BROADCASTING CARRIES ON

For years we had an old copy of the Radio Times at our house, issued on 4th September 1939, price two-pence which we pronounced `tuppence’. The cover featured an impressive photograph of Broadcasting House in Portland Place under which was the assurance that Broadcasting Carried On! A banner of text was superimposed across the building proclaiming that this particular edition contained the Revised Programmes for September 4th to 10th. Some dramatic changes in programming had clearly taken place due to the emerging conflict. The Home Service had been somewhat abruptly created and a great many of the BBC staff had been evacuated, not that my mother was really aware of that of course. She only rarely purchased the weekly magazine but on this occasion must have decided that we needed to be fully informed of what the future might hold for us and most especially for me, newly procreated and to be born the following year. The only print connection with the air waves that I was regularly aware of as I grew up was my older cousins’ copy of Radio Fun which they fought over then usually passed on to us, supposedly for me but my mother devoured it eagerly. It featured Big Hearted Arthur and Dicky Murdoch on the front cover and Vic Oliver within its pages. These people became almost real to me and as I am sure I have said previously, I knew that they lived inside the wireless in a strange parallel world.

The Wireless itself was still relatively new and innovative in 1939, the year my parents were married in Crayford. My mother was an early and enthusiastic listener on account of her brother Edgar actually building a Crystal Set in the 1920s which had elevated him to intellectual brilliance in the eyes of his numerous admiring sisters. Although the BBC had been launched as a private company as long ago as 1922 it had rapidly burgeoned in popularity and became a national corporation in 1926. By the first few months of 1938 more than six million receiving licenses had been issue and by the Autumn of that year, shortly after the Munich Crisis the British Broadcasting Corporation solemnly began preparations for what it saw as the inevitability of War. It was only natural that the company should see themselves as significant, even vital in the business of the struggles in Europe and those VIPs in government obviously felt similarly including Neville Chamberlain himself who was heard to say that the broadcasting of pure entertainment must surely cease once war began. This would have been devastating as far as my mother was concerned but oblivious to the feelings of minions like her, he had already decided that the airwaves should be a vehicle for government advice and instruction together with hourly news bulletins. In order that the corporation be most effective and to avoid the possibility of information dissemination being disrupted by bombing campaigns both National and Regional Programming were to be combined into a single channel called The Home Service which would broadcast throughout the country. Programming would still be produced in several different places to limit damage if one area was knocked out due to enemy activity. In fact Broadcasting House in Portland Place was to be hit twice but the BBC was never forced off air which they must have found gratifying at least in retrospect. Replacement provision had been made in Bristol from a disused funicular tunnel in Clifton gorge with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Adrian Boult in mind but when the Music Department moved to Bedford, Bristol became the BBC nerve centre in the West of England eventually sending programmes in more than thirty languages all over the world. None of the Constant sisters were in the slightest bit interested in the kind of music Sir Adrian Boult might concern himself with but they mourned the temporary loss of dance bands and they were certainly more than a little on edge about what might happen next if the war actually came to pass.

Early on the morning of 1st September 1939 Poland was invaded and it was this defining act of aggression that finally pushed Britain into decision and the BBC found itself all at once on a most serious footing which meant that the much mooted merging of the channels took place at once and was announced to listeners on the midday news. My mother, standing at the shallow stone scullery sink in York Road felt a dull and ominous thud in her chest. It was a Friday and the fish for my moderately devout father’s midday dinner was already simmering in milk with a sprinkling of parsley, the potatoes bubbling alongside. Although she was always to be an indifferent cook she could manage boiled fish in what she described as Parsley Sauce though sadly never learned how to thicken the sauce.

When war was finally declared it startled those unfortunate broadcasters sitting in lonely soon to be abandoned studios playing tracks from LPs and every ten minutes informing a dwindling group of listeners, that their particular channel was now defunct. More than likely they like everyone else had confidently expected that the Start of War would herald an extraordinary bombing attack that would maim if not kill Britons in huge numbers. That did not of course happen. In fact nothing happened immediately and the housewives of Northfleet began to breathe easily again.

No official announcement was issued to the nation by Neville Chamberlain until the deadline for German troop withdrawal ran out on 3rd September. Hitler had perhaps wisely ignored those who expected a dramatic turnabout from him. In Northfleet my mother, her new pregnancy already suspected and undoubtedly half lamented, stayed close by the trusty wireless and wondered not for the first time about the prudence of the soon to be most unhappy marriage she had entered into. Bernard Joseph Hendy might well be a regular Mass attender, might never be heard to use bad language, might indeed not be a drinker BUT when all was said and done he was not her Fred. Fred her beloved fiancé was now five years in his grave, a victim of the greatly dreaded TB. It is fair to say my father had a number of pleasing attributes but in our house he was destined not to be loved.

She was not alone in her concentration on the Wireless that day because most of the neighbours and indeed all our relatives in Crayford were equally attentive and all were eventually rewarded with the iconic broadcast announcement that most of us have since become familiar with, after which the national anthem was played followed by a lot of information about how to conduct yourself during an air raid and reminders to be sure to carry your gas mask with you if you ventured outside. All this certainly promoted a feeling of unease in the community, particularly the focus upon gas masks. The protection device distributed to mothers for infants under three months was in the form of an alarming box operated via a foot pump. My mother had paid great attention to that issued to Totty Freeman from No 31 for her new baby Molly and was consumed with anxiety as to what might become of the vulnerable infant should the mother herself succumb to poison gas or indeed prove not to be particularly adept at pumping. She was to be more than relieved the following year when I reached the required age to be allocated the more acceptable diver’s helmet style mask that did not rely on maternal proficiency.

During these disquieting early days whilst mothers of the next generation anguished over what might lie ahead, the BBC came up trumps with regular tips on how to ensure the safety of the young and the only fault that could be found with the deluge of data was that the women delivering it were definitely of the Posh variety and most likely would not have any real worries themselves, at least not of the kind that preoccupied those living in the working class terraces of the south of England. Aunt Maud maintained you had to overlook the fact that they were undeniably more than middle class because there were times when you needed people like them, women who knew what was what. Anyhow they couldn’t help sounding posh if they belonged to the Women’s Institute because everybody knew you couldn’t join unless you were at least a little bit posh. Old Nan said that they were all looking up their own arses and you didn’t have to take their advice if you didn’t want to. My mother, on the other hand, always felt compelled to take the advice of those higher in status than herself and continued to feel doubtful. Interspersing the broadcasts were news bulletins and live music from Sandy MacPherson and his organ which everybody enjoyed even though he turned out to be a Canadian and not Scottish after all. Not that there was anything intrinsically bad about being Canadian of course.

So the British listening public continued to wait with bated breath for the onslaught of bombs from German aircraft and as the hours passed began to gradually relax when nothing untoward took place. By 6th September the BBC’s Variety Department took a deep breath themselves and broadcast the first live revue of the war – Songs From the Shows, from their new headquarters in Bristol. Within a week Children’s Hour had returned also and a week later Band Wagon was back complete with Arthur Askey at the helm. This was swiftly followed by ITMA which was hugely popular and had started months earlier. All the aunts were reassured, even delighted and Old Nan quickly decided that Chamberlain had got it wrong about the war in the first place although she was sure he’d done his best, adding generously that it couldn’t be easy doing his job.

The Wireless went from strength to strength during those early war years, and by 1943 the Variety Centre had abandoned Bristol and was back in London but holding onto an audience with only one channel would have been far from simple. There was a compelling necessity for Popular broadcasting and at the time this meant music and comedy. ITMA remained undoubtedly the most popular wartime show. It starred Tommy Handley and Jack Train who posed as a range of characters including a German spy called Funf who in particular caused my grandmother great merriment Each generated their own catchphrase such as `I don’t mind if I do’, ‘This is Funf speaking’ and of course the iconic `Shall I do you now Sir?’. The people of York Road were regularly convulsed with laughter at the antics of The Minister of Aggravation and those in The Office of Twerps. Old Nan became eventually more addicted to the first new hit show of the war, Garrison Theatre, which featured the kind of revues that had entertained the troops of WW1. The slightly boisterous and disorderly audience definitely appealed to her.

The Bassants next door quickly became fans of Any Questions, which later became known as The Brains Trust and was described as a general knowledge programme, serious in intention but light in character. Five experts discussed questions from members of the forces concerning such unlikely topics as philosophy, science and art. It became a huge success, attracting a regular audience of millions. The BBC Repertory Company produced half a dozen plays each week and these promised to appeal to The Average Listener although my mother had her doubts about this assertion saying that in her experience plays could not always be relied upon and that films were better all round, even though you had to go out and catch a bus and on Saturday nights even queue up.

Children were definitely well catered for as time went on. MPs like Megan Lloyd George gave educational talks about how Parliament functioned and there were also talks on World Affairs. Infinitely more popular though was serialized drama which included The Water Babies, Ivanhoe, Little Women and Nicholas Nickleby. In October 1939, Princess Elizabeth made her first broadcast on Children’s Hour with a special message to Evacuated Children which later included messages from parents to those children who had been evacuated to North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. This was of course most exciting not just to those directly involved but also those listening Ordinary people, not all of them posh, people with ordinary accents heard on the wireless! My aunts, however, maintained that those who had their children sent Overseas were not ordinary at all and could only be described as Nobs. Not everybody agreed with them.

By the end of 1940, when the Blitz was well under way and The Battle of Britain had come and gone, the population had adjusted reasonably well to the various onslaughts. London had become the seat of Governments In Exile for Norway, Belgium Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Greece and acted also as the headquarters of General de Gaulle. The services of the BBC were used to address people in all these countries with Holland having a regular slot called Radio Orange with Queen Wilhelmina giving the first broadcast. In January 1941 during the broadcasting slot allotted to the Belgiums, it was suggested that the letter V for Victory should be used to symbolize resistance in Europe and within a few weeks the idea was gaining traction in occupied countries. By the middle of the year the letter V in morse code became the signature tune of the programme and adopted the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The French, always thought to have a high opinion of themselves, became particularly adept at setting anti-Nazi words to traditional folk songs and in occupied France the tunes were whistled enthusiastically. It would be true to say that families like ours were remarkably insular and never over fond of foreigners of any description, not just the more actively despised Germans.

Meanwhile the Germans were busily broadcasting an English language News Programme with the aid of Lord Haw Haw, actually of course, William Joyce. He most definitely became a wartime radio star and millions tuned in to hear him, resulting in every British child of listening age becoming completely familiar with him and how he should be Strung Up, or Hung, Drawn & Quartered. I am not clear if we entirely understood why he was so universally reviled but to make an enquiry of this nature would have only resulted in further diatribes concerning the fate that must surely await him so generally we did not probe too deeply. However, over time even the youngest of us became comfortably acquainted with the names of those regular broadcasters of the years 1940 and 1945. This was unsurprising since these people were regular visitors into our homes day and night so that they were almost akin to family friends, in much the same way as that list of social media Friends infiltrate the outer reaches of our lives today. Not Real Friends in the sense by which we normally understand the word but nevertheless shadow people we almost consider we know well. By 1945 the list included Alvar Liddell, Freddy Grisewood, Wilfred Pickles, Elsie and Doris Waters, and Joyce Grenfell amongst others. My mother would have wanted to include Vera Lynn who with her regular fifteen minute singing spot kept the nation’s spirits up. And being a definite fan of vigorous piano playing for a time she would have very much wanted to add Charlie Kunz to the catalogue. By 1944, however, he had been abruptly tossed aside when a neighbour convinced her that Kunz was a close confidante of Goebbels, a definite German spy and thus sending messages to the enemy via the keyboard. This was on account of him having a German sounding name although later it appeared that he was more American than German but having lived in England for years definitely considered himself part of the British community. When he died in 1958 he was buried in Streatham Vale cemetery in London but Nellie Constant remained suspicious.

The part played by wartime broadcasting during the first half of the 1940s cannot be overvalued and radio fans like myself find it cheering that the technology, now more than a hundred years old, is still going strong, still invaluable during times of tension and trauma. Broadcasting has indeed carried on!