John
Reith was born Stonehaven, Scotland in
1889. After being educated at Glasgow Academy he served an engineering
apprenticeship.
Reith
specialized in radio communication and in December 1922 was appointed
general manager of the British Broadcasting Company, an organization
was set up by a group of executives from radio manufacturers.
In
1927 the government decided to establish the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
as a broadcasting monopoly operated by a board of governors and director
general. The BBC was funded by a licence fee at a rate set by parliament.
The fee was paid by all owners of radio sets. The BBC therefore became
the world's first public-service broadcasting organization. Unlike
in the United States, advertising on radio was
banned.
Reith
was appointed director-general of the BBC. Reith had a mission to
educate and improve the audience and under his leadership the BBC
developed a reputation for serious programmes. Reith also insisted
that all radio announcers wore dinner jackets while they were on the
air. In the 1930s the BBC began to introduce more sport and light
entertainment on the radio.
The
BBC began the world's first regular
television service in 1936. Two years later Reith left the BBC to
join
Imperial Airways.
On
the outbreak of the Second World War the prime
minister, Neville
Chamberlain,
invited Reith to join his government. Elected to the House
of Commons for Southampton, Reith
was appointed as Minister of Information in January 1940.
When
Winston Churchill replaced Chamberlain
in May 1940 he appointed Reith to the post of Minister of Transport.
Five months later he was given a peerage and given the job of Minister
of Works and Buildings.
After
the war Reith served as chairman of the Commonwealth Telecommunications
Board (1946-50). He also wrote two volumes of autobiography, Into
the Wind (1949) and Wearing Spurs
(1966). John
Reith died
in 1971.
(1)
Tom
Hopkinson,
Of
This Our Time (1982)
Our struggle over post-war
planning led to one further skirmish before the Second World War ended
and the future turned into the present. This involved the awe-inspiring
figure of John Reith. Following his long spell at the BBC and the
later task of transforming Imperial Airways into a state-run corporation,
Reith had been brought into politics by Chamberlain, who made him
Minister of Information in January 1940. When Churchill took over
in May, he gave Reith the post of Minister of Transport to which he
applied himself with his habitual energy. He was also just starting
to feel at home in the House of Commons when in October 1940 he was
shifted again, this time to the Ministry of Works, with a peerage
which carried him out of the Commons and into the Lords.
Churchill disliked Reith,
whom he blamed for having kept him off the air during the crucial
years of the thirties, and may
have imagined that, shoved into the Lords, in a post that had little
to do with the conduct of the war, he would fade into
obscurity. Instead Reith set to work, with determination and efficiency,
to make the most of this new opportunity and in
particular to extend the powers of his office. One aspect of his work
was concerned with repairing bomb-damaged buildings, but another involved
the planning and rebuilding of cities after the war ended, thus opening
up the whole field of postwar reconstruction. It did not take Reith
long to draw up an imposing list of objectives which included a central
planning authority: "controlled development of all areas and
utilization of land to the best advantage; limitation of urban expansion;
redevelopment of congested areas; correlation of transport and all
services; amenities; improved architectural treatment; preservation
of places of historic interest, national parks and coastal areas."
Followed, inevitably, by his recommendations for immediate action.
(2)
Herbert
Morrison, An
Autobiography (1960)
His (Lord Reith) wonderful
work in forming the British Broadcasting Company and later organizing
and running the BBC proved his capabilities, but as a minister he
was not happy even if he did his best to be a success.
At the outset he was Minister
of Transport, with which was merged Shipping. By October, 1940, he
was given a peerage and made Minister of Works. In most of his career
he had had a free hand - it is, of course, a byword that he ran like
an autocrat the motley and varied entity of the BBC, with its technicians,
semi-civil service officials and temperamental artists somehow having
to get on together. He found irksome the cooperation and compromise
necessary in ministerial life.
I think he felt circumscribed
and he was always looking for something more to tackle. Often at ministerial
meetings a problem would arise which could not be clearly defined
as the task of a particular department. Before the right niche could
be discussed Reith would be saying "I'll do it, I'll do it. My
department can handle that."
Some of his colleagues
were happy enough that an awkward job should be taken off their shoulders,
but others were reasonably apprehensive and annoyed.
I told him when we were
waiting at No. 10 one day that there would be jealousies and frictions
if he didn't watch out. "Sometimes it almost sounds as if you're
canvassing for orders," I said.
His rather dour Scottish
mind could not really see the implication. "There's no harm in
it," he protested. "A problem comes up and I'm willing to
solve it by taking it on."
The touchiness of some
otherwise intelligent and dispassionate men, and the subtleties of
cooperation in ministerial work escaped him.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
