: 'This occasion is as significant as any in the 10 years of British broadcasting. It is a significant occasion in the history of the British Empire; there must be few in any civilized country who have yet to realize that broadcasting is a development with which the future must reckon and reckon seriously.' In 2002 the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, described the World Service as the greatest gift Britain had given the world in the twentieth century. Currently the World Service broadcasts in 43 languages to a worldwide audience of 160-170 million.

Reith's stubborn beliefs drew the ire of the board of governors as he was slow to adopt television, which be believed would reduce media standards and to relax his standards for high-minded programming.

The first regular television broadcasts (November 1936 to September 1939) started under Reith's stewardship, but this service initially ground to a halt at the outbreak of the Second World War. When the television service resumed in 1945 it was to be very different due to the impact of the war and Reith having long since departed after being fired in 1938.

Later life

After leaving the BBC in 1938, Reith became chairman of Imperial Airways. In 1940 he was appointed Minister of Information in the government of Neville Chamberlain. So as to perform his full duties he became a Member of Parliament for Southampton standing for the Nationalist Party. When Chamberlain fell and Churchill became Prime Minister his long running feud with Reith led to the latter being moved to the Ministry of Transport. He was subsequently moved to become First Commissioner of Works which he held for the next two years, through two restructurings of the job, and was also transferred to the House of Lords becoming Baron Reith of Stonehaven.

During this period the town centers of Coventry, Plymouth and Portsmouth were destroyed by German bombing. Reith urged the local authorities to begin planning the post war reconstruction. He was dismissed from his government post by Churchill who stated that he found Reith difficult to work with.

He took a naval commission as a Lieutenant-Commander of the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve (RNVR) on the staff of the Rear-Admiral Coastal Services. In 1943 was promoted to Captain (RNVR), and appointed Director of the Combined Operations Material Department at the Admiralty, a post he held until early 1945.

In 1946 he was appointed chairmanship of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board - a post he held until 1950. He was then appointed chairman of the Colonial Development Corporation which he held until 1959. In 1948 he was also appointed the chairman of the National Film Finance Corporation, an office he held until 1951.

He also held directorships at the Phoenix Assurance Company, Tube Investments Ltd,the State Building Society (1960 - 1964) and was the vice-chairman of the British Oxygen Company (1964 - 1966). He was Lord Rector of Glasgow University (1965 - 1968). In 1967 he was appointed Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

The Independent Television Authority was created on July 30, 1954 ending the BBC's existing broadcasting monopoly. Lord Reith did not approve of its creation: "Somebody introduced Christianity into England and somebody introduced smallpox, bubonic plague and the Black Death. Somebody is minded now to introduce sponsored broadcasting ... Need we be ashamed of moral values, or of intellectual and ethical objectives? It is these that are here and now at stake."

In November 1955 Cable & Wireless moved from Electra House Embankment into its new headquarters in Theobalds Road, London. The building was named Mercury House after the Greek messenger of the gods and was officially opened by Lord Reith in December 1955.

In 1960 he returned to the BBC for an interview with John Freeman in the television series Face to Face.

Reith died in 1971.

Legacy

Reith wrote two autobiographies: 'Into The Wind' in 1956 and 'Wearing Spurs' in 1966.

In her biography of her father, My Father — Reith of the BBC Reith's daughter Marista Leishman claims that her father was a Nazi sympathiser who abhorred Jews. Leishman says he banned the playing of jazz music on the BBC, and that he wrote in his diary that "Germany has banned hot jazz and I’m sorry that we should be behind in dealing with this filthy product of modernity." Leishman says that on 9 March 1933 Reith wrote "I am certain that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again . . . They are being ruthless and most determined"; and in March 1939, when Prague was occupied, he wrote: "Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency."

The BBC Reith Lectures instituted in 1948 commemorate Lord Reith.

The BBC still operates according to Reith's directive and vision. It continues to provide much high-minded programming while remaining independent of politics. Despite this independence, Reith set a delicate precedent of close working relationships between politicians and the BBC while still having autonomy over content. This balance is sought, and sometimes upset, by news media the world over. Reith's World Service also set the precedent for later global networks such as CNN and al Jazeera.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• John Charles Walsham Reith Reith, Into the Wind (1956)
• John Charles Walsham Reith Reith, Wearing Spurs (1966)
• Marista Leishman, My Father — Reith of the BBC (2006)

External links

• Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
• Extract from Face to Face interview

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