Behind the Wireless: A History of Early Women at the BBC

"I’ve picked this because, again, it gets us thinking about the ambiguous cultural and social role of the BBC, sometimes reinforcing existing inequalities and hierarchies, and at other times helping to challenge them. Kate Murphy’s book examines this through the prism of gender. She looks at the social history of women’s employment at the BBC, particularly during the 1920s and 30s. She also considers some key figures at the BBC at that time, women who are already quite well-known among BBC historians. One example is Hilda Matheson, who was a really influential talks producer and brought more controversial cultural and political programming to the BBC in the 30s. Murphy also considers the careers of Mary Somerville, a pioneer of BBC Schools Broadcasting, and Isa Benzie, who played an important role in the BBC’s international work. Murphy considers how ‘ordinary women’ experienced life at the BBC, and also how some ‘extraordinary’ women made a measurable impact on British broadcasting. The BBC was seen as quite a progressive employer in the 1920s and 30s in terms of its attitude towards women. People like Somerville, Matheson, and Benzie were given a significant amount of responsibility and were paid well. However, they also faced prejudice and institutionalised inequality. Up until World War II, the BBC operated a ‘marriage bar’: if a female employee got married, they were expected to resign. Inequality was also apparent in the way that women were put on air. They were asked to give talks and to perform as musicians, and particularly appeared in programmes aimed at children and other women. Women were not employed as announcers: only men were used to provide the continuity announcements between programmes. There was one attempt to put a woman announcer on air, but she was taken off within weeks, supposedly due to complaints from listeners. This only changed during the Second World War, partly because of shortages of male staff, but also because it was clear that soldiers stationed overseas wanted to hear female voices from home. Another reason why I picked Murphy’s book is because it relates to continuing debates within the BBC about unequal pay. Recently the BBC has taken that challenge very seriously and has worked to address it, and its record on inclusion in the workplace is a lot better than that of many other big companies today in Britain. But it’s not perfect. We also need to relate this historic culture of institutionalised sexism to the tolerance of sexual harassment and assault that existed at the BBC in the 1960s and 70s. This was exploited by abusers like Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall, and produced scandals that have rocked the BBC over the last decade. Yes. I think the BBC was, relatively speaking, a progressive employer in the 20s and 30s—but only relatively. There’s a great quote from one Postmaster General in the 1920s—he said that ‘If once you let broadcasting into politics, you will never be able to keep politics out of broadcasting.’ For the first few years of its existence, the BBC was not permitted to cover any controversial issues in its broadcasts. Also, only a very limited amount of news or current affairs broadcasting was permitted. Once those restrictions were relaxed, the BBC almost immediately started to be accused of political bias. This came from all sides, but perhaps the most common claim, from the early 1930s onwards, was that the BBC was dominated by left-wing cosmopolitan types from London. I’ve already mentioned Hilda Matheson, the early BBC talks producer. She was accused of left-wing bias, of promoting socialism, and pressure from Reith to change the balance of what talks were broadcast led to her resignation in 1932. What becomes clear when you survey the whole century of the BBC’s history, is that politicians from both the major parties have believed that the BBC was biased against them. Harold Wilson certainly thought the BBC was prejudiced against the Labour Party, and there were of course later notorious clashes between Tony Blair and the BBC, culminating in the Hutton Report and the effective sacking of Dyke as Director-General. The BBC gets it in the neck from both sides all the time. We’ve seen this again recently, in the debates about Brexit and the consequences of the Brexit referendum. Both sides fundamentally believed that the BBC was biased against their particular viewpoint. The BBC has always found it difficult to convince people that its political coverage is balanced and, in the increasingly vitriolic political debates of today, the BBC finds itself in an almost impossible situation. A newspaper can very legitimately and very easily pick a side, and speak to the people who it sees as its tribe, but the BBC cannot."