The Radio Front The Bbc The Propaganda War 19391945 1st Edition Ron Bateman by Ron Bateman 9780750996648, 9781803990804, 0750996641, 1803990805 instant download after payment.

This book details the important wartime role played by the BBC Radio's 'Home Service' transmissions in informing the populace of the UK and the 'British Empire' with its daily updates on how the situation in the war at that time was progressing. As well as making 'light entertainment' to keep up peoples morale by giving them something to laugh at, BBC war correspondents like Wynford Vaughan-Thomas often risked life and limb to cover the war. As one of many examples, during RAF Bomber Command Operations to Berlin several reporters took part in those attacks of which several were killed or captured after the bombers they were flying in were shot down. Another role they fulfilled was to share speeches by elected officials and other important dignities, and most important of all, well wishes from family members at home to those who were serving overseas. As well as being regularly monitored by German Authorities for intelligence purposes, people throughout the world tuned into the BBC world service for news and other forms of information. Captured POWs in particular came to depend on the news updates listened to on illegally hidden radios inside their POW Camps as a way to find out exactly what was going on at home and abroad. A less well known but equally invaluable role was the BBC's clandestine support of the work of SOE  by supporting resistance efforts throughout the war within the occupied territories by passing on seemingly innocuous greetings which were in reality coded messages from SOE to specific resistance groups. This highly secretive intelligence work took place, not just in Europe, but in places as far afield as North Africa, Singapore and Timor.

 The fact that all of this and so much more was achieved Within 17 years of the first ever public Radio broadcast inside the UK, is in itself a clear testament to the BBCs professionalism and hard work in that period of history.

From its humble beginnings as the service broadcast out to localities throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as within the UK, with what could sometimes be called tediously boring programming in those early years, the service slowly started to find its feet as a reputable source of news and entertainment. By the time of the 1930s the BBC had started to truly come into its own, as it started to cover news and other events by not only reading the news but by also interviewing people who were deemed as being newsworthy or excitingly original, and doing so in its own unique style. The BBC started to expand and grow and was soon covering things as diverse as interviewing record breaking pilot Amy Johnson after setting yet another world record in 'distant' locations or covering 'live' test match cricket matches at home, as a young Australian upstart called Donald Bradman ruthlessly and with wild abandon set about punishing English bowlers at lords cricket ground.

After the rumblings in Europe turned into a roar, the BBC world service news became even more important to those elsewhere who wanted to know what was taking place or listen to George Orwell warning of the approach of fascism after his experiences in Spain, or Martha Gellhorn's heartfelt plea to not to throw Czechoslovakia to the baying wolfs inside of Nazi Germany. After the now infamous signing of the 1938 Munich Agreement, the BBC carried Neville Chamberlain's 'peace in our time' speech out to the world. On 3 September 1939, it also carried his announcement 'that Great Britain and her empire were now at war with Germany' to the furthest corners of the globe.   

During the war the Home Office in London and the BBC itself suddenly awakened to the potential wartime benefits of public radio to do more than just to inform and entertain. Behind the curtains of millions of blacked-out homes worldwide the BBC Home Service sought to keep the nation and the Commonwealth informed, upbeat and entertained no matter how grim things were. This book examines the relationship that formed over the years of the war between the BBC and the government of the day and the listener. We discover just how influential public broadcasting became in a time of National emergency and why its important role helped to maintain the English fighting spirt' right upto the end of the war.

Ron Bateman embarked on an apprenticeship with British Rail at Swindon in 1977, where he continued to work as a skilled coach-painter until the works finally shut down. Thereafter, he worked in engineering for an orthopaedic manufacturing company, before retiring in 2016. In 2011 he became a co-founder of the Orwell Society, before taking over the editorship of the Society Journal. He lives in Umbria and Swindon and this is his second published book.