John Hilton (1880-1943) was apprenticed as a mill mechanic and worked as foreman and manager of engineering works in his native Lancashire, until he went to study in Russia in 1907-8. After four years of lecturing and technical journalism, he became in 1912 the acting secretary of the Garton Foundation, newly established to propagate Norman Angell's ideas on international relations. In 1919 he joined the Ministry of Labour as Assistant Secretary and Director of Statistics. Appointed in 1931 as Professor of Industrial Relations in the University of Cambridge, he was free to make weekly broadcasts called 'This and that' (1934-36) and 'This way out' (1936-37), and to write weekly articles and daily questions-and-answers in the News Chronicle (1936-39). On the outbreak of war, in September 1939, he became Director of Home Publicity at the Ministry of Information, but stood down in the following June and resumed broadcasting, with 'John Hilton talking', speaking largely to those affected directly and personally by the war, those in the Forces, those left behind, those subject to industrial conscription, and so on. He was approached in March 1942 by the News of the World Ltd to do the same sort of thing for the newspaper. So he became Director of the News of the World Industrial Advice Bureau which, after his death in August 1943, was renamed after him. Based in Cambridge, the Bureau called on a panel drawn from dozens of professions, with expertise to deal with readers' queries. It continued in peacetime, until 1968, particularly addressing the public's concerns in their dealings with the Welfare State.
From the guide to the Papers of the John Hilton Bureau, 1942-1974, (News of the World archive, News International Archive and Record Office)
