Rodney M. Bennett

Not to be confused with TV Director Rodney Bennett.

Rodney M Bennett (b 1934) is a broadcaster, writer, and local politician. He came from naval background; his father, Geoffrey Bennett, was a novelist and naval historian (he used the middle initial to avoid confusion with namesakes).

Educated at Hoe Place and Allhallows Schools, after national service in the Royal Navy where he spent a year in south and west Africa, he obtained a trainee post with the BBC. In twelve years he worked as a studio manger, announcer, and scriptwriter in Singapore and a producer in the Archives and African services. He then spent two years as Senior English Producer in Ethiopia with the Lutheran church international Radio ETLF and a year in the African English service of West German overseas broadcasting.

Through the 1980s he freelanced for BBC in particular on the World Service and published a book The Archer-Shees Against the Admiralty, a factual account of the event on which Rattigan based his play The Winslow Boy. His research unearthed the original five-shilling postal order which caused the problem. He also contributed many articles to the classical magazine Music and Musicians. Then in the 1980s he was a reporter for the London commercial news station LBC, mainly of the flagship breakfast-time 'AM' programme.

Interested in politics he joined the Young Conservatives in 1960 and two years later was elected to Kensington Borough Council and then in 1964 to the newly formed Kensington and Chelsea council after the re organisation of London local government staying until he went abroad in 1967.

Though Conservative he was an active Trade Unionist, Secretary of the Central London programme branch on the Association of Broadcasting Staff which looked after programme staff in the Broadcasting House area and when freelance Chairman of the Association's free-lance division where he campaigned vigorously against the BBC's practice of withholding contacts until after a programme had been broadcast. In retirement he was secretary of the union BECTU's History project and given life membership of this union. Arising from this he was active in the Conservative Trade Unions movement, Chairman of the London Area in the 1990s for several years.

After retirement in 1990 he moved to Richmond in Surrey and became active in local politics, serving on Richmond upon Thames council 2002-2010, where he took a special interest in planning. Always a staunch Euro-Sceptic and he was active in the Campaign for a British Referendum over the Maastricht Treaty in 1993.

A passionate opera lover he has a significant collection of operatic memorabilia, some items from the 18th century.