FAMOUS BROADCASTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 220, 10 September 1943, Page 10

FAMOUS BROADCASTER

A Tribute to Professor John Hilton

"Tas army fighting for a brighter and better world lost a valuable officer when John Hilton died in England the other day. That brighter and better world meant for him, among other things, brighter and better relations between employer and employed, and brighter and better broadcasting. John Hilton’s main job was Industrial Relations. He was a professor of that subject, the very name of which, given to a University Chair, must have been enough to make some old-fashioned dons declare afresh that the universities were going fast to the dogs. John Hilton was better known as one of the best af broadcasters, but the two jobs went together. He used at the microphone knowledge he had gained as a protessor, and he developed a technique of talking which influenced broadcasters far away from England, probabiy ali over the English-speaking world. His methods have been used in the instruction of speakers by the National Broadcasting Service in New Zealand for some years, "| Have a Memory" John Hilton had a particularly good preparation for the job of Professor of Inaustrial Relations. He was no intellectual seeking to bend human material to his theories. He knew the industrial world from personal experience. He was born of a middle class Lancashire family, the youngest of seven children, educated at Board School, and then at the Bolton Grammar School. He leit school at 14, and started life in a bicycle shop, where he swept the floor, cleaned the windows and mended punctures. Then he was an apprentice mechanic in a cotton factory, the right job for him, because he always liked handling tools and making things. And he went to evening classes. Consider this routine when the classes were on. Up at a quarter to five, cycle three miles to work, work in the mill from six to half-past five, home for tea and technical school seven to nine. Sometimes he worked "in an agony of tiredness." "You will understand now why I lose my Olympian calm when people oppose the reduction of working hours of youngsters," he wrote in recent years. "I have a memory." Young Hilton won an Exhibition at his night school, but through a technicality, wasn’t allowed to hald it. Then he worked in engineering shops and became a manager on £450 a year, but broke down ih health, spent a while in Russia with his wife and child, and lived for a time on less than a pound a week, when he returned to England. Then he was engaged to speak for the Free Trade Union, and met Sir Norman Angell. This was the turn in his fortunes, and led him to various positions, culminating in the Chair of Industrial Relations at Carhbridge. Hilton said of himself that he never consciously aimed at anything. "It just happened. It happened because talents or knowledge he had been acquiring for fun were the talents or knowledge called for.’ So he wrote in his own obituary notice, — appeared in the Strand for May ast.

You will see, therefore, that John Hilton had very exceptional qualifications for a Professor of Industrial Relations. He found in broadcasting just the medium to put forward his views and to get in touch with people. His talks on industrial relations made him a national figure. "He became, as everyone knows, the guide and counsellor and friend and lay father confessor to countless thousands of the public (to quote his selfwritten obituary again). In the fourth year of the war he was receiving and replying to over 3000 letters a week." Talks on Talking John Hilton worked particularly ,hard at the art and craft of broadcasting. After he had been on the air about 150 times he gave a talk on talking. Peopie said of him that he "just comes to the microphone and talks. So different from listening to something being read!" That was just the point. John Hilton, as he admitted, read his talks, but he had mastered the art of reading as if he wasn’t reading. He described the method-the simplification of the text, the use of conversational style, the value of pauses. Hilton, of course, fully grasped the essential basic point about radio talks, that their construction is different from that of English meant to be printed and read. The main weakness with most scripts offered for the radio is that they are essays or lectures; they are coustructed in literary form. What is wanted is a talk, a real talk. "You can scrap in writing a Talk most of whet you’ve been told all your life was literary good form. You have to; if you want your Talk to ring the bell and walk in and sit down by the hearth." He showed that every phrase, every word, in a really good talk is carefully considered. Like a good essay, qa good talk has its form, its texture, its spirit, but it is as distinct from an essay as an essay is from a piece of political oratory. ;

A.

M.