‘Nice weather for ducks,’ the Radio 1 DJ Clara Amfo said on air this morning, relating a conversation on her way into work, with a ‘security guard’ and a BBC employee. Her reason for telling the story was that she had never heard the phrase before, as a way of saying it was rainy; were there any other weather phrases that she ought to know? A moral of the story was that you should beware of what you say when you are around someone from the media, in case they make use of it, writes Mark Rowe.
Besides, it was an indirect insight into the work of the BBC physical security – the gate-keeper, once called a commissionaire, and with a grand uniform and manner to boot. While that may have changed with the times, so have the threats that gate-keepers are there to face.
Broadcasting House in Portland Place is an Art Deco building that reflects the era it was opened – 1932. In those days, radio – TV was in its very infancy – was the premier and most modern medium. That was reflected in the central place it held when extremists – whether fascist right or Communist left – tried to seize power, as the Austrian Nazis tried to do in Vienna in 1934.
That prompted a secret Home Office letter to chief constables dated February 11, 1935 on the protection of BBC transmitters and studios ‘from unauthorised interference’, just about the earliest evidence of re-armament before the 1939-45 world war. The official letter was about protection from damage, and prevention of access to the microphones, by unauthorised persons wishing to broadcast messages for political or revolutionary purposes.
That mattered because if revolutionaries wanted to carry out a coup, the centres of communication – physical and news – were the main places where the authorities had to be overthrown, for the coup to stand a best chance of success. It was no coincidence that the Easter 1916 uprising in Dublin and the abortive proclamation of a republic was centred on the General Post Office in O’Connell Street in the city centre – before the days of radio, and when the GPO sent out telegrams, as the fastest method of communicating (when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, an official in London went to a post office to send the telegrams to various colonies to tell them that they too were at war).
The Home Office had been reviewing security with Sir John Reith, the Director General of the BBC. Wireless transmitters were mostly in open country while studios were in important towns. Microphones normally were at studios but also at transmitters, which could be connected by people with electrical knowledge. The BBC could disconnect either rapidly ‘… but the danger exists that even in the transmitting stations remained indisturbed harmful propaganda or inaccurate news might be transmitted for a short period if possession of a studio microphone could be obtained as happened in Vienna last year.’
While for the 2020s the threat to public security is ‘fake news’ online, in the 1930s it was similarly that extremists with malign intent might piggy-back on the BBC’s facilities to spread mischief, to camouflage an invasion or coup attempt. Hence from 1939 the notorious ‘Germany calling’ broadcasts by the traitor William Joyce, hanged in 1946 as a traitor.
But back to the 1935 letter; Broadcasting House in London after a recent review had adopted ‘bullet-proof shutters fixed to all ground floor windows’, and steel shutters that could quickly close main entrance doors, and all street doors and vulnerable points had ‘bullet-proof shutters that can be drawn from inside at short notice’. Two commissionaires were on duty, one inside and outside during the day. At night, all doors were locked and on duty were a commissionaire and night watchman. Police chiefs receiving the letter from central government were asked to consider how to protect studios or transmitting stations in their district.
Reith appointed a Colonel FW Home RM to co-ordinate protection of all BBC premises with an office in Broadcasting House. Today’s building as pictured, like other landmarks in London has visible bollards to guard against a ‘vehicle as a weapon’ attack, while still seeking to make the institution of the BBC as little affected by its security as possible; just as the security guard on the door passes the time of day with those entering the place, by talking about the weather.
