John Reith, 1st Baron Reith
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith of Stonehaven (
20 July 1889–
16 June 1971) established the
British tradition of independent
public service broadcasting.
Born at
Stonehaven in
Scotland, Reith was the youngest, by ten years, of the seven children of the Revd Dr George Reith, a minister of the
Free Church of Scotland. He was to carry the religious convictions of the Free Church forward into his adult life. Reith was educated at
Glasgow Academy then at
Gresham's School,
Holt,
Norfolk. Reith was an indolent child who had used his intelligence to escape hard work but he was genuinely disappointed when his father refused to support any further education and
apprenticed him an
engineer at the
North British Locomotive Company. Reith had been a keen sportsman at school and only learnt to tolerate his apprenticeship through part-time
soldiering in the
1st Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers and
5th Scottish Rifles.
In
1914, Reith left
Glasgow for
London, largely in pursuit of a 17 year-old schoolboy, Charlie Bowser, on whom he appears to have formed something of a crush. Though he readily found work at the
Royal Albert Dock, his commission in the 5th Scottish Rifles soon found him serving in
World War I, being invalided out when struck in the cheek by a bullet in October
1915. He spent the next two years in the
USA, supervising armament contracts, and became attracted to the country, fantasising of moving there with Bowser after the war.
On his return to the UK, Reith and Bowser both fell in love with Muriel Odhams. Reith won Muriel's hand but warned her that she
must share me with C. He sought to redress the asymmetry by finding a partner for Bowser but Reith's subsequent jealousy interrupted the men's friendship, much to Reith's pain.
However, the end of the war saw a reconcilliation, with Reith's return to Glasgow as General Manager of an engineering firm and Bowser becoming his assistant. But the lure of London proved too much for Reith and in
1922, he again set out for the capital. Dabbling in
politics, despite his family's
Liberal Party sympathies, he ended up working as secretary to the London
Unionist group of
MPs in the
United Kingdom general election, 1922. Perhaps prophetically, that election was the first whose results were
broadcast by
radio.
On
14 December 1922 Reith became the general manager of the
British Broadcasting Company, an organisation formed by
manufacturers to provide broadcasts to foster demand for
wireless sets. In his own words he was:
... 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.Reith oversaw the vesting of the company in a new organisation, the British Broadcasting Corporation (
BBC), formed under
royal charter and became its first
Director-General from
1 January 1927 to
30 June 1938.
He expounded firm principles of centralised, all-encompassing radio broadcasting, stressing programming standards and moral tone. To this day, the BBC claims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain".
The first regular
television broadcasts (November
1936 to September
1939) started under Reith's stewardship, but this service initially ground to a halt at the outbreak of the Second World War. When the television service resumed in 1945 it was to be very different due to the impact of the war and Reith having long since departed.
After leaving the BBC in 1938, he became chairman of
Imperial Airways. In
1940 Reith was appointed
Minister of Information in the government of
Neville Chamberlain. So as to perform his full duties he became a
Member of Parliament for
Southampton. When Chamberlain fell and Churchill became Prime Minister his long running feud with Reith led to the latter being moved to the
Ministry of Transport. He was subsequently moved to become
First Commissioner of Works which he held for the next two years, through two restructurings of the job, and was also transferred to the
House of Lords.
The BBC
Reith Lectures commemorate Lord Reith.
*
His potraits at the National Portrait Gallery
