Maguire, (Benjamin) Waldo

by Linde Lunney

Maguire, (Benjamin) Waldo (1920–2005), broadcaster, controller of BBC Northern Ireland, was born 31 May 1920 in Portadown, Co. Armagh, the eldest of three children, two boys and a girl, of Benjamin Maguire and his wife Elizabeth Ann (née Eldon). His father worked for the Post Office in Lurgan, but was from a farming family in north Co. Armagh. Waldo was educated at Portadown College and entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1938 to study mental and moral science. He did well in all examinations and was awarded a scholarship in 1941; other new scholars that same year included John Victor Luce (1920–2011), Robert Collison Black (1922–2008) and Alexander Norman Jeffares (qv). He was an enthusiastic cricketer, and won a college cricket-ball throwing competition in three successive years. It was said he scaled the college campanile in a late-night exploit (he would have been expelled had he been caught). Editor of the student magazine, T.C.D.: A College Miscellany (1942), he also contributed freelance articles to the Irish Times and other papers.

Having graduated BA in 1942 with a first (philosophy with mathematics), he joined the British army; his linguistic and mathematical skills were immediately put to use in Bletchley Park, the Buckinghamshire code-breaking and intelligence-gathering establishment. During his time there, Maguire met and subsequently married (22 April 1944) an English woman, (Lilian) Joan Martin; until declassification in the 1960s, neither could discuss their contribution to the war effort. After demobilisation, Maguire joined the BBC in London, working at first in its Latin American Service, and from 1946 in BBC radio news, where he gained invaluable experience. He produced the nightly programme Today in parliament, but mostly worked as editor or organiser of reporting. In 1955, he moved to BBC television news, based in Alexandra Palace, and was promoted to editor in 1962. In 1965–6 he was on secondment to what was then the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, as controller of news and public affairs. His energetic and cheerful approach overcame some initial local resentments, and he was able to suggest major improvements in facilities and equipment. He also started Town and around, New Zealand's first nightly current affairs magazine programme, which was immediately popular.

Maguire took up appointment as controller of BBC Northern Ireland in May 1966, the first native of the province to hold the post. For a few months after his return, Northern Ireland might have seemed to him little more challenging than New Zealand, owing to his being perhaps somewhat out of touch with recent political and social developments. For a time, he was able to introduce changes in news programmes, and there were even a few tentative efforts to improve community relations and understanding, with participation by catholics involved in programmes reflective of traditional culture. Maguire's education and his experience of wartime life in Dublin and England had changed the perspective that might have been expected of someone from north Armagh, the Orange order's birthplace; he was by instinct a reformer. While Ulster's rapid descent into violence almost overwhelmed local journalists, Maguire's long experience in international newsgathering and broadcasting proved to be of great importance. He saw that more staff and greatly enhanced facilities were urgently required to cope with national and international demand for news from the province, and that the need to establish principles and strategies for journalists operating in such a volatile and dangerous situation was still more crucial. Though the controller's friendliness and sense of humour were appreciated, both loyalists and republicans ferociously criticised the BBC and its personnel. In other situations the corporation's stated policy of attempting to achieve objectivity and balance in its news productions might have been appreciated, but not in that time and place. Extremists, as always, expected to be able to find support for their own beliefs in current affairs and news programmes. Republicans accused the BBC of being run by supporters of the Stormont administration, while many of Maguire's co-religionists regarded him as a traitor; in August 1971, an estimated 30,000 loyalists sent letters of protest about perceived bias in BBC news coverage. Increasingly, as the political situation deteriorated, Maguire developed the view that the controller, Northern Ireland, should take responsibility for editorial oversight of news coverage, and should advise his London superiors and London-based programme-makers accordingly. He believed that this was vitally important to avoid encouraging violence; however, opponents, and even on occasion some colleagues, regarded this as censorship rather than the application of prudent local knowledge.

The controller, like his staff, was literally in the firing line, and though he provided energetic leadership and robust response to criticism for six years, the strain of abusive attacks and the duties of the controllership eventually told on him. In September 1972, he took leave to go on a solitary fishing trip in Co. Donegal. When he failed to return home, it was feared that he had been kidnapped or killed by the IRA. Gardaí found him after an all-night search; unconscious and lying partly in the water at the edge of Lough Rath, near Pettigo, he had suffered a stroke. It took Maguire three years to recover sufficiently to return to work, but he did not work again in Northern Ireland. He was appointed OBE in 1973. He went back to New Zealand in 1975 as head of information programmes in the newly established TV2 television channel, but retired after a year, and spent the rest of his life in Ruislip, Middlesex, England. He suffered another major stroke in 1999, a year after the death of his wife, and was left considerably incapacitated. He died 23 November 2005 in England, survived by four sons.