User talk:Craig W Thomas

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Hello, Craig W Thomas, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful: Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! Ruby  Murray  15:10, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
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January 2014
Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to John Reith, 1st Baron Reith, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear constructive and has been reverted. Please make use of the sandbox if you'd like to experiment with test edits. Thank you. Ruby  Murray  14:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

John Reith, 1st Baron Reith
How I reply to you?

I'm going to type my justification in case you log back in to take a look...

Right, so. The writer here has, in my view, smeared Reith by virtually calling him a proto-fascist. I have read all the existing Reith literature excepting his daughter's recent book which I haven't got around to yet, and there is no evidence of Reith having fascist sympathies. In almost every book this is a complete non-issue. In the absence of any evidence of Reith's enthusiasm for fascism it is hardly constructive for a writer to throw around cheap accusations about the man. It is scurrilous, cheap and thoroughly bad history.

I have left justifications for my actions. Did you not see them. Did you not read that I'm currently undertaking a PhD on Reith and the BBC? I'm sorry to sound pompous but how many folk writing entries on Wikipedia are this well qualified. I also want to tell you that I come at this NOT from the political direction you might expect. I am a Labour supporting, voting historian. Normally Reith gets attacked from the left. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Craig W Thomas (talk • contribs)
 * Thanks for replying. Yes I did read your edit summaries, but they seemed to amount to you disagreeing with what was written from your own experience and research. There are several references from reliable sources in that section to support what's written, and on Wikipedia, assertions must be verifiable. There's more detail about this at Verifiability. If you have references that can throw more light on what's written there, then please do add them. But our own personal knowledge of a subject doesn't count as verification, as explained in No original research. I hope that clarifies why I've restored that section. Thanks, Ruby   Murray  14:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply RM. I recognize the point about verification. I confess to be unsure how to do this, and also confess to commenting on the Reith page in moments snatched in haste whilst trying to do my Phd and have a private/personal life! :) I aim to do something about this as soon as I can.

On "Reich the Nazi", I feel that your response and/or Wiki practices seems to leave me with the job of proving that he was not a Nazi sympathizer. Given that in my considered opinion Reith has no case to answer, not least because the evidence on the page at the moment is laughably thin, to put it mildly and politely, the case shouldn't even be there. To assert that Reith was not a Nazi sympathizer has nothing whatsoever to do with 'original research'.

Let us look at the evidence against Reith on his page.

1. "I am pretty certain ... that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again. They are being ruthless and most determined." This is flimsy, circumstantial evidence. Any historian would completely dismiss it as evidence of Nazi sympathy per se. It just doesn't remotely fly. Whoever wrote this Wiki section clearly wants us to believe that Reith saw "clean things up" in the 1930s as we see them now: we tend to construe "clean things up" with arrest, torture and murder. Given that this appears to have been written in Jan or early Feb 1933, immediately after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, he would have had no idea what Hitler was going to do in office.

2. "I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt. I really admire the drastic actions taken, which were obviously badly needed." This is the most damning evidence against Reith on the surface. I would love to find the time to look into this quote, and may look into it the next time I visit the BBC WAC (March). Relevant question here: what information did Reith have about the "Night of the Long Knives" at the time of his diary entry? When Reith uses the term "drastic actions", what facts (or alleged facts) had Reith just read? In which newspaper? Though I would try to approach the task with an open mind, a construction of this quote as Reith approving of cold blooded murder does not only not ring true with everything we know about Reith's personality, but positively clashes with Reith's extremely deep devotion to God.

3. After Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Nazis in 1939 he wrote: "Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency." This is so empty as evidence against Reith it's almost funny. In the first place Reith might be employing irony. In the second, the use of the adjective "magnificent" does not directly evidence Reith actually approving Hitler's actions. He is, if not being ironic, almost certainly employing it to define Hitler's ruthlessness.

4. "Reith's daughter, Marista Leishman, revealed how her father in the 1930s did everything possible to keep Winston Churchill and other anti-appeasement Conservatives off the airwaves." This is absolutely not true (that he "did everything possible...airwaves"). Further "did everything he could" is a dramatically biased comment in any context, a figure of speech. This sort of exaggeration surely has no place in Wikipedia. (?) The inferred suggestion that Reith was an appeaser is utterly laugable. Indeed, if I make the time for the job I could produce a string of sources to prove not only that Reith was NOT in favour of appeasement, but that he was strongly against appeasement as a useful policy viz-a-viz Hitler's foreign policy.

To collect these quotes together and use them to make an argument for R. the N. sympathizer is just a nonsense. I hope the next paragraph will underline the point.

Now, forgive me, I do not know which is your area of academic expertise, but in the Mussolini-Hitler period, 1922-45, virtually all British conservatives, including senior politicians and peers, approved of both M.'s and H.'s trade union policies, to wit, closing them down and arresting and/or torturing and killing a number of them. How many Wiki pages on Conservative Party figures in the period have a section, "Nazi Sympathizer" on their pages? I'm going to take a look at a notorious Nazi friend and Tory Cabinet Minister right now....Hold on a sec...

....I'm back. This is genuinely shocking. Go and take a look at Lord Londonderry's page (7th Marquis, Charles Vane Tempest). This guy was a known Nazi sympathiser and was dropped from the Baldwin government (himself an admirer of Mussolini, of course) because of it. My source: a book on the man by a world class Nazi historian, Ian Kershaw. I hope you've heard of him. This link also evidences what I have just said. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LbaSgOyciPYC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Nazi+sympathizers+Lord+Londonderry&source=bl&ots=sYUpszuQxa&sig=4SlRoEVW2K8VJO2uHrcSeNMlmj4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XWLuUumfO5SUhQfB-oH4AQ&ved=0CGAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Nazi%20sympathizers%20Lord%20Londonderry&f=false

Your LL page is a farce, frankly. It's a whitewash, a cover up; by friends and/or family, I have little doubt. In effect, his page is a falsification of history and an insult to those who lost their lives fighting Nazism from 1939-45, and to their families. Yet you restore my edit of Reith's non-existent Nazi sympathies.

I wonder whether there is a 'Nazi sympathizer' on Winston Churchill's page. No? No, I thought not. I'm sure there isn't, without even needing to look. Churchill, very much an admirer of Mussolini's social policies (he hated trade unions), was far more sympathetic to Nazi policy too.

So, look, this is an outrageous situation. For Wikipedia, however inadvertently, to single out John Reith as a pro-Nazi figure in the Thirties is to discredit the project. I feel, actually, for Reith's family. It is utterly dreadful for the possibility of his grandchildren or great-grandchilren, etc, reading these insults.

The rest of the article is little better actually. Where the Londonderry page is very literate and thorough, the Reith page is badly written and full of error (the General Strike section is a good example). It is also scandalously thin. Reith was an absolute colossus of a figure in British twentieth century. His work in shaping and administrating the two BBCs (Company, then Corporation) was admired hugely across the globe. He was a world figure. He virtually invented the concept of the public corporation, a conception much-copied not just in the UK but in many other countries too. As a leader he attracted the support, enthusiasm and sometimes devotion of the overwhelming majority of BBC staff. Example: in 1936 (I think it was) his detractors on the left of British politics and press tried to pressure him into granting BBC employees their own staff association (virtually trade union). In a secret ballot, less than 10% voted in favour of having one. His post-BBC work was also extraordinary. He was a monumentally successful - brilliant - administrator, at a time when British management was, to be kind, extraordinarily poor.

Yet for this man, you have a page which, I'm sorry, disgraces Wikipedia.

So I hope you will appreciate, if you've read the above, why I am very angry with Wikipedia and am not remotely impressed with your argument in favour of keeping in situ the article of someone clearly intent on 'doing Reith in', someone with limited writing ability, and absolutely no idea whatsoever how to construct a serious article about a historical figure. I would be delighted if you could put the writer in touch with me.

Craig W Thomas (talk) 16:05, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You've asked about the author of the article. On Wikipedia, articles don't have a single editor, as it's a collaborative project. You can look at the history of how the article was written by clicking on the "View history" tab.
 * You removed an entire section of referenced content, in good faith, because you believed it to be inaccurate, which is perfectly within Wikipedia's guidelines. I reverted your deletion of the section, because it's a referenced section, and believe that your proposed change needs further discussion by as many interested editors as possible: this is also normal practice on Wikipedia. This cycle of editing on Wikipedia is known as the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. So the best place to discuss your proposed changes is at the article's talk page Talk:John Reith, 1st Baron Reith, so other editors can join in the conversation. If, as you said, there are errors elsewhere in the page, please do go ahead and correct them, and don't wait for consensus on changes to one small but controversial section.
 * Please note, however, that the historical arguments you make above, while they appear to me to be perfectly sound, won't be regarded by other editors as sufficient reason to delete a referenced section: on Wikipedia, they need to be backed up by references from reliable sources. Academic credentials don't alter this requirement: even the world's foremost authorities on a subject still need to reference what they write here, and provide counter-references to justify deletion of referenced material. One notable exception to this is on articles about living people, where deletion of contentious material is allowed while verification is being discussed, to protect living people from libel. This doesn't mean that we're free to smear the dead, but I'm sure you get the idea.
 * As you've noted that you're currently pressed for time by your studies and other commitments, you might want to wait until you have time to gather the references that can back up your arguments. They don't to be online references: book citations are fine too. Once you've got those, you should have no trouble convincing other editors of the case for replacing that section with a better referenced one. I look forward to hearing more from you at the article's talk page. Best regards, Ruby   Murray  18:24, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

RM Thank you very much for your reply. Interesting and more positive!

Referencing - 2 years into my PhD research project you don't need to tell me about referencing - :) -.

That noted, may I just stress once more than proving a negative can be tricky: here I would most readily go to the same sources the writer has used here, check out the context and see if their view is immediately torpedoed. This may well happen. But having to do this frustrates me not least bec. if that Reith-Nazi section is allowed to stand, then any scurrilous person can make insinuations, claims, smears on individuals using a slanted, biased take on the evidence and get away with it. And, as is with the case of Reith here, any person making one or two comments that can be taken out of context and used to create a falsehood (a malicious one in this case). Surely Wikipedia has better standards than this?

Finally, for now, having just looked at Margaret Thatcher's page, I want to argue for you to take down the Reith-Nazi section on the grounds of consistency and fairness. Whilst Pinochet is mentioned, her contact with him is not used as it arguably should be and certainly could be, as evidence of Thatcher's Fascist sympathies? I bet if I inserted a Thatcher Fascist Sympathiser Section there would be an explosion of dissent from right-wing Wikipediasts and you'd take the section down. Am I right?

If so, on the strict grounds of consistency (and fairness), then, you should excise the Reith section under discussion.

Oh, one more thing. I really dislike the "picture" of Reith. Why on earth is that allowed to stand there. Imagine an equally major figure as Reith of the 20th century, Churchill, for example, or McDonald, or Keynes, being represented as a cartoon. This only emphasizes the feeling I have that no serious person has worked on the Reith page, and no unbiased one.

regards,

Craig

Craig W Thomas (talk) 18:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You're making several points, so I'll try to reply to each:


 * I certainly agree that we can't be asked to prove a negative. If you think that the section is unbalanced, then you can always add the additional context (with reliable references) to give a more complete picture. I've changed the wording of the section heading, in this edit, in the hope that the section will simply present the evidence of his views, rather than infer a definite conclusion one way or the other. One alternative might be "views on Fascism", or the section could even be made the last paragraph of the section "Wartime_activities", omitting a section heading entirely. You'll note that the entire section is rather short, relative to the length of the article, so his views on fascism aren't given undue weight in the article: see WEIGHT for more information on this policy. As you've noted above, Thatcher's views on Pinochet are mentioned, with references from reliable sources, but as it was only one small aspect of her career, it is not given undue weight there. I don't imagine that you're saying that these facts about Reith can't be mentioned under any circumstances, and within any context: you simply want them not to be taken out of context and distorted? If so, then we can fix that problem without deleting the section.
 * You mentioned the Churchill article above: I see that his views on Mussolini are indeed mentioned in Winston Churchill. Yet those two articles are never "finished" on Wikipedia, and if there were no mention of Pinochet in the Thatcher article, or of Mussolini in the Churchill article, then surely our response should be "if it's significant, and if it can be reliably sourced, then it should be added to those articles, using a neutral point of view, and giving it no more than due weight."
 * The picture of Reith: I completely agree with you on this one. It's an affectionately drawn cartoon of Reith, but I don't personally like that style of cartoon, and I can see how it can be viewed as disrepectful. Note that on Wikipedia, we can only add images that don't breach copyright. I've looked in Wikimedia Commons, and that's the only picture they've got of Reith at the moment. If you can find a better, copyright-free image, or can persuade someone to grant the appropriate permissions for use of a better image, then please do upload it, and let's add it to the article. A postgraduate historian of the BBC should be just the person to know whom to approach about this. For information on how to sort out permission for use of copyrighted images, please see IOWN, and if you have any questions on that, or on how to upload images, or any other technical gubbins, then please ask. I'd be more than happy to help you improve the article in any way I can. Ruby   Murray  12:57, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks once again for a very conscientious piece of work. I'm really sorry I don't have more time today to reply more fully than this. Just time for one point, really. There is absolutely no justification for a section on Reith the fascist sympathizer until someone can adduce far more convincing evidence than that which we presently have and until every person who ever made a comment approving one or more actions, policies, comments or speeches of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco or any other known Fascist/authoritarian leader, and for whom there is a Wiki biographical page, has a sub-section on 'Fascist sympathies' (or whatever) on it.

So while I am very grateful to you, and impressed, that you have taken the trouble you have to respond to my concerns, I have to continue to protest against a sub-section on Reith-Fascist. On the grounds of consistency alone, it's still an error; one the grounds of substance, it's egregious. I am not a huge fan of the "great man or person theory of history", not at all, in fact. But on those terms, there were, one can argue, few "great men" of 20th century British history. The top three, in my (now long) experience of studying the period, are, without doubt, Lloyd-George; Churchill and Reith. Of the three, the greatest was Churchill, because without him, a Conservative party dominated Cabinet would have signed a peace deal with Hitler in 1940. Just thought I'd chuck that in for you.