Lord Reith (1889–1971): The Stonehaven Minister's Son Who Made the BBC

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Reith left voluminous diaries, which are the main source for his private views. They are candid but also self-dramatising, and he revised his own story in his autobiography Into the Wind (1949). This card distinguishes his public record from what the diaries reveal.

Manse and workshop

established John Charles Walsham Reith was born in Stonehaven on 20 July 1889, the youngest child of a Presbyterian minister, and grew up mostly in Glasgow, where his father had a church. Stern Calvinist piety marked him for life: a sense of duty, a suspicion of frivolity and an unshakeable conviction that he had been called to some great work. He was educated at Glasgow Academy and Gresham's School in Norfolk. His father, George Reith, was minister of the Free Church's College Church in Glasgow, and when he could no longer afford the fees his son was sent to the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College instead of Oxford or Cambridge, and then into an engineering apprenticeship in Glasgow. Reith wrote in Into the Wind that the idea of becoming a mechanical engineer was abhorrent to him.

established Commissioned in the 5th Scottish Rifles in 1914, he was shot in the face by a sniper in October 1915. The wound left a long scar across his left cheek, which added to his formidable presence. He spent the rest of the war on munitions contracts in the United States.

Building the BBC

established In 1922 the leading wireless manufacturers formed the British Broadcasting Company to provide programmes that would sell radio sets. Reith, who knew almost nothing about broadcasting, answered an advertisement and was appointed general manager, becoming managing director in 1923. He quickly decided that broadcasting was too important to be run for profit or entertainment alone.

established The General Strike of 1926 was his first great test. The government wanted to commandeer the BBC; Reith kept it independent by reporting the strike in a way broadly acceptable to the government, while refusing to become its official mouthpiece. He also, under government pressure, refused to let the Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald broadcast. The episode established both the BBC's reputation for impartiality and the limits of that impartiality.

established On 1 January 1927 the company became the British Broadcasting Corporation, a public body created by Royal Charter and funded by a licence fee, with Reith as its first Director-General. He was knighted the same year. Under him the BBC opened Broadcasting House (1932), launched the Empire Service (1932) and began the world's first regular high-definition television service from Alexandra Palace (1936).

Reithianism

established Reith's philosophy, later called Reithianism, held that broadcasting should give the public "the best of everything", not simply what it wanted. That meant a monopoly protected from commercial competition, no advertising, high moral and cultural standards, and a duty to educate as well as entertain. Sunday programming was deliberately austere, and announcers wore dinner jackets to read the news on radio.

shared The phrase "inform, educate and entertain" is universally attached to Reith and appears in BBC charters, but there is no contemporary evidence that he used those exact words. It summarises his outlook rather than quoting him.

Reith and Baird

established Reith and John Logie Baird were students at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, later the Royal Technical College, at the same time: Antony Kamm and Malcolm Baird, in John Logie Baird: A Life (2002), date the overlap to 1906–1908. The two had much in common: both were youngest sons of ministers in the west of Scotland, both idolised their mothers, and both had elder sisters who trained as nurses.

shared In his memoirs Baird recalled a tall, booming young Reith, probably in 1907, asking him, when he queued for a front seat because of his short sight, whether he was deaf or blind. It is Baird's account alone, dictated more than thirty years later. Kamm and Baird suggest it may have been an isolated piece of loutish behaviour by a reluctant student, though Baird remembered the hurt all his life.

established By a small coincidence, Reith's wife Muriel was a niece of W. J. B. Odhams, whom Baird's advertisement in The Times brought to Hastings in 1923. Odhams probably asked Reith for an expert, and the BBC's A. G. D. West went to inspect the apparatus, possibly lending Baird BBC valves; the company declined to take part.

established Under Reith the BBC was slow and reluctant to take up television, and in a 1967 interview with Malcolm Muggeridge Reith said he had been frightened of it from the start. In October 1928 he asked the Post Office to confine any Baird licence to pictures only, to protect the BBC's sound monopoly. He avoided Baird demonstrations, sending senior staff instead. The Corporation agreed to carry Baird's programmes only after a test on 5 March 1929 before an advisory committee chaired by Lord Clarendon, after which the Postmaster General called the system a "noteworthy scientific achievement". Transmissions began on 30 September 1929, at 11 a.m. on weekdays with extra slots after midnight, at the Baird company's expense, and the BBC took over their production in August 1932.

established Relations were not uniformly cold. Reith first met Baird on business on 6 January 1931 and wrote in his diary that he found him most reasonable; he met him at least five times between January 1931 and December 1932. In April 1932 he suggested that the struggling company seek a government grant like the BBC's opera subsidy, and he wrote to the Postmaster General in support. His diary was harsher about Baird's associate, the journalist Sydney Moseley, whom in June 1932 he called "the miserable Moseley" and, that April, a man "whom nobody seems disposed to trust". In February 1934 he went to the Athenaeum to blackball Baird's fellow director Archie Church.

shared Kamm and Baird write that there is no evidence in BBC archives or in Reith's diaries of personal animosity towards Baird, and they conclude that Reith respected him. They also report, with caution, a story passed on by George Bernard Shaw that Reith once spoke with strong jealousy of Baird, and they suggest that Reith's dislike of television came partly from a belief that the broadcast word should be unadorned. He kept away from both opening days of BBC television, in 1929 and 1936, being on holiday in Scotland each time.

After the BBC

established Reith left the BBC in 1938, a move he soon regretted, to become chairman of Imperial Airways. In 1940 Neville Chamberlain made him Minister of Information and he was created Baron Reith. Winston Churchill moved him to other posts and dismissed him in 1942, and Reith nursed a lifelong hatred of Churchill. He served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, rising to captain in 1943, and later chaired the Colonial Development Corporation and the National Film Finance Corporation. He bitterly opposed the creation of commercial television in 1954, comparing it in the House of Lords to smallpox, bubonic plague and the Black Death. His daughter recalled that the television set the BBC gave him before the war was never used.

established Scotland honoured him late in life. He was Lord Rector of Glasgow University from 1965 to 1968 and Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1967. He died in Edinburgh on 16 June 1971, after a fall, aged 81.

What the diaries revealed

established Reith's diaries, published after his death, showed a more troubling figure. In the 1930s he wrote admiringly of Hitler and Mussolini, apparently drawn to their authority and decisiveness. His daughter, Marista Leishman, in My Father: Reith of the BBC (2008), and his biographer described his intense youthful relationship with a friend, Charlie Bowser, as homosexual. The diaries also show a man consumed by grievance, convinced that his talents had never been properly used.

Legacy

shared Reith's achievement is beyond doubt: the public service model he shaped became the template for broadcasters around the world, and the BBC's independence, licence-fee funding and educational purpose are still debated in his terms. The Reith Lectures, founded in his honour in 1948, continue. But the man was autocratic, rigid and, by his own private record, sympathetic to authoritarianism. A fair card holds both.

• Reith knew almost nothing about broadcasting when he answered the advertisement in 1922.
• He was six feet six inches tall.
• His facial scar came from a sniper's bullet in 1915.
• BBC radio announcers once wore dinner jackets to read the news.
• "Inform, educate and entertain" may never have been said by Reith in those words.
• The Reith Lectures have been broadcast since 1948.
• Reith and John Logie Baird were at the same Glasgow technical college in 1906–1908, and Reith's wife was a niece of one of Baird's first would-be backers.
• In a 1999 poll of people listed in Who's Who in Scotland, Reith came eighth among the greatest Scots of the twentieth century, behind Baird in second place.

• Myth: Reith coined "inform, educate and entertain". The phrase is attached to him and appears in BBC charters, but there is no contemporary evidence that he used those exact words. It summarises his outlook rather than quoting him.
• Myth: Reith invented radio broadcasting or founded the BBC. Wireless manufacturers formed the British Broadcasting Company in 1922. Reith was its first general manager and then the first Director-General of the Corporation, which was created by Royal Charter in 1927.
• Myth: the BBC's General Strike coverage was neutral. Reith kept the BBC independent of the government, but he reported the strike in a way broadly acceptable to it and, under government pressure, refused to let Ramsay MacDonald broadcast.
• Disputed: Baird's story of Reith asking if he was "deaf or blind". It is Baird's account alone, dictated more than thirty years later, though Baird remembered the hurt all his life.
• Myth: the BBC aired Baird's programmes only late at night. From 30 September 1929 they went out at 11 a.m. on weekdays, with extra slots after midnight.
• Myth: Reith was Baird's personal enemy. He was wary of television and slow to give Baird air time, but his diaries and the BBC archives show no personal animosity, and in 1932 he backed Baird's request for a government grant. His diaries were harsher about Baird's associate Sydney Moseley.