Deed plan for Manchester’s purchase of the Tatton’s Wythenshawe estate

In 1947 Ernest was chosen by the government to become the chairman of the BBC. Eager to get to grips with broadcasting from the outset, Ernest’s tenure was marked by his keenness to speak to members of staff regardless of how junior they were to learn about their duties in order to better understand how the BBC really worked.

Ernest was very interested in broadcasting in other countries and travelled abroad to investigate how television and radio worked there. He spent the longest time investigating America in autumn 1948. In Britain all television was broadcast by the BBC, but in America commercial television was the rule. Here he met numerous experts on broadcasting from advertising tycoons, heads of networks, to professors, and spent hours listening to and watching American radio and television programmes. While he felt light entertainment was pretty good and was impressed by the prevalence of broadcast music, Ernest fervently disliked how the private profi t motive underpinned broadcasting there. In his eyes it severely lowered the standard of programming, reducing it to sensationalism which was bad for children and did ‘nothing to make’ Americans ‘wiser or better citizens’.

Source: Shena Simon Papers, Manchester Archives+.

It was, perhaps, in his impact on the staff that Lord Simon of Wythenshawe made his chairmanship of the B.B.C. most memorable… The small parties in the [Simons’ London] fl at became famous inside the Corporation; two of them sometimes going on simultaneously on different sides of the curtain, with Lord Simon of Wythenshawe eagerly canvassing some point with men producers in one room and Lady Simon of Wythenshawe getting the women producers to be equally frank and forthright in the other. Sir William Haley, Director General of the BBC 1944-1952, on the Simons at the BBC. Source: 80th Birthday Book for Ernest Darwin Simon, Lord Simon of Wythenshawe.

(Below) The zoning of Wythenshawe in 1955. Source: © Garden City Collection (Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation), ref. Plan673. (Above) Typical of Ernest’s refl ective and inquisitive character and his determination to seek improvement, he wrote The BBC From Within (1953) which represented the summation of his experience as chairman from 1947-1952.

(Left) Source: The Courier and Advertiser, 12th October 1950, p.3.

In 1950 Ernest unwisely put himself at the centre of a small political scandal. In October, Ernest took the decision to stop a repeat of a televised comedic play called Party Manners by Val Gielgud, the villain of which was a corrupt Labour politician. Ernest, who had always stressed the importance of citizens having a strong attachment to democracy, felt his decision was justifi ed as its cynical image of politicians seemed to him to severely undermine trust in democratic government. Uproar from right-leaning newspapers followed, with Ernest accused of censoring a play critical of a politician from his own party. Ernest, who did not anticipate the furore, went to the House of Lords to explain his actions and admit his decision to stop the repeat was a mistake. Ernest fi nished his tenure as chairman in 1952, writing an account of his experiences in a book entitled The BBC from Within the following year. In the years following the war Shena kept up her campaign for equality of opportunity in education. For her, the promises of the 1944 Education Act had not been met. The act, instead of providing equal educational opportunities catered for the varying aptitudes of different children as many hoped it would, was continuing to lead to segregation and inequality in education. Furthermore, Shena was dismayed at the paucity of working-class students at university. On the Education Committee of Manchester City Council Shena pushed for the introduction of comprehensive schools in Wythenshawe. While the scheme was frustrated by the objections of the Minister of Education, she had some success with Yew Tree Comprehensive becoming Manchester’s fi rst comprehensive school in 1956.

Her active role on the Council’s Education Committee and public campaigning often led her into arguments with advocates of grammar schools and in 1951 Shena had a heated debate with Dr Eric James, headmaster of Manchester Grammar School. While Dr James believed that some people were born to be leaders and merited an elite education, Shena argued that everyone deserved equal educational opportunities as leadership had to spring from the people.

In 1955, invited by the Soviet Union’s Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, Shena returned to the USSR to uncover how education had progressed there since she lasted visited in 1936. Shena, whose visits made her a leading commentator on Soviet education, was impressed by its increased educational provision and its plans for further expansion in school and higher education. She was also captivated by the educational and recreational activities children enjoyed in the Young Pioneers, the Soviet Union’s equivalent of the Scout movement. Shena felt that citizens in the Soviet Union, where there was no educational segregation, were well on their way to becoming the most educated in the world. In the context of the Cold War Shena urged Britain to consider educational reform as important as military defence as she felt that for developing countries knowledge would soon ‘be indistinguishable from Communism’.

He has a great contempt for the mass of the people and thinks they can’t really have much in the way of taste or morals… He does not believe in the equality of educational opportunity– only in-asmuch as it gets children to the grammar schools… Every child must get an equal chance in education. Dr James despises the masses, but it’s the masses who settle who our leaders are going to be. Excerpts from Shena’s fi erce debate with Dr Eric James headmaster of Manchester Grammar school in 1951. Source: News Chronicle, 20th December 1951.

Architectural plan for a new primary school from the 1950s. Source: Manchester Archives+, ref. M813/4.

Source: Shena Simon Papers, Manchester Archives+.

(Above) Shena was pushing hard for Manchester to develop comprehensive schools in the mid-1950s and called for new schools in Wythenshawe to be trialled as comprehensives. Source: Manchester Guardian, 22nd March 1955, p.12