John Cole

Broadcaster and journalist

23 November 1927 – 7 November 2013

There is a certain irony that, at a time when Northern Irish events were consistently making negative headlines, an Ulsterman had risen to the top of the national media and was setting the tone for the news from Westminster. Success came early in John Cole’s career, interviewing Clement Attlee when he was still in his teens and a junior reporter at the Belfast Telegraph.

A rapid succession of promotions took him from the local beat to Stormont and then across the water to The Guardian, becoming its news editor in 1963. Coming from a Presbyterian background in North Belfast, he challenged the paper’s view of the Troubles and went on to become deputy editor of The Observer.

During a dispute with the paper’s owner Tiny Rowland, he was offered the post of BBC political editor and soon became an established, authoritative presence on TV and radio.

When leaving the press, he called for the separation of comment from news reporting and a return to basic journalistic ethics. “Is there no merit left in Tennyson’s ‘honest doubt,’ in leaving the reader a little room to make up his mind either way?” he wrote in 1981. Opinion had spread “too widely from the editorial columns to news reporting, and has become too assertive.”

On the night of the Brighton bomb, Cole asked Mrs Thatcher for “any message for people at breakfast time”. To this, she replied: “You hear about these atrocities, these bombs. You don’t expect them to happen to you.” Pausing to make sure the cameras were on, Thatcher added: “The conference will go on, as usual.” Cole was also one of the first to predict her departure from office.

His presenting style set the tone for all subsequent political editors. In later years, he was highly critical of New Labour’s spin machine which, in his view, lowered the quality of politics.

Outside the impartiality required for his job, Cole was very much his own man. British republicanism and Labour sympathies sat alongside his unionism. At home, his family knew him as “the most loving, funny and devoted” husband, father and grandfather.

Tributes on his passing were led by the Prime Minister, describing a “titan … who contributed so much to British political life.”  His Belfast accent never left him and local political figures noted his deep humanity and tough but fair professionalism.  John is survived by his wife Madge, sons Donald, Patrick, David and Michael, and nine grandchildren.

Photo Credit: BBC Pictures