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Rentoul, Ferenc: Registering what happens but not encouraging it "Meetings at the Petőfi Circle, lectures in the Officers' Club, the way crowds of people could assemble and the proceedings in the hall had to be relayed by tannoy in the street-these were splendid things. Here at the BBC in London we heard of these remarkable developments from two sources. One was the British Embassy in Budapest, the other British journalists, who by then were visiting Hungary from time to time. And don't forget, if thousands of people were listening over the tannoy in the heart of Europe, it couldn't be kept secret for more than 24 hours, however strict the censorship. Any more than it could that a huge crowd had gathered outside the Radio on October 23, 1956 and the mass meeting had been followed by gunfire.
"The main question mark during the revolution, of course, was what we at the radio in London should be doing about it. We decided at the very beginning that we would not broadcast anything that might encourage or tease the people who had managed to obtain weapons into further fighting or resistance. It also seemed to us in the first few days that something astonishing was happening here, as if the cataract had fallen from a blind man's eyes. People in Hungary had begun to speak openly, were daring to say things couldn't have been said up to then. So everything looked so promising, but the innate caution and moderation of the British warned us to go slowly, to register what was happening, but not to encourage people to rebel. The British ambassador in Hungary, Sir Leslie Fry, sent a stream of the latest reports over the Embassy radio. We would have known about everything even if we hadn't believed what Budapest Radio was saying.
"On October 30, we also thought that the revolution had won. Then it occurred to the heads of the BBC that we should send somebody from the Hungarian Department to Hungary, to try to establish on the ground what was happening and try to telephone or send a report to London. After some discussion, it was decided that I should go. That was about November 1. I went to the Hungarian Embassy, but it was closed. On November 2, I went to the Hungarian Embassy to ask for an official Hungarian entry visa, so that I wouldn't be going to Hungary illegally.
"I arrived in Vienna the next afternoon. The first call was at the British Embassy in Vienna. I went in the office to find papers and cables about Suez were piled up to the ceiling. My one question was whether I could travel to Hungary or not. 'Please take note that you cannot enter Hungary. I cannot send my own diplomatic convoys into Hungary. There stand the Russian tanks on the border with their cannon pointing to the West.' Then I went to the bar of the Bristol, where the Western journalists were gathered, and I heard there was a Russian ship due to sail down the Danube. So I went out to the Vienna branch of the Danube and found the ship, went on board, and tried to talk to the captain. Sadly, that didn't succeed. I went back to my hotel, listened to the radio for a while, then went to bed. On November 4, I was woken by the telephone at five in the morning. It was the press attaché from the embassy in Vienna: 'See what a good job we didn't send you into Hungary?' I asked why. 'Don't you know what's happened?' I said I didn't. Then he told me what had occurred. I got dressed quickly and went to the BBC correspondent in Vienna. We quickly got hold of a car from somewhere, he had a tape recorder, and we went off to the border at Nickelsdorf. There we met the first wave of refugees coming out of Hungary. The Austrians housed them very well in a hastily evacuated school and barracks. They put up camp beds and gave them bed linen and everything.
"These people must have fled from the border areas. I made interviews with several. For instance, I spoke to a woman who had arrived with her two children and her husband. I remember asking why they had come and what their plans were. 'We haven't any plans,' she said, 'we can't have any plans. Our one plan is that we'd like to wake up on the same pillow we laid our heads on last night.' The BBC probably broadcast those interviews that night or next day. And from then on, the BBC continued to interview refugees from Hungary for several days. After November 1956, the directors of the BBC, with Foreign Office approval, lengthened the Hungarian broadcasting time. They gave an extra quarter of an hour. And there was another groundbreaking move as well. They gave permission for Hungarian refugees to send messages over the BBC airwaves to their relatives, saying they had arrived. That was quite unprecedented, because it was inscribed in the charter of the British Post Office that only the Post Office could deliver messages. The BBC had to obtain a special permit from the home secretary. And another thing: according to our reports, despite the interference, a great many people in Hungary listened to the BBC simply because the station had built up such credibility during the war, so that if something interesting happened, people would try to tune into the BBC simply to check whether it was true or not."
The life-interview made by András B. Hegedűs in 1988 is No. 151 in the Oral History Archive.
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