Homage to Reith
The Birth of Broadcasting. By Asa Briggs. (O.U.P., 42s.)
ACCORDING to Professor Briggs himself, the huge history of broadcasting in the United King- dom of which this is the first instalment is to consist of three volumes. The blurb, more vaguely, refers to 'a projected three- or four- volume history.' Seeing that the first volume takes us only to the point in 1926, when the B.B. Company became the B.B. Corporation, we may well wonder how the task can be completed in fewer than six volumes—even allowing for the fact that 1955, when the Independent Tele- vision Act was passed, has somewhat arbitrarily been fixed as the terminal date.
The story begins with the origins of broad- casting, on both sides of the Atlantic; with the discoveries of Oliver Lodge and others, and their exploitation through the genius of Marconi; with 'the first broadcast in history.' when R. A. Fessenden, of the University of Pittsburgh, transmitted speech and music over a distance of several hundred miles on Christmas Eve, 1906; with Dame Nellie Melba's broadcast from Chelmsford in June, 1920, which 'caught people's imagination' and so 'was a turning point in the public response to radio.' We are shown how broadcasting in Britain was deliberately evolved on 'public service' lines, as distinct from 'the go-as-you-please methods of the United States'; how the character of the BBC was firmly estab- lished while it was still a commercial enterprise;
how the lady of Magnet House and Savoy Hill was already in effect an honest woman before the State finally took her to the altar.
There is plenty of good solid stuff about the medium, but excitement comes with the account of what was achieved by one man—J. C. W. Reith. The BBC was largely his creature, just as the RAF was largely Trenchard's. A prac- tical dreamer, a high-minded conquistador, a Puritan with a restless submerged aestheticism, he made the BBC and thereby influenced the British nation more decisively than anyone, perhaps, in modern times. When, at the age of thirty-four, he applied for the job of General Manager of the BBC, he 'knew nothing of broadcasting.' Four years later he was the acknowledged master of the air waves in Britain, using them as his own mind and conscience dic- tated, for purposes which seemed to him good. He had turned down a request from the Arch- bishop of Canterbury. He had advised the Prime Minister how to improve the text of a speech. His theory of broadcasting—which he had even found time to argue in print—had been substantially adopted by the State. He had moulded a great organisation and breathed into it a spirit which it has never lost.
What is that spirit? Many would claim that it is stuffy, snobbish and self-righteous; conser- vative and conformist; old-maidish and mug- wumpish. Others would reply that it is the pure essence of British freedom—qualified and dis- ciplined, but invincible. There is truth in both versions, because Reith is an odd mixture (like Cromwell, half-revolutionary, half-defender of the established order), and because freedom in Britain is not an absolute concept : it emerges, as it were furtively, from a tangle of petty per- sonal rights, of tolerated fads and necessary inhibitions. Reith was determined to educate as well as to entertain, to raise the standard of public taste and not to forget minorities while catering for the mass. He insisted that the BBC must be free from government interference and must be impartial in its handling of news and comment. Yet he had a strict sense of public re- sponsibility, which opened him now and then to the charge of being biased in favour of the authorities.
The general Strike of 1926 was a difficult time for him. He was against the strike, in that he held it to be illegal, but he would have liked to allow a Labour spokesman to be heard on the air. He was warned, however, that if he did so the BBC would probably be comman- deered by the Government—as Winston Churchill, for instance, thought it should be during the emergency. Reluctantly he barred any direct statement of the Labour case, in order to save the BBC from becoming a mere propa-
'1 don't see vphai's so good about the reception.' ganda machine when the public demand for un- coloured information was so urgent. His decision may have been wrong, but at least the motives for it were respectable.
Not long ago, in an interview 'face to face' with John Freeman, Lord Reith said that if he had his life over again he would drive him- self less hard and pay more attention to the maxim that 'life is for living.' We in turn may say that if he had driven himself less hard the pattern of broadcasting as we know it in Britain —and the consequent patterns of thought, taste and behaviour—might never have existed. Reith used what he calls 'the brute force of monopoly' to impose his own ideas, which were, luckily, on the whole very enlightened ideas. But monopoly is always dangerous and it, would not have been good for the country, or for the BBC itself, to maintain the monopoly intact for ever. The compromise solution of 1955 has many flaws, and further reforms are doubtless im- pending, but the BBC has lost none of its prestige through competition. Reith's work has not been undone: it may even have been strengthened.
Professor Briggs leans heavily upon Reith. Quotation from his private and official papers gives the book (which is dedicated to him) a vividness which it would otherwise lack. A slightly more critical approach might have been better, for the sake both of historical truth and of the reader, because Reith has a few quirks and limitations to set against his extraordinary talents and virtues. But it seems that Professor Briggs's equipment as an historian does not in- clude the capacity to convey the drama, the light and shade, the subtlety or the irony of human character.
ALTRINCII AM
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