‘The BBC has always done far more than reflect the contemporary’
David Hendy, Author of The BBC: A People’s History (Profile, 2022)
To write the history of the BBC, Asa Briggs once said, is ‘to write the history of everything else’. The relationship, he suggested, is more than one of background and foreground. Radio and television are like corridors through which the whole of life passes. If we’ve witnessed the dramas of history – wars, natural disasters, sporting spectacles – it’s generally been through the media. Yet the BBC has always done far more than reflect the contemporary. Since 1922 it’s been one of the most influential forces shaping it.
The BBC’s founding father, John Reith, set out what he saw as broadcasting’s true purpose. In the wake of a destructive global conflict, he believed it was radio that could draw out ‘everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement’. Crucial to this enterprise was Reith’s certainty that supply could shape demand: ‘The more one gets, the more one wants.’ In time, those tuning in would be nudged towards an appreciation of more – and better – things. The purpose was not to describe the present but to enrich it.
The BBC’s determination to bring into millions of British homes not just that famous triumvirate of ‘information, education and entertainment’ but what one insider described as ‘the unfamiliar on a tide of the familiar’ is what enabled it to alter the boundaries and textures of national life. In the 1920s and 1930s the BBC’s commitment to regular doses of classical music had a transformative effect on what had so recently been a ‘land without music’. During the Second World War its steady supply of distracting entertainment and reliable news was instrumental in maintaining morale. Later still, a generation of documentary makers and dramatists increased public awareness of poverty, homelessness and racism. While all this was going on, the BBC’s schedules have given shape and character to domestic life, altering mealtimes and establishing the rhythms of our days and weeks and years. When I was a baby I was put to bed when The Archers came on. Now, I cook my evening meals to it.
The Corporation’s continued centrality to British life has achieved something else of national import; it has made possible a succession of shared moments and has helped a sense of the collective to survive.
‘The BBC was at the forefront of shaping the experience of West Indians in Britain’
Darrell Newton, Author of Paving the Empire Road: BBC Television and Black Britons (Manchester University Press, 2011)
On 21 June 1948 the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex carrying nearly 500 West Indians. The event, which ushered in an era of mass immigration, was covered by the BBC on Television Newsreel, Britain’s first regular news programme. Given that fewer than 50,000 combined radio and television licenses were held in 1948, only a small percentage of Britain’s population saw the coverage; but in the years that followed, the BBC would be at the forefront of shaping the experience of West Indians in Britain, for better and worse.
In 1939 the BBC’s Calling the West Indies featured West Indian troops reading letters to their families in the islands. The programme later became Caribbean Voices, showcasing West Indian writers, but it was not until the postwar era that the Corporation began to focus on thorny issues surrounding race relations. In We See Britain and West Indian Diary (1949), West Indians discussed their experiences of Britain for the benefit of those considering immigration. The British press routinely linked West Indians to crime and unemployment and the BBC was no exception. In 1955 Television Service ran a story on ‘Our Jamaican Problem’.
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