John Reith, 1st Baron Reith
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith was a Scottish broadcasting executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. In 1922, he was employed by the BBC, then the British Broadcasting Company Ltd., as its general manager; in 1923 he became its managing director, and in 1927 he was employed as the Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation created under a royal charter. His concept of broadcasting as a way of educating the masses marked for a long time the BBC and similar organisations around the world. An engineer by profession, and standing at tall, he was a larger-than-life figure who was a pioneer in his field.
Early life
Born at Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, Reith was the fifth son and the youngest, by ten years, of the seven children of the Rev. George Reith, a Scottish Presbyterian minister of Blackfriars Parish Church, High Street, Glasgow, and later Moderator of the United Free Church of Scotland. He was to carry strict Presbyterian religious convictions forward into his adult life. Reith was educated at the Glasgow Academy then at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk. He spent two years at the Royal Technical College at Glasgow followed by an apprenticeship as an engineer at the North British Locomotive Company. During this time, he joined the Territorials and in February 1911 was commissioned as an officer in the Scottish Rifles’ 5th Territorial Battalion. In 1913, he moved to London after obtaining a post at S. Pearson and Son through Ernest William Moir, and worked on their construction of the Royal Albert Dock.Reith, who was tall, joined up with the 5th Scottish Rifles early in the First World War and was quickly transferred to the Royal Engineers as a lieutenant. In October 1915, while fighting in France, he was severely wounded by a sniper's bullet through his left cheek, which nearly cost him his life and left him with a noticeable scar. While lying wounded on a stretcher after the shot, he is reported to have muttered "I'm very angry and I've spoilt a new tunic."
During Reith's convalescence, E W Moir referred him to a post at Pearson's project constructing the cordite factory HM Factory Gretna, comprising the fixing of contracts, estimating of costs, taking out quantities, and inspection of materials. In February 1916, he went to work at Remington Arms, Eddystone, Delaware County, Pennsylvania who were manufacturing the Pattern 1914 Enfield Mk 1 rifle for the British government. He spent the next two years in the United States, supervising armament contracts, and became attracted to the country. He was promoted to captain in 1917, before being transferred to the Royal Marine Engineers in 1918 as a major. He returned to the Royal Engineers as a captain in 1919.
Reith resigned his Territorial Army commission in 1921. He returned to Glasgow as general manager of an engineering firm. In 1922, he returned to London, where he started working as secretary to the London Conservative group of MPs in the 1922 general election. That election's results were the first to be broadcast on the radio.
British Broadcasting Company
Reith had no broadcasting experience when he replied to an advertisement in The Morning Post for a general manager for an as-yet unformed British Broadcasting Company in 1922. He later admitted that he felt he possessed the credentials necessary to "manage any company". He managed to retrieve his original application from a post box after re-thinking his approach, guessing that his Aberdonian background would carry more favour with Sir William Noble, the Chairman of the Broadcasting Committee.In his new role, he was, in his own words, "confronted with problems of which I had no experience: Copyright and performing rights; Marconi patents; associations of concert artists, authors, playwrights, composers, music publishers, theatre managers, wireless manufacturers."
The general strike
In 1926, Reith came into conflict with the government during the 1926 general strike. The BBC bulletins reported, without comment, all sides in the dispute, including the Trades Union Congress's and of union leaders. Reith attempted to arrange a broadcast by the opposition Labour Party but it was vetoed by the government, and he had to refuse a request to allow a representative Labour or Trade Union leader to put the case for the miners and other workers.Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin made a national broadcast about the strike from Reith's house and was coached by Reith. When Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of the Labour Party, asked to make a broadcast in reply, Reith supported the request. However, Baldwin was "quite against MacDonald broadcasting" and Reith unhappily refused the request. MacDonald complained that the BBC was "biased" and was "misleading the public" while other Labour Party figures were just as critical. Philip Snowden, the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, was one of those who wrote to the Radio Times to complain.
Reith's reply also appeared in the Radio Times, admitting the BBC had not had complete liberty to do as it wanted. He recognised that at a time of emergency the government was never going to give the company complete independence, and he appealed to Snowden to understand the constraints he had been under.
The Labour leadership was not the only high-profile body denied a chance to comment on the strike. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, wanted to broadcast a "peace appeal" drawn up by church leaders which called for an immediate end to the strike, renewal of government subsidies to the coal industry and no cuts in miners' wages.
Davidson telephoned Reith about his idea on 7 May, saying he had spoken to Baldwin, who had said he would not stop the broadcast, but would prefer it not to happen. Reith later wrote: "A nice position for me to be in between Premier and Primate, bound mightily to vex one or other."
Reith asked for the government view and was advised not to allow the broadcast because, it was suspected, that would give the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, an excuse to commandeer the BBC. Churchill had already lobbied Baldwin to that effect. Reith contacted the Archbishop to turn him down and explain that he feared if the talk went ahead, the government might take the company over.
Although Churchill wanted to commandeer the BBC to use it "to the best possible advantage", Reith wrote that Baldwin's government wanted to be able to say "that they did not commandeer , but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial".
Reith admitted to his staff that he regretted the lack of TUC and Labour voices on the airwaves. Many commentators have seen Reith's stance during that period as pivotal in establishing the state broadcaster's enduring reputation for impartiality.
After the strike ended, the BBC's Programme Correspondence Department analysed the reaction to the coverage, and reported that 3,696 people complimented the BBC and 176 were critical.
British Broadcasting Corporation
The British Broadcasting Company was part-share owned by a committee of members of the wireless industry, including British Thomson-Houston, The General Electric Company, Marconi and Metropolitan-Vickers. However, Reith had been in favour of the company being taken into public ownership, as he felt that despite the boards under which he had served so far, allowing him a high degree of latitude on all matters, not all future members might do so. Although opposed by some, including members of the Government, the BBC became a corporation in 1927. Reith was knighted the same year.Reith's autocratic approach became the stuff of BBC legend. His preferred approach was one of benevolent dictator, but with built-in checks to his power. Throughout his life, Reith remained convinced that that approach was the best way to run an organisation. Later Director-General Greg Dyke, profiling Reith in 2007, noted that the term Reithian has entered the dictionary to denote a style of management, particularly with relation to broadcasting. There is no contemporary evidence that Reith summarised the BBC's purpose in three words: inform, educate, entertain; nevertheless, that summary is attributed to him by the BBC. It has also been adopted by broadcasters throughout the world, notably the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.
Reith earned a reputation for prudishness in sexual matters. There is an old BBC legend that he once caught an announcer kissing a secretary and decreed that in future the announcer must not read the late-night religious programme The Epilogue. In fact, this may have been inspired by his catching the Chief Engineer, Peter Eckersley, not just kissing but being in flagrante with an actress on a studio table.
He was to be somewhat embarrassed when one of his staff ran off with the quite new wife of the then rising young writer Evelyn Waugh. Reith also had to deal with Eckersley after the BBC Chief Engineer had a rather public affair with a married woman on the staff. Up to the Second World War any member of BBC staff involved in a divorce could lose their job.
Under Reith, the BBC did not broadcast on Sunday before 12:30 PM, to give listeners time to attend church, and for the rest of the day broadcast only religious services, classical music and other non-frivolous programming. European commercial stations Radio Normandie and Radio Luxembourg competed with the BBC on "Reith Sunday" and other days of the week by broadcasting more popular music.