Sir John Reith

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 175, 30 October 1942, Page 3

Sir John Reith

E are asked by a correspondent to-day if we were not a little off-hand in a recent issue in a reference to Sir John Reith, and if his is not the greatest name in the history of British broadcasting. If we seemed disrespectful it was unintentional. We agree without hesitation that the BBC to-day is what Sir John Reith made it (or was before the war left its mark). If his is not the greatest name so far in the history of British broadcasting we can’t think of a greater. But it is not always necessary in the presence of the great to grovel. Sir John in Broadcasting House commanded, and thoroughly deserved, respect; but he also raised many smiles, and was, and in many respects will always be, a huge official joke. When R. S. Lambert, for example, the best known of the several éditors of the English Listener, first applied for a job, Sir John looked solemnly at him for some moments and then asked: "Do you accept the teachings of Jesus Christ?". When Paul Bloomfield (author of another book about life in the BBC) was appointed, he | was put into a class of twenty or thirty bright young men and given an intensive course in BBC atmosphere. When after a year or two it was thought that he had not made (or kept) the grade, being still only 80 per cent. BBC instead of 100 per cent., he was removed. A chief engineer was removed — he, too, has written a book about his ex-periences-for an appearance in a Divorce Court, and it was of course Sir John who removed him; but although the victim was mystified, and not able to grasp the principle by which Sir John decided such issues, no one else could have told him gravely that it was impossible to be a good engineer without keeping the seventh commandment. Sir John is, and will always be, a big man. When crawlers came to him with charges against their colleagues he sent for the colleagues and had the charges repeated |. in their presence. Like the New Zealand Minister who put "j" in "education" he put the first, the fourth, and the seventh commandments into the BBC book of words, and was strong enough to keep them there. No small man could have done that.