RULING THE AIRWAVES
The impact of Lord Reith, the dour Glaswegian dynamo who launched the BBC, is still felt fifty years after his death, writes Rick Wilson
Rick Wilson takes a look at the life of Lord Reith, the dour, scar-faced dynamo who transformed the BBC
“His bullet-scarred, scowling face prompted immediate respect
You could be forgiven for thinking, in view of his title ‘Lord Reith of Stonehaven’, that the BBC’s legendary creator was a native of that picturesque seaside town just south of Aberdeen. Not so: he was born there in 1889, while his Glasgow-based family were visiting on holiday.
Reith was evidently proud of his north-eastern ties, and the feeling is mutual – this year, local residents mounted a display to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Reith’s death at the age of 81 in 1971. There’s also a plaque pinned proudly to the house in which he was born, which reads: ‘In this house was born on July 20th, 1889, John Charles Walsham Reith, statesman, administrator, engineer, 1st Baron Reith of Stonehaven, first director-general of the BBC.’
The austere stone-built house in which he was born, perched high on the hill above the town, seems symbolic of the man. His bullet-scarred, scowling face prompted immediate respect, particularly as it was paired with a sonorous pulpit voice which he inherited from his father George, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland.
According to Lord Reith’s daughter Marista, his austere exterior disguised a more eccentric, awkward side. In her book ‘My Father’, Marista calls him a mercurial mass of contradictions who reached ‘the heights of outrageous success matched by bitter black despair’.
There was little to suggest in Reith’s early career that this 6ft 6in tall man would become a giant of the media, but his mission statement, which was to ‘inform, educate, entertain’, still guides the corporation. The Reith Lectures – a series of annual radio lectures given by leading figures – also continue, ensuring that his name is never forgotten.
The youngest of seven, John Reith first attended Glasgow Academy where he was seen as a troublemaker. He was then sent to Gresham’s boarding school in Norfolk, and on to an engineering apprenticeship at the North British Locomotive Company in Springburn. But this move wasn’t welcomed by Reith, who labelled it ‘an awful prostitution of my intellectual ability’, and proclaimed he ‘was not going to be a mediocrity’.
Nevertheless, he did well in this role, and went on to do even greater things as a Major in the Royal Engineers in the Great War, where he was shot through the cheek by a sniper, a wound which left him with a noticeable scar (Reith, lying wounded on a stretcher, muttered: ‘I’m very angry and I’ve spoilt a new tunic’).
Reith spent the rest of the war in armaments procurement in America, where he witnessed radio stations plunging downmarket in search of ratings, a spectacle which horrified the ferociously prudish moralist and would lead to an advertising-free BBC.
Married and in London working for another Scottish engineering company in 1922, he spotted a newspaper advertisement for general manager of the
nascent (and then commercial) British Broadcasting Company. Confidence won him the job, and when the BBC was rebranded four years later into the publicly-owned British Broadcasting Corporation he became director-general.
Projecting his towering ego and bold managerial talent, Reith presided over a huge expansion in its workforce and operations, including the establishment of the globally respected World Service. His strengths lay in his oratory, energy, organisation, delegation and ferocious work ethic, with his extraordinary efforts to establish the BBC earning him a knighthood in 1926.
But it wasn’t all plain sailing for Reith. He and Winston Churchill shared a poisonous relationship which largely dates from the General Strike in May 1926. Reith insisted the BBC maintain an objective tone in its reporting, which enraged Churchill, who wanted it to condemn the strikers. The then Chancellor said the Scot ‘had no right to be impartial between the fire and the fire brigade’. Churchill even lobbied to be allowed to commandeer the Corporation.
Relations weren’t helped when Reith kept Churchill and anti-appeasement Conservatives off the airwaves during the 1930s. When excerpts from Reith’s diaries were published in 1975, they suggested he had harboured pro-fascist views. In 1933, he wrote: ‘I am pretty certain that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again. They are
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Reith presided over a huge expansion in the BBC’s workforce and operations