John Reith biog   Review of BBC Media Trash     Ian McIntyre: The Expense of Glory - A Life of John Reith

The Case Against the BBC - Part 1. Reith
Ian McIntyre: The Expense of Glory - A life of John Reith (1993)

Here's the myth of the BBC (2012; forum comment): '... the saddening part of this farce [BBC resignations, as paedophile cover-ups including Jimmy Savile are partly exposed; while Muslim rapes of little white girls are ignored, as are murders of whites in South Africa, the views of victims of wars in the Middle East, and so on, and on, and on is that an organisation that was set up with all the good intentions to bring unbiased news and entertainment, world wide in some areas, has under the regime of successive governments since its inception, been allowed to be infiltrated and controlled by Marxist idealism without anybody questioning it. ... in its day the BBC was the closest anyone could get to know what was going on world wide...'

McIntyre's book (large, many monochrome photos, endnotes) is the outcome of his access to 'millions of words of Reith's diaries in the BBC archives'. The endnotes show a lot of information from these; a previous version exists, but 'heavily edited'. In addition, Reith wrote a couple of supposedly autobiographical books (McIntyre says these were flavoured with nautical expressions, and with Old Testament Bible stories). Newspapers and the 'Radio Times' and ten or so other books make up almost all the source material. And Asa Brigg's History of Broadcasting in the UK - decades old now - and as with Alan Bullock and other establishment-joiners of that time one can almost taste the northernness, the Oxbridge connection, the self-censored smug prose...

'The Expense of Glory' is a phrase taken from a comment by Sydney Smith - McIntyre studied English Lit or 'Greats', and likes such quotations, even of slender relevance. Wiki says he was born in '1930-31'. He joined BBC radio in 1957 and I think had an all-radio career. His book is dedicated to 'George Fischer friend and comrade' who appears to be (or have been) a Hungarian Jew. Fischer worked on or started a weekly radio half-hour called 'Analysis' in 1970; McIntyre wrote a book on Israel in 1968, and whether by coincidence or not, also started work with 'Analysis' in 1970. 'Analysis' was supposed to air alternative and unusual and different from ordinary viewpoints; it is hardly necessary to point out that, of course, it didn't. After a bit less than ten years he became 'controller' of Radio 3 (supposedly cultural stuff with tiny audiences) and later of Radio 4 (supposedly intellectual and news stuff). He seems to have retired to write several biographies, some of Scots, including his Life of Reith. With thirty years and more at the BBC, one must assume censorship for the good of the people is a reflex with him.

Anyway Reith (born 1889) was the son of severe Scottish parents - there's a rather stern photo! - his father a clergyman, a background somewhat similar to Gordon Brown's. He had no secondary education, but was forced to work in 'engineering', locomotive stuff, which he hated. Then the First World War 'broke out' and he fought. After that, he looked for work. It's a mystery to me why he was appointed to manage the newly-formed BBC, and McIntyre doesn't begin to answer this question. Surely there were ex-brass left over from the War who were a more obvious choice? Was the organisation so embryonic that nobody thought it would amount to anything? Maybe his tallness and severe demeanour impressed someone? Conceivably Reith's apparent religiosity is the explanation: the BBC has some similarities to the Church of England, including lifetime careers from about 21, unfair state financial support, and the task of spreading official doctrines, the BBC being technically more advanced, and centralised, but otherwise analogous; perhaps Reith's sermonising style of speech seemed appropriate? Maybe official BBC clothing, dog-collar style, was discussed? At any event, he was selected, and immediately made his mark: his secretary was to be a man in a top hat, who was immediately sacked and replaced by a female secretary. (This was a time before employment legislation - later, Churchill would do the same to Reith).

I'd suggest the BBC was set up all along with an eye on the control of opinion. Radio was new at the time (Marconi's uncertain successes to the founding of the BBC was about 20 years). There was a good deal of disenchantment after the holocaust of the First World War. There was a fear of 'communism', after the so-called 'Russian Revolution', most people of course not knowing this was a Jewish movement. I'd suggest the Jewish roots were planned to be kept hidden in the usual control-both-sides way. 'The 1904 Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1904 vested the power to license all transmitters and receivers [in Britain] in the Post Office..' In 1922, the main interest of radio manufacturers was to get into a promising new market, irrespective of content. The sets used thermionic valves and were big, hot, expensive pieces of furniture. By 1923, Reith was hard at work on the legal details of rights, patents, writers and composers and publishers. The Charter emerged a few years later, debated and accepted after the 1926 General Strike. Characteristically, McIntyre has nothing to say on the deeper meanings and purposes of this event; he takes the conventional view of 'Labour' and 'Conservative' parties. Or on the Charter's 'public interest' aspects, which of course resulted in full-blown censorship after 1939.

Everyone says Reith did a wonderful job, but this seems likely to be a huge exaggeration. The 'control board' seems to have had eight members, including Reith, so there must have been plenty of expertise. Radio 'skyrocketed' - the number of licences, a handy measure of market penetration, rose to about nine million by 1939. The manufacturers of course were happy to push their products - factories appeared on the roads outside London; retail outlets specialising in radio opened; all no doubt independently of Reith. 'His' phrase - radio was to 'educate, inform and entertain' was copied from Sarnoff in the USA, with the word order changed. Reith started the 'Radio Times' - an obvious title - and since the BBC had inside knowledge of their programmes, it was a 'money spinner' and indeed the guaranteed licence income, plus the possibility of revenue, opened questions of public-sector and private-sector conflicts of interest. Reith's biggest fear was commercial competition and some of his most carefully-wrought speeches were on that subject.

There's a certain fascination in boardroom struggles. What terrific television they would make! There's a background in the book of BBC officials, shadowy detectives, government functionaries, High Court judgments, Times journalists, interspersed with such events as visiting Ascot, dining at the Carlton Grill, being driven to Downing Street, telephoning Ministers. He was a philanderer, and also probably a homosexual, illegal then, suggesting there may have been opportunities for blackmail. But clearly the background manoeuvrings in the BBC are unlikely to be documented. Reith felt insulted by the offer of just an ordinary knighthood, and generally had a high opinion of himself, not as far as I can see supported by much evidence. Reith must have lasted partly because he understood, or grovelled, maybe by instinct rather than reason, establishment power and (for example) took the BBC down the road of foreign language broadcasts which he pretended were not quite propaganda. He was dropped before 1939, and later sacked by Churchill from the Ministry of Information. He was considered for, but didn't get, various jobs reorganising this or that company or branch of government.

People who think the BBC was 'captured' by cultural Marxism seem offbeam. The BBC has ALWAYS, ever since its beginning, been purely establishment, in the pragmatic sense of including Jewish influence as 'establishment'. In the 1920s, it permitted no debate on whether WW1 was a mistake - there were no inquiries; in the 1930s it had nothing on Stalin or on Jews or for that matter the Royals; the Spanish Civil War was not reported honestly; in the 1940s it was pure Churchilliana with unsparing anti-German propaganda; in the 1950s it never deviated from pro-American views on Korea, supposed nuclear weapons; the Nuremberg Trials were never queried. In the 1960s there was no honest comment on the Vietnam War. I could go on, including science fraud too. But the simple point is: the BBC has never, ever, been honest.

One star seems harsh, as there's evidence of a great deal of effort by McIntyre. In its way this book duplicates the BBC's ethos: a well-packaged product, solemn, properly proof-read but also discreetly censored, internally consistent with the establishment world-view, lavish, perked up with a few titillating scandals which aren't important. But the real importance of the BBC remains outside the package.

Just five books from thousands:
Review of ex-BBC boss Greg Dyke's horrifyingly shallow Inside Story
Review of an execrable and evasive book by a BBC employee. Robert Peston: Who Runs Britain?
Tenth-rate book by Robin Aitken of unimportant criticisms of the BBC
Laurence Rees has been turning out junk programmes for the BBC for years
James Naughtie of BBC Radio 4's 'major series' on people in Britain who have endured Elizabeth's 'reign'

Endnote 15 Mar 2016
Alice Cribbins says: Hard to know whether ReRev is a mere mischief maker or a krank. Either way, the ravings of whatever shade of lunatic he or she is, it is appalling to me that Amazon can tolerate the existence of anti-Semitism on its website, and indeed, publish same.

Noting the importance of freedom of speech and the fact that - presumably - some academics will be interested in the extent of racism in the world and the nature of its substance, and given the Holocaust & other racist crimes, Amazon's failure to prevent such muck from being available to its users represents a moral failure of very serious proportions.

Rerevisionist says: I have to laugh at your hired stupidity. The BBC has deliberately lied for the whole of its life. I won't say more.

Alice Cribbins says: You can say as much as you like. You're a laughable fraud, trying to pass yourself off as an intelligent human being. Let me repeat: I've been doing university research on the history of the BBC for the past four years. What actual effort have you put into the subject over the same time period. Go get a blank piece of paper and draw a donut on it. There's your answer.
Interested by this stupid piece of trolling, I followed up links, and it does seem that an Alice Cribbins, of northern England, has taught A-level [pre-university] history for 20 years. And works, or at least reads, in the British Library in London. Her main interest seems to be pop music from her youth, and foreign but translated into English detective stories. The Jewish surname index gives CHRABENSZ as the nearest sound equivalent; I visualise, perhaps wrongly, Alice Cribbins as a middle aged fanatical woman from Manchester, with a genetic scream reflex when asked to investigate hypotheses, narrow-minded and unintellectual. I think that Jewish fanaticism is evolved, after the event of the invention of cities. Once expertise has formed, a parasitic existence based on secrecy and lies can emerge. If this is a new idea to you, read this link. Imagine the amount of trash her pupils must have endured. How outrageous that a primitive simpleton, mentally something like a taboo worshipper and believer in human sacrifice, should actually be paid, and be allowed to exploit whites!