With 90 Further Years

EPILOGUE: A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH 90 FURTHER YEARS Volumes could be written about the women at the BBC post-1939; these few pages offer just a glimpse of signifi cant changes and individuals; the seeds of further research. The Second World War, like the First, was a time of great fl uctuation for women in the UK, particularly in relation to work. 1 At the BBC, as thousands of men were called up, women took over essential jobs, most strikingly as engineers. An Engineering Training School opened in May 1941, the fi rst seven female trainees arriving the following month. By the end of the war more than 800 women would pass through its doors, being deployed fi rst on maintenance and programme work and later at transmis- sion stations. Sir Noel Ashbridge, the BBC’s Chief Engineer, declared in The BBC Year Book for 1943, that ‘the experiment of recruiting women and training them for technical work has been an undoubted success’. 2 The BBC more than doubled in size during the war creating an urgent need for more support staff. However, the introduction of conscription for single women (aged between 20 and 30) in December 1941 meant there was a severe shortage of ‘suitable’ secretarial recruits. As a result a Secretarial Training School was established in February 1942, its aim, ‘to convert a mere typist into an instructed and enthusiastic employee 1 There are many books on women and work in the Second World War, see particularly Penny Summerfi eld (1989) Women Workers in the Second World War: Production and Patriarchy in Confl ict (London: Routledge). 2 BBC Year Book, 1943, p.88. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 257 K. Murphy, Behind the Wireless, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2 258 EPILOGUE: A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH 90 FURTHER YEARS of the Corporation’. 3 Another new and vital area of work was the BBC’s Monitoring Service, based at Caversham near Reading. Hundreds of female linguists arrived, many of whom were mothers, and because of the need for 24 hour working, a full-time crèche was opened in 1943 at nearby Sonning Manor. The expansion of the BBC’s overseas services also created new oppor- tunities for women. Una Marson, a Jamaican, was the fi rst black woman to join the BBC staff in March 1941 (she had briefl y worked before the war on a contract basis as a researcher for the TV programme Picture Book ). 4 Marson was employed as a Programme Assistant on Calling the West Indies but also, in 1943, developed the long-running literary series Caribbean Voices (although Marson would leave the BBC in 1945). Cecelia Reeves, who had been one of Isa Benzie’s Assistants in the Foreign Department, played a key role in the French Service. As Senior Talks Assistant she coor- dinated the team of French broadcasters from London, including Jacques Duchesne. Reeves was one of a number of women who rose to senior positions in the External/World Service after the war. She became the BBC’s Paris Representative in 1947, a position she held for 20 years. The Television Service was shut down at the outbreak of war. Elizabeth Cowell, a former TV Hostess, joined the growing band of women who were now accepted as radio announcers. Margery Anderson, Jean Metcalfe, Margaret Hubble, Joan Griffi ths and Mary Malcolm, for instance, began their BBC careers at this time. Women’s programmes continued to be an important element of the broadcast schedules, most of which were pro- duced by Janet Quigley. Series such as The Kitchen Front , Wise Housekeeping , Calling the Factory Front and Your Health in Wartime provided essential information as well as boosting morale. 5 Audrey Russell was spotted as a broadcasting talent (she had been working as an auxiliary fi rewoman) and was recruited to the BBC in June 1942.6 In 1944, she became the Corporation’s only female accredited war correspondent, covering events in mainland Europe. After the war she gained acclaim as an outside com- mentator, particularly celebrated for her coverage of the Royal Wedding 3 BBC/WAC:R13/241: Secretarial Training Centre, Burlton to Controller (Administration), 6 October 1941. 4 See Delia Jarrett-Macauley (1998) The Life of Una Marson, 1905–65 (Manchester: Manchester University Press). 5 Sian Nicholas (1996) The Echo of War: Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC, 1939–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press) pp.70–107. 6 Audrey Russell (1984) A Certain Voice (Bolton: Ross Anderson). EPILOGUE: A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH 90 FURTHER YEARS 259 in 1947. Russell had been prepared to accept unequal pay during the war. However, in peacetime, she complained about her lower earnings and her sidelining into ‘women’s’ issues, a situation rectifi ed when she threatened to resign.7 After the war, BBC Monitoring was scaled back, the crèche closed and no further female engineers were recruited. Women engineers who wanted to remain, although no longer employed at transmitters, were retained for studio work but with limited options for promotion because ‘they gener- ally did not possess the necessary technical qualifi cations’. The Secretarial Training School, however, was bolstered under its new head, Marian Scott. She held the position until 1967 when the School was merged into General Staff Training. Women’s programming was also strengthened. Woman’s Hour was fi rst broadcast in October 1946, its mix of domesticity, citizenship and escapism reminiscent of the BBC’s pre-war women’s fare. 8 In 1950, Janet Quigley (who had left the BBC on her marriage in 1945) returned as Editor, with Olive Shapley as presenter, two of a sequence of high-powered women who would shape the programme both behind and before the microphone into the present day. 9 Shapley was to be one of the presenters of women’s programmes on television. Mary Adams, now a Senior Television Producer, devised Designed for Women , in 1947 which was followed by other series such as For the Housewife and Leisure and Pleasure . 10 Doreen Stephens, who joined BBC television in October 1953 as Editor, Women’s Programmes, was the fi rst woman to be directly recruited to a senior post from outside the Corporation since Hilda Matheson. 11 In 1964 the Women’s Unit was merged with children’s programming into a Family Programmes Department; however, by 1967 the ‘women’s’ element had been dropped. Children’s programming had by then been greatly expanded. First with the introduction of Listen with 7 The Oral History of the BBC: Audrey Russell interview, (no date). 8 Kristin Skoog (2014) ‘Striving for Editorial Autonomy and Internal Recognition: BBC Woman’s Hour’ in Maggie Andrews and Sallie McNamara eds. (2014) Women and the Media: Feminism and Femininity in Britain, 1900 to the Present (London: Routledge) pp.99–112. 9 Jenni Murray (2006) Woman’s Hour: Celebrating Sixty Years of Women’s Lives (London: John Murray). 10 Mary Irwin (2014) ‘Women’s Viewpoint: Representing and Constructing Femininity in Early 1950s Television for Women’ in Andrews and McNamara, Women and the Media , pp.113–26. 11 Mary Irwin (2011) ‘What Women Want on Television: Doreen Stephens and BBC Television Programmes for Women, 1953–64’, Westminster Papers , Vol. 8, issue 3. 260 EPILOGUE: A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH 90 FURTHER YEARS Mother (the brainchild of Mary Somerville) broadcast on the Light Service from 1950 and second by the creation of a Children’s Programmes department in Television (initiated by Adams) under the headship of Freda Lingstrom in 1951. Children’s television would largely continue to be the domain of women, headed by the likes of Monica Sims, Anna Home and Lorraine Heggessey. Grace Wyndham Goldie is the best known of all BBC women of the 1950s and 1960s. She moved from Talks Producer, Radio (a post she had been recruited to in 1944) to the position of Talks Producer, Television in October 1948, where her infl uence would be immense. 12 Amongst her many successes were the pioneering of General Election coverage, the revamping of Panorama , the development of Tonight , the nurturing of Man Alive and the launch of That Was the Week That Was . She also cham- pioned the BBC careers of, amongst others, Michael Peacock, Richard Dimbleby, Donald Baverstock, Huw Wheldon and Alasdair Milne. Although there were female members of her team, she was not a great advocate for her sex either on air or within the BBC. She was dismissive of female voices, which she felt lacked authority, although she did later con- cede that she might have done more to promote women. 13 Goldie retired in 1965 as Head of Talks and Current Affairs, Television. Mary Adams, who became Head of TV Talks in 1948, was initially Goldie’s boss. Adams was then promoted in 1953 to Assistant to the Controller of TV, a post she held until her retirement in 1958. Mary Somerville also took on a new role becoming Assistant Controller of Talks in 1947 and ultimately Controller of Talks in 1950. She retired in 1955. Janet Quigley and Isa Benzie also assumed important roles, Quigley as Chief Assistant and later Assistant Head of Talks. The two women worked on the development of the Today programme which was launched on the Home Service in October 1957. Isa Benzie was its fi rst producer.14 Sir Ian Jacobs, interviewed on Woman’s Hour in 1959 (following his retirement as Director General) was asked which single word he would 12 See, for example, Grace Wyndham Goldie (1977) Facing the Nation: Television and Politics, 1936–76 (London: The Bodley Head); Charlotte Higgins (2015) This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC (London: Guardian Books) pp.70–90.

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