‘Growing Like a Young Giant’: The BBC as a Place to Work

Murphy, Kate

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2_2

‘Growing Like a Young Giant’: The BBC as a Place to Work

Kate Murphy²

Chapter
First Online: 29 April 2016

249 Accesses

Abstract

Here the working environment of the BBC is established, outlining its development from the amateur enthusiasm of Savoy Hill to the sober professionalism of Broadcasting House. The BBC’s unusual position as both a creative industry and a bureaucratic monolith is explored as is the significant role of John Reith, assessing in particular his relationship with women and with the all-male managerial hierarchy he imposed. The sharp division between waged and salaried staff is introduced; their differing pay scales, promotional opportunities and conditions of service as well as their motivation for joining the BBC. The BBC’s commitment to welfare is also analysed in terms of staff loyalty and cohesion. The chapter compares the BBC with other large interwar organisations and concludes that it was a dynamic place to work.

Ariel, April 1937, Lilian Taylor memories.

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Notes

1.
Ariel, April 1937, Lilian Taylor memories.
2.
Unlike the USA, where women were known to have dabbled in wireless as amateurs, there is little evidence of British women participating in the pre-BBC development of radio. Michele Hilmes (1997) Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) pp. 132–6.
3.
Reith Diaries, 14 December 1922, shows him to be ‘completely mystified as to what it was all about’. For the history of broadcasting and founding of the BBC see Asa Briggs (1961) The Birth of Broadcasting: The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom Vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press) pp. 3–142.
4.
Mark Hines (2008) The Story of Broadcasting House: Home of the BBC (London: Merrell) pp. 38–42.
5.
Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff (1991) A Social History of British Broadcasting, 1922–1939 (London: Basil Blackwood) pp. 277–9.
6.
Marie Wilson, a member of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, led the Proms on several occasions in the mid-1930s.
7.
Mark Pegg (1983) Broadcasting and Society 1918–1939 (London: Croom Helm) p. 7; John Reith (1924) Broadcast over Britain (London: Hodder and Stoughton) p. 80.
8.
The BBC was originally run provincially, with London Station the most important of the nine initial stations. The others were Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff, Belfast, Aberdeen and Bournemouth. The Regional Scheme, which began its slow introduction from July 1927, divided the country into seven regions: London Regional, Midlands, West, North, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
9.
D.W. Hughes (1936) Careers for our Daughters (London: A&C Black) p. 85.
10.
Briggs, The Birth of Broadcasting, p. 4.
11.
The main biographies of Reith are Ian McIntyre (1993) The Expense of Glory: A Life of John Reith (London: Harper Collins); Andrew Boyle (1972) Only the Wind Will Listen: Reith of the BBC (London: Hutchinson); Maritsa Leishman (2006) My Father: Reith of the BBC (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press).
12.
Asa Briggs (1965) The Golden Age of Wireless: The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp. 454–6.
13.
D.L. LeMahieu has written of how the BBC invented and projected an image of bourgeois culture and tradition that was absorbed and accepted by all levels of British society. D.L. LeMahieu (1988) A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communications and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp. 179–89.
14.
This is also apparent in Matheson’s book about broadcasting. Hilda Matheson (1933) Broadcasting (London: Thornton Butterworth).
15.
Reith (1949) Into the Wind (London: Hodder and Stoughton) p. 272.
16.
This is very apparent from BBC Staff Lists, which were introduced in 1934.
17.
Matheson, Broadcasting, pp. 56–7.
18.
BBC/WAC:R1/66/2: Director General Reports, Joint Memorandum by Control Board, 27 May 1930.
19.
Lewis, Broadcasting from Within, p. 27. Cecil Lewis was appointed at the same time as John Reith, as Assistant Director of Programmes.
20.
BBC Programme Content, 1922–26.
21.
Lewis, Broadcasting from Within, p. 27.
22.
Ariel July 1958, ‘Portrait of the Month: Dorothy Knight’.
23.
Ariel, April 1937.
24.
Prospero, June 1984. Prospero is the journal for BBC retired staff.
25.
Roger Eckersley (1946) The BBC and All That (London: Sampson Low, Marston) pp. 57–8; Peter Eckersley (1942) The Power behind the Microphone (London: The Scientific Book Club) p. 57; Arthur Burrows (1924) The Story of Broadcasting (London: Cassell) p. 72.
26.
Richard Lambert (1940) Ariel and All his Quality (London: Gollanz) pp. 43–4.
27.
See for example Asa Briggs (1985) The BBC: The First Fifty Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp. 96–106; Scannell and Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting, pp. 32–34, 108–13; Anne Perkins (2006) A Very British Strike (London: Macmillan).
28.
BBC/WAC:CO37: BBCo: General Strike–Staff Arrangements, Gambier Parry to Gladstone Murray, 18 May 1926; Atkinson report, 18 May 1926.
29.
Maurice Gorham (1948) Sound and Fury (London: Percival Marshall) p. 17.
30.
Hines, The Story of Broadcasting House, pp. 22–34.
31.
Floor plans in Brian Hennessy (2005) The Emergence of Broadcasting in Britain (Lympstone: Southerleigh) pp. 394–413.
32.
BBC Year Book 1932, p. 90.
33.
Val Gielgud (1947) Years of the Locust (London: Nicholson and Watson) p. 90. Gielgud’s italics.
34.
BBC Year Book 1932, p. 98.
35.
Eric Maschwitz (1957) No Chip on my Shoulder (London: Herbert Jenkins) p. 70.
36.
Dorothy Warren Trotter was a qualified architect.
37.
Radio Pictorial, 9 October 1936.
38.
Wilfred Goatman (1938) By-Ways of the BBC (London: P.S. King) p. 49.
39.
See for example Mary Grieve (1964) Millions Made my Story (London: Gollancz) pp. 42–3.
40.
There are a large number of books which examine women’s employment issues; see, for example, Sylvia Walby (1986) Patriarchy at Work: Patriarchal and Capitalist Relations in Employment (Cambridge: Polity Press); Jane Lewis (1984) Women in England 1870–1950: Sexual Divisions and Social Change (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books); Catherine Hakim (1996) Key Issues in Women’s Work: Female Heterogeneity and the Polarisation of Women’s Employment (London: Athlone); Harriet Bradley (1989) Men’s Work, Women’s Work: A Sociological History of the Sexual Division of Labour in Employment (Cambridge: Polity Press); Albert J. Mills and Peta Tancred, eds. (1992) Gendering Organizational Analysis (Newbury Park: Sage).
41.
Reith, Into the Wind, p. 158.
42.
See for example, Reith Diaries, 15 February 1923, ‘A succession of appointments all day … Saw Douglas Smith, Herd, Graham and McQueen’.
43.
Gorham, Sound and Fury, p. 14.
44.
Hendy has written about the effect of the war on BBC staff. David Hendy (2014) ‘The Great War and British broadcasting: emotional life in the creation of the BBC’, New Formations, 82, 82–99.
45.
Annan wrote widely about this attitude. Noel Annan (1985) Our Age: The Generation that Made Post-War Britain (London: Harper Collins).
46.
Reith recorded, ‘an interesting conversation about Etonian benefits and so on, I having said how much I regretted not having been at a real school and Varsity’. Reith Diaries, 1 February 1928.
47.
BBC/WAC:R3/3/1-14: Control Board Minutes, 12 November 1929, 5 January 1927, 9 December 1928, 2 February 1926
48.
Angela V. John (2013) Turning the Tide: The Life of Lady Rhondda (Cardigan: Parthian) p. 15. The journal Time and Tide, established by Rhondda in 1920, had an all-female board. Other women who sat on boards include Sarah Lewis at the John Lewis Partnership and Florence Sangster at the advertising agency W.S. Crawford Ltd.
49.
Asa Briggs (1979) Governing the BBC (London: BBC) pp. 53–5.
50.
For Reith’s relationship with his Board of Governors see Briggs, Governing the BBC, pp. 55–66.
51.
Reith’s diaries bristle with antagonism towards Snowden. He described her as a ‘truly terrible creature, ignorant, stupid and horrid’, Reith Diaries, 9 March 1927. When Hamilton joined the Board, he noted that he was sure ‘Mrs Hamilton would bring a livelier and more critical intelligence to bear … So she did’. Reith, Into the Wind, p. 173.
52.
Internal Instruction No. 408 forbade the use of paper clips except for mail, Ariel, March 1938.
53.
Edward Pawley (1972) BBC Engineering 1922–1972 (London: BBC Books) pp. 71–8, 197–205.
54.
Maurice Gorham, Sound and Fury, p. 30.
55.
BBC/WAC:R/49/178/16: Staff Policy: Establishment, 1 July 1939.
56.
BBC/WAC:R62/100/1-3: Salary Information 1923–39. The Civil Service had a combined proportion of female administrative, executive and higher clerical officers of 5.8 per cent. It did not have the anomaly of a high proportion of technicians.
57.
See, for example, Vyrnwy Biscoe (1932) 300 Careers for Women (London: Lovat Dickson) pp. 56–66.
58.
See, for example, BBC/WAC:R49/231/1: Staff Policy: Grades and Salaries: Monthly (Except Grade ‘D’).
59.
There are scant references to the social class of BBC women, but documents show the occupation of husbands/husbands-to-be included accountant, army subaltern, school teacher, osteopath and transport foreman, all skilled jobs. BBC/WAC:R49/372:Married Women Policy: Tribunals, Freeman also stated that the BBC’s clerical/secretarial women generally married ‘black-coated’ workers. BBC/WAC:R49/371/1:Married Women Policy:1, undated memo from Freeman c1937/38.
60.
BBC/WAC:L1/15/1: Doris Arnold staff file, Gielgud to Eckersley, 1 September 1930, comment by Carpendale.
61.
BBC/WAC:R49/31/1: Appointments Procedure:1, Report on Recruitment of Staff, 8 February 1934, Submission by Nicolls.
62.
Staff files include details of women opening bank accounts on promotion to the salaried grades.
63.
Freeman to Miss George, Miss Hope Simpson, Miss Osborne, Miss Shawyer, 29 September 1935. BBC/WAC:L1/1699/1: Margaret Hope Simpson Staff File.
64.
The Oral History of the BBC: Interview with Mary Lewis, 2 March 1978.
65.
Alix Kilroy described herself as an object of curiosity when she joined the Board of Trade as an Assistant Principal in 1925. Alix Meynell (1984) Public Servant, Private Women: An Autobiography (London: Victor Gollanz) pp. 84–6.
66.
Gorham, Sound and Fury, p. 20.
67.
Ralph Wade (no date) Early Life at the BBC (Unpublished memoir) p. 62.
68.
Radio Pictorial, 27 November 1936.
69.
The 1921 Census showed women aged between 15 and 24 comprised 63 per cent of those in paid employment; in 1931, it was 69 per cent.
70.
Much has been written about young women in the interwar workforce, see particularly Selina Todd (2005) Young Women, Work and the Family in England 1918–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
71.
These figures are derived from the 59 weekly paid women staff who left the BBC for marriage between January 1938 and April 1939. BBC/WAC:R49/371/2: Married Women Policy:2, 28 April 1939. Only two were under 18 when they started. Twelve others were aged under 20. The oldest new recruit was 29, with five aged 27.
72.
Ray Strachey (1935) Careers and Openings for Women: A Survey of Women’s Employment and a Guide for Those Seeking Work (London: Faber and Faber) p. 2.
73.
See, for example, Samuel Cohn (1985) The Process of Occupational Sex-Typing. The Feminisation of Clerical Labour in Great Britain (Philadelphia: Temple University Press) pp. 205–13.
74.
BBC/WAC:R49/227: Grades and Salaries, Grades ‘D’ and Weekly Paid Staff, Memorandum on the Employment of Boys, 28 April 1937.
75.
Salary Information Files.
76.
Goatman, By-Ways of the BBC.
77.
BBC/WAC:R49/227, 19 April 1937. The girls were graded EW with a starting salary of 17/6d a week, similar to what was then paid to ‘boys’.
78.
Many working-class married women continued to work; nearly all the BBC’s charwomen were older married women, see Chapter 3.
79.
Virginia Nicholson (2007) Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived without Men after the First World War (London: Viking) p. xi.
80.
Ray Strachey ‘Changes in Employment’ in Ray Strachey ed. (1936) Our Freedom and its Results by Five Women (London: Hogarth Press) p. 145.
81.
Ariel, April 1937.
82.
Ariel, Summer 1953.
83.
Salary Information Files.
84.
BBC/WAC:R49/73/1: Catering Staff, Conditions of Service, Wade to Pym, 8 September 1938.
85.
BBC/WAC:R49/372: Married Women Policy: Tribunals, Nicolls to Carpendale, 6 March 1935.
86.
Katherine Holden (2007) The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914–60 (Manchester: Manchester University Press) pp. 4, 7, 40–1.
87.
BBC/WAC:L1/454: Gwendoline Williams Staff File, Dewar to Lubbock, 4 December 1936.
88.
11 December 1952. A perfunctory note indicates the embarrassment this caused.
89.
Briggs, The Birth of Broadcasting, p. 225.
90.
Sally Alexander (1995) Becoming a Woman and Other Essays in 19th and 20th Century Feminist History (New York: New York University Press) pp. 213–15.
91.
J.A.R. Cairns (1928) Careers for Girls (London: Hutchinson) p. 37.
92.
See Carol Dyhouse (2010) Glamour: Women, History, Feminism (London: Zed Books) pp. 41–54.
93.
The Oral History of the BBC: Clare Lawson Dick interview, 30 March 1979.
94.
The Oral History of the BBC: Mary Lewis interview, 13 December 1978.
95.
Dorothy Torry interviewed by Kate Murphy, 28 June 2006.
96.
BBC Year Book, 1932, p. 90.
97.
Gorham, Sound and Fury, p. 23.
98.
Daily Express, 6 August 1937.
99.
See Catherine Horwood (2005) Keeping up Appearances: Fashion and Class between the Wars (Stroud: Sutton) pp. 53–6, 67–9.
100.
Dyhouse, Glamour, pp. 64–5. For Alexander the use of cosmetics was a symbol of a young woman’s independence and defiance at this time, Sally Alexander, Becoming a Woman, pp. 219–24. See also Lucy Bland (2013) Modern Women on Trial: Sexual Transgression in the Age of the Flapper (Manchester: Manchester University Press) pp. 108–9. Fiona Hackney has written about the growing importance of cosmetics to women’s magazines in terms of articles and advertising revenue. Fiona Hackney (2011) ‘“They Opened Up a Whole New World”: Feminism, Modernity and the Feminine Imagination in Women’s Magazines, 1919–1930’ (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of London).
101.
Daily Express , 6 August 1937.
102.
BBC/WAC:R51/397/1a: Talks Policy, Graves to Maconachie, 14 July 1937.
103.
Mary Agnes Hamilton, ‘Changes in Social Life’, in Strachey Our Freedom, pp. 233–5. Young working women as a symbol of modernity is also discussed in Adrian Bingham (2004) Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press) pp. 64–5.
104.
Ariel, December 1937.
105.
Ariel, October 1937.
106.
Hilda Matheson Letters, 20 December 1928.
107.
Gorham, Sound and Fury, p. 16.
108.
BBC/WAC:R49/73/1: Catering Staff, Conditions of Service, Wade to Nicolls, 11 January 1934.
109.
BBC/WAC:R3/3/11: Control Board Minutes, 26 May 1936.
110.
See, for example, Arthur J. McIvor (2001) A History of Work in Britain, 1880–1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave) pp. 98–9.
111.
The first Holidays with Pay Act was passed in 1938. BBC/WAC:R49/323/1: Staff Policy: Annual Leave.
112.
In summer, working hours were 9.30–5.30, in winter 9.30–6.00.
113.
The practice was commented on in an article on Welfare Arrangements at the BBC in Nursing Times, 28 April 1934.
114.
Ariel, June 1938.
115.
BBC Club Bulletin, January 1930. Motspur Park opened in June 1929.
116.
The Heterodyne, June 1930.
117.
BBC Club Bulletin, December 1930.
118.
Ariel, June 1936.
119.
The Heterodyne, June 1930.
120.
The Heterodyne, August 1930, November 1930.
121.
Juliet Gardiner (2010) The Thirties: An Intimate History (London: Harper Press) pp. 602–3, 522–3. The BBC branch of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty took part in the 1932 Hyde Park and Albert Hall demonstrations. Heterodyne, April–June 1932.
122.
Ariel, June 1936.
123.
See for example Ariel, June 1936.
124.
Quoted in Briggs, The Golden Age of Wireless, p. 465.
125.
BBC/WAC:R/1/1: Board of Governors, 4 May 1930.
126.
BBC/WAC:R1/66/2: Board of Governors, Proposed Staff Association Reports, 28 May 1930.
127.
Briggs, The Golden Age of Wireless, pp. 454–6.
128.
For a detailed discussion on the Ullswater Committee see Briggs, The Golden Age of Wireless, pp. 476–513.
129.
At the John Lewis Partnership staff were not prevented from joining trade unions but John Spedan Lewis believed that the conditions of service offered made this unnecessary. Judy Faraday (2009) ‘A Kind of Superior Hobby: Women Managers in the John Lewis Partnership 1918–1950’ (Unpublished MPhil dissertation: University of Wolverhampton) pp. 105–6.
130.
BBC/WAC:R49/850: Trades Unions: Amalgamated Engineering Union; R49/871:Trades Unions, National Union of Journalists.
131.
Lambert, Ariel and All his Quality, p. 159. Female membership of trade unions remained low in the interwar year, never reaching more than 19 per cent of total membership. Lewis, Women in England, p. 169.
132.
See Alison Oram (1996) Women Teachers and Feminist Politics 1900–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Helen Glew (2009) ‘Women’s Employment in the General Post Office, 1914–1939’ (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of London).
133.
In 1921, 80 per cent of female post office workers were members of the Association of Post Office Women Clerks. Glew, ‘Women’s Employment in the GPO’, p. 192. In 1929, 83 per cent of women teachers were members of the NUT. Oram, Women Teachers, p. 226.
134.
BBC/WAC:R49/857: Trade Unions: Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries.
135.
In a radio interview Reith stated, ‘Merely that one felt somehow or another, arrogance if you like, or some sort of conceit, that I had qualities at that age, seventeen and a half, that ought to enable me to do something in the world’. BBC Sound Archive, 87181, ‘Reith Remembered’, broadcast 21 June 1989.
136.
McIntyre, Expense of Glory p. 99.
137.
McIntyre, Expense of Glory, pp. 2, 24.
138.
McIntyre, Expense of Glory, pp. 21–85.
139.
McIntyre, Expense of Glory, pp. 82–9.
140.
Reith’s daughter, Marista Leishman’s, biography of her father portrayed him as a deeply troubled man, a workaholic who dedicated his life to the BBC. Leishman, My Father Reith.
141.
Reith’s draconian attitudes towards alcohol and divorce would become the stuff of legends.
142.
BBC/WAC:R49/940: Women Assistants, 1926, Reith to All Station Directors, 30 April 1926.
143.
Reith Diaries, 29 April 1926, 28 November 1926.
144.
Reith Diaries, 22 September 1927.
145.
Lambert, Ariel in All his Quality, p. 69.
146.
Reith was not averse to writing damning comments about women, as his hostile references to Ethel Snowden reveal.
147.
Reith Diaries, 23 December 1930, 21 December 1932, 20 December 1933.
148.
Interview with Dorothy Torry, 28 June 2006.
149.
McIntyre, Expense of Glory, p. 120.
150.
Initially, Isabel Shields worked alone, however during 1925 the complexities of Reith’s job necessitated a second secretary, Elizabeth Nash, and in December 1927, a third ‘assistant secretary’ was recruited, Jo Stanley.
151.
See, for example, Reith Diaries, 1 February 1923, 18 April 1927, 31 August 1934, 25 April 1938.
152.
Reith Diaries, 31 January 1926. As Reith pulled together the final papers for the Crawford Committee he noted, ‘Miss Shields and Miss Nash were both at the house working on evidence’.
153.
Winifred Holtby (1934) Women and a Changing Civilisation (London: Lane and Bodley Head) pp. 105–10. Noel Annan also made this point, Annan, Our Age.
154.
See, for example, L1/1049/2: Isa Benzie Staff File, 22 July 1937, Carpendale to?
155.
For a discussion on women as ‘other’ in the workplace see Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books) pp. 206–29.
156.
Gorham, Sound and Fury, p. 11.
157.
Freddy Grisewood (1959) My Story of the BBC (London: Odhams) p. 79.
158.
Lewis, Broadcasting from Within, p. 175.
159.
Hamilton, Our Freedom, pp. 233–9.

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Murphy, K. (2016). ‘Growing Like a Young Giant’: The BBC as a Place to Work. In: Behind the Wireless. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2_2
Published: 29 April 2016
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