“John Reith and the Feudal Values
of British Broadcasting in a Modern Age”
University of Bucharest Review “Modernity: The Crisis of Value and Judgement” 8 (3) (2006): 137-44.
The BBC has self-promoted its reputation as the “standard” by which all other broadcasters should be judged. While the international face of the B.B.C. represents the British Foreign Office, its domestic services are supposed to mirror the British way of life. However, this “British-ness” owes its origins to cultural norms once articulated by John Reith who both shaped and directed its broadcasting policy. Reith admired Mussolini and shared Hitler’s dislike for jazz. He banned Churchill from the BBC airwaves before WWII and he regarded American commercial broadcasting as vulgar. It was Churchill who helped to end the B.B.C. monopoly by introducing commercial broadcasting which brought with it a culture that both Reith and Hitler despised. Today many Britons look back fondly to that quieter, more unified and dignified age of Reith and pose this question: What price has Britain paid for its broadcasting freedoms?
“You never know a British institution by examining its law. You have to meet its man” claimed William Hard in 1933 while assessing the British Broadcasting Corporation under the control of John Reith. He added, “Sir John is in practice the effectively absolute autocrat of the whole British air” (340).
As a British subject young Reith owed his allegiance to the sole corporation around, that is, The Crown in Right of the United Kingdom. His father’s calling as a minister of religion surely helped Reith to understand the relationship between “The Crown” and its Subjects, because his father’s denomination had been created by dissent emanating from clashing interpretations over church government that pitted egalitarian management by local congregants, against autocratic control by a supreme dynasty. On April 3, 1971, which was also long after John Reith had left the British Broadcasting Corporation, The Spectator magazine looked back at his greatest accomplishment and mused in “The Spectator’s Notebook” that:
============> The BBC broods over our lives like the great cathedrals of the past looked down upon villains. In little more than a generation this consequence of Reith, electricity and crystal sets has become covered with ancient-seeming lichen, so that it looks, and often behaves as if it were immoveable, indestructible and immortal. The BBC is the nearest thing to a national church that we have had since Cranmer (449). <============
Following in the footsteps of the fractious theological reign of England’s Henry VIII, his Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer turned a de facto schism with Rome into the Established Church of England with the help of the Privy Council and its Court of Star Chamber. Cranmer facilitated in ritual that which the king had brought about by fiat.
Originally England’s King had the luxury of dispensing orders to his subjects under advice from his Privy Councellors, but British subjects have now morphed into European citizens with egalitarian rights. Meanwhile the Privy Council has gradually lost most, but by no means all of its ancient and secretive powers as a primary government acting as if it still answers to none but Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Thus when Parliament cannot achieve enactment of legislation, the Privy Council has been known to produce a similarly desired result by means of a Royal Order in Council.
But the Privy Council has also been most active in bringing about broadcasting policy changes in the United Kingdom. In 1967, an Order in Council applied the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act to the Isle of Man by overriding the island’s ancient legislature to silence Radio Caroline North. The year before another Order redrew the coastline of England to prosecute the offshore stations Radio 390, Radio City and Radio Essex under the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1949 (cf. Gilder).
Beginning in 1869, Parliament began to reach back in time to build upon a convoluted series of existing laws that gave the General Post Office authority over the sending and receiving of written and printed correspondence. In that year GPO authority was extended to wired communication by telegraph and in 1904 it was further extended by an Act of Parliament to incorporate wireless telegraphy. The essence of that law is that no person shall establish a wireless telegraph station; build a wireless telegraph station, install equipment at a wireless telegraph station or use equipment at a wireless telegraph station for the purpose of sending or receiving a signal for wireless telegraphy, without first obtaining a license from the Postmaster General.
The historical theory behind these Acts is that the method of transmittal of information is not at issue, the transmission of information by any means is the domain of the Post Office and ultimately the Crown. At one time this included the licensing of the printers and publishers of books and newspapers. That monopoly originally enforced copyright control with the right to copy being subject to licensing and owed its origin to the Catholic Church Index of prohibitive works. Copyright licensing in England was originally intended to serve as an arm of Crown censorship enforcement but this authority was eventually transferred to the authors of the works to be copied.
When microphones were added to telegraph wires to create the telephone, the exchanges were interpreted as being electronic Post Offices and the domain of the GPO. When wireless telephony became possible this same logic was applied, although it was later queried because telegraphs and telephones served individuals while wireless telegraphy and telephony had a broadcast effect.
Administration of these electronic means of communication also came under the jurisdiction of the Committee of Imperial Defence which had been created by Prime Minister Arthur Balfour in 1904 at the time of the Wireless Telegraphy Act. This Committee was formed by representatives from the Admiralty, War Office, Air Ministry, Treasury, India Office, Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Board of Trade and the General Post Office.
Prior to advent of The Great War (WWI) the American Marconi subsidiary company had established ship-to-shore wireless stations. In 1914 Britain entered the War and forbade further use of amateur wireless equipment. When America joined the fray several years later it also forbade the use of wireless equipment by private citizens and the U.S. Navy came to regard Marconi’s American subsidiary as a threat to U.S. national security because it placed U.S. naval communications under partial foreign control and this resulted in the forced buy-out of American Marconi by the General Electric Company. For its part G.E. formed a subsidiary Radio Corporation of America with the U.S. Navy represented on its board of directors. In 1919 the new R.C.A. absorbed the assets of the old American Marconi. After the War the U.S. Navy attempted to retain control of all U.S. wireless operations but, the U.S. Congress relinquished this technology to private interests once again. (Briggs 17-18)
Marconi Publicity Manager Arthur Burrows feared that the U.K. airwaves might become “…filled with audible advertisements...on behalf of somebody's soap or tomato ketchup.” (Briggs, 13) British officials viewed the American system as vulgar, not just because it was commercial, but being profane. Its authority flowed upwards from citizens speaking through a Constitution, instead of from a king speaking on behalf a Crown through his government, down the subjects of the Realm. It was a world turned upside down.
Because British amateurs were demanding opportunities to restart wireless activities, the GPO began issuing new licenses with call letters to receiving stations. In 1920 a GPO license was also issued to station MZX at the Marconi factory using a ten-watt transmitter to broadcast for no more than thirty minutes per day. When its license was withdrawn howls of protest were heard from British amateur radio societies. In 1922 the GPO issued another license to station 2MT at the Marconi factory research facility in the nearby village of Writtle. By this time developments in the United States were once again reaching the ears of British listeners at their own receiving stations.
Because the US airwaves were at that time unregulated, broadcast reception was marred by interference due to chaotic schedules from competing transmissions over limited bandwidth. British authorities noted American complaints about chaos in reception and sponsored advertising messages and their views were repeated by British newspaper proprietors who did not want to open the door to electronic advertising, because they feared that their advertising revenue would be diverted to commercial radio stations.
The historical relationship between the British General Electric Company and the American General Electric Company is complicated due to constantly moving proxy shareholdings often facilitated by the International General Electric Company. IGEC was a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Electric in the USA which held financial interests in British companies. In 1933 GE created E.M.I. [Electric and Musical Industries].
By June 24, 1920, the London Marconi station 2LO was broadcasting live music during the evening hours and other stations, some owned by American subsidiary companies, were also coming on the air. In order to both regain and then retain control of the British airwaves, the GPO ordered all electrical entities having an interest in British broadcasting to get together to form one broadcasting company during the summer months of 1922.
By absorbing the transmission facilities of its member companies, this ad hoc consortium continued operations even though the British Broadcasting Company did not hold its first Board Meeting until December 21, 1922, and it did not receive its first broadcasting license from Postmaster General Neville Chamberlain until January 18, 1923. Meanwhile the young company advertised several job opportunities in the press. John Reith applied for the post of General Manager on October 13, 1922. He was eventually hired on December 14 (Briggs, 44) and began his first day at work on December 30. On November 14, 1923 he was promoted to Managing Director.
============> “…it is the personality of one man that accounts for broadcasting in Britain as it is today. Sir John Reith was so certain he was right that no research seemed necessary. Regardless of its actual effects for him his policy stood self-justified. Secure in his personal conviction of what was right and wrong, he imposed upon a nation the imprint of his personality.” (129-30) <============
That same year the Beveridge Report quoted Reith: “…it was the brute force of monopoly that enabled the BBC to become what it did; and to do what it did; that made it possible for a policy of moral responsibility to be followed. (364) Reith had never tried to obscure his intentions at the BBC. In 1924, just two years after the BBC had been formed, Reith wrote Broadcast over Britain and made it clear that the BBC had no intention of providing what the public wanted; it would only provide them with what he believed they should have according to Reith’s own formula:
============> First of all BBC should inform the electorate and second it should halt the secularizing of Sundays which should be reserved for the official religion of the country as seen through the ecumenical lens of the Church of England. This automatically denied access to BBC airwaves by “rationalists,” Christian Scientists, Spiritualists, Mormons, Jews or the “gospel religion”. (cf. Harline). Third on Reith’s list was his intention to treat broadcasting as a servant of culture interpreted by his fourth point to mean that there would be no concessions to the “vulgar Americanization” of the British airwaves. Reith’s fifth premise revealed a conflict. While admitting that the BBC was a company with shareholders, making money should not be the object of broadcasting, because he viewed broadcasting as a public service. His sixth point was an edict: he demanded blind loyalty by employees whose character had to be beyond reproach. (Briggs 54-56). <============
However, British “listeners-in” were not only able to hear the BBC, but they could also hear transmissions originating from within America’s borders and those emanating from transmitters located in various countries around Europe. Noting how the GPO had created a broadcasting monopoly that was far from egalitarian in reach, Leonard Frank Plugge decided to provide a “vulgar” alternative for British listeners (Time 26 June, 1939). Born two months after Reith on September 21, 1889, Plugge began building his own International Broadcasting Company by leasing time on foreign transmitters aimed at the British Isles. (Plugge pronounced his Scandinavian family name “Plooje”, but in 1935 when he stood for election as a Member of Parliament, his Conservative Party supporters persuaded him to use the English pronunciation. This suited their slogan of “Plugge in for Chatham”, and their constant “plugging” won Plugge a Parliamentary seat that he held until 1945.)
Plugge’s IBC English language commercial broadcasts began in a modest way with a fashion talk sponsored by a London department store established by an American citizen, and it came from Radio Paris transmitting from a station located on the Eiffel Tower. This experiment quickly mushroomed throughout the 1920s and 1930s from sporadic talks on only one transmitter, to a full schedule using many transmitters and almost a full time broadcasting operation via Radio Normandy on the coastline of France. (Leonard, 3-7) To add insult to injury, the IBC leased space for its offices and production studios across the street from the BBC’s Broadcasting House.
When Reith fell out with Winston Churchill and banned him from the BBC airwaves, Churchill turned to the shortwave transmitters of CBS in the U.S.A. and to the standard broadcast transmitters of IBC in Europe. On October 1, 1937 Churchill delivered a talk called “The Peace of Europe” over IBC’s sponsored time on Radio Toulouse (“Best of British”). Reith’s ban turned Churchill into the enemy of BBC exclusivity which in the 1950s resulted in Churchill helping to end the B.B.C. monopoly in television. Meanwhile Reith’s policy on Sunday broadcasting and Plugge’s success at the IBC had inspired other investors to construct a powerful commercial radio station in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg with antennas specifically aimed at the British Isles. Although the GPO forbade land-line links from London to the transmitters that were mainly located in France and Luxembourg, Captain Plugge solved that problem by recording soap operas and other shows on the audio sound tracks of movie reels. Luxembourg used such transcription methods and began featuring recorded music that was banned on the BBC. By 1938, most of these commercial radio broadcasts to British listeners were having their greatest impact on Sundays, and as result, Reith lost a significant slice of his audience to both the IBC and Luxembourg commercial broadcasts. (Leonard, 6)
When Churchill took over from Chamberlain, Reith was assigned the job of Minister of Information in the wartime government. When America was dragged into World War II by Japan, the USA dispatched both her GI’s and means of entertaining them to the British Isles. With the sounds of more vulgarity emanating from the American Forces Network, the BBC sans Reith partially capitulated by launching their own national network equivalent called the “Forces Programme.”
Many additional chapters about the history of broadcasting in Britain have been added since WWII. While Captain Plugge’s IBC never returned to the air, Luxembourg did manage to limp back during the evening hours and during the 1950s the door to commercial television was kicked open. In the 1960s an offshore fleet of commercial radio stations eventually ringed the British coastline in imitation of Captain Plugge’s Pre-WWII operations from the European continent. These ship and WWII-era maritime stations were mainly financed by Texas entrepreneurs and California religion (cf. Gilder, Hagger, HWA). By the early 1970s the BBC lost its sound monopoly when commercial radio stations were licensed on the mainland of Great Britain. (cf. Gilder).
As the years rolled by Prime Minister Blair began extolling “Cool Britannia” until the net effect of its consequences began to become apparent to all: the British subject of old had morphed into European citizens who did not behave in the ways of yore. World trade had changed the face of the British high street and as well as the sights and sounds that were to be seen and heard over the British airwaves.
Today the “British-ness” of old has disappeared. Another kind of culture has taken root in Britain that dismays Prime Minister Blair. Indeed, in many ways Tony Blair sounds as if he is lamenting the passing of a British Society that John Reith was not only trying to preserve, but to foster.
Gone are the patient people who waited in queues. Gone are the “Bobbies” on bicycles riding without guns. Gone are the uniform rosy-red cheeks of British boys and the Snow-White British girls, because gone is that Society that looked and acted as if national and world management was all a part of a “White Man’s Burden”.
Gone is the society where everyone looked alike and heard the same songs, the same talks and the same jokes and reacted accordingly. Gone are quiet Sundays where “nothing happened.” Gone is the Empire that morphed into a Commonwealth where diversity existed outside of British shores, because any diversity within its coastline was supposed to remain unobserved. Today, the citizens of the world have made London their home.
Prime Minister Tony Blair continues to look wistfully backwards to the England that was while continuing to project England into the future as a devolved unit of the United Kingdom within a United Europe. Blair laments the lack of civility and the fissures that have rent the fabric of British Society. He has suggested edicts that might force compliance with the “British-ness” once championed by Reith.
While the airwaves of London now reflect some diversity of culture and language, much of it seems to be in imitation of those vulgar American radio formats, but with different accents. Even the British station logos hark back to the days when American radio once held out a beckoning hand to a dream that seemed to be unobtainable to British eyes and ears. Yes, the BBC still exists, but it is now like a flower whose pod has exploded with seedlings all across the dial.
The fight against vulgarity began with radio, but now radio as it was known is dying as a medium. Rapid technological innovations are dividing the once unified audience of Reith into even more obscure units. Self-indulgent listeners are constantly reinventing themselves in their own individualistic ways to the point where it is now very difficult to define what the term “British-ness” could possibly mean.
As we survey the wreckage of Reith’s ideology that was eventually destroyed by the vulgarity that he opposed, we ponder the question of whether the introduction of commercial broadcasting was but a symbolic apple that Britannia lusted after? If Reith was correct, then what does the future hold for Britain now its inhabitants have left the British-ness of its broadcasting Eden?
Article References
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Leonard, Mike. From International Waters – 60 Years of Offshore Broadcasting. Wirral: Forest Press, 1996.
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