“IRISHMAN’S DIARY” in JOHN BULL’S OTHER TIMES tells us that the BBC celebrates its first 100 years today, January 1st 2022.
The column carries a photo of the newsreader, Alvar Liddell,a handsome man wearing trousers, a white shirt, sleeveless pullover and a tie. I had thought that Auntie’s newsreader in that era wore full evening dress with swallow-tail coats. The Corporation was led by John Reith, a 6’6″ Scottish giant with a proportionately forbidding scar from a German rifle bullet, imbued with the Calvinist joie de vivre of his father, a Moderator of the United Free Church based in Glasgow.
For 80 years of the BBC’s existence I have been a listener. Indeed I was weaned on Alvar Lidell, Tommy Handley’s “ITMA” , “Just William,” “Dick Barton, Special Agent”, with its signature tune “The Devil’s Gallop”, “Listen While You Work”, “Mrs Dale’s Diary”, “Workers’ Playtime” “Twenty Questions”, “Much Binding in the Marsh ” and “Have A Go” with Wilfred Pickles.
I hadn’t much choice.
There was only one wireless in our house and Radio Eireann didn’t come on the air before 5pm except on Saturdays for Rugby Internationals and horse racing, and Sundays for religious services and GAA and Soccer matches.
My parents were not of a generation to tune into Luxembourg at night.
I enjoyed much of the BBC’s output and endured some of it. I remember being asked to tell my father when the news came on, and I suppose that was during the Second World War about which I knew nothing. I believe my parents remembered Alvar Liddell reading the news when a German bomb hit Broadcasting House or nearby, causing a very short pause. A true professional, he carried on reading the news as if nothing had happened.
I tell this story because on New Years Day this year, the Centenary of the BBC the BBC Screened a news programme written by Luke Sproule of “BBC NI” – “IRELAND 1922 -KEY FIGURES IN THE EMERGENT FREE STATE.
IT starts with a picture of a rifleman in Free State Uniform standing near the roof of Dublin’s City Hall,with the city’s insignia embossed on the stonework. It describes him as a “sniper” presumably a Republican, on the Four Courts, the other side of the Liffey a half mile away, I believe. It then goes on to say who was who on each side of the encounter and it is obvious that whoever compiled the piece knows nothing about snipers and less about who was who in the National movement and the roles they played and the politics involved .
Some years ago BBC TV produced, with great care and expense, a 6 part series called ” EAMON DE VALERA. IRELAND’S HATED HERO.”
I wrote a detailed refutation “De Valera, ‘Ireland’s Hated Hero’ – Oh Really?” which was published in the IRISH POST and other papers in 2012. I recycled it in a Blog Here on January 22nd 2020.
By happenstance, THE IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW OF JANUARY 2022 recycled my piece as it fitted nicely with themes it featured in that edition.
BBC Northern Ireland produced a Radio Play set in 1940 and had De Valera, the elected head of Government planning to play a Quisling role to install the Nazis in Dublin. A poisonous piece by a supposedly serious dramatist.
The irony of all this I have only discovered when preparing this BLOG. For Lord Reith was a dedicated, perhaps even KINKY, follower of Fascism.
Lord Reith a British Establishment man to the core, wrote in his diary of his admiration for Adolf Hitler.
9th March 1933 – “I am pretty certain that that …the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to be a real power in Europe again. They are ruthless and most determined.”
After the Night of the Long Knives in July 1934 – “I really like the way Hitler has cleared up what seems like an incipient revolt, I really admire the drastic actions taken which were obviously badly needed.”
After Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 – “Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency.”
In March 1933 THE IRISH TIMES Editorially welcomed Hitler’s accession to power.
In February 1933 THE IRISH TIMES warned of the dire consequences in store for Ireland if De Valera and Fianna Fail were re-elected to run the Irish Free State,
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