The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press. The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, Volume 3: Competition and Disruption, 1900-2017 9781474424943

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THE EDINBURGH HISTORY OF THE BRITISH AND IRISH PRESS, VOLUME 3

T he E dinburgh H istory of the B ritish and I rish P ress , V olume 3 Competition and Disruption, 1900–2017

edited by martin conboy and adrian bingham e d i t o r i a l a s s i s ta n t s a a r o n a c k e r l e y and christopher shoop-worrall

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Martin Conboy and Adrian Bingham, 2020 © the chapters their several authors, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun­– ­Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13pt MillerText by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 2492 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 2494 3 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 2495 0 (epub) The right of Martin Conboy and Adrian Bingham to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Published with the support of the University of Edinburgh Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Contributor Biographies Preface Introduction: Milestones in the History of the TwentiethCentury Press Adrian Bingham

viii xv xvii xxvii 1

  1. Economics: Ownership and Competition Jonathan Hardy

31

  2. News Production Robert Campbell

64

  3. Readership and Readers Tom O’Malley

83

  4. Regulation Julian Petley   5. Identities and Communities: Negotiating Working-Class Identity in the Regional Press John Steel

106

131

  6. Transatlantic Exchanges Mark Hampton

155

  7. Literary and Review Journalism Sarah Lonsdale

172

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  8. The Financial Press Steve Schifferes (in memory of Richard Roberts) – Case Studies by David Kynaston and Angel Arrese

189

  9. Digital News, Digitised News Scott A. Eldridge II

211

10. Professional Identity Aaron Ackerley

227

11. News Agencies: From Telegrams to Tweets Jonathan Grun

247

12. Photography and Illustration Frances Robertson

265

13. The Sporting Press Stephen Tate

280

14. Women’s Magazines: The Pursuit of Pleasure and Politics Maggie Andrews and Fan Carter

298

15. The Welsh Press Simon Gywn Roberts

315

16. Shared Media Histories in the British Isles: Irish-Language Media, 1900–2018 333 Regina Uí Chollatáin 17. The Gaelic Press Robert Dunbar

356

18. Continuity and Change in the Belfast Press, 1900–1994 Nora Moroney and Stephen O’Neill

377

19. The Black British and Irish Press Olive Vassell

396

20. Cartoons Jane Chapman, Kate Allison, Andrew Kerr and John Cafferkey

414

21. Britain’s Imperial Press System Simon J. Potter

434

22. The Entertainment Press Patrick Glen

451

23. Feminism and the Feminist Press Kaitlynn Mendes and Jilly Boyce Kay

468

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24. The LGBTQ Press in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland Alison Oram and Justin Bengry 25. The Press and the Labour Movement Thomas Dowling and Adrian Bingham 26. The Tabloid Press: Tales of Controversy, Community and Public Life Sofia Johansson

vii 483 502

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27. The Sunday Press Martin Conboy

538

28. Satirical Journalism Felix M. Larkin – Case Study by James Whitworth

556

29. Newspaper Reports of the Westminster Parliament Bob Franklin

574

30. Extra-Parliamentary Reporting: The Under-Reported Life of the Working Class Andrew Calcutt and Mark Beachill 31. Science and the Press Robert Bud 32. The Metropolitan Press: Connections and Competition between Britain and Ireland Mark O’Brien

593 612

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33. The Provincial Press Rachel Matthews

643

Concluding Comments Martin Conboy

660

Key Press and Periodical Events Timeline, 1900–2018 Bibliography Index

664 685 743

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures   I.1 Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, 1917   I.2 News International Building, Wapping, 2011 (© Roger Jones (https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2478979))   I.3 The Sun, 13 March 1986   1.1 Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, c. 1918   1.2 Robert Maxwell, 1989   1.3 The Independent’s ‘It is, are you?’ advert, 1986   1.4 Front page of cartoon leaflet The Scum from February 1987, a spoof of the Sun produced in solidarity with the strikers at Wapping. Sold at 10p, with all profits donated to the strike fund   2.1 Staff at work at the ‘delivery end’ of one of the large printing presses used in the production of the Daily Mail newspaper (From The Makings of a Modern Newspaperthe Production of ‘the Daily Mail’ in Wartime, London, UK, 1944)   2.2 Two newspaper men flip a first proof of a page off the printing press at the offices of the Daily Mail (From The Makings of a Modern Newspaper- the Production of ‘the Daily Mail’ in Wartime, London, UK, 1944)   3.1 A British soldier reading the Sunday Dispatch while stationed in the Middle East during the Second World War (From British Forces in the Middle East, 1945–1947)   3.2 Newsagents in Watford, c. 1914 (https://www.flickr.com/ photos/foundin_a_attic/43836537112#) viii

6 22 25 41 47 49

50

66

78 85 99

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  4.1 Press Complaints Commission in Salisbury Square, 2008 (© Basher Eyre (https://www.geograph.org.uk/ photo/764950)) 111   4.2 Duncan Campbell appearing on After Dark on 2 February 1991 (Courtesy of Open Media Ltd) (https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duncan_Campbell_appearing_ on_%22After_Dark%22,2_February_1991.jpg)) 121   5.1 The offices of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Weekly Telegraph and Evening Telegraph, on High Street, Sheffield, 1898 133   5.2 Queen’s Monument, Endcliffe Park, Sheffield, 2015 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_ Queen_Victoria,_Sheffield.jpg) 136   5.3 Sunderland Echo subeditors checking facts and news stories at the Bridge Street office in the 1960s (© Sunderland Echo) 143   6.1 Henry Morton Stanley, 1872 157   6.2 Ralph David Blumenfeld, editor of the Daily Express, 1919 158   7.1 Rudyard Kipling, early twentieth century 173   7.2 Arnold Bennett, no later than 1912 180   7.3 Kenneth Allsop (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ninian_ reid/8256553088/) 182   8.1 Financial Times headquarters, 2011 (© Colin Smith (https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2585965)) 191   8.2 Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, c. 1914 200   9.1 The Guardian offices, Kings Place, London, 2012 (https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Guardian_ Building_Window_in_London.jpg) 222 10.1 Harold Evans, former editor of The Times and the Sunday Times, 2009 238 10.2 C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian (1872– 1929), 1919 243 11.1 The old Scotsman Building, Edinburgh, 2016 (© John Allan (https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5254049)) 248 11.2 Reuters Building, Canary Wharf, London (https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reuters-Building30SC.jpg) 250 11.3 Press Association Telegraph Office, 1922 253 12.1 This advertisement was used as an example of how to lay out typographic letterpress elements as advertising display, from John Charles Tarr (1945) How to plan print: a textbook for student compositors and designers, page 105 267

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12.2 An early press photo from the Daily Graphic, 11 March 1910 12.3 Advertisement in The Bystander, 25 September 1907 13.1 Team photograph of the Championship-winning Burnley FC side in the 1920–1 season, from the Burnley Express, 9 May 1921 13.2 Former football stands at Sincil Bank, Lincoln City’s stadium, 1982, displaying an advert for the Football Echo (© Steve Daniels (https://www.geograph.org.uk/ photo/2023533)) 13.3 Gilbert Jessop, 1896 13.4 C. B. Fry in his batting stance, 1906 14.1 The Suffragette­– ­Emily Davison memorial edition, 13 June 1913 14.2 Alison Settle, third editor of (British) Vogue, c. 1930s 14.3 Margaret Mackworth (born Haig Thomas), 2nd Viscountess Rhondda 14.4 Radclyffe Hall, c. 1930 15.1 Y Cymro, 26 February 1954 15.2 BBC debate between Iorwerth Thomas (Rhondda MP) and Gwynfor Evans, 28 September 1951 16.1 Statue of Pádraic Ó Conaire in the European Village at Milwaukee Public Museum (https://www.flickr.com/ photos/jeffchristiansen/19621505033) 16.2 ‘The Echo Boy’, a statue created by Barry Moloney, Cork (© Andreas F. Borchert (https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:Cork_Saint_Patrick_Street_%​E2%​ 80%9CThe_Echo_Boy%E2%80%9D_by_Barry_ Moloney_​2017_​08_​25.jpg)) 16.3 Patrick Pearse, 1916 18.1 Belfast Telegraph advert Castledawson, County Derry, June 1990 18.2 Advertisement for copies of the Ulster Covenant carried in the 28 September 1912 edition of the Belfast News Letter 18.3 Robert H. H. Baird 19.1 An article in the African Sentinel described the SS Yarmouth, part of the Black Star Liner Fleet. Its crew is shown here, c. 1920 19.2 Learie Constantine was a supporter of the League of Coloured Peoples and a contributor to its publication, the News Letter 19.3 Cover of Negro World, 31 July 1920. Its publisher, Marcus

268 269 283

291 294 295 299 303 304 307 318 328 341

348 351 379 381 382 399 400

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list of illustrations

Garvey, brought his magazine, The Black Man, to London in 1935 20.1 Front cover, Fitzpatrick, The Lepracaun, Dublin, January 1911 20.2 ‘The quick changes of Big and Little Willie No. 4’ by W. K. Haselden, 1918 20.3 Ken Mahood cartoon published in Punch magazine, June 1982, depicting Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan 21.1 General Post Central Telegraph Office, London, c. 1898 21.2 Roderick Jones, Managing Director of Reuters 1916–41 21.3 Wellington General Post Office foyer with a telegraph sign visible at the back, c. 1920s (Courtesy of Archives New Zealand) 22.1 Paul Rotha directing a scene, 10 September 1962 (Courtesy of the Dutch National Archives and Spaarnestad Photo (https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/ fotocollectie/aa16ff32-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84)) 23.1 Votes for Women, 10 October 1907 (Courtesy of LSE Women’s Library Collection) 23.2 Outwrite, May 1988 (Courtesy of LSE Women’s Library Collection) 24.1 The Artist cover, August 1899 24.2 Cartoon from Men Only, November 1936 24.3 Inside page of Arena Three, December 1969 25.1 Tony Dubbins, General Secretary of the NGA, on the picket line during the Wapping dispute, 1986 (https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tony_Dubbins.jpg) 26.1 Cecil King with Marlon Brando and Ann Miller, California, 1959 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ stokesblandfullerkingancestry/6803353909) 26.2 The agony aunt Majorie Proops, 1974, long-serving author of the ‘Dear Marje’ column for the Daily Mirror (© Allan Warren (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Majorie_Proops_Allan_Warren.jpg)) 26.3 Don’t Buy the Sun campaign sticker. These stickers as well as posters were being distributed around Wembley Stadium before the League Cup Final between Liverpool and Cardiff City on 26 February 2012 (https://www.flickr. com/photos/36593372@N04/6932997707) 27.1 Oor Wullie statue, Edinburgh (© Richard Webb (https:// www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3616986))

xi 401 416 420 426 438 440 442

455 471 476 485 486 490 514 522

526

534 541

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list of illustrations

27.2 James Louis Garvin, editor of the Observer 1908–42, in his office during the First World War 28.1 Nicola Jennings, ‘Harp and Guns’, 2001 28.2 Martyn Turner, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’, Irish Times, 15 March 2012, p. 14 28.3 Daily Mirror, 5 July 1945 29.1 The House of Commons with the Press Gallery visible on the upper level, 1911 29.2 St Stephen’s Tavern, Westminster, London, 2008. A popular destination for politicians and journalists (https://www.flickr.com/photos/55935853@ N00/3107119836) 30.1 John MacLean, a schoolteacher and revolutionary socialist from Clydeside who regularly denounced Britain’s involvement in the First World War in the Herald, 1919 31.1 ‘Nikola Tesla holding in his hands balls of flame’, by Warwick Goble Illustration from the article by Chauncy Montgomery M’Govern, ‘The New Wizard of the West: An interview with Tesla’, Pearson’s Magazine, May 1899 31.2 H. G. Wells with a copy of the Daily Mirror, c. 1918 32.1 T. P. O’Connor, politician and editor of the Star (1887), the Weekly Sun (1891), the Sun (1893) and T. P.’s Weekly (1902), 1917 32.2 Daily Express, 24 April 1900 32.3 Contemporary satirical cartoon of William Martin Murphy by Ernest Kavanagh titled ‘The Demon of Death’, published 6 September 1913 in the Irish Worker 33.1 Cutting from the Eastern Evening News sent to editor Tom Copeman demonstrating the juxtaposition of an anti-smoking story with an advert for cigarettes (Norfolk Records Office BR39.24)

Colour Plates   1   2   3   4   5

Arthur Pearson, caricature in Vanity Fair, 17 November 1904 Sheringham seafront wall painting­– ­‘Not Reading the Newspaper!’ (©John Salmon (https://www.geograph.org. uk/photo/4575814)) The Strand Magazine, vol. 65, no. 321, September 1917 Pall Mall Magazine, August 1898 First issue of The Criterion, October 1922 (https://

551 560 571 573 576

581 596

613 616 629 630 635

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list of illustrations

6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

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commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:THE_CRITERION_ PORTADA.jpg) Mosaic Browser Netscape Navigator 2 The Bystander magazine cover, 1930 A heroic Charles Stewart Parnell protects Erin from Tim Healy, Thomas Sexton and Justin McCarthy, the Weekly Freeman, 4 April 1891 Picturegoer cover, 14 November 1936, featuring Frances Langford A selection of UK fanzines from the punk and immediate post-punk era, including London’s Outrage (https://www. flickr.com/photos/stillunusual/21224199545/) The Englishwoman poster, 1915 (Courtesy of LSE Women’s Library Collection) Rupert Murdoch (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:%D0%9C%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B4%D0%BE%D 0%BA.jpg) Leslie Illingworth cartoon of Winston Churchill, 1940 Protesters from the global civic movement Avaaz, dressed as Rupert Murdoch and Theresa May, demonstrate in Parliament Square to call on the British government to launch a full investigation into Rupert Murdoch before he can proceed with his planned takeover of Sky, London, 2016 Picture Post 1938–50 cover, a collected volume of images from the magazine (https://www.flickr.com/ photos/27556454@N07/2627518697)

Tables   1.1 Advertising revenue as a proportion of total revenue. Adapted from RCP (1977: 32)    1.2 National daily and Sunday newspaper ownership and circulation figures, 1930–2017   3.1 National and provincial newspaper circulations in the UK 1939–88 (in millions of copies sold per day)   3.2 Readership of selected metropolitan morning newspapers by region, gender and social class, 1939   3.3 Readership of selected national daily morning newspapers by gender and social class, 1986   7.1 Percentage of feature space dedicated to ‘theatre, art, radio

32 58 88 91 92

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  7.2   7.3 13.1 18.1 29.1 33.1 33.2 33.3

list of illustrations and literary criticism’ in three national newspapers: 1927, 1937, 1947, 1975  179 Arts and books coverage in the New Statesman 1913–2013  184 Genders of book reviewers and authors in five newspaper and periodical book pages for the month of October 1983, 1993, 2003, 2013  186 Press coverage of sport (as percentage of whole editions) 1880–1930 (September editions only) 283 Irish newspaper circulation figures. The difficulty in finding reliable figures reflects a significant gap in the existing research 383 Number of Comments posted on The Guardian parliamentary live blog, July 2017 589 Average daily newspaper sales 1952 (Norfolk News Company Ltd archive) 651 The relationship between newspaper circulations and advertising rate per column inch, 1961 (Royal Commission on the Press 1962: 198) 653 Costs for the Western Mail and Echo Ltd, January 1966 (National Library of Wales archive Managing Director’s monthly reports, file 44) 654

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It will be evident in the structure and scope of this book that a greater number of people is to be thanked for its eventual publication than is possible to thank individually. We must, then, stress that even more than usual has this work been a thoroughly collective effort. However, within the process of co-ordination, it is possible to identify key players and even locations that have enabled the book to take its shape and move to eventual publication. The editors have benefitted from the environments provided by various universities and other learned establishments in developing the volume. The University of Dundee, the Queen’s Hotel, Dundee and conferences at the University of Edinburgh, University of Sheffield and Marsh’s Library, Dublin allowed us to both fashion a structure and generated a lively and convivial atmosphere of enthusiasm for the press that we hope has transferred over onto the printed page. The series it belongs to may well be testimony to the creative ambience within the Elephant House coffee shop on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh where series editors David Finkelstein and Martin Conboy originally discussed the idea for both this book and the series that it complements. As if enchanted by some strange spell, the longer we drank the tea, the more we talked; the more we talked, the more we wrote. We are grateful to the energy and foresight of Jackie Jones from Edinburgh University Press in identifying the approach to such a history, and the entrepreneurialism and drive of David Finkelstein in helping to make it all happen. At EUP we owe special gratitude to Ersev Ersoy and Eliza Wright for their patience and hard work on the production side and enormous thanks to Christine Barton for her rigorous attention to detail in the copy editing process. We have xv

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­ enefitted considerably from the hard work of two editorial assistants: b Christopher Shoop-Worrall who has been instrumental from the start, and Aaron Ackerley, who came late to the project but added muchneeded energy when we were flagging, not just identifying suitable images, copy-editing and offering critical comments on the text, but also writing an excellent chapter. As always we are thankful for the support and advice of colleagues in our respective departments. They know who they are. Most of all we would like to thank the authors for their patience in what has been a relatively long haul, their intellectual energies in responding so imaginatively and creatively to the challenges of contributing to such a volume, and ultimately their generosity in teaching us so much about the press of this long century throughout these complex and yet connected islands. It is with sadness that we conclude by noting the tragic death in December 2017 of Richard Roberts, one of our contributors. Richard was a fine historian and a generous colleague, and he will be greatly missed. Adrian Bingham and Martin Conboy, Sheffield, October 2019

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

Aaron Ackerley is a Teaching Associate at the University of Sheffield. He recently completed his PhD, entitled ‘Economic Ideas in the Interwar British Daily Press’, at the same institution. He is currently working on a reappraisal of the Empire Crusade campaign and a survey of how public and academic understandings of media influence have historically been shaped by political events. Kate Allison is an independent academic and specialises in studying political cartoons in a journalistic historical context. For her doctorate she studied the fin de siècle cartoons by Linley Sambourne of Punch and Jean Veber of  Assiette au Beurre, particularly on the subject of the Boer War. She has also researched and published an award-winning article on women’s protest in the press in India, France and England with Professor Jane Chapman and has contributed towards a book on contemporary documentary studies with the same author. Her highly trained visual sense in researching cartoons in context in academia has been very much honed by her experiences as a journalist at The Times. Maggie Andrews is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at the University of Worcester and Chair of the Women’s History Network’s national steering committee. Her research focuses on twentieth-­ century women’s social and cultural history. Recent publications include: Women and Evacuation in the Second World War: Femininity, Domesticity and Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2019), A History of Women in 100 Objects (History Press, 2018) and a revised edition of The Acceptable Face of Feminism: The Women’s Institute Movement 1915– 1960 (Lawrence and Wishart, 2015). xvii

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Mark Beachill is currently Lecturer in Journalism at the University of East London. He has a PhD from Sunderland University on the shifting meaning of race in modern US history. He has worked as a jobbing journalist for several publications and previously for many years as a computer programmer. As a teenager during the 1980s Miners’ Strike he most clearly remembers seeing the police doing paramilitary exercises as he walked past Edlington Colliery to the local public baths. Justin Bengry is Lecturer in History and founding Director of the Centre for Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London where he convenes the world’s first MA in Queer History. His primary interest is the relationships between homosexuality and capitalism. He also researches questions related to the so-called ‘gay pardons’ as well as queer local and public histories. His book The Pink Pound: Capitalism and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Britain is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. Adrian Bingham is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Sheffield. He has written widely on the history of popular journalism, including Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain (Oxford University Press, 2004), Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918– 1978 (Oxford University Press, 2009) and (with Martin Conboy), Tabloid Century: The Popular Press in Britain, 1896 to the Present (Peter Lang, 2015). Robert Bud is Emeritus Keeper at the Science Museum in London where he has worked as a curator, Head of Research (Collections) and Keeper of Science and Medicine. He is an honorary affiliate of departments at Cambridge and at University College London, and has been Sarton Professor at the University of Ghent. His monographs include The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology (Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy (Oxford University Press, 2007), and he is co-editor of Being Modern: The Cultural Impact of Science in the Early Twentieth Century (UCL Press, 2018). John Cafferkey is the Deputy Head of the School of English and Journalism at the University of Lincoln. John specialises in, and is currently researching,  sports journalism. Previously he worked for the BBC in news and sport. In 2019 he hosted a Women in Sports Media conference at the University of Lincoln, in partnership with Sky Sports.

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Andrew Calcutt has taught Journalism at the University of East London for more than twenty years. Previously, he worked on print magazines (B2B and consumer titles) and pioneered online journalism in the mid-1990s with Channel Cyberia, where he was commissioning editor. In the 1980s he became news editor at Living Marxism and culture editor of LM. His first (of many) books, Arrested Development: Pop Culture and the Erosion of Adulthood, was recently re-issued by Bloomsbury. Robert Campbell worked as a newspaper journalist before joining the University of South Wales, where he is head of Journalism and Media. He teaches modules in media studies plus practical print, online and mobile journalism. His PhD explores Harmsworth’s prototype tabloid newspaper of 1901, and he has spoken at media history conferences in the UK, USA and Poland. He maintains his media practice and has been highly commended in the British Regional Press Awards. Fan Carter is Associate Professor in Media and Communication at Kingston University, where she teaches media and cultural studies. She has written extensively on young women’s magazines and popular culture and is currently completing a cultural history of young women’s relationships with fashion and consumer culture in 1960s Britain viewed through the lens of one of the most successful and new magazines of the period, Honey. Jane L. Chapman is Professor of Communications, Lincoln University, and Research Associate, Wolfson College Cambridge. Author of fourteen books and thirty articles/book chapters, she is an editorial board member for several international journals. Previous awards include the Colby Prize for Victorian Literature, and Emerald Publishing best academic article of the year. Jane specialises in the comparative, transnational history of newspapers and illustrative satire, especially relating to forgotten or neglected newspaper communications by women and ethnic minorities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her collaborative research in relation to the world wars is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her most recent monograph, Early Black Media, 1918–1924: Print Pioneers in Britain (Palgrave Pivot, 2019). Martin Conboy is Professor of Journalism History and co-director (with Professor Adrian Bingham) of the Centre for the Study of Journalism and History at the University of Sheffield. He is the author

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of seven single-authored books on the language and history of  journalism, four edited collections and co-author (with Bingham) of Tabloid Century (Peter Lang, 2015). He is on the international editorial board of twelve journals including, most pertinently, Journalism Studies; Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism; Media History. His research has been funded by the AHRC, the Dutch NWO and Marsh’s Library (Dublin). Thomas Dowling obtained his PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2015. His thesis, ‘In Spite of History? New Leftism in Britain’ challenged existing historiographical framings of the so-called British ‘new left experience’ between 1956 and 1979. Robert Dunbar is Professor of Celtic at the University of Edinburgh. He has written extensively on Gaelic media, including Gaelic broadcasting, and on various aspects of contemporary language policy in relation to Gaelic, other Celtic languages, and other minoritised languages. His interests include modern Gaelic literature, and Gaelic language and culture in the diaspora. He is currently completing a monograph on language legislation and policy for Gaelic, Welsh and Irish. Scott A. Eldridge II is Assistant Professor with the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, where he studies digital change and the journalistic field. Recent publications include the monograph Online Journalism from the Periphery (2018), and articles in Journalism & Communication Monographs, New Media & Society and Digital Journalism. He is co-editor with Bob Franklin of The Routledge Handbook of Developments in Digital Journalism Studies (2019), and Associate Editor of the journal Digital Journalism. Bob Franklin was Professor of Journalism Studies at Cardiff University (2005–18) and Founding Editor of the journals Digital Journalism (2013–18), Journalism Practice (2007–18) and Journalism Studies (1999–2018). He currently edits the Routledge series Disruptions: Studies in Digital Journalism. Recent publications include Digital Journalism Studies: Key Concepts (with Lily Canter, 2019), The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (2017) and The Routledge Handbook of Developments in Digital Journalism Studies (2019) both with Scott Eldridge II.

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Patrick Glen is a research fellow in the Centre for Historical Research at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of Youth and Permissive Social Change in British Music Papers, 1967–83 (Palgrave Macmillan 2019). Patrick was the postdoctoral research associate on UCL’s AHRC projects, ‘Remembering 1960s British Cinema-going’ and ‘Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s’. He is also a practising musician and journalist who has appeared in session on BBC Radio 6 Music and written for publications including Tribune and Loud & Quiet. Jonathan Grun is Emeritus Editor of the Press Association and is a former Professional Chair in Journalism at the University of Sheffield where he currently chairs the advisory board of the department of Journalism Studies. He has twice been president of the Society of Editors, which campaigns for media freedom, and in 2014 received a special National Press Award to mark his contribution to journalism. Mark Hampton is Associate Professor of History, Fellow of the Centre for Social Policy and Social Change, and inaugural Warden of the Jockey Club New Hall (H), at Lingnan University. He is author of Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950 (University of Illinois Press, 2004) and Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945–97 (Manchester University Press, 2016). He is currently serving as general co-editor, with Adrian Bingham, of a six-volume Cultural History of Media, and is a co-editor of the journal Media History. Jonathan Hardy is Professor of Communications and Media at the University of the Arts London and teaches political economy of the media at Goldsmiths College, London. His books include Critical Political Economy of the Media (Routledge, 2014), Cross-Media Promotion (Peter Lang, 2010), Western Media Systems (Routledge, 2008) and he co-edited The Advertising Handbook (2009/2018). He is a member of the editorial boards of Digital Journalism, Triple C, and Political Economy of Communication. Sofia Johansson is Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm. She is the author of Reading Tabloids: Tabloid Newspapers and Their Readers (Södertörns högskola, 2007) and co-author of Medielandskap och mediekultur (Media Landscapes and Media Cultures, Liber, 2016) and Streaming Music: Practices, Media, Cultures (Routledge, 2017). She has pub-

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lished widely on tabloid journalism, celebrity culture and the uses of streamed and social media, currently researching news practices among young people. Jilly Kay is Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. Her research interests lie primarily in the historically shifting relationships between feminism and mainstream media in Britain. Her work has been published in journals including Feminist Media Histories and Critical Studies in Television. She is assistant editor for the European Journal of Cultural Studies. She is also co-editor of The Past in Visual Culture: Essays on Memory, Nostalgia and the Media (with Cat Mahoney and Caitlin Shaw) (McFarland & Co., 2017). Her forthcoming monograph is entitled Gender, Media and Voice. Andrew Kerr is a co-author of ‘Comics and the World Wars­ – ­a cultural record’. He specialises in the work of Haselden and also comics about heroes and villains. His doctorate is on Second World War comics. Felix M. Larkin is a co-founder and former chairman of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland. A retired public servant, he now works as a historian and freelance writer. He has written extensively on the history of the press in Ireland, and his publications include Terror and Discord: The Shemus Cartoons in the Freeman’s Journal, 1920–1924 (A. & A. Farmar, 2009). He was an external contributor to the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Sarah Lonsdale is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Journalism, City, University of London. A former national newspaper journalist she still contributes to the Sunday Times and reviews books for the Times Literary Supplement. Author of The Journalist in British Fiction and Film: Guarding the Guardians from 1900 to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2016). Her next book, Rebel Women Between the Wars: Fearless Writers and Adventurers is published by Manchester University Press, October 2020. Rachel Matthews is Associate Professor of Journalism at Coventry University. A former journalist with extensive professional experience in the regional news industry, her academic inquiry uses history to contextualise the cultural and social meanings of local and regional news production and products. She is the author of The

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History of the Provincial Press in England (Bloomsbury Academic 2017) and is chairman of the Local and Community Media network of MeCCSA. Kaitlynn Mendes is Associate Professor in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, and an expert in feminist media studies. She is author or editor of five books including the award winning SlutWalk: Feminism, Activism & Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and the newly released Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight Back Against Rape Culture (with Jessica Ringrose and Jessalynn Keller) (Oxford University Press, 2019). Nora Moroney is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, working on a cultural history of the Benjamin Iveagh Library. Her doctoral thesis examined the contribution of Irish writers to the British periodical press in the late nineteenth century. She has published on Irish female journalists in the Victorian Periodicals Review, and was awarded the 2017 RSVP Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in NineteenthCentury Media. Mark O’Brien is Associate Professor at the School of Communications, Dublin City University. A former chair of the Newspaper & Periodical History Forum of Ireland, he is the author of The Fourth Estate: Journalism in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2017); The Irish Times: A History (Four Courts Press, 2008); and De Valera, Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press: The Truth in the News? (Irish Academic Press, 2001). Tom O’Malley is Emeritus Professor of Media, Aberystwyth University, co-editor of Media History, and writes on press and broadcasting history. His publications include: Closedown? The BBC and Government Broadcasting Policy, 1979–1992 (Pluto, 1994); with Clive Soley, Regulating The Press (Pluto, 2000); with David Barlow and Phillip Mitchell, The Media in Wales (University of Wales Press, 2005); with Janet Jones (eds) The Peacock Committee and UK Broadcasting Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); with Siân Nicholas (eds) Moral Panics, Social Fears, and the Media (Taylor & Francis, 2013) and Newspapers, War and Society in the 20th Century (Routledge, 2019). Stephen O’Neill is based at University of Notre Dame, where he is the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for 2019–20

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at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. In 2017 he was SPeCTReSS Visiting Research Fellow at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and in Summer 2019, a visiting researcher at the Moore Institute at NUI Galway. He is currently writing a book about partition and Irish culture. Alison Oram is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. She has published widely on twentieth-century queer British history and on the representation of LGBTQ histories in heritage, especially historic houses. Her books include Her Husband Was a Woman! Women’s Gender-Crossing and Modern British Popular Culture (Routledge, 2007). She led ‘Pride of Place: England’s LGBTQ Heritage’ for Historic England in 2015–16 and is co-investigator of the AHRC-funded project ‘Queer Beyond London: Sexualities and Localities 1965–2010’. Julian Petley is Honorary and Emeritus Professor of Journalism at Brunel University London. His most recent book is the second edition of Culture Wars: The Media and the Left in Britain (Routledge, 2019), co-authored with James Curran and Ivor Gaber. He edited the collection Media and Public Shaming: Drawing the Boundaries of Disclosure (I. B. Tauris, 2013) and is currently co-editing with John Steel The Routledge Companion to Censorship and Freedom of Expression. A former chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, on the editorial board of the British Journalism Review and the advisory board of Index on Censorship, he gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. He is currently writing a book about press freedom. Simon J. Potter is Professor of Modern History at the University of Bristol. He is the author of Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening: Britain, Propaganda, and the Invention of Global Radio, 1920–1939 (Oxford University Press, 2020), Broadcasting Empire: the BBC and the British World, 1922–1970 (Oxford University Press, 2012), and News and the British World: the Emergence of an Imperial Press System, 1876–1922 (Oxford University Press, 2003) as well as of numerous articles and book chapters on the history of empire and the history of the mass media. Simon Gwyn Roberts is Senior Lecturer at the University of Chester. His current research interests include: regionalism and the representation of place, the history of Welsh newspapers and the relationship between the news media and political devolution. He has recently com-

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pleted a book which takes a comparative look at minority languages in the context of social media. Frances Robertson is Lecturer and Reader in Design History at Glasgow School of Art. She researches practices of drawing and print with reference to the history of technology, visual communication and the constructed environment. Recent publications include: Print Culture: Technologies of the Printed Page from Steam Press to eBook (Routledge, 2013); ‘Power in the Landscape’ in Kjetil Fallan (ed.) The Culture of Nature in the History of Design (Taylor & Francis, 2019). Steve Schifferes was Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism at City, University of London, and director of the MA in Financial Journalism, from 2009 to 2017. He edited three book collections, The Media and Financial Crises (Routledge, 2015), The Media and Austerity (Routledge, 2018) and The Media and Inequality (Routledge, 2020). As economics reporter at BBC News, he covered globalisation, financial crises, public finances and trade. He was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic Journalism at Columbia, and a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford. John Steel is Research Professor in Journalism in the School of Humanities and Journalism at the University of Derby. Since completing his PhD in 2001, John has produced more than thirty publications with leading international publishers and in major peer-reviewed journals. Broadly, his work spans media history, journalism studies and political communication. He is currently the Principal Investigator on an AHRC-funded project examining press freedom and journalism ethics across thirteen European countries. Stephen Tate is a former daily newspaper journalist. His 2007 PhD examined the professionalisation of nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury sports journalism. He currently lectures in History at Blackburn College’s University Centre and his research has been published in the journals Sport in History, Manchester Region History Review and Archives, and the Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism. He is the author of A History of the British Sporting Journalist c.1850–1939. James Catton, Sports Reporter (Cambridge Scholars, 2020). Regina Uí Chollatáin is Professor and Head of the School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore at University College Dublin. Her main areas of research are Irish-language media, print culture and language

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revival. She has published widely in academic journals nationally and internationally. Her monograph on the first Irish-language newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis agus Fáinne an Lae 1899–1932 (Cois Life Teoranta, 2004), was awarded the Donnchadh Ó Súilleabháin Oireachtas award. Recent publications include the co-edited Saothrú na Gaeilge scríofa I suímh uirbeacha na hÉireann [Irish language urban writing] 1700–1850 (Four Courts Press, 2017) and Litríocht na Gaeilge ar fud an domhain (Comhar, 2015), the first comprehensive study of Irish-language literature in a global context. She is currently working on a monograph entitled Revival and Media. Olive Vassell is Associate Professor of Digital Media at the University of the District of Columbia. A Fulbright awardee, her academic research focuses on the Black British media. She also has extensive experience as a multimedia journalist and editor focusing on Black British and Black European communities. She is a member of The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). James Whitworth is a nationally syndicated newspaper cartoonist whose work has appeared in British, European and American publications. He has contributed to national magazines including Private Eye and Prospect. His area of academic study is the use of the visual in the popular press, with his PhD concentrating on the pocket cartoon in the Daily Express and Daily Mirror 1939–69. He has over fifteen years’ experience working in the print media, including time as a reporter and feature writer.

PREFACE

This book is part of a three-volume series, and the structure and content of the series are shaped by a set of exchanges led by the series editors, David Finkelstein and Martin Conboy, into the writing of a new history of the British and Irish press. It responds to the absence of wide-ranging, up-to-date surveys of newspapers and periodicals across Britain and Ireland by providing ambitious, interdisciplinary and research-led volumes that seek to analyse long-term continuities and changes. Following volumes covering c.1650–1800 (forthcoming), and 1800–1900 (already published), this book addresses the long twentieth century, from 1900 to the present. The Introduction provides an initial overview of the century by studying the evolution of the British and Irish press across five milestone years, and, in particular, examining how the leading titles in the market, the popular daily newspapers, sought to develop their appeal to a broad, mainstream audience. Five chapters then analyse in more detail the central features of the environment in which the press operated: economic forces and patterns of ownership; the institutions and technologies of production and distribution; the reading audience; the legal and regulatory framework; and the identities and communities that structured the market. After these, the bulk of the volume comprises a series of thematic chapters attending to different aspects of the creation, content and impact of newspapers and periodicals in this period. The book concludes with a detailed timeline and a comprehensive bibliography. It is worth emphasising that the editors have not imposed an interpretative model for authors to follow. The authors come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, bring different expertise to their topics, and offer their own perspectives on the central questions raised by the xxvii

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volume. There are alternative and sometimes competing opinions in this volume. We firmly believe such diversity, and occasionally, discord, is both creative and reflects the breadth of the wider field. What we have asked authors to do, where possible, is to be expansive in their coverage, both chronologically and geographically, and also to combine generalisation with the particularities of examples and case studies. Within the constraints of copyright and our budget, we have also tried to illustrate each chapter, capturing something of the visual appeal that was so important to newspapers and periodicals in this period. We are conscious that, even with such a generous amount of space at our disposal, there are still some publications, people and themes that have not received the attention we would have liked. We are confident, however, that we have brought together a wealth of fresh and exciting research, and we hope that this book both provides a valuable overview of the state of the existing scholarship, and inspires further research to take the field forward.

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Plate 1  Arthur Pearson, caricature in Vanity Fair, 17 November 1904

Plate 2  Sheringham seafront wall painting – ‘Not Reading the Newspaper!’ (©John Salmon (https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4575814))

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Plate 3  The Strand Magazine, vol. 65, no. 321, September 1917

Plate 4  Pall Mall Magazine, August 1898

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Plate 5  First issue of The Criterion, October 1922 ( https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:THE_CRITERION_PORTADA.jpg)

Plate 6  Mosaic Browser

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Plate 7  Netscape Navigator 2

Plate 8  The Bystander magazine cover, 1930

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Plate 9  A heroic Charles Stewart Parnell protects Erin from Tim Healy, Thomas Sexton and Justin McCarthy, the Weekly Freeman, 4 April 1891

Plate 10  Picturegoer cover, 14 November 1936, featuring Frances Langford

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Plate 11  A selection of UK fanzines from the punk and immediate postpunk era, including London’s Outrage (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ stillunusual/21224199545/)

Plate 12  The Englishwoman Poster, 1915 (Courtesy of LSE Women’s Library Collection)

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Plate 13  Rupert Murdoch (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%​ D0%​9C%​D0%​B5%​D1%​80%​D0%​B4%​D0%​BE%​D0%​BA.jpg)

Plate 14  Leslie Illingworth cartoon of Winston Churchill, 1940

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Plate 15  Protesters from the global civic movement Avaaz, dressed as Rupert Murdoch and Theresa May, demonstrate in Parliament Square to call on the British government to launch a full investigation into Rupert Murdoch before he can proceed with his planned takeover of Sky, London, 2016

Plate 16  Picture Post 1938–50 cover, a collected volume of images from the magazine (https://www.flickr.com/photos/27556454@N07/2627518697)

INTRODUCTION: MILESTONES IN THE HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY PRESS Adrian Bingham

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n January 1901 , Alfred Harmsworth, an Anglo-Irish businessman who had recently risen to international prominence as the founder of the spectacularly successful London newspaper the Daily Mail, looked ahead with confidence at the prospects for the press industry. ‘The future of journalism in the twentieth century impresses me as being full of hopefulness’, he wrote in the North American Review: ‘There are abundant signs that we are witnessing the birth of developments in newspaper enterprise which will make the past look insignificant by contrast . . . we shall see­­– ­­or our children will see­– ­journalism brought to a standard of excellence hitherto unattained’ (Harmsworth 1901: 79, 86). He predicted that newspapers would experiment with new styles and formats, improve newsgathering, and benefit from new printing technologies, thereby ensuring that they were not so ‘hopelessly clumsy in shape, verbose as to matter, and most imperfect as a record’ as at present. ‘By the use of improved machinery’, Harmsworth noted, foreshadowing the tabloid that would come to dominate popular journalism, ‘it would be possible to issue the newspaper of the future in what is obviously its proper form­– ­a small, portable and neatly indexed publication.’ ‘Combination and centralization’ would enable greater efficiency and economies of scale, and titles would be printed in different sites around the country­– ­indeed, he predicted that one or two ‘simultaneous newspapers’ could dominate ‘almost the whole of Great Britain’. Markets were expanding as the population increased and education spread, and the recent growth of readership ensured that the press was ‘in touch with the people to an extent never attained before’. The press, in short, was ‘keeping step with the march of a progressive age’, and had ‘its best days to come’ (Harmsworth 1901: 79, 90). 1

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Harmsworth accurately predicted many of the most significant developments of modern print journalism, even if his optimistic reading of them was not shared by critics who feared the consequences of a more centralised industry subjected to the rigours of market competition and required to appeal to mass audiences. News and information would indeed be collected, packaged and distributed with greater speed and concision by large newspaper and magazine corporations, chains, and news agencies, and a small number of national titles would dominate the market and make fortunes for their owners. As he peered into the future, however, Harmsworth did not anticipate that the new technologies that would make journalism more efficient would also eventually threaten to render obsolete products based on paper, print and physical distribution. If the press adapted, uneasily but effectively, to the rise of radio and then television, the emergence of the internet seemed to pose a mortal threat. By the early twenty-first century, printed newspapers and magazines no longer appeared to be marching in step with ‘the progressive age’, but were widely regarded as relics in a world of online speed and tablet convenience. The industry was in crisis, with readerships declining rapidly and titles closing. There was a widespread belief, too, that popular journalism, in particular, had lost its moral bearing as well as its commercial viability. The most widely read title in British newspaper history, the News of the World, was closed in ignominy and disgrace after the revelations of illegal phonehacking in 2011. Rupert Murdoch, variously feared, hated and admired for the apparent hold his newspapers gave him over a generation of British politicians, was reduced to an apologetic, and rather uncertain, appearance before the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport select committee. Given this dramatic reversal of fortunes, there is an almost irresistible temptation for the historian of the twentieth-century press, and of the daily newspaper more specifically, to create a rise and fall narrative. This narrative has many interlocking subplots: rapid sales growth followed by inexorable decline; thoughtful political journalism undermined by commercial pressures towards simplification and sensationalism; the respectful examination of public affairs being replaced by intrusive, and often underhanded, scrutiny of private life and an associated encouragement of a celebrity culture; diversity and local variety being replaced by the growing power of national and international corporations; a loss of integrity and seriousness of purpose. The rise and fall narrative has considerable purchase in academic writing, popular histories and journalistic reminiscences of the ‘golden days’ of Fleet Street (Curran and Seaton 2010; Franklin 1997b; Engel 1997; Chalaby

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1998; Sparks and Tulloch 2000; Barnett and Gaber 2001; Goodman 2003). No overview can ignore the very real contraction of the industry in the twenty-first century, yet even if we focus on the national daily newspaper, ‘rise and fall’ by no means captures the full picture. If overall national newspaper circulations peaked in the early 1950s, the decline in the daily market was very modest until the end of the century, and there were still areas of growth. New titles could generate impressive sales figures, at least for a time (the Sun, The Independent, the i), and innovative strategies, such as removing the cover price, created fresh opportunities (notably for the Metro). Newspapers also grew in size in the closing decades of the century, and therefore sold more content to readers (Tunstall 1996); as they migrated online, there were new, often more frequent, forms of audience engagement. More broadly, there is a real danger of measuring the impact and performance of the press in static ways that do not take sufficient account of the historical context or the evolving media environment. The belief, rooted in the nineteenth century, that newspapers’ primary function is to provide serious and substantial commentary on public affairs, and thereby act as a critical ‘fourth estate’ monitoring those in power, continues to inform many assessments of the press (Curran 2002: 3–54). This ideal type was never uncontested, however, and should be viewed as a product of specific historical circumstances: it was, after all, usually directed, implicitly or explicitly, at a male, ­middle-class, white (usually English), politically literate audience, and did not take account of competition from other media forms which might take on some of these roles (Hampton 2004). Indeed, this chapter will argue that a more fruitful way of approaching the history of the twentieth-century press is to consider how Harmsworth and his successors sought to reimagine this vision of the newspaper both to engage a wider and more socially diverse audience, and to maintain relevance amidst new media competing for attention­ – ­but while still articulating and defending particular political positions (Conboy 2002). The answer was to provide a popular miscellany that sought, in different ways and with different voices, to entertain, inform, shock, titillate, moralise, and in which a specific political and social analysis would be embedded in a range of content to cater for a variety of reader types and interest groups. Newspapers borrowed approaches and ideas that had previously been tested in magazines and other forms of popular culture, and repurposed them for their own broad audiences. The mass public was segmented, and then reunited. As the social commentator Patrick Balfour noted in 1933:

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adrian bingham A newspaper used simply to be an organ for the purveyance of news, and was hence confined to some half-dozen pages. Today it has swelled to four times the size and its news is no longer its only stock-in-trade. A newspaper is a mixed bag of tricks, providing sufficient material to occupy the whole of the average man’s leisure time. It performs the advisory functions of the dressmaker, doctor, psychoanalyst, humorist, clergyman, governess, moralist, historian, salesman, beggar, philanthropist, critic, cook, gardener, chauffeur, tipster, solicitor, stock-broker, mother, father, guide, philosopher and friend. It provides a schoolroom nursery for the children and a gambling saloon for the grown-ups. (Balfour 1933: 82)

This is the approach that would characterise the twentieth-century popular press, and, over time, many of its strategies and techniques would be adopted by radio, television and magazines. It was gradually undermined by the emergence of a multi-channel environment, and then by the endlessly diverse online environment. Assumptions about a predictably segmented mainstream, divided by class, gender and region, came to seem increasingly dated in a more pluralistic, individualistic and mobile society. The generalising language of the mass newspaper was challenged by the personalisation, niche marketing and social networking enabled by the new media (Conboy and Steel, 2010). These changes would have a profound impact on British politics, culture and public life. The range of voices available in the public sphere increased as marginalised groups found it easier to challenge mainstream attitudes and provide alternative content­– ­but the spaces for shared cultural experiences reduced as audiences fragmented in pursuit of specific interests. This introductory chapter offers a new interpretation of twentiethcentury British press history by examining the changing ways in which owners, editors and journalists sought to address the British public in five milestone years: 1903, 1938, 1969, 1986 and, more briefly, 2011. Each section offers a brief overview of the industry at each of these crucial moments, before considering how the press tried to adapt both to new political, social and commercial opportunities, and to the challenges of the shifting media landscape. Given the constraints of space, the chapter is inevitably highly selective, and focuses on the most widely circulating and influential national (usually London-based) daily newspapers as a way of exploring some of the key trajectories of  the wider industry. National newspapers cannot, of course, represent the full breadth and diversity of the printed press that this volume

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covers, and other chapters shine a light on many of the publications that are obscured or hidden in this introductory overview. Nevertheless, national dailies were so central to British popular culture, and received so much attention from politicians and public figures, that they provide a valuable lens through which we can study the ways in which the press both shaped and reflected the nation across the century.

1903: The Popular Press Revolution Consolidated The press and periodical market had been expanding rapidly since the removal of the stamp tax in 1855, but the years around the turn of the twentieth century marked a period of particular creativity and disruption that changed the dynamics of journalism and laid the template for the twentieth-century press. In May 1896, 29-year-old Alfred Harmsworth launched the half-penny Daily Mail and demonstrated the existence of a large lower-middle-class audience eager to consume news and features daily if they were packaged at low cost in a bright and accessible format (Thompson 2000). The Mail had soon become so successful­ – ­its coverage of the Boer War saw its daily circulation briefly reach the unprecedented figure of 1 million copies­ – ­that other entrepreneurs sought to claim the riches and prestige offered by newspaper publishing. In April 1900, Arthur Pearson, a year younger than Harmsworth and with a similar background in magazine publishing, launched the Daily Express, a paper that largely followed the Mail’s editorial formula except in its novel use of the front page for news rather than advertisements. Such was the confidence in the market’s potential for expansion that Harmsworth responded in November 1903 with another title, the Daily Mirror, a daily produced by and for women. Although it struggled initially, and would soon be relaunched as a picture paper, the Mirror became Britain’s most commercially successful daily paper, and, in the middle decades of the century, perhaps the most influential expression of British popular print culture. By 1903, the titles that would dominate the popular newspaper market for several decades had all been launched, and the central strategies for attracting wider audiences had been established (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 1–22). The Mail, Mirror and Express were, of course, only the most commercially successful tip of a broad and varied newspaper and periodical landscape. The Newspaper Press Directory of 1903 calculated that 1,897 newspapers were published in England (454 in London, and 1,443 in the ‘Provinces’); Scotland was home to 233 titles, Wales 107, Ireland 175, and the smaller ‘British Isles’ a further 19. In ­addition to these

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Figure I.1  Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, 1917

2,431 newspapers were 2,531 magazines, of which 534 were religious publications produced by the Anglican, Nonconformist and Roman Catholic churches (Newspaper Press Directory 1903: Publishers’ Address). In terms of prestige, The Times remained unmatched among the London dailies, but it had long since lost its mid-Victorian authority, and papers such as Westminster Gazette, the Standard and the Morning Post were also respected sources of political journalism for the elites (Koss 1984: 1). Although the emergence of the Mail, Express and Mirror foreshadowed the rise of a national press based in London­ – ­the Mail started a printing operation in Manchester in 1900 to make it easier to sell copies in northern England and Scotland­ – ­in 1903 the combined circulation of local and regional papers comfortably outweighed that of the London publications. A number of English provincial titles, such as the Manchester Guardian, the Yorkshire Post (Leeds) and the Northern Echo (Darlington) had a voice and reputation that carried well beyond their immediate localities (Matthews 2017a). In Scotland, the Herald, printed in Glasgow, and The Scotsman, in Edinburgh, served the Scottish elites, while the Daily Record, launched in 1895, was opening up the popular

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market with some ­success (Doogan 1999). In Belfast, the Irish News was joined in 1904 by the Irish Daily Telegraph, while in Dublin the Freeman’s Journal, the Daily Express and the Irish Times were soon facing fierce competition from William Martin Murphy’s relaunched Irish Independent (1905). The Independent brought some of the Daily Mail’s populism to Ireland, but avoided the gossip and scandal that might have provoked a reaction from the Catholic Church (O’Brien 2017: 4–22). Wales lacked an independent national paper, but was the home to thriving local journalism in English and Welsh; the Western Mail, printed in Cardiff, reached a broad audience in South Wales and the West of England (Jones 1993). Newspaper readership in this period probably did as much to reinforce local and regional identities as it did to cultivate a wider sense of Britishness. Daily newspapers were, in general, the most politically influential and socially prominent forms of print culture. They attracted the leading writers and the most ambitious entrepreneurs, and defined and reflected the identities of readers in particularly significant ways. Other publications, however, had equal cultural reach or authority in their own spheres. On Sundays, newspapers provided a different diet, privileging entertainment, reviews and feature-writing (Paolitto 2008). On this day of leisure, the audience was broader, and mass circulations had been generated since the mid-Victorian period. Lloyd’s Weekly News, with sales of around 1.25 million, was the only paper whose circulation clearly surpassed the Daily Mail, and the News of the World and Reynolds News were not far behind (Butler and Butler 2000: 538). The major Sundays were all independent titles, unconnected to daily operations, with the Observer (edited by Rachel Beer, a pioneering female journalist) and the Sunday Times both offering distinctive treatments of the news and influential book reviews. Among the periodicals, the Spectator, The Economist and the Fortnightly Review had established reputations for thoughtful political commentary; the popular miscellanies Tit-Bits, Answers and Pearson’s Weekly (the last two founded by Pearson and Harmsworth respectively), reached a lower-middle-class readership eager for diverting and informative articles about the world around them (Reed 1997). Harmsworth and Pearson had also done much to expand the periodical market for women and children, launching titles such as Comic Cuts, Home Chat and Home Notes; in 1903, Harmsworth’s magazine arm, Amalgamated Press, launched Woman’s World, which would soon be selling just below 350,000 copies a week (Reed 1997: 133). The periodical market remained highly stratified by class and gender, and whereas newspapers were increasingly trying to unite a mass

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audience, new magazines were becoming more strategic in targeting specific readerships. There remained significant constraints on the market. Many ­working-class readers lacked the disposable income and the leisure time to buy more than the occasional publication, and although educational provision improved in the late Victorian period, many children left school at the age of ten and struggled to read anything beyond the most basic English. It was only on Sundays that a majority of the adult population read a paper. The domestic consumer economy, whose mass-market advertising would provide the finances underpinning the expansion of the media, remained underdeveloped (Benson 1994). Companies such as Pears, Kelloggs and Cadbury’s were demonstrating the power of striking images and slogans in creating recognisable brands, and newspaper advertising managers, such as the shrewd and ambitious Wareham Smith at the Mail, were starting to move their focus from text-based classified advertising to display advertising. However, many in Fleet Street and beyond firmly believed that pictures and bold text in advertising columns were vulgar (Bingham 2004). Before the establishment of the Audit Bureau of Circulation in 1931, moreover, reliable data about newspaper circulations were hard to come by. Proprietors and editors­– ­and, by extension, potential advertisers­ – ­knew little of the precise breakdown of the class, gender and age of their readers. In such circumstances, editorial and advertising policy inevitably relied on conventional assumptions about different social groups, and on meeting the traditional expectations created around different formats and genres. Alfred Harmsworth’s launch of the Mirror as a half-broadsheet-sized paper aimed exclusively at women in November 1903 ­demonstrated both the optimism surrounding attempts to reach mass audiences at the turn of the century, and also the risks of such ambition and innovation in an opaque market. Harmsworth was convinced that the Mail’s popularity was due in no small part to its explicit appeal to female ­readers, and predicted that advertisers would flock to a paper consumed by thousands of women on a daily basis (Jones 1920: 22). Emboldened by the success of a similar paper in France, La Fronde, Harmsworth carried out little market research or preparatory work before entrusting the venture to Mary Howarth, the original editor of the Mail’s women’s pages. But creating an entirely new type of newspaper required more than merging the popular daily with a woman’s magazine using hunch and intuition. The first issue declared expansively that the paper would not be a ‘mere bulletin of fashion, but a reflection of women’s interests, women’s thought, women’s work’, covering ‘the daily news of the world’

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and ‘literature and art’ as well as the ‘sane and healthy occupations of domestic life’ (Daily Mirror, 2 November 1903, p. 1). The Mirror struggled to find a consistent tone and identity, and seemed caught between the newspaper and magazine formats, which had different expectations. The Mirror’s mixture of crime and human-interest stories, fashion advice, and domestic articles did not hit the right note for a ‘high class’ journal for ‘ladies’. Circulation plummeted, and Harmsworth lost £100,000 (Daily Mirror, 27 February 1904, p.1). Yet the underdeveloped popular newspaper market offered other opportunities, which Harmsworth was shrewd enough to appreciate. Even though photography had been an established technology for decades, the challenge of reproducing images in the rapid and cost-effective way required for a mass-market newspaper was only mastered at the turn of the twentieth century (Linkof 2018). Bringing in experienced journalist Hamilton Fyfe as editor, and taking advantage of these new techniques enabling the rapid rotary printing of half-tone photographs, Harmsworth transformed the title into the Daily Illustrated Mirror, and relied on the power of the visual to create a new audience. The Mirror’s pioneering photographs, combined with a diet of human-interest stories and feature articles that surpassed the Mail and Express in populism, soon enabled it to challenge the Mail at the top of the circulation tables. The Mirror had not yet developed the template for modern ‘tabloid’ journalism­ – ­that would come in the 1930s­ – ­but it was a significant step in breaking the tyranny of text columns and laying the basis for a more visually appealing newspaper design that would enable the newspaper to appeal to a different sort of mass audience. If the new methods used by the popular papers­ – ­bold language, eye-catching headlines, striking images, and more ‘human interest’ content­ – ­attracted readers, they also generated anxieties among the cultural elites that the mass press was encouraging an unruly emotionalism that would undermine the rationality and propriety of the public sphere. In 1903, for example, William Adams, veteran radical journalist and former editor of the Newcastle Weekly Journal, argued that ‘vulgar sensationalism has taken the place of sober earnestness. Instead of being the instructors of the people, many of our newspapers have become mere ministers to the passions of the people’ (Hampton 2004: 84). Such views were based on a deeply entrenched set of assumptions that saw the commercial, the visual, the feminine­ – ­all key markers of the new popular papers­– ­as inferior, and a danger, to the understated, analytical, literary (and hence masculine) public arena created by the leader pages and opinion columns of the traditional Victorian press. Many worried, too, that the readers being drawn into the newspaper

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market lacked the education and discrimination to resist the persuasive appeals of the press. As individual newspaper circulations moved beyond a million, immense power was, it seemed, being placed into the hands of newspaper owners and editors. It has often been argued that the new wave of proprietors typified by Harmsworth were preoccupied by profit rather than politics: ‘it is doubtful’, the sociologist Jean Chalaby has written, ‘whether political interest or political conviction typifies press barons’ behaviour’ (Chalaby 1998: 50). This is to mistake pragmatism for a lack of interest. Owners and editors recognised that many readers only had a limited appetite for political content, and that it therefore needed to be packaged appropriately. Nevertheless, politics remained an important component of the editorial formula throughout the century­ – ­without it, popular papers would have been nothing more than entertainment sheets, and would have lost their privileged place in national life. ‘Every extension of the franchise renders more powerful the newspaper and less powerful the politician’, wrote Alfred Harmsworth mischievously in 1903, and he, like other owners, was keen to use the authority provided by his paper’s huge readership to intervene in debates about key political issues (Koss 1984: 12). For politicians, meanwhile, the press offered ways to engage and enthuse a wider public outside governmental and party structures. When Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, dramatically resigned from the Conservative Cabinet in 1903 to campaign for a new system of imperial preference, he used the popular press to generate publicity and momentum. Arthur Pearson became the first chairman of the Tariff Reform League, and his Express was one of the League’s firmest and most consistent allies. Pearson also used his financial muscle to buy existing titles the St James Gazette (1903) and the Standard (1904) to bolster the cause (Koss 1984: 25–8). The Mail, too, was supportive, although it had some concerns about the prospect of higher food prices. In a moment of such controversy and uncertainty, Harmsworth wanted to know the mood of the public, and so the Mail undertook what was perhaps the first formal attempt on a large scale to measure political views in Britain beyond the usual mechanism of the general election. The paper printed voting slips with three statements about free trade and imperial preference, and asked readers to choose which one they supported. This was, the paper boasted, ‘practically a general election in advance’. A prize of £1,000 was offered to the ‘most industrious and successful collector of votes’, and some 546,000 ballots were eventually counted­ – ­around half from men and women who could not vote in parliamentary elections­– ­demonstrating a mood

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in favour of abandoning the liberal free trade regime (Daily Mail, 1 October 1903, p. 5; 26 December 1903, p. 5). If Chamberlain and the Tariff Reform League were ultimately unsuccessful in their campaign, it was clear that British political culture was being changed by press proprietors and editors willing and able to mobilise the public in new, and for politicians, often unsettling ways. Recognition of this proprietorial power soon came in the traditional manner: Harmsworth was made a baronet in June 1904, and then Baron Northcliffe a year later. By 1908 he was the owner of both the Observer and The Times. The upstart had shaken up Fleet Street.

1938: The Power of Print By 1938 the press had dramatically extended its reach and influence in British politics, society and culture. The habit of daily newspaper readership had spread throughout the working classes, with the circulation of national dailies doubling in the two decades after 1918. Two-thirds of the adult population regularly read a daily newspaper, and more titles were consumed per head of the population than in any other country (Harrison, Mitchell and Abrams 1939: Ch. 21; Wadsworth 1955). The press had become an industry of real economic significance: its net output by the mid-1930s was higher than both shipbuilding and iron and steel, and it employed 80,000 direct employees (Political and Economic Planning 1938: 3). Its impact on public life and culture was even more important, and it was this that preoccupied a wide range of writers, critics and social commentators. In 1938, the research organisation Political and Economic Planning published its Report on the British Press, the fruits of three years of research, and by far the fullest and most rigorous overview of the sector that had been produced. In the same year, the newly formed social survey group Mass Observation carried out its first study of newspaper reading habits, and Wickham Steed, a former editor of The Times, published a Penguin Special on The Press (Mass Observation 1938; Steed 1938). The quotation on the cover of Steed’s volume insisted that ‘The problem of the Press . . . is the central problem of democracy’­ – ­a powerful warning as fascism extended its power across Europe. Evelyn Waugh also released his novel Scoop, satirising the war reporting of William Boot, a hapless correspondent for Lord Copper’s Daily Beast, and provided scenes and phrases (‘Up to a point, Lord Copper’) that would resonate for the rest of the century (Waugh 1938). Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, Theodore Adorno joined Max Horkheimer at Colombia University to develop the theories the latter had outlined in his recent

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essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, and which would form the basis of the ‘Frankfurt School’ of media scholarship. More accessible was American journalist Simon Bessie’s influential overview of the tabloid, Jazz Journalism (Bessie 1938). Comprehending the role and power of the press was one of the defining challenges of the age, and the various modes of interpretation developed by 1938­ – ­social scientific, political, satirical, critical­– ­would define the understanding of the press for decades to come. Although total circulations had risen significantly, the number of newspaper titles had declined significantly since 1903, as the process of consolidation that Harmsworth predicted took hold. The Newspaper Press Directory of 1938 recorded a total across Britain and Ireland of 1,841 titles, a reduction of nearly a quarter from twenty-five years previously.1 This comprised 347 London papers, and a further 995 provincial English papers; 212 in Scotland, 123 in Wales, 54 in Northern Ireland, 96 in Eire, and a further 14 across the British Islands (Newspaper Press Directory 1938: 5). The reductions were unevenly distributed: whereas the fall in the number of titles in Scotland, Wales and Ireland was modest, the number of provincial English papers had dropped by almost a third. This was partly due to the growing influence of the London dailies­ – ­the combined circulation of the national papers overtook that of the provincial press in 1923­– ­and partly due to closures brought by the emergence of the provincial chains owned by Lords Rothermere, Kemsley, Camrose and Iliffe (Royal Commission on the Press 1949: 57–79). Several English towns lost their second daily newspaper, and local content started to decline as material was shared and syndicated around chains. Several major national titles also disappeared through mergers, often due to changes in the political climate. The Liberal press was hit hardest, with the Westminster Gazette merging into the Daily News in 1928, followed by the News and the Daily Chronicle combining as the News Chronicle in 1930. The left-wing press benefitted from the growth of the Labour party and the trade union movement, with the Daily Herald (1911), the Daily Worker (1930) and Tribune (1937) rising to national prominence, although its reach did not yet rival the Liberal press it was replacing. The magazine sector, by contrast, continued to grow, with 3,119 titles recorded in 1938, a rise of 23 per cent since 1903. The mid- to late 1930s saw a number of major launches that revitalised and expanded the sector, including Weekly Illustrated (1934), Men Only (1935), Woman’s Illustrated (1936) Woman (1937), Beano (1938), the UK edition of Reader’s Digest (1938) and Picture Post (1938) (Cox and Mowatt 2014: 55–72). The most popular title­– ­itself giving an indication of the

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changing media climate­– ­was the Radio Times (1923), the BBC’s listings guide, whose circulation surpassed 2 million copies a week in the late 1930s (Reed 1997: 178). The process of reimagining the austere Victorian morning newspaper as a popular form, only recently launched in 1903, was almost fully realised by 1938. Creative editors such as Arthur Christiansen (Daily Express 1933–57) developed a more fluid, dynamic and visually appealing ‘jigsaw’ make-up, with text and image fully integrated, and pages structured with bold headlines, cross-heads and captions, all set in sufficient white space to reduce the overall density of the display (Christiansen 1961). The Express’s sunny mixture of accessible political commentary, brightly written human-interest stories, entertainment news and enticing gossip (provided by the well-connected Tom Driberg as columnist ‘William Hickey’) proved hugely successful, and enabled the paper to become market leader with a daily circulation of over 2.3 million copies. In the second half of the 1930s, the Daily Mirror, under the editorial direction of Harry Guy Bartholomew (‘Bart’), and assisted by a talented group of young journalists including Basil Nicholson, Hugh Cudlipp and William Connor (‘Cassandra’), took the populist impulse further, developing Britain’s first fully fledged tabloid aimed directly at a working-class audience. With its bold black type, informal language, unapologetically brash social commentary and strategic use of sexual content, the Mirror updated Harmsworth’s model with the insights of American advertising and the left-of-centre instincts of a young and reform-minded editorial team (Bingham and Conboy 2009). The Mirror and its sister paper, the Sunday Pictorial, were the fastest growing titles of the late 1930s, and the template they tested and refined before and during the Second World War would dominate British popular journalism well into the 1960s. Newspapers were also substantially larger by the late 1930s than earlier in the century. In 1903, the Mail and the Express were generally eight to ten broadsheet pages, while the first issue of the Mirror was twenty tabloid-size pages. By 1938, issues of the Mail and Express were twenty or twenty-four pages and the Mirror was usually thirtytwo or thirty-six pages. This increased pagination enabled newspapers to diversify their contents considerably, particularly into the private realm, and ensured that the social and cultural influence of the press extended into new areas of life. By the late 1930s, for example, newspapers offered fashion advice and dress-making patterns, recipes and cooking instructions, health and fitness guidance, gardening notes, motoring columns, betting tips, price guides and consumer information. Agony aunts answered questions about personal relationships,

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while pin-up photos, an increasingly prominent feature of the Mirror and the Pictorial, provided sexual titillation (the latter published in April 1938 what seems to be the first topless shot of a white women in a mainstream national paper (Bingham 2009: 207–8)). More innocent fare, in the form of cartoons and puzzles, was aimed at children. In the late 1930s, horoscopes and astrological predictions became more common: now popular papers were even promising to tell the future. No two readers navigated the diverse miscellany provided by newspapers in exactly the same way, and they did so with different motivations and intentions. Mass Observation’s 1938 research concluded that while many used their paper ‘to make people feel they are in touch with the outer world’, others saw it ‘as a means of getting away from the world’, more in the manner of ‘a novel or magazine’. Newspapers provided a way of navigating and simplifying the complexities of the modern life, while also providing the fantasy and entertainment that could enliven the mundane realities of the everyday (Mass Observation 1938). Politics was by no means always the main explanation for a reader’s choice of newspaper, nor did it dictate how that newspaper was consumed. Yet if the press had widened its scope, its traditional influence on political affairs had not necessarily waned. Political and Economic Planning argued that it was ‘the principal agenda-making body for the everyday conversation of the ordinary men and women about public affairs, and, therefore, for public opinion in general’ (Political and Economic Planning 1938: 33). The interventions of the press barons had become a prominent, and much criticised, feature of British politics during and after the First World War. In 1931, Stanley Baldwin dramatically attacked the owners of the Express and the Mail, Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere, for seeking ‘power without responsibility­ – ­the prerogative of the harlot through the ages’, due to their efforts to stand candidates against the Conservative Party as part of their ‘Empire Free Trade’ campaign (Chisholm and Davie 1992a: 285–321). While Baldwin’s memorable speech undoubtedly slowed the momentum of this particular crusade, its impact in restraining the political ambitions of the press should not be overstated. Indeed, the focus on meddling press barons distracted attention from the more subtle, everyday influence of newspapers. Overt, campaign-based, political interventions were of less significance than the ability of newspapers to set the agenda and frame the news, as the growing body of critical commentary on the press was making clear (Lippmann 1922; Political and Economic Planning 1938; Williams: 1996). As Mass Observation’s research highlighted, readers were often sceptical of, and resistant to,

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party political propaganda, whether from politicians or journalists; but as newspapers remained most people’s main source of information about politics­– ­partly because the industry had successfully lobbied for constraints to be placed on radio’s powers to collect and disseminate news (Nicholas 2000)­– ­it was difficult to avoid being influenced by the press’s presentation and prioritisation of political issues. The belief in official circles that the press was a decisive influence over public opinion was underlined by the aggressive information management campaign conducted by Chamberlain’s government to defend its policy of appeasing Hitler’s Germany (Cockett 1989). Diplomacy was no longer just about the detail of negotiation, but about public relations and civilian morale, and for that, the support of leading newspapers was crucial. Chamberlain’s anxieties about his press coverage were unmistakeable in his private letters to his sister, Hilda. ‘Some of our own papers are as mendacious & vicious as any of the Continental rags’ he complained in February 1938 as the Express and Mirror reported on splits in the Cabinet. In July he lamented that the press ‘are perfectly intolerable in their comments on delicate matters’, such as negotiations with the Germans (Self 2005: 302, 337). As the crisis over Sudetenland intensified, ministers and officials cynically manipulated lobby briefings and put considerable pressure on editors to back the government’s line. Some papers were willing to do so, whether out of editorial conviction (Geoffrey Dawson’s Times) or commercially informed optimism (Beaverbook’s Express), but in many newspaper offices, including those of the Herald and the News Chronicle, there were serious tensions about the tone of the coverage (Koss 1984; Hubback 1985: 162–4). There were also limits to the government’s powers of persuasion. During 1938 the Daily Telegraph published columns from Winston Churchill warning of the dangers ahead, and the Daily Mirror adopted a critical perspective, articulated mainly through the columns of ‘Cassandra’ (Bingham and Conboy 2009). Once the war did break out, however, many commentators were scathing of the press’s failure to resist government blandishments and keep the public better informed, and, after the war, the Royal Commission on the Press 1947–9 would hear much bitter testimony about the political and commercial pressures placed on editors (Graves and Hodge 1940; Royal Commission on the Press 1949: 123–38). The popular newspaper template, which married entertainment and commentary on public affairs, was put under severe strain by the international crisis of the late 1930s. It was difficult to navigate the conflicting demands of informing and entertaining as war loomed, especially as there were strong political and commercial pressures to

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maintain optimism and trust in government policy. Many believed the wrong balance had been achieved, and the perceived failures of 1938–9 would embolden later editors to take a more critical stance on foreign affairs, as would be seen, for example, in the coverage of the Suez War in 1956. Ultimately, though, while readers kept on consuming newspapers in ever greater quantities­ – ­and circulations would continue to rise until the early 1950s­– ­there were few incentives for radical change. The challenge that could not be avoided, however, was that the press was losing its monopoly on the provision of the news. The BBC broadcast regular updates during the Sudetenland crisis in 1938, and the exigencies of the Second World War enabled it to throw off entirely the shackles restricting its news-gathering (Nicholas 2000). Where radio led, television would eventually follow. The public were being offered an apparently more impartial and balanced information service­– ­and the press would have to adapt.

1969: Murdoch and the Reinvention of the Tabloid On Saturday 15 November 1969, BBC1 and ITV launched their muchanticipated regular colour broadcasting service. The BBC treated viewers at midnight to a Petula Clark concert from the Royal Albert Hall, while ITV started in more mundane fashion the following morning with the RAC Road Report. BBC2 had been broadcasting in colour since 1967, and it would not be until 1970 that the colour service was available in Wales and Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, the launch was an important symbolic moment in the process by which television entrenched itself at the heart of British popular culture. From the mid-1950s, television ownership rose dramatically, and by 1969 over 91 per cent of households had one (BARB 2018); the introduction of colour now gave families the incentive to invest in new sets and spend more time watching them (Crissell 2002: 119–33). For the press, the challenge to rethink its role and ensure that it kept the attention of both readers and advertisers could no longer be avoided. The most significant commercial response occurred only two days later, on 17 November 1969, when Rupert Murdoch, a 38-year-old Australian media magnate who had that year bought both the News of the World and the struggling Sun, relaunched the latter as a brash, populist tabloid (Chippindale and Horrie 1999: 3–56). The highly centralised and competitive British market was hard to enter. No major dailies had launched since before the First World War, and there had not been any dramatic, market-changing relaunches since the 1930s. The Mirror and Express had been unchallenged at the top of the circulation charts

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for two decades. Within ten years of its relaunch, however, Murdoch’s Sun would be the most popular paper in Britain, demonstrating how the tabloid could remain successful in a more affluent, permissive and mediated age. The impact of radio and television broadcasting on the newspaper market was not as immediate or dramatic as some in Fleet Street had feared. Further waves of consolidation meant that the number of newspaper titles in the UK and Republic of Ireland had declined by 1969 to a total of 1,370, a drop of around a third since 1938. This comprised 1,090 titles in England and Wales, 159 in Scotland, 54 in Northern Ireland, 60 in the Republic of Ireland (the area of the sharpest fall, partly due to the growing success of British newspapers) and 10 across the other British Isles. The magazine market, on the other hand, continued to diversify, with 4,161 titles being published­ – ­a rise of a third since 1938 (Newspaper Press Directory 1969: 9). Total newspaper circulations had dipped from their early 1950s peak, but they remained above their pre-Second World War levels, and the market leaders continued to achieve mammoth sales. The Daily Mirror sold 4.9 million copies a day, only a fraction below its 1967 peak of 5.25 million; the News of the World had fallen further from its own high point of 8.44 million (in June 1950), but it was still selling a healthy 6.2 million copies a week (Britain 1970: 443; Butler and Butler 2000: 538). At the elite end of the market, moreover, sales were growing, partly due to the emergence of a more educated and aspirational audience. Both the Daily Telegraph (1.38 million copies a day) and The Times (437,000) sold around twice their 1938 figures, while The Guardian­ – ­which had in 1959 dropped ‘Manchester’ from its title and in 1964 relocated its headquarters to London­– ­sold 292,000, almost six times its pre-war total. In the Sunday market, too, the Sunday Times (1.45 million), the Observer (879,000), and the recently launched Sunday Telegraph (753,000) were thriving, and all drew new revenue streams as a result of the advertiser-friendly colour magazines that had been introduced across the 1960s (Britain 1970: 443; Butler and Butler 2000: 538; Farmer 2018). While general interest, illustrated magazines, such as Picture Post (closed 1957) and Illustrated (1958) were hit by the introduction of television, publications for a politically engaged middle-class audience were also prospering: The Economist sold over 100,000 a week, and the New Statesman was not far behind at 84,000 (Reed 1997: 224; Britain 1970: 445). The less deferential, more diverse society of the 1960s was reflected in Private Eye (launched in 1961), and the new counter-cultural magazines that circulated in London, such as Oz and IT (Fountain 1988).

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Despite the relative health of the circulation figures, however, there were some serious underlying problems in the sector. Newsprint and production costs had increased significantly since the Second World War, and papers such as the leading Liberal daily, the News Chronicle (1960), its evening sister paper the Star (1960), and the mid-market Sunday Dispatch (1961), were all forced to close despite having substantial circulations (1.2 million, 0.74 million and 1.52 million respectively) (Royal Commission on the Press 1962: 9–21; Butler and Butler 2000: 538–9). The Royal Commission on the Press, reporting in 1962, concluded that ‘In the national newspapers offices production is gravely inefficient, mainly through the employment of excessive labour’, and accepted the recommendations of an independent report suggesting that manpower levels could be reduced by around a third. The Royal Commission illustrated the difficulties of raising pagination levels by noting that producing a 24-page, rather than 20-page, edition of one newspaper was deemed to require around seventy further employees (Royal Commission on the Press 1962: 113, 36–7). Yet with management often weak and fragmented, and the unions determined to preserve their positions and resist the introduction of new technology, there was little real change. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, both The Guardian and The Times, and the Express and the Mail, considered solving their considerable financial problems through mergers (Taylor 1993: 185–6; Addison 2017: Ch.7) On top of these economic difficulties, many were finding it hard to adapt to the social and cultural changes brought by greater affluence and generational change. The travails of the International Publishing Corporation (IPC)­ – ­the market-leading media conglomerate formed in 1963 after Cecil King’s Fleetway Publications (owner of the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Pictorial) bought Odhams Press (owners of the Daily Herald and the People)­ – ­provide a case in point (Cox and Mowatt 2014: Ch. 6). King and Hugh Cudlipp, the editorial director of the Mirror Group papers, sought to reinvigorate their new portfolio by relaunching the declining Daily Herald as the Sun. Cudlipp firmly believed that newspapers had to reposition themselves to accommodate the impact of television, writing in 1962 that ‘So much that is trivial appears night after night on the TV screen: less that is trivial, and more that is informed comment, will appear in the popular newspapers.’ Only ‘at his peril’ would any editor ‘ignore the growing seriousness of interest among readers’ (Cudlipp 1962: 368–9). Such a high-minded approach was a dangerous strategy for someone who had made his name at the Mirror as an unapologetic populist. His views were reinforced, though, by the findings of the leading market

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researcher Mark Abrams, who Cudlipp had commissioned in advance of the Sun’s launch to investigate the impact of social change on the ‘newspaper readership of tomorrow’. Abrams emphasised the blurring of class distinctions since the war. ‘Some working-class families have incomes as high as some white-collar families’, he reported, ‘and there is little to choose between their styles of living and the goods and services they consume’ (Abrams 1964: 57). Seeking to reach this audience, the new Sun made a significant play of its modernity, aspirationalism and classlessness. The first issue, in September 1964, boasted that the paper was ‘born of the age we live in’ and announced that ‘We welcome the age of automation, electronics, computers. We will campaign for the rapid modernisation of Britain’ (Sun, 15 September 1964, p.  1). In practice, this attempt at an up-to-date sophistication all too easily slipped into a rather banal and bland editorial package that failed to connect to its intended audience. The Sun’s sales soon fell far below target, and by 1969 Cudlipp had decided that there was little danger in selling the faltering title to Rupert Murdoch, who wanted a daily to complement his newly acquired Sunday, the News of the World. Even at the Mirror, despite its continued sales success, there were signs that IPC was losing touch with its readers and misjudging the political and financial realities of the market. Despite consistently supporting Labour for two decades, Cecil King increasingly used the Mirror as a mouthpiece to criticise Harold Wilson’s government, culminating in May 1968 in a signed front-page article demanding the prime minister’s resignation, and warning darkly of ‘the greatest financial crisis in our history’ (Daily Mirror, 10 May 1968, p. 1). There was a political and commercial backlash, and King was dramatically deposed as Chairman of IPC by Cudlipp (Cudlipp 1976: 328–70). There were signs of commercial hubris, too. In September 1969, the Mirror launched a lavish weekly colour magazine to imitate the elite Sundays and build on the appetite for aspirational consumerism it discerned among its own readership. Lacking the advertising profile of the Sunday Times and the Observer, or a clear vision for its content, the magazine was an expensive flop and soon closed (Tunstall 1983: 84). Such was the turmoil inside IPC that in 1969 Cudlipp, uncomfortable in his new position as chairman, started engineering negotiations with the papermaking concern Albert Reed, which took over IPC under the name Reed International the following year (Cudlipp 1976: 412–3). The significance of Murdoch’s Sun was that it broke decisively with the prevailing Fleet Street wisdom that education and affluence were inexorably creating a demand for more serious and informative content. With ITV’s launch of the thirty-minute News at Ten in 1967,

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and BBC’s subsequent lengthening of its Nine O’Clock News bulletin, broadcast news services were expanding rapidly (Franklin 1997b: 10). The gaps for the press were either in the provision of greater detail and analysis, or by offering more outspoken, disreputable and intrusive content. At the same time, television was itself now part of a more youth-focused and permissive mainstream entertainment culture, and popular publications could not afford to ignore or dismiss its output. There were opportunities for a paper which could tap into this younger, less socially deferential, working-class audience who had grown up in an TV age. The relaunched Sun, edited by the experienced former Mirror and Mail journalist Larry Lamb, positioned itself expertly in the crowded market (Lamb 1989). With no editorial tradition to defend, and owned by an outsider who was keen to ruffle the feathers of the establishment, it had the brashness and energy that had characterised the Mirror in the 1930s and 1940s. At the same time, the paper was far more convincingly ‘modern’ than its IPC predecessor. Rather than focus on the abstract social trends of affluence and new technology, the Sun hitched its fortunes to ‘permissiveness’. It presented itself as ‘the lusty young Sun’, and argued that ‘People who pretend that yesterday’s standards are today’s, let alone tomorrow’s, are living a lie’ (Sun, 18 November 1969, p. 2; 22 November 1969, p. 2). With topless models included from the second issue, if not initially on page 3, and major serialisations of Jacqueline Susann’s ‘bonkbuster’ novel The Love Machine and Joan Garrity’s sex guide, The Sensuous Woman, the Sun identified itself as a (hetero)sexually permissive, hedonistic paper (Sun, 18 November 1969, pp. 18–23). It drew further attention to its stance by mocking those who had been ‘whipped into a froth of anxiety’ by its contents, updating the conventional working-class ‘usthem’ dichotomy into a contrast between the cheerfully vulgar and the respectable do-gooders (Sun, 22 November 1969, p. 2). Crucially, too, the Sun embraced television far more energetically than other papers. Murdoch himself was owner of a television station, Channel 9, in Australia, and recognised it as an important source of celebrity stories and gossip. The inclusion of a detailed weekend television guide helped to make the Sun’s Saturday edition its bestselling one of the week, and it also used the medium as a key advertising platform, running a series of cheeky commercials that deliberately sought to bait the television authorities (Lamb 1989: 78–80). After only a week, the Press Gazette, the leading industry journal, had identified the central tenets of Murdoch’s strategy. ‘The lesson of six days of Sun issues’, an editorial argued shrewdly, ‘is that the press in the 1960s in Britain has been the object either of a gigantic confi-

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dence trick or of massive self-deception’ in believing that ‘newspapers and television must nourish the new literacy­ – ­or perish’. Murdoch, it continued, ‘has worked on the assumption that the up-marketing­ – ­in newspapers and in television­ – ­was the result of a carefully fostered myth’ (Press Gazette, 24 November 1969, p.  3). The Sun’s dramatic commercial success­ – ­within a year its circulation had risen from 850,000 to more than 1.5 million copies a day, and within five years it was 3.5 million­ – ­ensured that these ‘lessons’ were learnt very quickly (Butler and Butler 2000: 538). Over the next decade, both the Mail (1971) and Express (1978) turned tabloid, and a new paper, the Daily Star (1978), launched in an attempt to outdo the Sun on its own terrain of sex and sensation. Education might be laudable, but entertainment, it seemed, was more profitable; if broadcasters were balanced, measured and impartial, popular newspapers needed to become louder, more dramatic, and more insistent.

1986: The Production Revolution In January 1986 Rupert Murdoch dramatically moved the production of all his national papers­– ­since 1981 his portfolio included The Times and the Sunday Times as well as the Sun and the News of the World­– ­to a modern new printing plant in Wapping, east London. The plant was equipped to enable computer typesetting, which allowed journalists to input their copy directly, rendering redundant the traditional, labour-intensive linotype methods. Over 5,000 printworkers went on strike to protect their jobs, and maintained a picket outside Wapping for over a year (Greenslade 2003b: 469–533). Murdoch, however, had the full support of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, fresh from her decisive victory in the Miners’ Strike, and the Wapping plant received strong protection from the police, ensuring that the papers always got through the picket lines and that the union action would eventually be defeated. Murdoch was not the first proprietor to take on the unions in a bid to introduce new technology and tackle overmanning­– ­Eddie Shah had led the way in 1983 with his Messenger group based in Warrington, and in 1984 the Irish Press Group had also tried to implement direct inputting­– ­but his intervention was critical in prompting the industry to react (Tunstall 1996: 18–30). After decades of stagnation, rising costs and tense union relations, the sector was awash with plans for innovation, investment and restructuring. New titles emerged­ – ­notably Today in March, and The Independent in October­ – ­and established publications relocated with greatly reduced workforces. Across the industry, management power increased, and journalists as

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well as production and distribution workers faced a struggle to maintain their security, with freelance and short-term contracts becoming more common (Tunstall 1996: 18–30). Some of the bolder hopes for a reinvigoration of the sector were not realised, and the established titles were firmly enough entrenched to preserve their position, albeit with greater competition. Computer technology did allow more colour and increased pagination. The Sun grew, for example, from thirty-two pages to fifty-two pages between 1984 and 1994 (Franklin 1997b: 90). Balfour’s 1930s vision of the newspaper addressing all aspects of life was updated for a more affluent age and manifested in a raft of new sections and features. The improved financial position encouraged a swaggering self-confidence in many national newsrooms, particularly in Kelvin MacKenzie’s Sun, which was demonstrated both in an increasingly aggressive style of political journalism, and a more intense scrutiny of celebrities and public figures (Chippindale and Horrie 1999). New business models, as well as new production techniques, were transforming the sector. In 1986, there were 995 paid-for newspapers in the UK, including 145 in Scotland, 60 in Wales, and 46 in Northern Ireland. This was decline of around 38 per cent from 1969, due largely to a further wave of consolidation among the English provincial titles, but these figures were supplemented by a flourishing new category: local free newspapers, supported entirely by advertising revenue, and numbering 842 titles, with over 100 launches between 1985 and 1986 alone, and a total weekly circulation of around 36 million. In 1985, free newspapers overtook paid-for titles in terms of total advertising revenue (Benn’s Media Directory 1986: 5–6; Britain 1987: 414).

Figure I.2  News International Building, Wapping, 2011 (© Roger Jones (https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2478979))

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The rise of free sheets, which dated from the late 1970s, changed the dynamics of the sector. Householders received newspapers through their letterbox whether they wanted them or not, and were consumers of advertising rather than readers of editorial content. Editorial costs were stripped to the bone, and readers’ investment in the product was inevitably highly contingent, dependent perhaps on an eye-catching headline. Substantial reporting from the local area was minimal, and content was usually consumerist and politically uncontroversial (Tunstall 1996: 60–75). Freesheets made it harder for paid-for local papers to survive, although evening titles in big urban centres, such as the Manchester Evening News, the Birmingham Evening Mail, the South Wales Echo (Cardiff) and Glasgow’s Evening Times continued to achieve considerable circulations. The market had become more diverse in other ways, however. By 1986 more than seventy newspapers and magazines were published specifically for ethnic minority readerships, including The Voice, Caribbean Times, New Life and Asian Times (Britain 1987: 414). The periodical market more generally also continued to expand, with a total of 8,152 titles in 1986, not far from double the number in 1969­ – ­a rise underpinned by digital desktop publishing, which reduced production costs and lowered the barriers to market entry (Benn’s Media Directory 1986: 6; Cox and Mowat 2014: 135–41). Nevertheless, traditional format TV listings magazines (Radio Times, TV Times) and women’s magazines (Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Own) continued to dominate the circulation charts, albeit with fewer sales than their mid-century peaks. For all the technological and commercial changes, however, it was the reworking of the traditional tabloid formula, led by Murdoch’s Sun, that had the most significant impact on popular culture and the public sphere. In its early days, the Sun had carved out a brash, ­pleasure-focused identity, but it followed no firm political line. The paper offered support for Labour in the 1970 general election, switched to the Conservatives in February 1974, and then despairingly advocated an all-party coalition the following October. It was only in the late 1970s that the paper started to develop a consistently ‘new right’ political position. The Sun’s famous ‘Crisis, What Crisis?’ headline of January 1979 mocking Prime Minster James Callaghan was typical of its scathing critiques of the Labour Party; trade unions were also targeted, notably in the relentless coverage of public sector strikes packaged as the ‘Winter of Discontent’ (Thomas 2005: 67–86). Margaret Thatcher was correspondingly lionised. ‘Maggie’, as she came to be known, was the first Conservative leader who was genuinely in tune with tabloid populism. Her relatively modest provincial background,

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her suspicion of traditional elites and institutions, her stark, confrontational and yet commonsensical political rhetoric, her unapologetic patriotism, and her resolute support for ‘law and order’ ensured that she sang from the same hymn sheet as the right-wing popular press. Five months after the election, the Sun asked the prime minister for a letter of congratulations to celebrate the paper’s tenth birthday. Overriding the objection of her press secretary, Thatcher wrote ‘The Sun is a friend! Will do’ (Moore 2013: 441). Bernard Ingham, her chief press secretary, usually started his prime ministerial briefings with the Sun and encouraged the view that the paper represented the views of the ‘man in the street’ (Price 2010: 247). Kelvin MacKenzie, an irreverent and self-assured South Londoner who replaced Larry Lamb as Sun editor in 1981, updated the paper’s template for the 1980s and did much to create a popular culture supportive of the Thatcherite project. The Sun’s outspoken populism developed a harder edge, evident in the unapologetically jingoistic coverage of the Falklands War in 1982 (exemplified by the notorious, and quickly withdrawn, ‘Gotcha’ headline on the sinking of the Argentinian ship the Belgrano), the bitterly hostile coverage of Arthur Scargill during the Miners’ Strike of 1984–5, and the scathing attacks on ‘political correctness’ and the so-called ‘loony left’ (Chippindale and Horrie 1999: 128–218; Curran et al. 2018). Political reporting became more personalised, intrusive and sensationalised, and the boundaries between politics, entertainment and celebrity blurred as the tabloiddriven sex scandal became a regular feature of British political life (See 2013). As MacKenzie’s confidence in his formula grew, boundaries were increasingly pushed back, more risks were taken, and the quest for scoops broke professional restraints. By 1986, MacKenzie’s freewheeling Sun, selling over 4 million copies a day, was at the height of its cultural influence, generating innumerable conversations, both admiring and reproachful, with its stories and misdeeds. On 13 March the paper ran one of its most famous front-page headlines, ‘Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster’­ – ­a story which Max Clifford, Starr’s publicist, later admitted that he allowed to run, despite its falsity, to generate publicity for the comedian. The same day the paper responded forcefully to the Labour MP Clare Short’s House of Commons motion to ban the ‘Page 3 girl’, which, particularly in the form of Samantha Fox, had become one of the defining popular symbols of the 1980s. The defence of ‘Page 3’ turned into a full-blown ‘Save our Sizzlers’ campaign, complete with a badge for readers, and featuring vicious attacks on ‘Killjoy Clare’ herself; it also served the paper’s wider political agenda:

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[Short] has a political animus against The Sun because of our break to the land of the free­– ­Wapping. She belongs to that band of mischievous, misguided extremists whose first instinct is to be suspicious and hostile to all institutions –such as Page Three. They want the kill-joy society, fashioned after their own dreary, intolerant obsessions. If MPs are worthy of their trust, Ms Misery Short will not find a single friend in the House. (Sun, 26 March 1986, p. 6) The paper’s assertive heterosexuality was combined with an intolerance for alternative sexualities. The emergence of HIV/AIDS as a public health issue provided an alibi for hostility to gay men. In December 1986, for example, the Sun praised James Anderton, the

Figure I.3  The Sun, 13 March 1986

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Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, who, in the paper’s words, accused ‘homosexuals of spreading the deadly virus through their obnoxious sexual practices’: ‘Their defiling of the act of love is not only unnatural. In today’s AIDS-hit world it is LETHAL . . . What Britain needs is more men like James Anderton­ – ­and fewer gay terrorists holding the decent members of society to ransom.’ When, the following year, Labour’s Chris Smith, the only ‘out’ MP, suggested that there were other gay politicians, the Sun derisively ran the headline ‘SixtyFive MPs are Poofters’. In 1990, the Press Council criticised the paper for its liberal use of the word ‘poof’, but it remained defiant: ‘Readers of The Sun know and speak and write words like poof and poofter’, it argued: ‘What is good enough for them is good enough for us.’ (Smith 2013: 68, 93, 118). Commercial success and a favourable political climate insulated the paper from criticism. The Sun’s formula of titillation, political populism, celebrity gossip, law-and-order moralising, cheerful consumerism and noisy patriotism­ – ­the last expressed in the summer of 1986 with the paper’s bashing of the Maradona-led ‘Argies’ after England’s exit from the football World Cup­– ­profoundly shaped public expectations of popular tabloids. The paper’s strident voice contributed to the political polarisations of the 1980s while demonstrating how popular journalism could continue to make an impact in the television age. It created space in the market for the launch in September 1986 of the Sunday Sport, a paper which combined soft-porn photography with humorously fake news stories reminiscent of an American ‘supermarket tabloid’; the left-wing News on Sunday, on the other hand, explicitly opposed to the pin-up culture and committed to a more serious political approach, failed within seven months of its launch in April 1987 (Chippindale and Horrie 1988). The Sun’s success, and the continued buoyancy of the tabloid market, had a broader ripple effect too. While the post-Wapping production transformation enabled a new period of success for the broadsheets, spurred by the competition of The Independent, there were complaints by the 1990s that they were being influenced by a process of ‘tabloidisation’. The Sunday Times’s serialisation of Andrew Morton’s lurid biography of Princess Diana in 1992 seemed to mark a move into the celebrity market at a time when the space devoted to parliamentary reporting was declining, and new, consumer-led sections (motoring, housing, fashion, etc.) were being added to the editorial mix (Franklin 1997a: 232–47). In the mid-1990s, indeed, The Times’s aggressive price cutting led to a price war more reminiscent of the tabloid market. For all the criticisms, however, this so-called ‘tabloidisation’ was, to some extent, a necessary process of responding to wider social and

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intellectual shifts, such the blurring of class distinctions and the breakdown of barriers between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Elite newspapers were becoming more aware of the value of (suitably reworked) tabloid features as the wider media environment grew more challenging. The cultural impact of the tabloid was increasingly evident in other media formats. The UK launch of Hello! magazine in 1988 paved the way for a flourishing celebrity magazine sector, dominated by titles such as Ok, Heat and Closer. These glossy, full-colour magazines not only offered greater depth and more lavish illustration, they were free of the tabloid features that alienated some female readers. On the other side of the market, ‘lads’ mags’ such as Loaded, FHM, Nuts and Zoo provided so much naked female flesh that the Sun’s ‘Page 3 girl’ was left looking decidedly old-fashioned. BSkyB, Britain’s dominant satellite broadcaster from 1990, bought the rights to Premier League ­football and increasingly reshaped sports coverage around celebrity and controversy. The rise of ‘reality television’, pioneered by shows such as Changing Rooms (1996) and Big Brother (2000), enabled broadcasters to pursue the traditional tabloid agenda of finding interest in the trials and tribulations of everyday life. The Drudge Report’s breaking of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, meanwhile, offered an early indication of how online writers and bloggers would take greater risks than the print and broadcast media, and would become a rich source of revelation, accusation and commentary. The tabloid voice that was, for its critics, almost unbearably loud in 1986, would become harder to hear in the babble.

2011: Popular Journalism Disgraced­– b ­ ut Unbowed By 2011, the British press faced unprecedented commercial and political pressure. Newspaper circulations, in the daily market at least, had held up reasonably well until the end of the century, but thereafter started declining dangerously. The Sun, still the market leader, had sold 3.7 million copies a day in 1998, but was down to 2.8 million by June 2011. The Daily Mail, outperforming the sector with its distinctive appeal to conservative ‘middle England’, was the only other paper with a daily circulation above 2 million, while the Mirror, in third place, sold 1.2 million, barely a quarter of its total in its 1960s heyday. The elite newspapers, for so long a growth area of the market, were suffering too, losing around a third of their circulation since the mid-1990s, while the Sundays struggled most of all, with the Sunday Times the only title to outperform its daily equivalent (The Guardian 2011). The only real commercial successes came through offering

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s­ tripped-down, uncontroversial journalism for a reduced price. The free Metro newspaper, launched in London in 1999, had a circulation of 1.38 million among urban commuters by 2011, while the i, a concise paper from The Independent stable, launched in October 2010 and quickly took readers from other titles. In an online world, moreover, the future of newspapers seemed very uncertain. Newspapers had been able to maintain their relevance, albeit with some difficulties, through the challenge of radio and television, but the internet and social media, especially on smartphones and tablets (the first iPhone was launched in 2007, and the iPad in 2010), were threats of a different order. These platforms could provide replicas, and extensions, of newspaper content more quickly, conveniently, and with greater personalisation than print. Newspapers were required to cut costs, filling space with a reduced and increasingly casualised workforce, and often recycling public relations releases or material gleaned from the internet (Davies 2008). Equally troubling was the perception that the press had lost its moral compass. Newspapers, and particularly tabloids, had long been accused of intrusion, irresponsibility and sensationalism, but the revelations about wide-scale phone-hacking by News of the World journalists generated genuine shock and outrage, not just because of the criminality involved, but also because of the unpityingly brutal ­treatment of ordinary families such as the Dowlers, who were victims of high-profile crimes and not part of the celebrity world (Davies 2014). The scandal led in July 2011 to the closure of the News of the World, Britain’s most popular paper across the twentieth century, the arrest and eventual imprisonment of its former editor (and Downing Street Director of Communications) Andy Coulson, and the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry into the ‘culture, practices and ethics’ of the press. The hacking of celebrities’ phones, the use of private detectives to uncover personal information, the insistent surveillance of the famous, the snatching of photographs at every opportunity­ – ­all of these ultimately stemmed from the pressure in tabloid newsrooms to obtain scoops, beat competitors and stay ahead of the game (Leveson 2012). The seeds of the scandal had been planted long before. The pursuit of scoops was deeply entrenched in Fleet Street culture, but MacKenzie’s Sun had taken risk-taking, outspokenness and a disdain for ethical restraint to new levels, with libel payments­ – ­such as the record-breaking £1m paid to Elton John in 1988­– ­apparently regarded as an inevitable part of the competition for stories. The ineffectiveness of regulatory mechanisms meant that there were few consequences for

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the grossly inaccurate and insensitive reporting of the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989, or the sensational coverage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and, in the early 1990s the Major government backed away from establishing privacy legislation or a more punitive regulatory regime (Bingham 2007). As circulations started to tumble in the new century, and editors became even more desperate to keep the attention of their readers amidst all the distractions of the new media environment, it was perhaps no surprise that laws were not just bent, but broken. The misdeeds of the press were scarcely hidden, and it is perhaps surprising that it took so long for them to generate a public and political backlash. A simple decline narrative, however, does not fully capture the reality of the situation. Both falling circulations and the scandals over newsgathering methods were, in many respects, products of the success, rather than the failure, of the template laid down by Alfred Harmsworth over a century earlier. Other media forms­– ­broadcasting, magazines and then the internet­ – ­took on board, and adapted themselves to, the populist priorities of the tabloid, embracing the drive for speed, brevity, accessibility, drama and controversy. Tabloid values colonised the media landscape, leaving popular newspapers less and less distinctive, and finding it difficult to match their imitators. Globalisation, the liberalisation of media regulation, and the rise of international media conglomerates, exemplified by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, all reinforced the trend towards providing bright, eye-catching and immediately accessible chunks of content that could be packaged and repackaged across different media forms and in different territories. The rise of social media, driven by unprecedented quantities of personal data, enabled this content to be targeted at more diverse and fragmented audiences. Even on their own terms, moreover, newspapers were far from dead. Newspaper groups established significant internet presences, with MailOnline and The Guardian website achieving considerable success both in Britain and abroad, and their content was, in many cases, consumed by more readers than ever before, even if it could not always be monetised straightforwardly in proportion to the new audience sizes. Newspapers had not lost their ability to influence public debate. Few disagreed that the Euroscepticism of many British tabloids contributed at some level to the ‘Leave’ campaign’s victory in the 2016 referendum on EU membership. Newspapers also continued to break big political stories, from the MPs’ expenses scandal to the revelations about the treatment of the ‘Windrush’ generation. The BBC was routinely accused of following a news agenda significantly influenced by the Daily Mail,

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and online sites and social media often lived off the material created by print journalists. Nor had another medium quite replaced the daily newspaper in public conversation: it was telling that late-night television news continued to broadcast and discuss the following morning’s newspaper front pages. What was slipping away, though, was the model of a popular miscellany that could unite a diverse audience. A cultural landscape of previously unimaginable choice was increasingly based around personalisation, selection, and carefully defined networks of friends and acquaintances. In such a world, the universalising editorial voice and the curation of content for a mass mainstream public increasingly appeared to be presumptuous and unsustainable. While this greater cultural diversity and fluidity brought many gains, there was a risk that personalisation and fragmentation would produce a more siloed public consuming material that reinforced existing likes and beliefs. The consequences of this transformation are much debated, but as yet remain unclear. What is likely, however, is that the socially mediated, online, ‘simultaneous newspaper’ of the twenty-first century, now tailored to each individual reader, will have as profound an impact on British politics, society and culture as Harmsworth’s print version did in the long twentieth century.

Note 1. The figure actually cited, and repeated in the PEP Report, is 1741, but this incorporates an error in the number of Scottish papers, which should read 212 rather than 112 (as demonstrated by a comparison with the following year’s volume, which indicates a figure of 210; there is a helpful pencil correction in the British Library’s copy).

Chapter One

ECONOMICS: OWNERSHIP AND COMPETITION Jonathan Hardy

Introduction

A

t the start of the twentieth century commercial newspapers were becoming large industrial operations whose economies of scale, and increasing reliance on advertising revenue, kept prices low and built up an ever-expanding readership. The Daily Mail, launched in 1896, had by 1900 a circulation of over half a million. Sold for a halfpenny, the sale price was less than the cost of production. The gap was made up by advertising (Royal Commission on the Press 1949: 14–15). Replacing smaller, often family-owned businesses, most national newspapers required significant capital investment, with high running costs and with a pattern of high returns and failure rates that characterised this volatile industry throughout the century. This chapter explores the economics of newspapers in print and online publishing in Britain and Ireland. As the terrain to map is already vast, periodicals and other important sectors are ignored, to concentrate on the topography of newspapers.

Part 1: Newspaper Economics Newspaper costs and revenues shifted with changes in production, distribution and consumption across the decades, yet some core features remained stable. Most newspapers competed in what is described as a dual-product, or two-sided market: a market for consumer sales and a market for advertising revenue. Most sales were made through individual purchase, or home delivery arranged by consumers with retailers. In 1933 an estimated three-quarters of national dailies were home 31

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delivered by newsagents, while around one-fifth of national dailies, but a much larger proportion of Sunday and evening papers, were sold at news-stands (Political and Economic Planning 1938: 67). Street vendors also played a significant role, especially for urban evening papers. Features common across Europe and the USA, including street-kiosk sales, and subscription arranged directly with publishers, were both uncommon in the UK or Ireland, until digital-era subscriptions. The ratio of dependence on revenue from advertising or consumer sales varied considerably; however, a persistent pattern was that socalled quality papers received a higher proportion of their revenue from advertising over sales. The second Royal Commission on the Press found the ratio of advertising to sales revenue for quality papers to be 74/23 in 1937 and 73/24 in 1960, while for popular papers it was 50/49 in 1937 and 45/54 in 1960 (RCP 1962: 23). In 1976, advertising provided 60 per cent of the revenue of quality national papers, but only 28 per cent for populars (Henry 1978:12). This had several important consequences. The popular press, deriving a greater share of income from consumers, was under pressure to compete with content that would maximise sales: entertainment, celebrities, scandal and sports. The quality press, more reliant on advertising income, could sustain a competitive position on comparatively lower circulation. Focusing editorial content on attracting readers with high value for advertisers, the qualities provided public affairs coverage in a manner approximating the free press of ‘democratic mythology’ (Sparks 1999: 59). Socio-economic inequality in society was reflected in the allocation of advertising finance and in turn the distribution of economic resources to media. Quality papers could charge advertisers rates nearly four Table 1.1  Advertising revenue as a proportion of total revenue. Adapted from RCP (1977: 32) Total advertising revenue as a proportion of total revenue

Display and classified as proportions of total advertising in 1975

Newspapers

1960

1973

1975

Display

Classified

National popular daily National quality daily National popular Sunday National quality Sunday Provincial (daily, Sunday) Provincial (weekly)

45 73 46 79 60* 79

36 70 38 74 67 84

27 58 31 66 60 84

85 62 91 68 39 44

15 38  9 32 61 56

* Sunday figures not available

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times as high as populars (RCP 1962: 69). While papers with a greater proportion of revenue from advertising could survive, others with higher sales but lower advertising revenue share, such as the Daily Herald, failed. Illustrating the complexities of managing these interdependent revenue sources, The Times in the early years of Thomson Organisation ownership, from 1965, increased circulation but lost advertisers and so initiated moves to shed newly acquired readers. The broadened readership profile offered less appeal for advertisers targeting high-net-worth consumers, and advertisers were unwilling to pay higher rates to reach consumers who could be accessed more cost-effectively across other media channels. A third key resource is state subsidies. The self-promoted myth of press freedom as freedom from state patronage has always been at odds with reality. Through much of the twentieth century direct financial aid for newspapers was limited in both Britain and Ireland but indirect aid has been considerable, in the form of reductions on business rates and taxes. Yet the countries differed markedly too, with the Republic of Ireland sustaining newspaper Value Added Tax (VAT) rates as high as 23 per cent, while UK newspapers remained VAT-free, a form of public subsidy worth £594 million in 2008 (Nielsen and Linnebank 2011). Newspapers share characteristics with other industrial sectors that are prone to market concentration. There are high so-called ‘first-copy’ costs, the costs of producing one issue, and relatively low marginal costs in the production and sale of additional copies. Many copies may need to be sold before ‘break-even’ point, but beyond that considerable profits can be achieved from high volume sales. Consequently, there are significant economies of scale available in production (RCP 1977: 46) as well as economies of scope, arising when ‘shared overheads or other efficiency gains . . . make it more cost-effective for two or more related products to be produced and sold jointly’ (Doyle 2002b: 14), driving corporate expansion. Achieving economies of scale and scope means that existing firms with high volume will usually operate at lower unit cost than a new firm entering the market, creating a barrier to market entry. Of course, competitors may have other advantages, but where market entry is difficult there tends to be concentration of ownership. In addition, the newspaper business, while often profitable, has been subject to considerable risk and uncertainly because of high investment and running costs. This has tended to limit ownership to very wealthy individuals, large commercial companies, or investors, all of whom tend to be advocates of capitalist economics and the political arrangements that facilitate them. Historically this has fuelled concerns that the major means of communication would tend to be owned by the

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powerful and wealthy, because the strategies for profitability required huge resources. One report from the 1930s (Political and Economic Planning 1938: 313) estimated that at least £1m a year for five years was needed to establish a popular national newspaper. The commercial press that developed in the nineteenth century required significant investment in on-site printing facilities. Into the twentieth century, large-circulation papers could be printed by external contractors, reducing initial capital outlay, as the Observer was (PEP 1938: 72). So, relatively undercapitalised papers could be launched and become viable with sales growth. A significant cost for all though was paper and ink, with newsprint, manufactured from wood pulp and other materials, estimated by the second RCP (1962) to make up 33 per cent of costs for national qualities and 42 per cent for popular newspapers. Shortly before the Second World War, UK newspapers were using 22,000 tons per week, falling to 4,200 tons in 1942 after the government imposed severe restrictions. Daily newspapers were reduced to an average of four pages, although with increased hunger for news sales rose (Seymour-Ure 1991: 16). Newsprint rationing was relaxed in 1946, then reimposed in 1947 on the grounds of reducing imports to meet the balance of payments crisis, and in the context of a worldwide paper shortage. Newsprint was the last product released from post-war rationing when restrictions were lifted in 1956 (Williams 2010: 177). During the Second World War, the UK Government also imposed restrictions on advertising, limited to 40 per cent of total publication space for daily and Sunday papers and 45 per cent for evening papers. One consequence was that advertising rates soared in a newspaper sellers’ market, but more importantly advertising revenue was redistributed more evenly across newspapers. The forced contraction of pagination, and more even distribution of advertising revenue, sheltered newspapers from competition and aided economically weaker ones (RCP 1949: 57). The second RCP (1962: 6) judged rationing to have been an important factor inhibiting both market entrants and market innovation by incumbents, although UK provincial papers benefited from greater demand for advertising. The lifting of newsprint restrictions increased competitive pressures on weaker titles, with UK Sunday and evening papers suffering most (Seymour-Ure 1991: 16–18). Editorial labour costs made up between 11 and 22 per cent of total costs in 1960 (RCP 1962: 26), around 16 per cent of costs for quality dailies and 14 per cent for popular papers, although the latter’s actual expenditure was greater. According to the second RCP (1962: 69) ‘The typical popular newspaper spends three times as much as the typical

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quality because of the emphasis which it puts on such things as the speedy collection of all possible news and pictures, preferably of an exclusive nature.’ The third RCP (1977: 50) found the gap had narrowed, with popular papers’ editorial costs on average one and a half times those of qualities, but the latter now carried about twice as many editorial pages as popular papers, compared to only a quarter more in 1960. The scope to reduce editorial costs was regarded as comparatively limited. By contrast, the labour costs of production were problematised, especially after 1945. By the time the second Royal Commission laid out evidence on labour costs, a fierce struggle over interpretation was underway that would intensify during the battles over ‘new technology’ in the 1980s, most notably the Wapping Dispute in 1986 when 5,500 printworkers were sacked by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. A decade earlier the third RCP (1977: 216) regarded ‘higher productivity through reductions in manpower and the introduction of new technology’ as the principal means to achieve sustainability. The industry, it argued, could cut thousands of jobs and reduce total labour costs by 25 per cent (RCP 1977: 43). Half of Fleet Street was running at a loss in the 1960s, cross-­ subsidised by the profits of provincial papers or from other business activities (Seymour-Ure 1991: 34). With labour costs running at between 40 and 50 per cent of total costs, and average wages for manual printworkers higher than in any other UK industry, the second RCP concluded that high wages and low productivity were barriers to market entry (RCP 1962: 29, 31, 39). Three main explanations were given, the chief one being that union power to halt production, and the economic and reputational costs arising from lost sales and advertising, inhibited tougher management action. Next was the effectiveness of unions in negotiating beneficial arrangements, such as ‘ghost’ labour payments, that persisted under normal operations. The third explanation was poor management. Instead of maintaining a collective stance through the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association (founded in 1906 and renamed the Newspaper Publishers’ Association in 1962), individual firms acceded to poor deals which other firms were obliged to match. The changes in the 1980s arose not only from new technology but also from the weakening of union power, confronting legislative, policing and other state resources deployed by the Thatcher government on behalf of politically aligned publishers like Rupert Murdoch. After the move to computerised printing and production at Wapping, and road distribution by TNT, Murdoch’s News International reduced costs by an estimated £80m per year (Greenslade 2003b: 477). By 1987 ­profits

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of £111.5 million fuelled the enormously expensive forays into US broadcasting and UK satellite television that marked the next phase of News Corporation’s worldwide expansion. Distribution costs across a network of wholesalers and retailers accounted for a high proportion of the retail price. Early in the century most newspapers were distributed by train or van. Rail also supported provincial papers, most of whom served a market based on an average one-hour distance by train from where they were printed. Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, printed a northern edition of the Daily Mail from 1902 and soon afterwards established simultaneous printing of the same edition in London and Manchester. Apart from the Manchester Guardian, the London papers dominated distribution across England and Wales, with four dailies simultaneously printed in Manchester by the 1930s (PEP 1938: 3), while The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald circulated throughout Scotland as national papers, alongside 110 mostly local ones (PEP 1938: 49). Scotland’s market included the London papers, some like the Mail and Express printed in Scotland, and the Daily Record, with editorial and ownership links to the Mirror. Newspapers have been rooted in place, a physical, ‘perishable’ product distributed within constraints of space and time, written in the language of its readers and characterised by geo-cultural affiliations. While technological innovation, most notably the internet, has enabled many of these constraints to be overcome, the embedded practices of producers and readers, the path dependencies as new institutionalists put it, persisted and remain relevant in understanding both contemporary and historical newspaper markets. Having outlined the main costs and sources of income, the next section explores their influence on the way newspapers developed.

Part 2: British and Irish Media Systems and Newspaper Market Structures For newspapers, as for so much else, their development was both markedly different and intimately connected across Britain and Ireland. Ireland was under British imperial rule until 1922 when it was partitioned into the Free State (from 1947 the Republic of Ireland) and six counties in the north-east, which remained part of the United Kingdom. The ownership and structure of newspapers reflected these geopolitical divisions. Provincial papers had been developed by Protestant settlers but there was an expansion of Catholic and nationalist papers in the second half of the nineteenth century, after Catholic emancipation in 1829. By 1859 there were 130 regional papers. The revolutionary

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forces that led to the 1916 Rising were nurtured in small periodicals appearing from the late 1890s, but not reflected across any of the major media properties. Founded in 1905, the Irish Independent served an increasingly wealthy and mildly nationalist Catholic middle class, while the Protestant owned Irish Times, founded in 1859, articulated the ­interests of Southern unionism. After the Treaty of 1922, these national broadsheets, which survive, were joined by new papers representing emergent political-social blocs, notably the Irish Press, aligned with the party that emerged from anti-Treaty republicans, Fianna Fáil. The UK newspaper market has been large enough to support several competing national titles. The Irish market has been, and remains, considerably smaller. A population of over 8 million before the Great Famine and mass emigration had fallen to 3.2 million people in 1900, and in 1910 Ireland’s share of the total British population was a little under 10 per cent. Yet, in both countries national papers have dominated sales, in contrast to the predominance of regional papers across Europe (Doyle 2002b: 125). Britain’s relatively small geographical area, transport links and urbanisation, as well as the centralisation of political and economic power in London, helped to form a dominant national newspaper market. In Ireland, population size, geography and infrastructure contributed to smaller markets and reduced competition. Religious affiliations of owners, readers and advertisers also structured markets in ways quite unlike anywhere else in Britain. For instance, advertising from many Protestant-owned businesses in Dublin funded the Irish Times ‘to an extent probably not warranted by the paper’s circulation’ (Horgan 2001: 63). Northern Ireland, with a population of 1.5 million in the 1920s, was a region bitterly divided on political and religious grounds, with polarisation greater than anywhere else in Britain. Northern Ireland had three morning papers; the Belfast Newsletter (founded in 1737) was owned by Century Group and read by supporters of Protestant and Unionist traditions, with the smaller circulation Northern Whig (1824–1963) and the Irish News serving Northern nationalists and Catholics. Significantly, the market was too small to support rival evening papers and so the Belfast Telegraph, owned by Unionists, achieved a cross-community readership roughly in proportion to the population. In 1970, 87 per cent of the Newsletter’s readership was Protestant, and 93 per cent of the Irish News’s readership was Catholic (Horgan 2001: 102). Yet Catholics were more likely than Unionists to read British papers, whose Irish editions tended to remove the more virulent anti-Irish sentiments some offered to their British readers (Curtis 1996). The relatively high number of regional

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papers in Northern Ireland can be partly explained by the sectarian barriers to common ownership and amalgamation where an economic case would otherwise be compelling. The market presence of British newspapers, increasingly with separate editions for the Republic and for Northern Ireland, became a sometimes fiercely contested policy issue in the South, as social and religious conservatives railed against foreign news values, as well as an economic competition issue.

Periodisations The century can be divided into three unequal length periods within which there are sufficient commonalities within the industrial organisation of newspapers to justify such crude demarcations. These are, first, the period from 1900 to the end of the Second World War. The second period, from 1945 to 1990, marks the uneven growth and decline of mass-circulation printed newspapers, and the third period, of internetisation, runs from 1991. Britain and Ireland share common features in this periodisation but differ very significantly in other ways. For instance, Ireland was formally neutral during the Second World War, avoiding Britain’s enormous war debt, yet its economy grew more slowly, and low growth, as well as social conservatism, fuelled a wave of emigration from the 1950s that affected both the sales and editorial character of Irish newspapers. The first period, 1900–44, is characterised by the growth of mass-readership commercial papers, intensifying competition for cost-­efficient, higher-volume sales led by the popular press, and accompanying pressures towards chain ownership and concentration. The second, post-war period, 1945–90, saw the further rise and then decline of print circulation. UK circulation increased between 1930 and 1947, by 80.5 per cent in the case of national dailies and 100.5 per cent for Sundays. Profits averaged 10.3 per cent on capital investment. Total expenditure on press advertising increased from £159m in 1956 to £214m in 1960. The easing of newsprint restrictions saw a return to fiercer competition, increased pagination and rising production costs. Many of those who had read two or more papers, when newspapers were small, took to reading fewer larger papers. Sunday newspaper circulation dropped from 23.6 million in 1965 to 17.7 million in 1985. Closures followed, particularly affecting mid-market nationals and provincial papers (Williams 2010: 174). The year 1957 marked the high point in UK newspaper sales, with a long-term circulation decline thereafter. By the end of the 1950s television was starting to replace newspapers as the main source of national news. The rise of commer-

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cial television from 1955 also affected newspapers’ display-advertising revenue and by 1958 ITV’s advertising revenue was greater than the combined advertising revenue of national newspapers. The number of provincial morning papers declined between 1945 and 1990, with the greatest loss between 1955 and 1964. No new paidfor provincial morning paper was launched after 1945, and several evening papers closed in towns that had competing papers (SeymourUre 1991: 48). Monopoly evening papers survived with falling circulation until a wave of closures in the 1960s. Weaker competing evening papers closed everywhere except in London, Glasgow and Belfast, while new markets were filled only by monopolies, with twelve evening papers launched between 1959 and 1970 in towns that did not have one. In the Republic of Ireland, the number of provincial papers fell from seventy-one in 1950 to forty-one in 1969. The growth of freesheets, free newspapers distributed to households, from the early 1970s, increased diversity of supply where independently owned businesses competed, but these tended to have restricted news coverage and so added little editorial diversity (Thompson 1988). Freesheets generally had low initial fixed costs, contracting out their printing to third parties, and typically employed small numbers of journalists and advertising sales teams. Their growth helped to accelerate the rate of decline of the local paid-for weekly press. Average weekly circulation fell by 15 per cent between 1980 and 1986, and the number of titles fell. The freesheet share of the regional press advertising market grew to 35 per cent by 1990, concentrated in the more affluent southern counties (Williams 2010: 217). In response, regional newspaper chains launched their own freesheets and gradually bought up many of the new market entrants. The freesheet phenomena declined in the 1990s, when the number of copies fell from 42 million in 1989 to 29 million in 2004, before another wave of freesheet growth in urban markets.

Capitalisation, Ownership and Concentration Large-scale newspaper publishing has been characterised by high sunk costs. The second Royal Commission (RCP 1962: 31) reported that each rotary press might cost £90,000, with £2m needed to re-equip a machine room. Significant capital was also required to build up a profitable position for a new market entrant. This included pre-launch costs such as recruitment of staff and preparation of dummy copies to iron out both production processes and editorial direction, as well as heavy promotional expenditure across an extended launch period.

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A new paper also needed to offer marketers considerable incentives to purchase advertising in an uncertain product with low circulation and limited market data. As the second RCP noted, the most daunting challenge was not initial investment but financing inevitable trading losses in early years while circulation and advertising revenue were built up (RCP 1962: 82). In the event of failure there were also enormous, irrecoverable costs. Franklin Thomasson’s failed effort to launch a new Liberal daily, following the party’s election victory in 1906, cost him more than £300,000 (Williams 2010: 139). There have been four main sources of capital investment shaping the ownership and control of newspapers. The first is private individual or family wealth. The second is investors, most commonly in public limited companies but also privately owned businesses. The third is funding derived directly or indirectly from political parties (including state resources), trade unions, co-operative societies or other membership-based associations. The fourth is from ordinary individuals. The first Royal Commission showed the complex varieties of ownership and control arrangements. There were private companies fully controlled by individuals or families. There were businesses owned by trusts that were controlled by families or by a range of investors and appointees. There were joint stock companies ranging from private limited companies to public companies whose shares were listed on the London Stock Exchange. The first RCP made much of ‘joint stock’ newspaper ownership, where shares may be so widely dispersed that no individual or group is able to exercise effective influence on the paper’s policy, yet acknowledged that both the Mail and Express groups had a ‘single dominant shareholder’ (RCP 1949: 15). Lord Rothermere held only a minority stake of around 21 per cent of the Daily Mail and General Trust, yet no other shareholder held more than 1 per cent. Share ownership also increased pressure for dividend payments to investors and so ‘incorporated the profit motive more fully into newspaper production’ (Williams 2010: 140).

Concentration In the 1900s, most commercial newspapers were owned by very rich men who had built their wealth from publishing, or cross-subsidised their newspapers from inherited wealth or other business activities. In Britain, Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe) established and controlled a news empire that by 1914 held 40 per cent of the national morning newspaper market, 45 per cent of the evening and 15 per cent of Sunday circulation, with papers including the Daily Mail, The

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Times, Weekly (later Sunday) Dispatch, and London Evening News. Associated Newspapers, controlled by Lord Rothermere on his brother Lord Northcliffe’s death, had three national dailies (Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Times), several Sunday papers, more than 100 weeklies and monthlies, as well as magazines. Rothermere sold The Times to the Astor family, another branch of which already owned the Observer (bought from Northcliffe). Lord Beaverbrook had a controlling interest in the Express group with fewer papers than Rothermere but a combined circulation of 4.1 million, out of a total 13 million circulation on the eve of the First World War. The Berry brothers, later Lords Camrose and Kemsley, established the largest newspaper chain in the country, and at their height in the 1920s owned twenty provincial daily papers, three nationals, six Sundays including the Sunday Times, six weeklies and over eighty magazines, until the break-up of the business in 1937. Thereafter Kemsley Newspapers Ltd was controlled by Lord Kemsley and his family, with 50 per cent of shares, before it was sold to Thomson in 1959. The Daily Telegraph was owned through a joint stock company, yet Lord Camrose and family owned all the ordinary shares and a majority of the preference shares. The Times was controlled by major shareholders, Colonel J. J. Astor and Mr John Walter, with Astor

Figure 1.1  Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, c. 1918

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chairman of both Times Publishing and Times Holding company. By the late 1970s six of the nine national newspapers in Britain had ultimate control wrested in individuals, families or their trusts. Only Reed International had shares that were widely held and traded (RCP 1977). In 1913 Northcliffe, Beaverbrook, Camrose and Kemsley, between them owned nearly half the national and local daily papers as well as a third of Sundays. The political interventions of these press barons have been much examined, although, as Williams (2010: 165–7) discusses, it was not typical of the behaviour of at least some of their contemporaries, including Lord Riddell, owner of the News of the World. Yet this represented an overwhelming concentration of media power in the hands of wealthy capitalists, however they chose to exercise it. As the century progressed there were more ways for undercapitalised papers to launch, yet those competing in mass markets needed steeply rising circulation to survive. The majority failed, including News on Sunday, the Sunday Correspondent and Robert Maxwell’s London Daily News.

Political Press The UK’s party-owned newspapers have included the Communist Party’s Daily Worker, relaunched in 1966 as the Morning Star; News Line, published by the Workers’ Revolutionary Party; and Socialist Worker. The largest-circulation party newspaper was the Daily Herald reaching peak sales of 2.1 million in 1947, but its relationship with owners was a complex and often fraught one, atypical of party-owned newspapers across Europe. The Herald was established by trade union activists and while it was owned and supported by the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress, they were reluctant sponsors. In 1961 the Mirror Group, whose Daily Mirror had increased sales by 246 per cent between 1930 and 1947 to 3.7 million, bought Odhams, giving them a 51 per cent controlling share in the Daily Herald which they subsequently relaunched as the Sun in 1964, after the TUC sold back its remaining 40 per cent stake. Losing £17.75m a year by 1968, the ailing paper was sold to Murdoch’s News International in 1969. In a political system then dominated by Conservative and Labour parties, this meant that from the mid-1960s there was no formally aligned Labour paper, only support from the Daily Mirror and, more erratically, The Guardian, with electoral support for New Labour between the mid1990s to mid-2000s from others, such as the Financial Times and, amid internal opposition, the Sun. The News Chronicle was acquired by and amalgamated with the Daily Mail in 1960, marking the loss of one of the few surviving papers

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aligned with the Liberal Party. One of the great Co-operative Society papers, Reynolds News, survived into the twentieth century and was relaunched as Reynolds News and Sunday Citizen in 1944 and then as a tabloid, Sunday Citizen, in 1962, before closing in 1967. While some left-wing periodicals, such as the New Statesman, have relied on wealthy patrons, left-wing newspapers have needed the resources of collective organisations to survive. The right-supporting press has tended to be closely aligned with, but not owned by, right-wing parties. Instead, the interlocking of wealthy individuals, financiers, corporate owners, managers and senior journalists with the Conservative Party has been a feature of the ‘establishment’ broadsheets, the Telegraph and The Times, through to the volatile conservative-populism of the mid-market Mail and Express, and the tabloid Sun. The marginality of party papers in Britain, especially after the 1960s, bolsters the inaccurate self-image of British press independence, but is also in stark contrast to Ireland, which had a major national newspaper group aligned to Fianna Fáil that was either the governing or main opposition party from the paper’s launch in 1931 to its demise in 1995. The Irish Press was established not under party control but with the leader of Fianna Fáil, Éamon de Valera, as controlling director of a commercial venture, with a board of directors that included Protestant as well as Catholic figures (Horgan 2001: 28–9). De Valera was challenged over the conflict of interest when campaigning to become President of Ireland, but maintained control, albeit increasingly loosely, until his death in 1975 (Horgan 2001: 93). Fianna Fáil also published its own party periodical Gléas from 1952 to the mid1960s, succeeded by Iris Fianna Fáil and then FF Newsletter (Horgan 2001: 148). Yet the Irish Press was one of Ireland’s major press groups, although an undercapitalised one. In the late 1960s, the paper was running sixteen-page editions, while its main rivals the Irish Times and Irish Independent ran thirty- to forty-page papers (Horgan 2001: 94). The Irish Independent, aimed at a Catholic middle-class readership, was broadly aligned with the Fine Gael party but was not party owned or controlled. Most other party papers in Ireland were shortlived with the exception of Sinn Féin’s An Phoblacht, in print circulation from 1970 to 2017.

Chain Ownership As the century progressed, the dominant form of ownership became public companies. Ownership by private individual or family persisted in the provincial press, especially in Ireland, but larger capitalised

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national and provincial papers increasingly fell under chain ownership by publicly listed companies. The press barons of the 1920s and 1930s built up newspaper chains, setting a pattern for the provincial press through the rest of the century. While chain ownership had begun in the eighteenth century, only 10 per cent of UK evening provincial papers were chain owned in 1923. By 1939, 40 per cent of evening titles were owned by the five largest chains, whose share of the provincial morning papers had increased to 44 per cent from 12 per cent in 1921. By 1947, five chains controlled eleven of the twenty-nine mornings and thirty-three out of seventy-six evenings papers, with stakes in six more (Seymour-Ure 1991: 53). The largest group was owned by Lord Kemsley (six morning, nine evening, three Sundays). The Pearson family owned Westminster Press, controlled by Lord Cowdray, and was the second largest chain, with the Harmsworth brothers’ Associated Newspapers, a separate Harmsworth chain, and United Newspapers controlling the rest. The increasing competition to maximise sales at the lowest unit costs favoured the growth of newspaper chains that could take advantage of economies of scale, invest in more advanced, efficient technologies, spread financial risks, use market power in negotiating with suppliers, and manage labour efficiencies across large, stratified workforces. After 1945, independent ownership continued, but declined as chain ownership grew. Lord Kemsley sold all his provincial papers in 1949 to the international Thomson organisation. Regional chains, such as Iliffe in the West Midlands and Colmans in the east of England built quasimonopoly positions through launches and acquisitions. Firms built market dominance through joint production of evening and weekly papers enabling production and editorial economies, and more efficient advertising sales operations. Concentration was less marked in Ireland’s provincial press, a substantial proportion of which remained private limited companies. Into the 1980s, some forty different companies controlled 87 per cent of the regional press market, by circulation (Horgan 2001: 174). The 1990s saw growth, despite the competition from freesheets, but also cost-cutting from owners such as Scottish Radio Holdings, the third largest regional newspaper group in Ireland.

Conglomeration, Transnational Ownership and Diversification Between the 1950s and early 1960s, newspaper ownership became more concentrated in the hands of conglomerates, but most had publishing, or printing, as their core activity. Although there were some out-

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liers, the more general shift from national to international capital, and from publishing-based to more diversified conglomerates, occurred from the 1970s. The third Royal Commission (1977: 2) reported that six of the ten companies controlling national newspapers had substantial interests outside newspaper and periodical publishing. Trafalgar House, a property business, bought Beaverbrook’s newspaper group in 1978, subsequently selling on to United Newspapers in 1985. The Mirror Group was sold to International Publishing Company (IPC) in 1958, which then merged with paper manufacturing company Reed to form Reed International in 1970. The Thomson Organisation, led by Canadian newspaper owner Roy Thomson, moved into the UK market with its acquisition of The Scotsman in 1953 and then build up a chain of eleven provincial dailies. Thompson insisted on new marketing techniques for his papers, but this self-styled entrepreneurial proprietor avowed editorial independence and adopted a relatively hands-off approach. Elsewhere, interventionism persisted. Cecil King, a member of the Harmsworth family, acted like a press baron at the Daily Mirror but was appointed by directors who removed him as IPC chairman after his editorial attacks on the Wilson government escalated to a front-page challenge in May 1968. The UK national press had negligible foreign ownership for the first half of the century, with the exceptions of the Canadian, Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook) and American, John Jacob Astor, empires, both launched by rich men seeking positions in British public life. After Thomson, a more decisive shift from national capital began with Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the News of the World and the Sun in 1969. Falling stock value attracted international non-media businesses to acquire newspapers. In 1977, the Astors sold the Observer to US oil giant Atlantic Richfield who sold on in 1981 to Lohnro, a conglomerate with roots in African mining, leading to an infamous clash between its boss Tiny Rowland and the paper over its coverage of repression in Zimbabwe, where Lohnro invested. By the 1980s, British and Irish national papers were owned and controlled by foreign-owned multinational conglomerates, or by national firms with diversified ownership beyond newspapers. There had been diversification previously. For instance, Lord Camrose invested in the British film company Gaumont, and Lord Rothermere was a joint owner of British Movietone News, but these were exceptions (Murdock and Golding 1978: 144–6). From the 1960s, ownership patterns shifted as newspaper groups diversified into film, television, music, book publishing and non-media businesses, countering declining newspaper revenues. Thomson owned Sphere Books, Scottish Television

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and commercial radio holdings. The economic problems following the 1973 oil shock prompted further diversification, illustrated by Thomson buying a holiday business. In Ireland, the entrepreneur Tony O’Reilly bought into Independent Newspapers in 1973, was appointed chairman in 1980, and from a three-newspaper base made further acquisitions in media-related businesses in Britain, the US, Germany, Mexico, South Africa and elsewhere, with joint ventures including an Irish edition of the Express Group’s Daily Star. A new Irish paper, the Sunday World was launched in 1973 by two businessmen, Hugh McLoughlin and Gerry McGuiness, partners in the Creation Group, which owned magazines including Ireland’s first specialist financial magazine, Business and Finance. Sunday World was launched with capital of only £40,000, but strong early growth ensured it thrived with annual profit of £100,000 by 1975. The paper offered the first competition for British tabloids, and was a popular alternative to mid-market broadsheets like the Sunday Independent and Sunday Press which attempted to appeal to both popular and quality market segments. By 1977, however, Creation Group’s magazines were suffering during recession, and the Sunday World was sold to O’Reilly’s Independent News and Media (INM) group.

Patterns of Concentration: Ownership and Diversity There is a vast literature on measurement of newspaper concentration, and an equally vast literature debating the consequences of concentration (Baker 2007; Hardy 2014). Many considerations must be added before numerical tables of ownership and market share can be incorporated into suitable accounts of the extent of editorial diversity, owner influence, or reader choice available. Yet, with the caveat that care is needed to read the full story, the headlines are telling. Between 1921 and 1948, the number of daily and Sunday papers in the UK declined from 169 to 128, with only one new national paper, the Daily Worker, launched in 1930. In 1948, there were 112 daily papers in the UK, nine nationals (all published in London), three London evening papers, with twenty-five morning and seventy-five evening provincial papers. Outside London, only Glasgow and Belfast had competing morning newspapers. By 1948, fifty-eight of sixty-six towns had a local monopoly supplier. Reviewing these trends, the first RCP (1949: 175) considered that the drive towards concentration in the provincial press was strong between 1921 and 1929 but ‘much less pronounced’ thereafter, while from 1921 ‘there was a marked tendency away from concentration of

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ownership in the national Press’. Such optimism, underpinning the RCP’s inaction on ownership, did not survive the second RCP, which used different arguments to support continued inaction. Since 1949, the second RCP reported, seventeen daily and Sunday papers had ceased publication and concentration of ownership had increased. The three largest newspaper groups controlled 67 per cent of total daily newspaper circulation in 1961, up from 45 per cent share in 1948. The top three Sunday newspaper owners had 84 per cent market share in 1961, up from 61 per cent in 1948. The third RCP (1977) reported further contraction in ownership: 220 companies published newspapers, compared to over 490 in 1961. The intensifying commercial environment and matching orientation of post-war newspapers contributed to the right-wing drift that established a lasting dealignment between the spectrum of newspaper editorial opinion and public opinion (Curran and Seaton 2010: 66–99). This trend was exacerbated by the decline of left and liberal papers during a period of market contraction, with the loss of the News Chronicle (1960), Daily Herald (1964) and Sunday Citizen (1967). From the late 1970s, alongside increasing concentration of ownership there was increasing political assertiveness by national owners.

Figure 1.2  Robert Maxwell, 1989

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In contrast to the 1950s and 1960s, proprietorial interventionism by Murdoch, Lord Matthews at the Express Group, Mirror owner Robert Maxwell, and Canadian Conrad Black at the Daily Telegraph (1987– 2004) more closely resembled the era of ‘press barons’ in the 1920s and 1930s. By the late 1990s, the top ten UK national titles were owned by seven companies, all with substantial other media properties. Measured by circulation share, the top four companies controlled nearly 90 per cent of the total market, 87 per cent in 1997 (Sparks 1999: 47), while the top two companies held more than 50 per cent. In Ireland, by 1990, the Independent group controlled over half (51 per cent) of the newspaper market. Amongst European states, only Austria had a dominant group with a larger market share, while the combined share of 75 per cent held by the INM and Press groups was the highest (Sanchez-Tabernero 1993). Whatever its debated effects, the commercial newspaper press was prone to concentration and corporate consolidation. Only market interventions to affect the ownership structures, behaviour, subsidy and financing arrangements could ameliorate or counter such powerful political economic tendencies. Very little occurred, instead came the promise that new technology could reshape markets by transforming the economics of publishing.

New Technology, New Diversity? Successive technological innovations have prompted optimistic claims for their transformative potential, shaping wildly inaccurate predictions (Curran 2011). New technology, in the 1980s, would allow a creative wave of competition by reducing cost barriers for new entrants and by rejuvenating ailing incumbents. New technology was indeed transformative across the newspaper industry. After high initial investment in switching to electronic typesetting and computer-aided printing, newspaper publishers benefited from improved operating margins (Doyle 2002b: 123–4). Yet, measured in terms of market access, increased diversity of supply and greater plurality of ownership, this was a pitifully limited techno-revolution. New UK national papers were launched, but only The Independent, from 1986, survived to the end of the century. Today, launched in 1986 by Eddie Shah, was sold to Lohnro within months, then to Murdoch’s News International in 1987, before it was shut down in 1995. When it closed, the paper had a readership of around 560,000, even higher at 650,000 on the three days it sold at a reduced cover price, yet it suffered from rising costs and falling ad revenue, as well as an increas-

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Figure 1.3  The Independent’s ‘It is, are you?’ advert, 1986

ingly indifferent owner keen to strengthen his other papers’ readership share, notably The Times. The Sunday Correspondent folded barely a year after launch in 1989. Other papers that failed after a few months or years, included Scotland on Sunday, Wales on Sunday, and the North West Times. News on Sunday, a labour movement paper, was barely viable at launch and lasted only eight months (Chippindale and Horrie 1988). New technology reduced capital costs, but launch costs for editorial staffing and marketing remained high. Costs also rose in the post-Wapping era, with higher distribution charges, colour-printing expenses, fluctuating newsprint prices, and costs arising from more intense competition for advertising finance and readers. As well as supply-side issues, identifying and meeting demand remained as risky and uncertain as ever. The slender number of successes included the Daily Sport, but that paper’s mix of sexism, sleaze, sport and sensation was barely a simulacra of news. In Ireland, a successful new entrant was the Sunday Business Post. Launched in 1989 by four Irish journalists backed by venture capital, the paper achieved a circulation of 26,000 in its first year against a target of 17,000, and was selling 57,000 in 2009 before sales and revenue declined. It became a largely foreign-owned paper, acquired by Trinity Holdings in 1997, and printed by the Belfast Telegraph group rather than inside the Republic. The Irish Press, facing losses of £3.5m in 1984, moved to computerised typesetting in 1985 but the industrial conflict and settlement terms ‘effectively cancelled out any potential savings’ (Horgan 2001: 108), leaving the group vulnerable to takeover or collapse, the latter occurring in 1995 after a foreign

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Figure 1.4  Front page from cartoon leaflet The Scum, February 1987, a spoof of the Sun produced in solidarity with the strikers at Wapping. Sold at 10p, with all profits donated to the strike fund

investment deal with US publishing company Ingersoll failed (Burke 2005: 79–127).

Competition? A celebrated feature of newspaper history is the fierce rivalry permeating through institutions and enveloping proprietors, editors, journalists and other staff. At various times, some markets were characterised by fierce competition, at others by securely ensconced monopolists, yet the newspaper business has deviated from textbook accounts of free-market competition. Firms acted to reduce competitive threats in various ways, most notably by buying up already established rival titles. Newspaper managers also pursued a range of ways to outspend rivals, especially in their most vulnerable launch phase. Actions to damage new entrants included launching spoiler papers, some sustained only until the immediate threat receded, such as Associated’s Evening News produced in 1987 to see off competition to the Evening Standard from Maxwell’s short-lived London Daily News. Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 comic novel Scoop captures both the fierce institutional rivalry between papers as well as their pack mentalities and co-dependencies. The mixture of competition and co-operation,

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co-opetiton, among journalists was matched at corporate levels, for instance in arrangements to set prices for suppliers and consumers. The second RCP, typically generous towards owners, judged there was no price fixing but found a ‘degree of consultation between the various proprietors’ (RCP 1962: 60). Proprietors discussed the timing of price increases in 1961, subject to agreements registered with the Registrar of Restrictive Trading Agreements. In oligopolistic markets informal price-setting aids coexistence, but is vulnerable to rivalrous behaviour by a firm seeking competitive advantage (Doyle 2002b: 128). That occurred when Murdoch’s News Corporation, facing debts of around 13 billion Australian dollars, and falling sales for its UK News International newspapers, launched a price war. In 1993, the Sun’s cover price was cut, leading to increased sales, with profits used to cross-subsidise a price cut at the loss-making The Times, maintained until 2005. This episode of ‘predatory pricing’, challenged unsuccessfully by MPs against a pro-Murdoch government, was estimated to have cost News International £175m. The Times’s circulation doubled but The Independent lost some 20 per cent of its sales and brought a paper once ‘independent’ of a dominant owner into the hands of Tony O’Reilly’s INM Group. The price war also demonstrated that reader loyalty was not as entrenched as assumed; The Times increased circulation from 360,000 in June 1993, when it sold for 45 pence to 724,000 in June 2000, selling at 30 pence (Doyle 2002b: 127, 131). Newspaper businesses have tended to compete where necessary, but have sought to sustain monopoly or oligopoly positions where possible. The newspaper industry became increasingly concentrated across Europe from the 1920s (Leurdijk et al. 2012). There have been powerful pressures towards market concentration as competition for audiences to drive advertising income, and cost efficiencies, made it increasingly difficult for weaker players to survive independently. There are common features in the demise of the Irish Press and Daily Herald. Both retained a substantial readership but one that failed to attract sufficient advertising interest being older, more male, workingclass, and with comparatively modest disposable income. In 1964, the Herald had 8 per cent circulation share but a bare 3.5 per cent share of advertising. Yet higher costs, underinvestment, outdated and partyconstrained editorial, and falling market appeal, all contributed to its demise (Smith 2000: 183, 169–200).

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1991–2011 The 1990s was a period of growth for many newspaper sub-markets in Britain and Ireland. While the internet would be proclaimed as the chief architect of the decline of newspapers, its actual impact was gradual. Even amongst early internet adopters, domestic, non-professional use did not pick up until the availability of browsers after 1993 and most users had limited and costly modem access until the widespread adoption of broadband. The initial impact of the internet for newspapers was in ventures to test online provision, many of which were costly failures: Express Newspapers Group, for instance, sold off most of its internet properties in 2001. However, by 2006 over 800 regional newspapers had websites. The Irish Times launched its website in 1994, although an online newspaper, the Irish Emigrant, was launched in 1987 and reached some 20,000 subscribers worldwide before closing in 2012. The greatest initial impact of internetisation was on classified advertising in the regional press and the lucrative recruitment ads that were staples of national qualities. Regional newspaper advertising fell for the first time in fourteen years in 2004–5, challenged by online classified sites for property, motoring and jobs, and auction sites such as eBay. The regional press depended on advertising for 80 per cent of revenue, compared to 46 per cent for national papers (Williams 2010: 240). The internet brought with it a flurry of futurological speculation that lumbering incumbents would be outpaced by a stampede of new digital companies. Reviewing two decades of disruption, a more complex pattern is discernible. New digital publishers have certainly emerged. The rise of freelance professionals, citizen journalists and pro-am bloggers and influencers have contributed to a massive expansion and reorganisation of news sources such that the problematics of information scarcity are transformed. Yet, legacy publishers (‘news brands’) have exploited advantages too, and remained the main sources of supply and the most accessed news providers. However, they are losing share among younger readers consuming news via digital native publishers such as Reddit, Vice and Buzzfeed. Google and other aggregators have attracted increasing numbers of viewers and taken the overwhelming share of advertising revenue from such encounters, as do the commercial social media services that incorporate newsfeeds, such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. The introduction of ICTs has led to cost reductions in news production and printing, as well as in back-office activities such as customer management. At the same time, due to declining sales, the average

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costs per print copy generally increased. As well as online and mobile competition, paid newspapers were challenged by a second wave of free newspapers targeting commuters in affluent urban areas. The Metro group, owned by DMG media, a subsidiary of Daily Mail and General Trust, launched the Metro in London in 1999 and expanded to other towns and cities. In Dublin, the Irish Times and Irish Independent groups both launched free papers that the Competition Authority permitted to merge as the Metro Herald, running from 2010 to 2014. If internet disruption was the chief explanatory narrative of business managers, underinvestment was the counter-narrative of their critics. Owners were maximising profits while revenue declined, by cutting staffing and production costs, allowing news brands to plummet in a spiral of neglect. In the UK, local papers declined from 1,687 in 1985 to 1,286 by 2005, with 242 closing between 2004 and 2011, while leading newsgroups maintained substantial profits (Ramsay and Moore 2016).

Diversifying Revenues During the 1990s, newspapers incorporated gifts and gimmicks, such as CDs, DVDs and wall charts, amongst other giveaways. Such promotional activity has accompanied periods of increased market instability, notably during the circulation wars of the 1920s and 1930s. Readers’ offers, another feature with a long history, also expanded considerably. The Daily Telegraph developed one of the earliest and most extensive portfolios, followed by The Times. Such offers involved commercial partnerships for goods and services such as holidays, entertainment, clothing and household items, featured in advertising and more controversially in editorial tie-ins and profit-sharing transactional journalism. In 1989 Tim de Lisle resigned from The Times when the arts page he edited was remade to promote a tie-in for Sky, an indicator of increasing corporate cross-promotion (Hardy 2010). Readers’ offers provided modest revenue streams for papers losing sales and advertising revenue, but also became more integrated into the other major development, the growth of subscription to digital content, print editions or both. The Times offered subscribers’ discounts and privileged access to cultural and sporting events. Users could now subscribe to a newspaper, buy a physical edition at a news-stand, pick up a free newspaper in higher density areas, access news online for free or from a paywall, or use free or paid-for apps on smartphones, tablets or other personal devices. However, efforts to make good the loss of advertising by more effective retailing, through paywalls, micropayments and subscription largely failed. Successful monetisation online

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was mostly restricted to products serving elite or specialist audiences, with attributes of high value content (relatively non-reproducible or fast), scarcity in supply, valued user interface and cross-platform availability. Within the period, pay models tended to stall after reaching a small segment of their total consumer market willing to pay for content (Newman and Levy 2015).

Media, Advertising and Branded Content The failure to raise revenue from consumers has meant ever greater dependence on advertising. Yet advertisers became increasingly unwilling to subsidise content. The deal whereby advertising paid for journalism to attract readers who would see their ads has been unravelling since the early 1990s, as marketers have found more direct, ­information-rich and cost-effective ways to track and target consumers online (Turow 2011). Digital journalism is at the apex of two key trends: towards the disaggregation of advertising and media and towards greater integration of advertising within media. For digital journalism the fastest-growing form of ad-integration is ‘native advertising’, a form of branded content that is produced by or on behalf of a marketer and appears within or alongside publishers’ own content offering. Ads mimic the editorial content surrounding them and follow the form and user experience associated with the context in which they are placed. Publishers deploy editorial staff, or set up more quarantined units such as The Guardian’s Guardian Labs, to create brand sponsored content (Hardy 2018). The growth of native advertising reflects new pressures and opportunities, shifts in governing values across established media, and the spreading influence of formats and business models from the inaptly named ‘pure players’, digital-only publishers like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, who attract a younger audience via social media and mobile (Newman and Levy 2015). There are long-standing critiques of the influence of advertising finance on media, source dependency and churnalism, and intensifying PRisation of media (Davies 2008; Jackson and Moloney 2015). What is euphemistically called native advertising blends and amplifies these concerns. The most pertinent charge is that there is a powerful imbalance in the resources to fund effective public communications. Professional journalism promised to ameliorate that imbalance by producing communications according to values that serve democratic and cultural life, including accuracy, balance and editorial independence from vested interests. Yet, branded content favours resource-rich, commercial sources, sponsor-friendly coverage, ‘bestselling’ stories and soft

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news. The central dilemma of native advertising is that revenue gain comes at the expense of eroding reader trust and undermining core jobs for news media (Piety 2016). Yet, the influence of advertisers has been a long-standing concern. The first RCP was pressed by the NUJ and others to examine the influence of advertisers on editorial policy and recognised that there may be direct or indirect pressure to avoid publishing anything detrimental to advertisers’ interests (RCP 1949: 135). However, none of the RCPs met the need for systematic study to underpin policy proposals; the examples of advertiser influence presented were instead treated as isolated instances to be rebuked (RCP 1949: 143). The introduction of ‘new technology’ in the 1980s significantly reduced printing production and distribution costs but editorial labour, marketing and other costs maintained high barriers to market entry. The internet reduced distribution costs to near zero for digital natives, but costs to sustain and promote rich, regular content origination continued to require significant funding.

Conclusion Commenting on the collapse of the News Chronicle, the second RCP (1962: 81) argued that the failure was not entirely the result of ‘an inevitable law of newspaper economics; different and more consistent managerial and editorial policy might have saved this newspaper’. The solution was inspired leadership and capable managers: ‘The only hope of the weaker papers is to secure­ – ­and some have done in the past­ – ­managers and editors of such enterprise and originality as will enable these publications to overcome the economic forces affecting them’ (RCP 1962: 99). Economic factors invariably need to be placed alongside other factors, but that does not mean we should follow the RCPs. All examined economic aspects in exemplary detail but then evaded considering the outcomes, as part of efforts to minimise the case for market interventions. The third RCP’s modest proposals to strengthen anti-monopoly interventions triggered a minority report, whose members endorsed the first RCP’s assertion that ‘free enterprise in the production of newspapers is a pre-requisite of a free press, and free enterprise will generally mean commercially profitable enterprise in the case of newspapers of any considerable size and circulation’ (RCP 1949: 157). The second RCP identified market tendencies towards concentration and noted with regret that the variety of opinion in the press had diminished since the first report. However, amid internal divisions, it rejected

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advocating statutory limits, based on market share or the number of publications under single ownership, and instead proposed a tribunal to scrutinise transactions where combined weekly sales of more than 3 million would be in the hands of one undertaking (RCP 1962: 106–11). While faith in market self-correction diminished across the reports, the RCPs’ evasions aptly illustrate the need for political economic analysis, because the political always works alongside economic processes to determine how resources are used and allocated. From 1900 to the mid-1990s, the problematics of newspaper ownership could be discussed in terms of a scarcity model. Barriers to market entry placed a premium on considerations of who owned papers, how they exercised control amid other influences on editorial output, how capitalist ownership and economics shaped provision, and to what extent plurality was sustained to deliver the multiple ‘jobs’ and expectations for a democratic and culturally diverse media. The political economy of newspapers was one in which capital was required and rewarded within a policy environment which permitted market concentration. The patterns of profitability, though, were more complex and uneven than the record of growth and decline in paid-sales suggests. Significant factors included the responses of advertising markets to changing economic conditions and the differential allocation of advertising, news market conditions and sociocultural changes in demand, the cost base of newspaper production and distribution, regulatory actions and, yes, leadership and industrial relations. With internetisation this political economic formation did not disappear, as predicted. However, the new economic and market conditions also influenced the terms of political and policy formulation: from scarcity to abundance, from mono-media to convergence, analogue to digital, and from the dominance of commercial newspapers to a crisis, opening up space for solutions ranging from hyperlocal community journalism, low-profit social enterprises, to rescue by public investment, including public service media cross-subsidies. Economics did not determine what newspapers communicated, but economics has shaped the broader contours of content provision. This includes the active influences arising from ownership and control by capitalist proprietors and businesses oriented to commercial goals. But equally striking are the gaps in provision, when the political economic conditions affecting supply meant that demand was not served, and a wider range of voices and perspectives was not heard. If the cry of reformers through most of the century was for increased pluralism in supply, the added calls at the end were for ‘exposure diversity’ (Napoli 2011). All of this mattered less, many argued, amid newspapers’ slow

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descent from the high circulation 1950s, but news brands remain a potent force, shaping lenses through which we observe and are observed in the world.

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Table 1.2  National Daily and Sunday Newspaper Ownership and Circulation figures, 1930–2017a Newspaper Group (owner) [National Paper]

1930b

1937c

1947d

Associated Newspapers/DMGT (Rothermere) [Daily Mail]

21 (1,845)k Mail

16 (1,579) Mail

13 (2,077) Mail

Astor [The Times]

2 (186) Times

2 (191) Times

2 (269) Times

Beaverbrook [Daily Express]

20 (1,693) Express

22 (2,204) Express

25 (3,856) Express

Camrose [Daily Telegraph] [Morning Post] (amalgamated with Telegraph in 1937)

2 (175) Daily Telegraph 1 (120) Morning Post

6 (559) Telegraph

7 (1,015) Telegraph

Cadbury [News Chronicle]

17 (1,451) Chronicle

13 (1,324) Chronicle

11 (1,625) Chronicle

Barclay Brothers [Daily Telegraph]

Guardian [Manchester Guardian; The Guardian] Hollinger (Black)(1987–2004) [Daily Telegraph] The Independent (1986–97) (Independent News and Media/ O’Reilly (1997–2010); Lebedev from 2010) Johnston Press (acquired i from Independent in 2016) [i] Kemsley Newspapers [Daily Sketch/ Graphic] Mirror Group (Daily Mirror Newspapers Ltd) (IPC 1958–70)

11 (926)

7 (683)

5 (772)

12 (1,072)l Mirror

13 (1,328) Mirror

24 (3,702) Mirror

13 (1,118) Herald

20 (2,032) Herald

14 (2,135) Herald

News International; News UK [The Sun; The Times; Today]

Nikkei Inc. [Financial Times] Northern and Shell [Daily Express; Daily Star] Oldhams [Daily Herald] Pearson [Financial Times] Pergamon (Maxwell) [Daily Mirror/The Mirror] Reed [Daily Mirror]

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1976f

1987g

1997h

2007i

2017j

[22] 16 (2,610) Mail 6 (981) Sketch

13 (1,755) Mail

12 (1,759) Mail

17 (2,344) Mail

21 (2,365) Mail

24 (1,389) Mail

8 (891) Telegraph

8 (466) Telegraph

3 (368) Guardian

3 (147) Guardian

2 (251) Independent

(online only)

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2 (253) Times

27 (4,328) Express 8 (1,248) Telegraph

9 (1,308) Telegraph

2 (245) Guardian

2 (306) Guardian

3 (494) Guardian

3 (428) Guardian

8 (1,147) Telegraph

8 (1,130) Telegraph

2 (293) Independent

2 (288) Independent

4 (263) i

[38] 29 (4,561) Mirror 9 (1,394) Herald 26 (3,708) Sun

[32] 27 (3,993) Sun; 2 (350) Today; 3 (442) Times

[34] 28 (3,877) Sun 6 (821) Times

[34] 28 (3,214) Sun 6 (654) Times

[34] 26 (1,517) Sun 8 (444) Times 3 (192) Financial Times

7 (815) Express 7 (804) Star

1 (132) Financial Times

1 (174) Financial Times

2 (280) Financial Times 21 (3,123) Mirror

27 (3,851) Mirror

2 (327) Financial Times

4 (441) Financial Times

[13] 6 (369) Express; 7 (407) Star

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Newspaper Group (owner) [National Paper]

1930b

1937c

1947d

Total Circulation

8,567,567

9,903,427

15,449,410

Top Three

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8 (1,197) Associated Newspapers [Sunday Dispatch, ceased 1961; Mail on Dispatch Sunday]

5 (741) Dispatch

7 (2,061) Dispatch

Astor/ Observer Trust (from 1945) [Observer]

1 (200) Observer

1 (208) Observer

1 (384) Observer

6 (928) Sunday Express

9 (1,350) Sunday Express

9 (2,578) Sunday Express

2 (283)l Reynolds News

3 (426) Reynolds News

2 (720) Reynolds News

[16] 6 (940) Sunday Graphic; 1 (153) Sunday Times; 9 (1,284) Empire News

[20] 4 (651) Sunday Graphic; 5 (730) Sunday Chronicle; 2 (270) Sunday Times; 9 (1,447) Empire News

[17] 4 (1,186) Sunday Graphic; 4 (1,178) Sunday Chronicle; 2 (568) Sunday Times; 7 (2,068) Empire News

Thomson [The Times] Trafalgar House [Daily Express] Trinity Mirror (1999–2018; renamed Reach 2018) [Daily Mirror] United [Daily Express]

National Sunday Papers

Barclay Brothers [Sunday Telegraph]

Beaverbrook [Sunday Express]

Camrose [Sunday Telegraph] Cooperative Press [Reynold News] Guardian Media Group (Scott Trust) [Observer] Hollinger (Black) [Sunday Telegraph]

Independent [Sunday Independent] Kemsley [Empire News ceased 1960; Sunday Chronicle ceased 1955; Sunday Graphic ceased 1960]

Lonrho (1981–93); previously Atlantic Richfield (1977–81) [Observer]

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economics: ownership and competition 1976f

1987g

1997h

2007i

2017j

18 (2,442) Mirror

14 (1,585) Mirror

10 (604) Mirror

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2 (310) Times 19 (2,594) Express

[14] [20] 11 (1,697) Express 9 (1,241) Express 5 (730) Star 9 (1,289) Star 15,835,000

14,006,000

14,867,000

13,628,000

11,800,666

5,798,061

87

72

73

69

69

71

10 (1,919) Mail on Sunday

15 (2,322) Mail on Sunday

20 (2,349) Mail on Sunday

24 (1,195) Mail on Sunday

5 (645) Sunday Telegraph

7 (345) Sunday Telegraph

4 (472) Observer

3 (177) Observer

3 (715) Observer

3 (670) Observer

17 (4,457) Sunday Express (688) Sunday Telegraph

4 (759) Sunday Telegraph

1 (310) Reynolds News 3 (498) Observer 4 (693) Sunday Telegraph

6 (938)

2 (311)

5 (973) Observer

2 (214)

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Newspaper Group (owner) [National Paper]

1930b

1937c

1947d

Mirror Group [Sunday Pictorial; People; Sunday Mirror]

13 (1,946) Pictorial

9 (1,345) Pictorial

14 (4,006) Pictorial

23 (3,410) NoW

25 (3,850) NoW

27 (7,890) NoW

17 (2,499) People

22 (3,406) People

16 (4671) People

Mirror Group (Pergamon/ Maxwell) [Sunday Mirror] News International; News UK [News of the World; The Sunday Times]

News of the World [Riddell; Carr] Northern and Shell [Sunday Express]

Oldhams [The People] Reed [Sunday Mirror]

Thomson [The Sunday Times] Trafalgar House [Sunday Express] Trinity Mirror (1999–2018)

United [Sunday Express] [Independent] (Plymouth)

(15)

[Sunday Referee] (ceased 1939)

(73)

[Sunday Mail] (Glasgow)

2 (244)

2 (342) 2 (333)

2 (588)

[Sunday Mercury] (Birmingham)

(55)

(64)

1 (125)

[Sunday Sun] Newcastle upon Tyne)

1 (119)

1 (88)

1 (202)

Total Circulation

14,600,000

15,700,000

29,300,000

Top Three

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Notes a The table includes UK-wide circulation only except for columns including data from RCP 1949 and 1962. Percentages rounded up to nearest whole number. The table omits small circulation papers and groups such as the Morning Star. The Mirror Group’s Daily Record (Scotland) is not included. Figures for 2017 are for print sales in November and include bulk distribution. See . b RCP 1949: 190–1; see also PEP 1938: 84. c RCP 1949. d RCP 1949: 190–1. e RCP 1962: 174–5. Daily Worker (60) and The New Daily are (23) not included in daily total. The Independent (32) (Plymouth) is not included in Sundays. f RCP 1977: 272–80. g Seymour-Ure 1991: 44–5; ABC. h ABC September 1997; print circulation only. i ABC September 2007; print circulation only. j ABC October 2017; print circulation only. k The first figure in each column shows circulation as a percentage of total circulation in the category (National Daily Paper; National Sunday Paper). The second figure in brackets is the actual circulation in 000s. l Estimated.

­ 1961e

economics: ownership and competition 1976f

1987g

63

1997h

2007i

2017j

[38] 9 (1,449) Sunday Times 29 (4,620) NoW

[40] 11 (1,244) Sunday Times; 29 (3,446) NoW

[41] 15 (751) Sunday Times; 26 (1,296) Sun on Sunday

[10] 6 (727) Sunday Express 4 (485) Star

[11] 6 (323) Sunday Express; 5 (248) Star

[18] [28] 15 (2,424) Mirror 12 (1,452) 13 (2,001) People Sunday Mirror 6 (722) Sunday People

[14] 10 (517) Sunday Mirror; 4 (207) People

20 (5,306) Pictorial 20 (5,450) People [32] 17 (2,953) Sunday Mirror 15 (2,743) People 26 (5,138)

[36] 8 (1,424) Sunday Times; 30 (5,360) NoW

25 (6,643) NoW

42 (8,195) Sunday Mirror; People 4 (967) Sunday Times

7 (1,382) Sunday Times 18 (3,451) Sunday Express

13 (2,033) Sunday Express

8 (1,262) Sunday Express

(32) 2 (612) 1 (210) 1 (222) 25,612,000

19,595,000

17,737,000

15,827, 279

11,757,304

5,058,529

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86

81

81

78

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Chapter Two

NEWS PRODUCTION Robert Campbell

The Proud Tower, 1900

B

arbara Tuchman, the American author and historian, titled her ‘Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914’ The Proud Tower after a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Tuchman explored a possible myth, a post-war construct of an Edwardian golden age in which innocents blessed by a century of progress failed to foresee the horror of what was coming. She surveyed the idea that there were pent-up problems, elusive and lethal forces not properly understood until it was too late. As Poe wrote in City of the Sea, ‘While from a proud tower in the town, Death looks gigantically down’ (Poe 2003). While Tuchman investigated that myth, she also conceded that after a century in which the power of machines had been harnessed to the advancement of industry and culture there was indeed, as she writes in her foreword, if not ‘a lovely sunset haze of peace and security’ at least some confidence in the early twentieth century about the potential of yet more benign power being built on those foundations. It is atop a proud tower of their own that we find newspaper ­publishers at around the same point in time. By 1900 they were gazing over a landscape onto which, it seemed, endless opportunities for production, distribution, profit and power rolled out into the new century. Looking back more a hundred years later, they might have been shocked by the reality of subsequent decades of deepening attrition against forces of which they could not previously have dreamed, and over which they failed to establish control. The period of our study starts there, in 1900, with the launch of 64

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probably the world’s first tabloid newspaper, and ends with the launch of Snapchat in 2011. The tabloid in this case was a British invention, and burst upon the world on the first day of the new century in a discourse of optimism about the shape of the emerging world for publishers and readers as well as the rest of a blessed mankind. This tabloid was the invention of Alfred Harmsworth, the County Dublin-born British upstart pioneer of mass-market popular journalism, who had launched the Daily Mail in 1896. His prototype tabloid came about through a chance encounter with his American counterpart, Joseph W Pulitzer, on the RMS Teutonic steaming out of Liverpool towards New York in late December 1900. That particular story unfolded in New York, but there are three reasons for considering it as a snapshot of developments pertinent to this volume. Harmsworth had honed his approach in a British context; there are fresh insights into it thanks to an unprecedented body of detail I have gathered; and the journalisms of the British Isles and the USA were very closely linked. The material I accessed includes some of 45,000 documents in the Butler Library of Columbia University in New York, including memoranda in the form of telegrams, printed and handwritten letters, notes, some pertaining to Harmsworth’s production experiment and the context around it. In terms of transatlantic links, there had developed in the era of telegraphs and steamships a flow of journalistic ideas and personnel on a scale and at a pace previously impossible. (The first telegraphic message between England and the USA was sent in 18581 and the first cable between Ireland and mainland Britain, Wales, six years earlier.2 By the early twentieth century, ship crossings of the Atlantic had been reduced to less than a week.) For example, Smith describes (Smith 1979: 154) how Morning, launched in London in 1892, was edited by Chester Ives, formerly of the New York Herald. Seymour-Ure (2000: 12) reminds us of key Harmsworth staff who came from across from the USA, such as Pomeroy Burton from The World, who became general manager of Harmsworth’s Associated Newspapers and was instrumental in the takeover of The Times in 1908. Alexander Kenealy, who later revitalised the Mirror as editor in 1907, had worked in New York on the Herald, World and Journal (Wiener 2011: 212). The literature reveals a considerable transatlantic traffic in journalists, which continued and indeed increased during at least the peacetime years of the twentieth century, with a significant British journalistic tabloid diaspora developing in the USA (Campbell 2007: 153). ‘Pultizer on board’, wrote Harmsworth in his diary dated 19 December

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1900,3 and although there is no record of their conversation we know that by the time these two giants of the newspaper world arrived in New York they had agreed that the Briton should edit the American’s New York World morning edition for one night only, as a circulationraising stunt on the first day of the new year and new century. Harmsworth had grander ideas, shocking Pulitzer’s team with his demands for an experimental transformation of the World. His newspaper came off the presses on 1 January 1901 (technically the first day of the twentieth century) with, on the front page, a handwritten message asking Americans to comment on this experiment, along with a nickname The Daily Timesaver, and a boast that all the news could be surmised in sixty seconds thanks to the logical arrangement of it on page one. The paper was half its normal dimensions, but twice as fat, ‘portable and pocketable’ and stories were short. The overall message, the Times of Richmond, Virginia, reported4 (for this was a media event in itself), was plain. ‘“Let nothing exceed the limit of space”, Harmsworth told the staff. “Condensation is the pass word of

Figure 2.1  Staff at work at the ‘delivery end’ of one of the large printing presses used in the production of the Daily Mail newspaper (From The Makings of a Modern Newspaper – the Production of ‘the Daily Mail’ in Wartime, London, UK, 1944)

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the coming newspaper! Everything should be presented in the briefest form. People have not the time to read long stories. They lose their interest in them.”’ As the evening’s work wore on, press reports captured Harmsworth’s priorities: ‘“Remember,” said he, “nothing more than 250 words and keep a good share of them down to 100 words. Condense as much as possible.”’5 The newspaper was hailed as revolutionary. According to the World’s own account, the ‘dean’ of the editorial staff, William Merrill, addressed the team in prescient terms: It is surely a pleasure to engage tonight in what may prove to be an epoch-making international episode in the history of journalism. If our blanket sheets shall in time become napkin sheets, so to speak, the change will date from the experiment we are making tonight.6 The Timesaver’s form, and the way in which Harmsworth wished it to be consumed, matched the production processes behind his British newspapers. This was a consumer good, produced with efficiency in a time-bound environment and read in the same way­ – ­bite-sized, in a rush, by the ‘busy men’ who Harmsworth flattered and cajoled into believing that the tabloid was what they had always wanted. It was a production-led newspaper; supply led, on the publisher’s terms. All that remained was to convince the readers, which was more of a challenge; next day, Pulitzer returned the World to its normal size, leaving a trail of discussion plus a letter from a medical company complaining that the name for their compressed powdered medicine had been stolen7 (they opted instead for tablets, although a century later that name was usurped by the media too). Perhaps as important as the Timesaver itself, was the confidence about the future of newspaper production that underpinned it. ‘Between 1856 and 1914 the number of newspapers published in Britain and Ireland increased more than eightfold, from 274 to 2,205, with London numbers tripling from 151 to 478’ (Williams 2010: 99). Lloyds Weekly News was the first paper to hit a circulation of 1 million, in 1896 (Williams 2010: 99), which was the year Harmsworth launched his Daily Mail, which itself hit 400,000 within a year of its launch, and stabilised at 700,000 in the years preceding the First World War (Willliams 2010: 130). Harmsworth, writing in the North American Review (Harmsworth 1901) on the eve of his visit to the USA, predicted that this modern, industrialised press would mean fewer newspapers as ‘the vortex of combination and centralization’ cut through the industry until their

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numbers dropped to single figures. Harmsworth went out of his way in the article to claim he neither relished this scenario nor wanted to help make it happen, but nevertheless wrote about it with enthusiasm: There seems to be no reason why one or two newspapers may not presently dominate great sections of the United States or almost the whole of Great Britain. In other words, where there is now a multitude of papers, good, bad and indifferent, there will then be one or two great journals. The method by which such journals would be established would be precisely those employed in the formation of any ordinary trust. Possessing its own wires, dispatch boats and special trains, the simultaneous newspaper concern would soon have its own paper mills, printing ink factories, machinery shops and the like. The simultaneous newspaper would represent a standard of excellence which has never before been attained, and with its own vast resources it would be able to carry out, on an unprecedented scale, enterprises outside of the strict newspaper field. Imagine, then, the influence . . . Such a state of things would be a terror to evil-doers and to the supporters of anything inimical to the commonwealth. Such was the context and nothing could stop the press barons, it seemed. They were competing against each other, for reader time. But it was a symmetric conflict­ – ­one paper pitched against another, and although there would be casualties they would be amongst ­newspapers rather than the concept of the newspaper itself. Production and distribution were assuredly in the hands of those who produced the content; journalistic organisations were publishers, and to some extent distributors too.

Death Looked Gigantically Down; 2011 Threats from other media (namely broadcasters), while damaging, came and were met head-on, with newspapers seeming to retain control of at least their own means of production and distribution, and thus of the form that journalism should take too. Until, that is, near the end of our era of study. In 2014 Emily Bell, the Columbia academic and former Guardian journalist, warned of where this journey had paused, a little over a century on. News spaces are no longer owned by newsmakers. The press is no longer in charge of the free press and has lost control of the

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main conduits through which stories reach audiences. The public sphere is now operated by a small number of private companies, based in Silicon Valley. No other single branded platform in the history of journalism has had the concentration of power and attention that Facebook enjoys . . . The language of news is shaped now by engineering protocols, not by newsroom norms.8 If a newspaper was not producing journalism adapted for, say, Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, it was missing out on an audience of previously unimaginable size. The form of journalism itself was increasingly led by video and graphics, its lengths dictated by sometimes arbitrary decisions of those whose platforms carried it. Newspapers had enjoyed success with websites but those sites were also becoming less relevant per se, and had begun to resemble a legacy medium to which the audience might or might not find its way from the social media access points owned and controlled by others. From a proud tower, all along, death or at least the threat of it had perhaps been looking gigantically down.

Definitions and Literature Some definitions are in order. By production, this chapter means the physical crafting of the journalistic product with a focus especially on editing and subediting, in the response of those crafts to changes in circumstances whether commercial, technological, or cultural. Printing is therefore addressed, but only where it affected the craft and output of journalism. Similarly, distribution, whether by horse, train, WH Smith, newsagents, supermarkets or the press of a retweet button on a smartphone­– ­is addressed where possible regarding its impact on the journalism itself. As regards scope within the existing body of literature, there is no single adequate volume specifically covering production and distribution of this era that does justice to the varied stories outside London. Nor, especially, is there anything that acknowledges the role of the subeditor as the journalistic interface between storytelling and the industrial and technological processes that deliver stories to the readers. Histories of the press tend to be dominated by the perceived hegemony of London’s newspaper business rather than that of the nations and regions of the  British Isles. Briggs and Burke, for example, in their social history of the media do not have the words Ireland, Scotland or Wales in their index (Briggs and Burke: 2002).

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Newspaper histories are also often dominated by the agency of three figures: press baron, editor and reporter; and those histories of printing tend not to explore connections often enough back from the presses to the form of journalism and the practices that interacted with that form. The histories of distribution do so even more sparingly, despite Wilson’s effort to address the problem that: ‘Historians have scrutinised and analysed some of the crises that from, time to time struck manufacturing industry, banking and finance [but] the operation of trade and distribution have had less attention.’ (Wilson 1985: 439.) Williams gets closest to writing a press history with the required breadth to understand the links between form, production and the reading experience. He argues that: fusing together a history of the political economy of newspaper production and organisation, the development of the style, character and content, as well as the changing social, technological and cultural context within which newspaper production and reading happens, rests on the premise that the nature of the newspaper can only be explained through an understanding of the interaction between external pressures that are brought to bear on the medium in any era and the internal mechanisms by which they are produced. (Williams 2010: 4) In acknowledging the need for such an eclectic approach, the historian of production might also be wary of trying to arrange developments according to a simple chronological narrative, least of all a teleological one. This chapter therefore, in demonstrating how production and distribution got from the Timesaver to Snapchat, and what issues can be identified along the way, acknowledges both continuity and disruption. What it proposes is that there was indeed some continuity, in a quantitative sense, but that in acknowledging this one can more easily identify moments of rupture and significant qualitative change in the very nature of the newspaper production. That is, this chapter asks not just what happened, but what really changed, and what was really new. It argues that for more than a century the newspaper press did what it had always done, except faster and better, and that the real changes to the very idea and nature of its work became clearer very close to the end of the era of study.

Quantitative Shifts: Printing and Distribution Before the start of our period some of the major changes in the application of print technology were already nearly a century old. Steam

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power had been harnessed to a cylinder press as far back as 1814 on The Times,9 increasing the speed from 300 pages per hour to 1,100; fourteen years later, with four cylinders, the newspaper was printing 3,000 pages per hour (Twyman 1970: 51). When one part of the process sped up, it exposed slower parts, and the nineteenth century saw these obstacles tackled. Further developments in the nineteenth century included the use of wood pulp from 1889, improvements in halftone technology, and a realignment of the newspaper trade away from that of books and towards that of the periodical (Cox and Mowatt 2014: 36). The most significant remaining obstacle to the production of more newspaper pages at higher speed, as the twentieth century approached, was the setting of type by hand, one letter at a time. It was solved, around the turn of the century, by the widespread adoption across the British Isles of the Linotype machine. An operator could enter text on a keyboard, and an entire line of type (hence ‘line o’type’) would be assembled into a mould or matrice into which molten metal was cast, and from which the newspaper could be printed. Such was the impact on newspaper publishing that a documentary about the Linotype machine refered to it as the eighth wonder of the world10 and the machine’s inventor, Ottmar Mergenthaler, has been referred to as a second Gutenberg. Linotype was a must-have for any newspaper large or small in a metropolis or small town. The machines were, for example, acquired by: the Star of Gwent in 1894 and the North Wales Chronicle in 1904 (Jones 1993: 74); the Belfast Telegraph in 1894 (Brodie 1995: 15); the Longford Leader (from its launch) in 1897, the Southern Star around the same time, and the County Down Spectator for its launch edition in 1904. Our period of investigation starts, therefore, with some of the major technological advances in place: steam, rail, rotary presses and Linotype­ – ­with which newspapers were produced faster, the quality better, the pagination potential greater, the distribution quicker. Changes thereafter were, in essence, of the same order: better, faster and more pages­ – ­with, of course, accompanying developments in design and content. But in essence it was a case of more, albeit sometimes much more, of the same. For well over the first half of the twenteith century the Linotype machines and their imitators and derivatives were improved, but they essentially remained in service into the 1970s and 1980s. Only then were they displaced, by phototypesetters (for example on the Belfast Telegraph from 1972 (Brodie 1995: 190–1) in which columns of type were produced through a photographic process). That process was but a brief interlude in newspaper production, matched by the move

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during the 1980s to desktop publishing in which journalists could create their own pages and output them as photographic film from which a printing plate could be made or, indeed, later straight from computer to plate itself. These developments and related ones had two profound effects on the newspaper business. The first was the burden of paying for new machinery without which a newspaper could not compete with its rivals. In 1904 the Belfast Telegraph, for example, was under strain because of such costs (Brodie 1995: 19) and this pressure was still there in the late 1980s, during which ‘capital expenditure of between 4 million and 7 million, which would not be commercially viable, was needed to buy and commission a new press capable of colour and good quality printing’ (Brodie 1995: 208). The scale of the business had made newspapers cheaper to produce if one had the capital, but harder to launch if one did not. Add to that the demand for newsprint, means of distribution and other resources, and the running of a newspaper became a large-scale industrial enterprise­ – ­indeed, Harmsworth’s Northcliffe empire became one of the top ten in all sectors of industry in the UK (Cox and Mowatt 2014: 37) and although other centres of press power were found outside London, for example at the DC Thomson empire in Dundee, entry by smaller players became increasingly difficult. Gone was, in Barnhurst and Nerone’s terms (2001: 15, 20) the printer’s or editor’s newspapers of the nineteenth century; in their terms, again, the industrial newspaper had arrived­ – ­and as the century unfolded the high capital costs of entry contributed to continuing concentrations of ownership. A second impact was in the concentration of organised labour around these capitally intensive machine processes, the industrial strife that ensued, and the opportunity for overcoming it. The result was an intense concentration of power in the hands of the print unions which meant, for example, that during 1978 strikes prevented The Times and the Sunday Times from being published for seven months. The technological changes outlined above promised a leaner labour cost-base for newspaper publishing with legions of compositors no longer needing to be paid, nor being able to halt production so easily. The realisation of this was tied to a political context, in Britain at least, when in 1979, the new Conservative government led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made clear its support for employers wishing to break union power, by securing two Employment Acts (1980 and 1982) to help them. The first major test case in the newspaper business was at Eddie Shah’s Warrington Messenger in 1983, a dispute characterised by violence. From that platform, Shah launched

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Today in 1986, paving the way for the Wapping revolution which would see Rupert Murdoch’s company produce The Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World with the latest technology and a more compliant workforce. A flurry of newspaper launches followed (but often eventually failed) deploying computerised processes to bring about what looked like a newspaper revolution. Newspapers had overcome the constraints of nineteenth-century technology, but so slowly and painfully that they were fit now for the recent past rather than a very different future, the contours of which were just beginning to emerge. They were still fighting each other. ‘As Lord McGregor had warned . . . in 1977 “Even if all newspapers accomplish the change [to new technologies], competition may still result in some papers closing, since the new technology does little to alter the relative positon of competing titles”’ (Petley 2016: 7). By the start of our era, the way in which newspapers reached people, or people reached newspapers, had changed as dramatically as printing had; from the reading-room culture of the start of the nineteenth century to the mass circulations via trains and newsboys of the end of it (Wilson 1985: 30–1). That the means of distribution of the early nineteenth century were unrecognisable at the end of it is clear, for example, from the description (Cathcart 2015: 270) of how the transmission of news of the British victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 had ‘depended on its delivery on four men rowing an open boat in the North Sea’. En route, its patchy and flawed dissemination had also involved messengers, semaphores, pigeons, rumour, disinformation and a flurry of coaches greeted by mobs. While it is true that developments since then had been patchy­– ­the Belfast Telegraph’s final horsedrawn delivery cart only ended service in 1956 (Brodie 1995: 108) –, the spread of the rail network transformed the newspaper business in Britain, with the first WH Smith opening in 1848 at Euston, until by 1860 there were branches on all main lines and many smaller ones. However, as with printing, the twentieth-century developments in distribution tended to be in speed and scale rather than in the very nature of the process. Wilson argues that Smith’s challenges were not those of technology ‘for though they relied heavily, and successively, on the technology of transport, Smith’s borrowed it from others (coach proprietors, railway companies, road haulage contractors)’ (Wilson 1985: 439). As with the production of newspapers, the challenge was more about managing the complexity of such an operation. When, for example, in 1905 Smith’s faced steep rent increases for 2,000 of its outlets at Great Western and London and North Western Railway stations, the company opened 150 new shops in the streets around the

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stations. It enabled Smith’s to survive the cutting back of the railway network sixty years later by Dr Beeching. While the topography of Britain facilitated a London-centric dominance, via the rail, wholesale and retail networks, there were limits and local variations. Blain points out that it was simply too difficult for trains to get papers from London to Scotland in time for morning reading (Blain 2008: 61) so the impact on Scottish morning newspapers was not as profound as it was on the English regional mornings. By contrast, for Wales, its capital little more than two hours from London, the effect was more profound, with wide readership of national newspapers which have long since abandoned the concept of Welsh editions. The Welsh Mirror, for example, ran from 1999 to 2003 and closed with little impact on the total circulation of the Mirror in Wales (Schrijver 2006: 311). Even being further distant from London did not always guarantee protection for indigenous and local newspapers: the effect is apparent in figures relating to just two newspapers (the Daily Express and Daily Mail), for which the ‘combined Irish circulation in 1926 was 49,119 copies; by 1931, it had increased to 60,707. To put this in context, the estimated circulation for the largest Irish daily of the period, the Irish Independent, was reputedly 90,000’ (Morash 2010: 139). In Ireland there were efforts to stem the tide, such as with import duties imposed on English newspapers alongside moral pressure from the Catholic Truth Society and the Committee on Evil Literature against the content of newspapers such as the News of the World. Other local anomalies added to the mix, particularly in the north during episodes of war and unrest, with periodic losses of vans, offices, machinery and newspapers themselves to bombs and attacks on the Belfast-Dublin mail trains. The overall picture is of a distribution system harnessing existing networks of rail and road, plus the new technologies that allowed satellite printing, all of it becoming faster and more efficient and with the predictable competitive pressures from London, which varied impact according to the topography of the British Isles. But, in essence, as with printing, it was a story of quantitative change rather than changes in the very nature of the industry. By the 1980s, and into the 1990s, those owning and controlling the press had beaten each other, establishing near-monopolies, and beaten their own workforces (literally, in some cases, with the help of the police at Warrington and Wapping). They were doing largely what they had always done since the Northcliffe revolution of the early years of the century, but with more pages (including full-colour ones) produced and distributed at greater speed.

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Editing Against that background there were developments as part of that revolution, just as profound but less often studied, at the interface between the cultural and industrial activities of newspaper production­– ­that is, in the realm of editing. These developments were simultaneous with and mirrored the way newspaper production had become a large-scale industrial process, with its complex stages and emphasis on speed, the output of which was a consumer product. It is worth returning to Harmsworth, who is most often credited for pioneering an aggressive approach to the fine detail of editing which shaped the presentation of journalism through the twentieth century. The key to this was subediting, and when Harmsworth launched the Daily Mail: there was special training for the subs . . . in the art of cutting down verbosity . . . they were the forerunners of a new race of Fleet Street craftsmen. Before 1896, news was commonly printed as it came in, its importance judged by its length. At the Times, the make-up of the news pages was left to the discretion of the head printer. Harmsworth would have none of that. (Pound and Harmsworth 1950: 96) Alfred Harmsworth declared, over and again, on the merits of his ‘condensing’ principle and the unreadability of so many newspapers by the kind of ‘busy men’ who would only get busier as the new century progressed. Popular newspapers might become institutions, but they were products first. And the manufacturing of them each day meant deciding what to leave out­ – ­from whole stories and subjects down to the smallest superfluous word­– ­so as to make the product as palatable as a newspaper could be. In archives of Harmsworth correspondence, ‘the chief’ (as he liked to be called) frequently reminded Daily Mail staff of how this was to be achieved. It required an emphasis on copy-tasting, headline writing, cutting, checking, and relentless attention to detail along with an understanding that even one’s best would never be good enough. He wrote about the treatment of stories far more often than he wrote about the subject of the stories, or the reporting that lay behind them. His skill was in what to do with stories once you had them­– ­he was at heart a subeditor rather than a reporter. Harmsworth wrote to his Daily Mail editor, Marlowe, from the Hotel Ritz in Paris, on 7 March 1909: ‘A few points about the paper [possibly the Paris edition of the Mail] . . . the fourth page articles are not yet right . . . there is not the nimbleness of varied selection that there used to be when done by your Chief.’11 Harmsworth continued

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with a complaint that the review of the world’s press was too narrow, and that it failed, for example, to scour sources of news from the Russian, Japanese, US and Canadian newspapers. ‘A system I built up myself for arranging these papers, as far back as the year 1897, seems to have disappeared . . . your man is no longer topical.’ In another memo, on 4 February 1911 he told Marlowe: ‘Interesting pieces of news are being cut. Take for example, Girl Killed by a Whirlwind. Surely that is a very strange piece of news; it is buried on page five. The sub-editing wants a little sharpening.’12 And on 8 August of the same year he wrote: I am entirely in favour of eight page newspapers but not like this morning’s. I shall probably order an eight page paper for ­to-morrow. In that case will you kindly see that every paragraph is short, that every article is in contrast and that the news gets displayed according to its importance?13 Harmsworth was relentless in his pursuit of the subtleties of news selection, or what a British journalist would call copy-tasting and a media scholar gatekeeping, and when it came to headlines, he was no less rigorous. On 30 June 1911 he wrote to staff that ‘The paper is getting long, flat and perfunctory. I am not fond of flaring headlines, but they are getting more and more deadly.’14 Again, someone fails to strike the popular-serious balance. The seamen’s strike should be explained every day in a few lines, he wrote, so that those who have not been following it could understand the story. And, in the same memo, ‘the headings to the matter about the Children at the Crystal Palace are perfectly deadly. The real heading would have been, Feeding 100,000 Children’ (underlining in original). A year later he was still on the same subject: The whole paper this morning shows the need for one or two bright sub-editors. The headings are wrong. The headings of the principal splash are all dull and old. ‘King and Queen Present’­ – ­there is nothing new in that. As to headings in the past tense; I have spoken to Caird over and over again on this matter. He does not seem to grasp what I mean. I know that these headings vulgarise the paper.15 In 1912 Harmsworth was writing to Marlowe complaining about the night staff, for ‘don’t read me’ headings and dull writing, and suggested leaving some younger men in charge for a night to bring them on and counter the middle-aged tone of things. Harmsworth wrote: There seem to be plenty of subeditors, but not bright ones. The gentleman who wrote the headlines to the report of the Consumption

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Cure case might attend the Conference, and explain why he chose the longest words in the language­ – ­‘Treatment’ instead of ‘Cure’; ‘Practitioners’ instead of ‘Doctors.’16 Subeditors were, it seems, his most highly prized staff but they could never be good enough. On 3 August 1911 he wrote, referring to a story about a Pole: ‘I thought that everybody knew that the masculine form for Polish names is “ski” and the feminine form “ska”, yet the whole way though the paragraph your sub-editor has put the name in feminine form.’17 In 1912: ‘The sub-editing of the Titantic was bad, and the introduction badly done . . .’18 and the sub-editor did not give due prominence to the fact that the Mail itself had revealed the angle that the ship was American owned. An American correspondent interviewing ‘the chief’ in January 1900 was interrupted by him correcting the next morning’s Mail leader columns, but also by his attending to queries from the city editor who was himself at the head of a long queue of reporters, unable to act until they heard the chief’s decision on some point or other.19 In a long and handwritten letter dated 26 May 1907, Marlowe replies to his ‘chief’ that: ‘With regard to the criticisms you make concerning the general conduct of the paper [the Daily Mail] they are so sweeping that it seems impossible for me to answer them.’20 Taking their cue from the popular periodicals on which the chief had learnt his trade (such as Answers) popular newspapers were now relating to their readers as consumers as well as citizens, and those newspapers would be dominated not by their writers but by teams of re-writers, executive editors, subeditors, headliners, and (to borrow a term from twenty-first-century online journalism) aggregators (who knitted together strands of related narrative). Popular newspapers would become, in the British terminology of those who worked for them as the century unfolded, subeditors’ papers. These popular press practices were not confined to Fleet Street, even if perhaps they radiated from there through the experience or aspirations of subeditors outside London. The Belfast Telegraph, for example, underwent significant modernisation in the 1950s at the hands of Fred Gamble who had worked for stints on the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1948 ‘fuelled by his Fleet Street experience, had a typographical and graphics experience far in advance of any other journalist on the newspaper at that time’ (Brodie 1995: 47) and introduced innovations in layout, style, ‘condensing’, plus news on the front page, and bylines for reporters. To the south, William Martin Murphy acted as an Irish Northcliffe,

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using a fortune made in the railway business to take over two newspapers (Irish Catholic, Irish Daily Independent, in 1904) and introduced his 24-page Irish Weekly Independent as a production-led, illustrated, advertising-heavy, consumer product. This was in sharp contrast, as Morash points out, to the Irish Worker which was ‘only four pages long, written largely by one or two people’ and had few illustrations. Murphy’s Independent ‘operated on more or less the same lines as its English counterpart [Mail], with a premium on high circulation and large advertising revenues . . .’ By 1939 it was selling 140,000 copies a day (Morash 2010: 148). Again, there were limits and exceptions. Despite Murphy’s innovations, ‘Ireland’s smaller, more politically volatile and splintering market meant that its Northcliffe Revolution would have to wait’ (Morash 2010: 122). In Wales, too, smaller newspapers survived in a niche market made up of the vernacular, the religious and the political. But economic pressures tended to mitigate against the success of local, independent general-interest newspapers. National newspapers, and regional titles as part of large chains, were better placed to find efficiencies, not least through central content provision, the reduction of expensive replated geographical or temporal editions, and later centralised ‘subbing hubs’ (Matthews 2017b).

Figure 2.2  Two newspaper men flip a first proof of a page off the printing press at the offices of the Daily Mail (From The Makings of a Modern Newspaper – the Production of ‘the Daily Mail’ in Wartime, London, UK, 1944)

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Newspapers, therefore, spent most of the century refining what they did best, which was to produce engaging, fast-moving and readable copy for a mass-market audience. As with printing and distribution, it was a quantitative shift­– t­ hings got faster, and more efficient, but neither the product not the processes were in their very nature so different from how they had been at the start of the century. Technology did not, thus far, revolutionise the nature of journalism itself and perhaps was never going to: ‘Hardware and software tend to amplify existing ways of doing things, are used to supplement rather than radically change whatever people were already doing’, writes Deuze and even ‘some kind of convergence across two or more media thus tends to offer little in terms of radically different forms of journalism or ways in which to gather, select or report the news’ (Deuze 2008).

A Qualitative Shift; Rupture Newspapers which had been preparing for a future of paper and ink embraced computer technology to continue the symmetric warfare against other newspapers as they moved into the online environment. The Irish Times, in 1994, was the first newspaper in the British Isles to go online, followed by the Daily Telegraph in the same year, and The Guardian in 1999 (alongside BBC News in 1997). They were the same titles, with similar content, reproduced on a new platform still within the control of those who owned the content. There were successes from some of the giants of old media, with, for example, the Daily Mail and The Guardian adapting content to find new online audiences in US markets previously unavailable to them via a print product. In The Guardian’s case, for example: ‘Since launching its US and Australia digital editions in 2011 and 2013 respectively, traffic from outside of the UK now represents over two-thirds of the Guardian’s total digital audience.’21 And the decline in printed newspaper circulations which had set in well before the digital era did not always or immediately go into free fall, such as in Ireland where figures for 2011 noted only a 2 per cent drop in readership since the previous year and no evidence of a switch to online, albeit with the Irish editions of British tabloids­– ­rather than a truly indigenous press –- holding up most strongly.22 There were successes, too, albeit some of them fleeting, from online start-ups with old media pedigrees taking new opportunities, from the Caledonian Mercury (launched 2010), to Bristol 24/7 (launched 2009), and the Caerphilly Observer (also 2009) with the latter even managing an unusual move from online to print. In addition, the

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Tindle Newspaper Group continued to thrive and acquire or launch titles in Britain (Greenslade 2011),23 against an exceptionally low costbase with, for example, three journalists producing nine newspapers.24 But it was the harnessing of computers to the mobile phone network, and the growth in social media, which heralded the start of the most significant qualitative change to the production and dissemination of news since 1900. In 2003 the UK got its first 3G network, and between 2004 and 2006 there were the launches of Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Bebo, Twitter, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. Again, newspapers adapted nimbly in some cases, repurposing and refocusing to, for example, provide video news fit for social media dissemination. There was good news, too, in the new opportunities for long form journalism on tablet platforms.25 In the same year as the launch of Snapchat, it was still possible to argue ‘that legacy news media are mobilising to ensure journalism flourishes in this rapidly transforming mediascape’ (Westlund 2012: 23) even though, simultaneously, ‘academics and pundits routinely speculate about the possible, if not imminent, death of printed newspapers’. For some it was, at worst, then still about ‘evolution not extinction’ (McNair 2009). In an echo of Harmsworth’s Timesaver experiment, proclaimed from his own proud tower back in 1901, journalism by 2011 was now portable and pocketable as never before. Its production and dissemination could involve little more than clicking on ready-made templates before accessing a potentially global audience. The difference was that the new players, the new publishers, were not like the foes of old. Their cost bases were miniscule, their editorial ambitions similarly so, yet their scale and reach almost unimaginable. They lacked all that the legacy media held proud (plant, printers, journalists) yet had all that they wanted (reach and readers). To take just one example from the final year of our study, The Times and Sunday Times were operating in 2011 with a thousand full and part-time members of staff 26 while Twitter employed fewer than 400 people in a year when it saw 177 million tweets posted. The competition had become a wholly asymmetric one. The owners of presses, offices, dealers in wholesaler contracts, employers of thousands could only dream of being­ – ­like Snapchat­ – ­‘dirt cheap to run’.27 Not only that, but the newer media dealt in disaggregation­ – ­the delivery of discrete particles of journalism­– ­which was contrary to the entire concept of the general interest newspaper. When the constituent parts of a newspaper were separated, and distributed on a third-party platform, they lost their trail of advertising revenue (Westlund 2012).

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Old remedies, such as mimicking online the cover price of a newspaper, did not prove ‘substantial enough to make paywalls a viable business model in the short term’ (Myllylahti: 2014). The breaking of the business model sped up newspaper closures, with 242 British titles lost between 2005 and 2011, and only seventy launches during the same period.28 If for a moment the shift from analogue to digital and to web had seemed like more of the same, the shift to mobile web with smartphones as the platform was a revolution. If Linotype machines had been the eighth wonder of the word, the smartphone with its social media apps was surely the ninth. These new and strange competitors were rewriting the rules of engagement (and pocketing the revenue). Not only had a newspaper’s assets now become a burden, and its revenue streams diverted, but­ – ­returning to Bell’s analysis­– ­the means of production and distribution of news was being dictated by media organisations which had all the scale, all the revenue streams, but barely any of the costly burdens. The history of the production and distribution of newspapers was thus, in effect, often more of the same­– ­just faster and smarter – until close to the end of our period when it became clear that traditional news organisations which had relied on readers finding them at the news-stand had to go find the readers and, by having to do so on someone else’s terms, saw their role as publishers diminish. Such was the shift in power that for some it was as if death had, indeed, been looking gigantically down all along.

Notes   1. Available at (last accessed 27 September 2017).   2. Available at (last accessed 27 September 2017).   3. Pulitzer on board . . . Alfred Harmsworth’s diary, 19 December 1900, Northcliffe papers, British Library, 62153-62397.   4. The Times (Richmond, VA) (13 January 1901: 16).   5. The Times (Richmond, VA) (January 13 1901): 16   6. New York World (1 January 1901: 3).   7. ‘nothing for years has attracted so much attention in the newspapers of the country as your Harmsworth edition. A great number of newspapers printed the news under large double-column headings. In many cities your picture was printed with the news. Everywhere the edition seems to have been the universal topic. If the circulation department had had faith in the idea we could have sold 200,000 extra papers. The belated orders

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leave no doubt of that.’ Don Carlos Seitz, Pulitzer’s business manager, to Pulitzer, ‘Memo on Mr Harmsworth’, 4 January 1901, New York World, box 17, folder 1–4 January.   8. Available at (last accessed 27 September 2017).   9. Available at last accessed 27 September 2017). 10. The Linotype Film, dir. Doug Wilson (2012). Available at (last accessed 27 September 2017). 11. Northcliffe to Thomas Marlowe, letter 7 March 1909, NADM, 62198, BL. 12. Northcliffe to Marlowe, 4 February 1911, NADM, 62198, BL. 13. Northcliffe to Marlowe, 8 August 1911, NADM, 62198, BL. 14. Northcliffe to Marlowe, 30 June 1911, NADM, 62198, BL. 15. Northcliffe to Marlowe, 5 June 1912, NADM, 62198, BL. 16. Northcliffe to Marlowe, 1912? [unclear], NADM, 62198, BL. 17. Northcliffe to Marlowe, 3 August 1911, NADM, 62198, BL. 18. Northcliffe to Marlowe, 5 June 1912, NADM, 62198, BL. 19. The Times (Richmond, VA), 21 January 1900, p. 16. 20. Thomas Marlow to Northcliffe, letter 26 May 1907, NADM, 62198, BL. One focus of Harmsworth’s complaints was the paper’s party political slant. Marlowe writes: ‘I certainly do not want to make the paper a political firebrand or party hack and I think if you look back you will find that there have been long periods when we have had not politics at all in the paper. I began the holiday week with the intention of having no politics for a fortnight at least . . . I see all the disadvantages which you feel of the paper being unduly political etc etc.’ 21. Available at (last accessed 20 September 2017). 22. Available at (last accessed 20 September 2017). 23. Available at (last accessed 20 September 2017). 25. Available at (last accessed 20 September 2017). 26. Available at (last accessed 20 September 2017). 27. Available at (last accessed 20 September 2017). 28. Available at (last accessed 28 September 2017). 29. Available at (last accessed 20 September 2017).

Chapter Three

READERSHIP AND READERS Tom O’Malley

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nlike the history of the book, where scholars have done a great deal of work uncovering and studying readers’ responses to texts (Towheed and Owens 2011a; Halsey and Owens 2011; Crone and Towheed 2011) the readership of newspapers in the UK has not been the focus of a similar level of scholarly attention. This chapter addresses this relative neglect by examining aspects of the relationship between newspapers and their readers in the UK during the twentieth century. It explores the ways in which the industry understood its readership and how readers responded to the newspapers they read.1 If we are to grasp the role newspapers played in the political, cultural and social history of the twentieth century, we need to pay far greater attention to their readers and how they related to and understood what they were reading. Section 1 sets some context for the issues discussed in the chapter; section 2 addresses patterns of circulation growth and decline. After outlining the effect of industry research on the content and appearance of newspapers, section 3 discuss the dominant demographic characteristics of readership. Section 4 focuses on what readers read in their newspapers and section 5 draws on evidence from immediately before and during the Second World War (1939–45) to examine readers’ engagement with newspapers in more depth.

Section 1: Context Historians dealing with the press in the twentieth century have touched on the issues associated with readership, usually making extensive use of industry-generated data about the demographic characteristics of the people purchasing and reading newspapers (Jeffrey 83

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and McClelland 1987; Seymour-Ure 1991; Williams 2010; Curran and Seaton 2010). Ross McKibbin’s study of classes and culture in England between 1918 and 1951 contains a compact summary of circulations and of regional, gender, age and class differences among readers, but like other work in the area, does not consider the response of readers (McKibbin 2000: 503–8). It is far simpler to discuss contemporary speculation about the impact of reading newspapers (Harrison 2011a: 28, 196) or statistics of the rise and fall of circulations (Harrison 2011b: 403–5) or to analyse the political content of newspapers (Thomas 2005), important as these are, than to explore in detail the responses of readers to newspapers across time. As Adrian Bingham, who has written persuasively about the readership of newspapers in the mid-twentieth century, points out: ‘People bought newspapers because in the spectacular diversity of their content they found ways of connecting to a wider world. Readers were selective, sceptical and even hypocritical, and used newspapers for their own reasons’ (Bingham 2011: 151). He has also argued that the difficulty of studying readership is, in part, due to the problems of collating relevant evidence. While there is evidence in general terms about types of readers and their preferences from circulation data, readership surveys, diaries, readers’ letters and memoirs, ‘it is far harder to pin down their reaction to specific articles, or even to a series of articles’ (Bingham 2009: 8). This is true. Yet it is also true that, to date, there has been no sustained attempt to work with this variety of imperfect sources to map the nature of newspaper readership in the UK. Our knowledge is still unfocused, discontinuous and often reliant on speculation. Tracking the reader is a complex process, posing challenges of focus, discovery, collation and interpretation. In addition, the word ‘reader’ has misleading connotations of homogeneity across space and time. As Roger Darnton has pointed out, readers occupy specific interpretative environments, that is cultural contexts on which the meanings they assign to texts depend. Although we share the activity of reading with our immediate ancestors, be they from the eighteenth or the twentieth centuries, the experience of reading, even the same texts, ‘never can be the same as what they experienced’ (Darnton 1986: 5). We have to be aware not just of the cultural contexts of reading, but also the physical contexts within which it took place, such as the home, public transport, libraries or the workplace. Readers bring to texts different approaches to the act of reading. They may read articles and whole newspapers intensively in great detail, or they may read extensively, skimming across a great deal of content within or across newspapers. They may read continuously, without

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interruption or in fits and starts, in between other activities. They may be prone to accepting the preferred meanings offered by a newspaper, or be critically resistant to absorbing the overt implications of a text (Towheed and Owens 2011b: 3). Readers may also be understood as people working within an institution, reading newspapers and using a frame of reference set by the body for which they work, such as censors working for the military, or researchers working for advertising agencies, or organisations like the Post Office concerned to monitor press reporting of their activities. They may also be individuals who monitor the press for information about how different publications are performing (journalists) or covering political issues (politicians), and they may be members of the public who read papers for a wide range of different reasons. The form of newspapers, the layout, the distribution of stories and features and the position and nature of visual imagery, may be just as important in shaping the experience and ultimate response of a reader as might the semantic content, for these features encourage partial selection or skimming of content, or equally, demand close attention (Chartier 1994: 4). The fact that newspapers like the Daily Express printed editions outside of London with different content, meant that

Figure 3.1  A British soldier reading the Sunday Dispatch while stationed in the Middle East during the Second World War (From British Forces in the Middle East, 1945–1947)

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people buying what was ostensibly the same paper on the same day were in fact reading what were, in essence, slightly different publications. Whereas academics working within the traditions of sociology or media and cultural studies have long been conscious of the complex factors which need to be considered when thinking about the reception of different media in a variety of contexts (Curran 1990; Morley 1992; Eldridge 1993; Miller et al. 1998; Gavin 2003; Liebes 2005; Iyengar 2010), there is still much to be done by historians of the twentiethcentury press in the UK in order to elucidate the ways in which readers related to the newspapers they read. The remainder of this chapter draws together some of the information on the key characteristics of newspaper readers and aspects of the evidence on reader response.

Section 2: Circulation The fact that people read newspapers in large quantities throughout the twentieth century is worth stating. Newspapers were one of the most important forms of public communication throughout the century and were for much of the period part of the daily lives of millions of people. Their predominance was challenged by the arrival of radio in the 1920s, more significantly by the arrival of television as a source of news and a rival for both advertising revenue and the public’s attention from the mid-1950s onwards, and most importantly, by the way in which news content on the internet had, by the early twenty-first century, become a major threat to circulations and revenue (Tunstall 1983; Curran and Seaton 2010). During the twentieth century, national, provincial, daily and weekly newspapers achieved impressive levels of circulation. In the first thirty-five years of the century reliable data on circulation was hard to come by. Publishers of newspapers and magazines were secretive about their circulation figures, and although ‘publishers of national papers were less secretive about their circulation figures than publishers of provincial papers and magazines, their circulation claims were often false or highly misleading, being based upon figures that were inflated by a competition, special event or attraction’ (Curran 1980: 112). It was pressure from advertising agencies, which needed data to develop media campaigns and to assess their effectiveness, which led to improvements. After the First World War (1914–18), the Association of British Advertising Agents campaigned for the release of circulation data and established its own system for auditing circulations in 1921. By 1927 the London Press Exchange had secured enough co-operation from publishers to allow it to provide circulation figures and analysis

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of the coverage of advertising at a household level. In 1931 the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) was established by advertisers and some publishers and by ‘1936 . . . the ABC monitored the circulation of 186 publications and circulation estimates of varying degrees or reliability were available for most important publications’ (Curran 1980: 79). Thus, by the late 1930s the advertising industry’s concerns were shaping the ways in which circulation statistics were gathered and, through the survey data it assembled, the ways in which readers were conceptualised and categorised. In the early twentieth century, market leaders such as The Times and the Daily Telegraph could boast circulations of around 50,000 and 300,000 respectively. The sales of these London-based dailies, however, had always been small relative to those of popular Sunday papers such as the News of the World, Lloyds Weekly News and Reynolds News, which even by 1854 were selling around 100,000 copies each (Williams 2010: 119, 135). The launch of the Daily Mail (1896), which sold at the low price of a halfpenny per copy, ushered in a new period of cheap popular dailies which by the late 1930s had penetrated to the daily lives of the working classes on a hitherto unprecedented scale. The papers which followed the Daily Mail, the Daily Express (1900) and the Daily Mirror (1903), were slow to rival that paper’s success, but nonetheless emerged as true rivals after the First World War. By 1918 the total circulation of the national dailies was 3.1 million and by 1926 had climbed to 4.6 million (Murdock and Golding 1978: 130). Within this pattern of expansion there were winners and losers, rises and falls in the circulations of individual titles, nonetheless the overall expansion of circulations accelerated in the 1930s. During that decade the systematic targeting of the working-class market let to a rapid expansion in circulation for popular daily papers. By 1957 the circulation of national dailies had peaked (see Table 3.1). Thereafter circulations began a slow process of decline, across four decades, in the face of the challenge posed by factors such as television and changing lifestyles. The period between 1930 and 1960 was, however, the golden age of newspaper circulations. The latter part of the twentieth century witnessed intensified competition for the attention and money of the public from news and information services on new platforms provided by the diffusion of cable, satellite and the World Wide Web. This trend affected all newspapers. The Sun, the tabloid which from the late 1970s onwards dominated the popular dailies’ market, was selling 3.7 million copies a day in 1998, but had difficulty selling 2 million in 2014, by which time the Daily Mirror which had 5 million in the 1960s, had fallen below 1 million.

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Table 3.1  National and Provincial Newspaper Circulations in the UK 1939–88 (in millions of copies sold per day) Year

National Morning

National Sundays

Provincial Morning

Provincial Evening

1939 1949 1957 1971 1988

10.53 16.45 16.71 14.24 14.96

15.48 29.32 29.08 22.74 17.74

2.16 3.03 2.30 1.95 1.99

4.99 6.79 6.85 6.68 4.90

Adapted from Seymour-Ure 1991, Table 3.1, p. 177.

The ­circulation of the News of the World peaked at 8.44 million in 1950 and had declined to 2.7 million in 2011 (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 227). In 1989 almost 48 million local newspapers were sold each week, by 2004 this had dropped by 15 per cent to 41 million (Mathews 2017a: 194). During the twentieth century the pattern across all newspapers, national and local, with individual variations, was one of a slow, steady, at times rapid, rise in circulation up to the late 1950s, followed by a gradual decline over the next four decades. Nonetheless, newspapers clearly occupied an important part in the daily and weekly reading lives of millions of people, and as such, the nature of that readership, its characteristics and readers’ responses to the newspapers they read are important parts of the political, social and cultural history of the century.

Section 3: Patterns of Readership During the twentieth century the newspaper and advertising industries used market research to gather information about the reading public, with a view to more effectively targeting actual and potential markets. This data revealed a great deal about the demographic characteristics of newspaper readers, but little of great detail about how people responded to newspaper texts. The organisation, Mass Observation (MO), which was established in 1937 by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings, pioneered more qualitative forms of research about readership, and helped illuminate a great deal about how, and why people engaged with newspapers.2 In addition, newspapers could gain some idea of what their readers thought through the letters they wrote to editors. This industry data helped advertisers gain a clearer picture of who

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was reading which papers (Curran et al. 1980). It ‘encouraged a more impersonal approach to advertising selection’ than had been the case prior to the 1920s. Research, for instance, encouraged advertisers to recognise the potential of the mass market for sales, especially among the working classes. This encouraged advertisers to spend increasing amounts of money in mass-circulation popular papers like the Daily Herald and the Daily Mirror in the 1930s (Curran and Seaton 2010: 50). It also encouraged publishers, initially of the popular press but, as the century progressed, of the middle-market papers also, to structure the appearance and content of their publications in ways designed to appeal to their target readers as identified by industry research. In the 1930s, for example, the Daily Mirror’s circulation was declining. Under the editorship of Harry Bartholemew, the paper shifted downmarket, with the assistance of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson (JWT), in order to exploit the growing market for dailies among the working classes: ‘JWT carried out market research into readers’ preferences: advised on layout, supplied staff to become key members of the new Mirror team, and, most important of all, encouraged clients to advertise in the rejuvenated paper’ (Curran and Seaton 2010: 50–1). As a result of the influence of the advertising industry on the content of newspapers and, in part, following through longer term tendencies in the range of information they carried, popular newspapers in the twentieth century became a miscellany of items, more like a magazine than a newspaper in the mould of many of their Victorian predecessors. To cater for the different readers papers became deliberately more compartmentalised, with sections for news, sport, women, children and special features. The rise of the tabloid format, especially after 1945, was an extension of these developments. The Daily Mirror became a tabloid in 1935, but the format came into its own after the 1960s, when competition for advertising revenue from commercial television helped accelerate the process. Over the next twenty years key publications went tabloid: Daily Mail (1971), Sunday People (1974), Daily Express (1977), Mail on Sunday (1982) and the News of the World (1984) (Seymour-Ure 1991: 33). So, during the twentieth century the content and form of newspapers were increasingly shaped by the findings of industry research which anatomised the demographic and purchasing characteristics of readers in order to produce a product that could appeal successfully to advertisers. In essence, industry research defined readers as potential targets for sales of both newspapers and the goods they advertised. A constant in the findings produced by the advertising industry

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was that newspaper readership was structured around social class. Throughout the century the UK was divided by social class, a fact which expressed real differences in income, occupation, levels of education and lifestyle. Class was not a static category, as Ross McKibbin has pointed out about changes in the working class between 1918 and 1951: ‘the working classes were a large, though slowly declining majority of the English people: they made up 78.29 per cent of the whole population in 1921, 78.07 per cent in 1931 and 72.19 per cent in 1951’ (McKibbin 2000: 106). Shifts in the numbers of people within classes and the way people perceived class occurred across the century, but class remained a potent fact of economic life and of people’s understanding of their place in society (Cannadine 1998). It is therefore not surprising that newspaper readership should reflect this fundamental, underlying characteristic of UK society. In addition to class, the research revealed differences in reading habits between women and men, and across age groups. A survey conducted by the Institute of Incorporated Practitioners in Advertising (IIPA) in 1939 illustrated this and other important and persistent characteristics of newspaper readership. The researchers divided the population into four categories: A, were people earning over £500 a year, living in a house in an expensive suburb, employing domestic servants and owning both a car and a telephone; B earned between £250 and £499 a year, were buying their house on a mortgage, employed servants occasionally, probably did not own a telephone and perhaps had a car; C earned between £126 and £249 a year, lived in a small house or flat, did not employ domestic servants and owned neither a phone or a car; D earned £125 or less per year, lived in an older terraced house or tenement, did not employ servants, nor did they own a phone or a car (Jeffrey and McClelland 1987: 37). Table 3.2 illustrates how these classifications related to newspaper readership. The class profile of readership is apparent from these figures. The Daily Mail and the Daily Express had a concentration of readers in classifications B and C, what might be called the middle class and upper working class. They had a reasonable number of readers across class boundaries but did not reach class A readers to the same extent as the Daily Telegraph and The Times. The Daily Herald and Daily Mirror had readerships predominately concentrated in the working classes with only a tiny percentage of readers in category A. The Daily Telegraph and The Times had readership located in the upper social categories. Compared to The Times the Daily Telegraph had fewer readers in category A and more in category C. Although these classifications were constructs of the advertising industry they do illustrate

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Table 3.2  Readership of selected metropolitan morning newspapers by region, gender and social class 1939 Social Class by %

Newspapers

% of readers in SE England

M %

F %

A

B

C

D

Daily Mail Daily Express Daily Herald Daily Mirror Daily Telegraph The Times

32 31 36 64 61 53

46 53 53 48 51 55

54 47 47 52 49 45

12  6  1  5 30 47

28 20  8 16 42 32

41 48 52 44 21 15

19 27 39 30  7  6

Adapted from Jeffrey and McClelland 1987, Table 2.7, p. 39. The figures give a broad indication of the percentages involved, and reflect those that appear in Jeffrey and McClelland.

the salience of class as a characteristic of readership. The social class in which a person was situated had an important influence on their choice of newspaper. The IIPA survey also illustrates other important characteristics of newspaper readership in the twentieth century. For much of the century the national daily and Sunday press was produced in London­ – ­with a proportion of papers printing special issues in Manchester or Scotland­– ­and had significant proportions of its readership located in the south-east of England. The papers of the upper and middle social classes and, in 1939, of the Daily Mirror, had readerships predominately in this part of the UK. The other papers had broader geographically distributed readerships, but still retained substantial numbers of readers in the south-east. National daily and Sunday papers were, for most of the century, in effect London metropolitan papers which had extended their reach beyond their heartland of the south-east in a bid to increase circulation (O’Malley 2017). Gender also played a part in determining readership. Of the six selected papers in Table 3.2, four (Daily Express, Daily Herald, Daily Telegraph, The Times) were read predominately by men. Although Table 3.2 shows that the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror were read by more women than men, other surveys showed that both were read predominately by men (Kimble 1942: 8; Hobson et al. 1947: 14,17). Although the differences between genders were not over large, surveys reflected the fact that men read national daily papers more than women in general.3 Age was another characteristic of readership. Of the six papers in Table 3.2, five had 20 per cent or less of their ­readers in the age range 14–24; popular dailies like the Daily Express and the Daily Mail had 20 per cent of their readers in this age group, and

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Table 3.3  Readership of selected national daily morning newspapers 1986 by gender and social class Social Class by %

Newspapers

M %

F %

AB

C1

C2

D

Daily Mail Daily Express Sun* Daily Mirror Daily Telegraph The Times

52 53 53 54 54 58

48 47 47 46 46 42

26 20  7  7 54 61

30 30 18 18 29 24

24 28 35 36 11  8

20 23 41 38  7  8

* The Daily Herald became the Sun in 1964 Adapted from Seymour-Ure 1991, Tables 6.2, 6.3, pp. 126–8.

the Daily Mirror had 29 per cent. The bulk of readers fell into two age groups, 25–44 and 45–64, with readership dropping off after 65 (Jeffrey and McClelland 1987: 39). People in their middle years, and approaching and just beyond retirement were the heaviest readers of newspapers. These characteristics of readership persisted into the last decades of the century as is clear from Table 3.3. Although the categorisations4 employed in the collection of this information did not replicate those used in the 1939 survey, nonetheless, they provide a fairly clear picture of the long-term continuities of social class and gender in determining who read which papers. Class remained an important feature of readership in 1986. The Daily Mail and the Daily Express’s profile had shifted. Both papers now had a wider, more even spread across the social classes, having gained readers in the upper social category (AB) and lost them in the skilled manual category, roughly equivalent to the C group in the 1939 survey. But in both surveys the bulk of their readership was among people below the upper social category. The successor to the Daily Herald, the Sun, and the Daily Mirror had a predominance of readers in the two lowest social categories in both 1939 and 1986. The Daily Telegraph and The Times both shifted their readership more towards the two top social categorisations over that fifty-year period. By 1986 differences in gender were more pronounced. Unlike in 1939 when two of the papers (Daily Mail, Daily Mirror) had a majority of female readers, in 1986 all six had a majority of male readers. Another fundamental feature which determined which paper people read, and how they read it was education. As Roger Chartier has argued:

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All who can read texts do not read them in the same fashion, and there is an enormous gap between the virtuosi among readers and the least skilled at reading, who have to oralise what they are reading in order to comprehend it and who are at ease only with a limited range of textual or typographic forms. (Chartier 1994: 4) The capacity to read was, in part, a function of education and was a factor in shaping which papers people read and how they read them. Of children born before 1910 in England and who went to elementary school, only 7 per cent of boys and 5.4 per cent of girls went on to secondary school. Of those born between 1910 and 1929, only 14.7 per cent of boys and 12.2 per cent of girls who attended elementary school went onto study at secondary school. The 1944 Education Act began to have an effect on the numbers of working-class children attending secondary education. In 1938–9 only 15 per cent of working-class children went from elementary to secondary school, but by 1951 this had risen to 22 per cent (McKibbin 2000: 260). This lack of educational opportunity for most of the population found a reflection in the newspaper-reading public. In 1948, 72 per cent of those who read daily newspapers had been educated only to elementary level, 17 per cent had secondary education up to the age of sixteen and a half, 6 per cent had experienced education beyond sixteen and a half, and only 5 per cent were educated at college or university. The percentage of readers who were only educated to elementary level was 92 per cent for the Daily Herald and 69 per cent for the Daily Express, Daily Mail and News Chronicle.5 In spite of a considerable expansion in public expenditure on education in the decades after 1945, the long-term impacts of the slow advance of educational opportunity remained. In 1968, 76 per cent of all adults had left education at 15, of which 82 per cent were 45 or over, 77 per cent were aged 35–44 and 64 per cent were 20–34. The number of people up to the age of 18 was now 18 per cent of the population (Abrams 1968: 3). The age at which people left education was mapped onto the papers they read. In 1968 only two national newspapers had an even spread across readers who had been educated up to 15, up to 18 or beyond 19­ – ­the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. The Daily Mirror’s readership was concentrated among people who left school at 15 or stayed on to 18; The Times, The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph’s readership was skewed towards those who had been educated up to 18 or beyond (Abrams 1968: 5). Readership of the national press, through to the 1990s, continued to reflect ‘divisions of social class and education more distinctly than anything else’ (Seymour-Ure 1991: 124). There

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was a strong tradition of working-class self-education (Rose 2002) and education through working-class institutions such as the Workers’ Educational Association, particularly in the first six decades of the century (Steele 1997). Nonetheless, the lack of proper education for the bulk of the population for much of the century, and the conditions under which people worked and lived created obstacles to reading complex material or finding time to read at all, obstacles not experienced to the same degree by people of a higher social class and with a more extensive formal education.

Section 4: What Did Readers Read? What kinds of content did the people who purchased newspapers read? In 1934 the London Press Exchange conducted a survey of reader interest in the contents of the national press. The papers surveyed were the popular dailies: Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Herald, Daily Mirror, News Chronicle and the Daily Sketch. It found that only 40.5 per cent of readers read all the news stories and only 35 per cent read all the features. Interest in accidents, court cases, divorces, personal gossip, letters pages and serials was slightly higher than interest in parliamentary reports and government, social and foreign policy issues. People were less interested in editorials, international politics, industry and commerce, sports and foreign politics (Curran et al. 1980: Table 13.1). Men had a slightly greater interest in the contents of the leader page than women, and a much stronger interest in the sports pages. Women showed a greater interest in the gossip, stories, women’s and children’s pages. (London Press Exchange 1935: Appendix B). A report published by Mass Observation in 1949 points to the complexity underlying such expressions of interest. It noted that readers of the Daily Herald and the News Chronicle mentioned politics as something they liked reading about more than readers of other papers, though ‘they actually appear to be less interested in politics than readers of either The Times or Daily Telegraph’ (Mass Observation 2009: 40). In 1963 readers of the four main mass-circulation dailies, the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and Daily Herald took an above average interest in ‘tragic’ human interest stories involving ordinary people or celebrities; cartoons; letters; ‘light’ human interest and sex, love and romance stories about ordinary people; horoscopes; crime and court stories. Their interest in domestic politics, television columns, industrial news and editorials was less pronounced. A below average interest was taken in sports, international affairs, finance, entertainment and women’s features. Compared to readers of the

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more upmarket Daily Telegraph, readers of these popular dailies were equally as interested in ‘tragic’ human interest stories, less so in domestic politics and more so in industrial and celebrity news (Curran et al. 1980: Tables 13.8, 13.17). By 1975 television had reached almost all homes in the UK and people spent increasing amounts of time watching it. Although national daily newspapers were regarded by readers as a useful source of news on government, political parties, other countries, trade unions, business, football and people in entertainment, far more people ranked TV as a more useful source of information on all of these subjects. As a result of the impact of TV, newspapers shifted their content more towards entertainment. By 1988, in a survey conducted by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, the body charged with regulating commercial television, only 25 per cent of people identified newspapers as the source of most of their information about world news, compared to 65 per cent who identified television. Where local news was concerned, however, 51 per cent identified newspapers as the source of most of their information and only 23 per cent television (Seymour-Ure 1991: 148–9). Nonetheless, people continued to read newspapers in the last two decades of the twentieth century for what could be called traditional reasons. Home news was preferred over international news and items like cartoons and horoscopes often had higher readership levels than leading articles. News about government, politics and political parties was popular, sport was more popular with men, and fashion was more popular with women. Readers of quality papers, such as The Guardian and The Times, wanted more serious news, while the drift amongst the popular dailies towards emphasising information over news continued. Indeed, ‘the further along the social scale one went, the more were entertainment and relaxation the motives for newspaper-reading’ (Seymour-Ure 1991: 156–7). Throughout the century, letters pages were an important part of the make-up of newspapers and, as many surveys showed, were a type of content which attracted readers’ attention. They were not, however, a simple expression of popular interest in particular topics, or of an unfiltered form of feedback to newspapers. They were used as a way of defining a newspaper’s brand and projecting a selective image of the paper’s relationship with its readers, an image designed to help bind readers to the publication (Tunstall 1977: 211). As Martin Conboy has argued: While newspapers such as The Times and the Daily Telegraph had prided themselves on the influence of their letters pages on both

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government policy and their readers in the nineteenth century, the Daily Mirror, in the very different context of the twentieth century, chose letters as one of its main strategies in constructing a connection with an entirely new readership as it shifted its appeal from a staid middle-class and middle-aged readership to a younger and more left-leaning constituency. (Conboy 2017: 451) In addition, class and education continued to play an important part in the relationship between newspapers and their readers as expressed through letter writing. Research for the 1974–7 Royal Commission on the Press showed that letters to the national press tended to come from the more educated and affluent sections of the population (Tunstall 1977: 221–2). Letters were therefore one way in which a reader could respond to a newspaper, but they were carefully filtered before publication in a manner designed to sustain and build circulation, as well as reflecting the deeper social factors which structured readership. People therefore read and enjoyed a variety of content in their newspapers. Although an interest in public affairs was always an important part of what drew readers to papers, human interest stories, sport, celebrity, cartoons and fashion were often equally important reasons for reading a paper, particularly for reading the popular national dailies. Readers were prepared to purchase and continue purchasing papers across the century, even though this habit declined in the latter decades, because they contained matter which both informed and entertained them, while proprietors and editors had to keep reinventing what they offered as new technologies like television, cable, satellite and the World Wide Web created rival platforms offering alternative sources of news and entertainment. It is striking, however, just how important social class and education were as determinants of readership and what people read.

Section 5: Newspapers and Readers: Where, How, Why and To What Effect This section explores, in more detail, some of the issues touched on in this chapter, using examples drawn from research into readership immediately prior to and during the Second World War. Any study of the relationship between newspapers and their readers should examine the broad patterns associated with the reading public discussed above. It must also explore the contexts within which newspaper reading took place, how and why newspapers were read, and what role these factors played in people’s relationship to the world. In addition, it is important

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to consider briefly the ways in which newspapers did or did not influence their readers. As Robert Chartier has pointed out, ‘readership is inscribed in a space and a relationship with oneself and others’, and as such understanding the contexts within which reading takes place is important as a way of illuminating the role it played in social and individual life (Chartier 1994: 8; Darnton 1986: 13; Colclough 2011). There were two important contexts within which newspaper readership occurred immediately before and during the Second World War; a public, official, or institutional context and the contexts within which individuals read and responded to papers. Just as class, gender, education and age influenced who read newspapers, people read newspapers for professional purposes or on behalf of institutions for which they worked. Newspaper proprietors, editors and journalist had long read newspapers with a keen, professional eye, comparing different approaches to either the ways papers presented or produced content, or its political implications (Koss 1990; Bingham 2009: 9). It is clear that throughout the twentieth century institutions employed people to read newspapers carefully in order to monitor how newspaper content impacted on their activities. These, what may be termed, official readers, included businesses, advertisers, government departments such as the Ministry of Information (MOI) in the Second World War or the Post Office and public bodies like the BBC. For example, the military had a long history of being concerned about, and paying close attention to, the contents of the press. Concerns about the potential of newspapers to leak information to enemies led to the creation of official secrets legislation and subsequently, during the First World War, to the establishment of a system of press supervision and censorship (Lovelace 1982; Taylor 1999). During the Second World War, the armed services were avid monitors of newspaper content. In August 1940 a Manchester Guardian journalist sent a telegram to the paper summarising the remarks made by Air Vice-Marshall Peck at a news conference: that it had been reported in the newspapers that when the fire broke out in the City on Saturday night the streets were immediately choked with fire-brigades. He deprecated any such fact, if it were a fact, being published because it gave the tip to the Germans to send another bomber after any fire had started and wipe out our fire brigade.6 The concern here was with readers of the press outside the UK, or even readers within who might be passing on information to the Germans.

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It also takes the most conservative interpretation of the publication of this information as the default, not allowing for the possibility that this consideration may not have been at the forefront of the Luftwaffe’s concerns. Again, on 16 August 1940, the Minister of Information, whose ministry was charged with duties that included the systematic monitoring of newspaper content, urged the papers to be careful in reporting the activities of the Spanish dictator Franco who, he claimed ‘only wants to keep out of the war; so do his generals; don’t be rude to him or them or the regime’.7 The MOI was ‘reading’ the paper as an organisation charged with interpreting the content of newspapers according to institutional priorities, ones which were concerned with how the most innocuous of remarks might be ‘misread’ or provoke adverse comment. The regular briefings between the service ministries, the MOI and the press were, in a sense, ongoing exercises in pre-empting dangerous responses from readers, as well as critically analysing the content of papers for the benefit of the people who produced them. They worked as a kind of feedback loop, through which reading and rereading of texts across the boundaries between papers and ministries, helped to modulate the way stories were written. Another completely different example of institutional readership, one which shows different ways of responding to the content of the press, can be found in the archives of the Exchange Telegraph Company. Amongst these archives are a series of press cuttings taken from a range of papers recording the military activities of an Exchange Telegraph employee, Basil Gingell. In this instance the press was being read to track and collate coverage of a story about an employee. The press cuttings functioned as a form of selective reading designed to service the Exchange Telegraph’s internal culture of remembrance and record.8 Individual readership was shaped by other contexts, many of which predated the war. A survey of 1938 pointed out that most reading of morning dailies went on in the early part of the day: newspapers are most read in the early part of the day, which in fact is often begun with this form of renewal of contact with the larger world. People read their newspapers in bed­ – ­especially women­ – ­then they read them at breakfast, and in bus, train and tube on their way to work (in our sample this is predominantly a male habit, a natural consequence of the fact that more men than women leave their homes for work in the morning). A smaller peak period of reading comes at lunchtime, and a slightly smaller again in the evening.9

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Figure 3.2  Newsagents in Watford, c. 1914 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ foundin_a_attic/43836537112#)

There were other places. In 1938 one respondent identified the office as a place where newspapers were shared, enabling people to read papers they would not normally purchase: I read the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, and Bristol Evening News. The Mirror is to me the most interesting of all. This is the paper that finds its way into our office and in spite of its obvious feminine appeal it is favoured by the male staff.10 In 1942 Mass Observation witnessed people reading newspapers, magazines and books­ – ­on tubes, trains, at stations, in parks, teashops and cafes, on buses and in British restaurants­ – ­with most people reading newspapers.11 People also encountered information from newspapers in the streets, in the headlines of newspapers or the billboards advertising those papers, at a time when newspaper vendors were common in the streets of cities and towns, reflecting a long-established tradition of public spaces being festooned with printed ephemera (Bingham 2011: 149; Qureshi 2011). War disrupted the newspaper industry, the lives of readers and the contexts within which papers were read. Nonetheless in 1943, over 77 per cent of the population ‘saw’ a morning newspaper every day’ (McKibbin 2000:

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503). For those conscripted into the army or to industrial work away from home, the patterns and contexts were disrupted. It meant that in 1942, only 25 per cent of civilians read more than one paper, but 32 per cent of people in the armed forces read more than one morning paper, largely because service people could pick up copies of other papers lying around in army canteens (Kimble 1942: 3, 7–8, 10–12). Civilians also had to get used to their morning papers not arriving on time due to the disruption of transport caused by the air raid damage to railways and roads; for example, in Reading in September 1940, people were ‘disconcerted by the late arrival of daily papers’ and some suggested ‘the revival of the mid-morning BBC news . . . to meet this need (Addison and Crang 2011: 409). Context therefore structured how people engaged with newspapers and set, to some extent, the possibilities of attention and depth of engagement. How did people read newspapers? The layout of newspapers encouraged discontinuous reading. Pages were divided up internally and different pages covered different features or themes. They invited selective engagement. One reader of the Manchester Guardian in 1938 pointed out that ‘When reading with plenty of time to spare, I simply read through the paper, from front to back, taking in everything of interest to me.’ Time was all important, and selective reading was more typical as was the case with this reader of the Daily Sketch: I first look and read beneath the front page pictures. The chief news feature on page 3 is read carefully and any other bits with attractive (usually unusual) headings. Then through the rest of the paper in order, reading all the cartoons and beneath most of the pictures. On a normal day I should not bother to read any more except perhaps a glance at the sports page and a look at the share movements.12 But discontinuity also suited the various contexts of reading, contexts which could and did prevent sustained engagement. Edward Stebbing recorded his experience of reading while in the army in February 1941: I walked up to the company office for the parade at 9.45. . . . At the company office we have to wait about some time, so I went and bought a News Chronicle and read it while I waited. Not much there today, but was interested in the article on ‘The Problem of Pain’ in the ‘God and the War’ series. While I was reading it the sergeant major came and asked me if all had pay-books, identity discs, field-dressings, and money. (Garfield 2006: 64–5)

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So a combination of the layout of paper, time, circumstance and interest, were factors at work before and during the war shaping how people read newspapers. Why did people read newspapers? Newspapers clearly met a variety of social and psychological needs (Adoni and Nossek 2011). People liked key parts of the content. In 1938 MO found it was news, features, sport, arts and entertainments and comics which people liked best, and it was also clear that they often read as way of escaping their immediate environment or concerns.13 This eclectic mix continued into the war. In a small survey conducted in London by Mass Observation in May 1940 people stated that what they liked best about the newspapers they bought, were, in descending order of importance: news, truth, articles and the politics of the paper, followed by sport, the format, comics, pictures, stories and astrology (Hodgson 2014: 289). Liking news though could mean liking what others called ‘gossip’. Newspapers also contained information of use in everyday life, such as when in January 1941 Pam Ashford read that ‘The papers report that sausages are likely to disappear’ because of the scarcity of meat (Garfield 2006: 51) It assisted some people in deciding which books to read, as MO discovered in 1942.14 In 1938 one of the most common reasons given by respondents as to why they read newspapers was in order to participate in the social world by furnishing information that could be used in conversation: I read newspapers to get the news more fully than the broadcast summary, and I like to be well acquainted with the chief news item of the day . . . because such things invariably come up for discussion in the office. I read newspapers to keep abreast with the times, to be sufficiently in touch with current news to form the basis for conversation with such people who can only make news their topic of conversation. I read newspapers because I am interested in current affairs, and because it is necessary for me to know about them to be able to take part in conversation.15 Diaries from the Second World War frequently record how newspapers generated discussion at work, as when in December 1940, ‘a newspaper revealing recent damage to the House of Commons’ stimulated discussion in the office where Pam Ashford worked in Glasgow or when in the following January office conversation was taken over by a report in the Sunday papers that the Nazis planned to make women marry soldiers

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after the invasion (Garfield 2006: 35, 49). Newspapers, magazines and broadcasts also provided diarists with the chance to reflect on the state of the war and confirmation of their own thinking on issues. In March, Edward Stebbing recorded how ‘this week’s Picture Post, with its articles on the German terror film, J. B. Priestley, and the BBC ban, set me to thinking about the principles at stake in this war’ (Garfield 2006: 89); in October 1941, Leonard Admanson recorded how he ‘entirely’ agreed with an article in the Evening Standard arguing for more shipping space for munitions (Malcolmson and Malcolmson 2012: 182). Finally, there was a mixture of acceptance and scepticism in the way people responded to newspapers. In 1941 Mass Observation stressed how one of the real powers of the press was its influence over politicians: ‘Politicians continually mistake press opinion for public opinion’; the influence of the press, it argued was ‘still enormous, especially in interesting people in matters of detail and in informing them about the movement and background of events’ (Mass Observation 1942: 20–1). A government-organised newspaper campaign in 1942 and 1943 about the dangers of venereal disease produced a strong response from readers who were clearly convinced of the need to address the issue. Over 66,000 people wrote to the Central Council for Health Education in response to the adverts ‘and there were thousands of requests for the sex education pamphlets it produced’ (Bingham 2009: 66, 70–2). The Home Intelligence reports for 1940, compiled by the MOI, represent the responses of a set of official readers of public opinion who were interpreting the impact of the press on the public. These readers recorded what they believed were the impacts of the press on people’s lives, as well as examples of what they witnessed as actual effects of press content. The reports were at least two steps removed from the readers in the street, being a distillation by the centre of reports compiled at a local level. Nonetheless they indicated the complexity of responses among the public to newspaper content. Some reports asserted that newspaper headlines spread alarm, exaggerated situations and promoted anxiety; others that press photography was so powerful it could both generate distorted understandings of bomb damage and reassure people that the RAF was really hitting back at Germany. They observed that newspapers influenced public opinion towards the Civil Service, and even the Ministry of Information. The reports are also full of comments on the positive and negative impact of newspapers on morale. They testified to the fact that people were, or were believed to be, upset by glancing at billboards advertising newspapers­– ­so much so that the government took action and banned them. The reports also contain

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evidence that people were critical of the papers for not giving enough details about bomb damage, for being London-centric, and where their experience contradicted the accounts in newspapers, such as during the bombing of Manchester, people were distrustful of what they read (Addison and Crang 2011; Hodgson 2014).

Conclusion The study of UK newspaper readership in the twentieth century has been relatively neglected in histories of the press and in more general histories. Yet at the same time, the size and persistence of large circulations over the twentieth century should prompt more probing questions about the role newspapers played in the lives of their readers. Much of what we know about the larger structural aspects of ­readership has been shaped by the priorities of the research conducted for the newspaper and advertising industries. That research is a valuable source of demographic information, if less helpful as a way of examining individual responses to newspapers. We know that throughout the century social class was a key factor determining what people read, a fact recognised by advertisers, proprietors and journalists who crafted their products in accordance with this reality, such that the layout and appearance of different papers reflected their understandings of who read papers and what readers liked. Gender also shaped reading practices, not only what subjects were attended to in papers but also, to a lesser extent, the papers that were read. Educational level, in combination with social class, clearly influenced what people read and, it may be inferred, how competently they read and understood different kinds of material within papers and the content of papers they may have occasionally encountered. Layout and appearance were clearly important factors in helping readers with different levels of education navigate to material with which they felt ­comfortable. Technological change also played a part in influencing people’s relationship with newspapers. Initially, in the 1930s and the 1950s it provided alternative sources of news and information, with the advent of radio and television respectively. Subsequently technological change facilitated the creation of new platforms from which news, information and entertainment could be accessed, such as cable, satellite and the World Wide Web, platforms which by the early twenty-first century were encouraging the public not to purchase newspapers. Newspapers were miscellanies of material, appealing across a range of educational levels, social classes, age profiles and personal interests. Newspaper readers responded positively to this eclecticism, and

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whereas news was always important so too was entertainment, especially the lower down the social and economic scale readers were positioned. The evidence also suggests that we need a far more fine-grained understanding of the ways in which reading was experienced. People clearly read newspapers in differing social and physical contexts; sometimes these were what have been described above as institutional contexts, but more commonly they were contexts associated with the individual circumstances of readers. Newspapers were portable and easy to read either continuously or discontinuously depending on the circumstances in which they were read and the abilities and interests of readers. Individuals found in them a range of gratifications: escape, useful information, topics of conversation to assist in social interaction, aids to understanding, and information which confirmed pre-existing opinions or which stimulated reflection, to list but a few. It is clear that people believed newspapers had influence on social and political issues, but assessments of that influence over time and in a historically informed manner is still underdeveloped. Nonetheless we do have evidence of a complex range of responses which must be factored into any consideration of the ways in which newspapers influenced readers’ understanding and behaviour. This chapter has emphasised the importance of studying newspaper readership in much more detail than has hitherto been the custom. In so doing it has outlined many of the key characteristics of readership; it has illustrated just how important newspapers were to the daily lives of their readers and pointed to the complexity of the ways in which readers and newspapers interacted. Historians need to pay more attention to this subject if we are to avoid over-simple assessments of the role of the media in people’s lives and if we are to develop a fuller, nuanced understanding of the role of newspapers in the social, cultural and political history of the UK in the twentieth century.

Notes   1. This chapter focuses on the ‘national’ newspapers, rather than the provincial press. Much work remains to be done on the history of the provincial press and its relationship to the communities within which it circulated. For an overview of the provincial press in the twentieth century see Matthews 2017a. For a discussion of the problems associated with the idea of a ‘national’ press in these years, see O’Malley 2017. Elements of the research for this chapter was conducted as part of the Aberystwyth University-based Leverhulme Trust funded project, ‘A Social and Cultural

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History of the British Press in the Second World War Project’ (2011–14).   2. For a discussion of the methodological problems posed by MO’s research see Pollen 2013.   3. A 1949 survey by Mass Observation found that while the Daily Mirror was read predominately by men, the Daily Mail had a fairly even distribution of readers between the sexes (Mass Observation 2009: 17).   4. AB=professional, administrative, managerial; C1=other non-manual; C2=skilled manual; DE=semi or unskilled manual (Seymour-Ure 1991: 126).   5. Sussex University Archives, Mass Observation, File Report 3005: Report on Reading the Daily Herald, June 1948.   6. John Rylands Library, MS 145/12/21 ‘Telegram to Crozier’, 26 August 1940.   7. John Rylands Library, MS 145/12/5 Ministry of Information guidelines to editors, 16 August 1940.   8. London Metropolitan Archive, file CLC/B/080/MS23063 Sub-folder ‘War Papers to look at’, dated 14 January 1944. The Post Office also monitored press coverage of its activities, recording it in its War Diaries. See, Post Office Archives, Post 56–126, ‘British Post Office War Diary August 1939-December 1940’. The contexts, reason behind the collection of press cuttings and the uses to which they were put by the institutions that collected them, would furnish an illuminating study of the ways in which different kinds of institutional readers responded to and sought to influence the press.   9. Sussex University Archives, Mass Observation, (1938) File Report A11: Motives and Methods of Newspaper Reading, p. 24 10. Ibid. p. 21 11. Sussex University Archives, Mass Observation (1942), Report on Books & the Public, p. 18. 12. Sussex University Archives, Mass Observation, (1938) File Report A11: Motives and Methods of Newspaper Reading, p. 32. 13. Ibid. pp. 2, 15. 14. Sussex University Archives, Mass Observation (1942), Report on Books & the Public, p.70 15. Sussex University Archives, Mass Observation, (1938) File Report A11: Motives and Methods of Newspaper Reading, pp. 5, 6.

Chapter Four

REGULATION Julian Petley

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his chapter is concerned with how the statutory regulation of newspapers in England and Wales developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It deals with those laws which have had a particular bearing on the practice of journalism, namely those concerning defamation, privacy, breach of confidence, official secrecy and terrorism. These, of course, apply to all media, but this chapter is concerned solely with how these laws have been applied to newspapers. It will outline the contents of the relevant statutes, but given the key role played by judicial precedent, it will also explain how the laws have been developed by the courts in particular cases. In 1936 the Law Lords declared that ‘free speech does not mean free speech; it means speech hedged in by all the laws against blasphemy, sedition and so forth. It means freedom governed by law’ (quoted in Robertson and Nicol 2008: 2). Blackstone’s Statutes on Media Law (Caddell and Johnson 2013) lists fifty-eight statutes which have a significant bearing on media content, and this chapter will concentrate on those with the greatest impact on journalism, particularly in the press. Freedom of expression is protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), and this chapter will take pains to elucidate the ECHR’s impact on cases involving press journalism. In particular, it is important to understand that, notwithstanding rhetorical invocations of England as the ‘home of free speech’, the statutory right to free expression as enshrined in Article 10 had never had a home in Britain until the Act’s passing. 106

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Article 10 of the ECHR states: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’ However, Article 10(2) lays out various grounds on which states may legitimately attempt to limit free expression, making it not an absolute but a qualified right: The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. It is with such ‘restrictions’ that this chapter will be concerned.

Defamation English libel law had its origins in fears that if the reputations of members of the establishment were impugned, it might encourage civil disorder. In the 1800s it was refashioned to compensate people for words which ‘tend to lower them in the estimation of right-thinking members of society’, clearly privileging reputation over freedom of expression and exposing the class-based manner in which the offence was still conceived. For a long period, libel law was regarded by journalists as the most powerful legal constraint on freedom of expression. Until the law was reformed in 2013, those accused of libel were effectively guilty until they could prove themselves innocent, thus reversing the normal burden of proof and making libel cases extremely difficult to defend. Case Study: Jeffrey Archer The dangers posed by the libel laws to publishing true stories were clearly illustrated in 1986 when the Tory party deputy chairman, Jeffrey Archer, had to resign his post after the News of the World suggested on its front page that he had paid Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, £2,000 through an intermediary to go abroad. Shortly thereafter, the Daily Star directly stated that Archer had paid for sex with Coghlan, which the News of the World had carefully avoided saying. Archer sued the Star, a less well-resourced paper than the News of

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the World, and was awarded £500,000 damages. The News of the World settled out of court. Adam Raphael, then the political editor of the Observer, who had been subpoenaed by the Star to give evidence in its defence, drew up a 25-page document detailing the extent to which Archer had perjured himself, which he gave to the paper’s editor, Donald Trelford, and to its board of management. But neither was willing to risk being sued for libel by a jubilant and richer than ever Archer, and Raphael himself was distracted by suing the Mail on Sunday, whose editor, Stewart Steven, a personal friend of Archer’s, had written a venomous attack on the journalist for his role in the court case (for which his paper was, after a great deal of prevarication, forced to pay Raphael costs and damages of £45,000). Not until November 1999 did the truth begin to emerge when the News of the World published allegations made by one of the chief defence witnesses that Archer had perjured himself. In September 2000, he was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice. A great deal of damning evidence that was not forthcoming in 1987 was presented at Archer’s trial; he was found guilty and imprisoned for four years. In October 2002, he repaid the Star the full damages, as well as legal costs and interest of £1.3 million (Raphael 1993: 11–107; Hooper 2000: 119–32; Crick 2000: 263–312, 432–62).

Defending a libel case is a highly time-consuming and expensive business, and newspapers are understandably wary of those with a litigious reputation. As the problems posed by the libel laws became increasingly apparent, the courts began to develop a public interest defence in cases involving serious journalism. The first step in this process came to be known as the Reynolds Defence, after the Law Lords extended the defence of ‘qualified privilege’ to serious journalism in 1999. This ‘privilege’ allows information to be communicated in certain situations without the risk of an action for defamation­ – ­generally where the person communicating the statement has a legal, moral or social duty to make it and the recipient has a corresponding interest in receiving it (for example, giving a job reference, answering police inquiries). Those communicating such statements must believe that what they are saying is true, and they must not be motivated by malice. Thus a publisher could now justly claim such privilege if the journalism in question could be shown to be responsible and not malicious. The Lords laid down ten criteria by which the degree of the responsibility of the journalism had to be judged. These included: • The extent to which its subject matter is of public concern. • The severity of the allegations contained within it. • The tone of the story.

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• The extent to which the claimant’s side of story is represented. • The extent to which the story has been verified. However, judges were disinclined to allow such a defence until the Law Lords overturned the high court and appeal court judgements in Jameel v Wall Street Journal in 2006, arguing that the Reynolds tests had been interpreted wrongly by the courts as a series of hurdles all of which had to be jumped. In the Lords’ view, these should be regarded not as an obstacle race but as indicators intended to assist courts in deciding whether an item deserved the protection of ‘qualified privilege’. Their judgement recast Reynolds as a full-blown public interest defence, which involved determining whether the allegedly defamatory material, taken as a whole and without isolating the allegedly defamatory part(s), was in the public interest; whether the allegedly ­defamatory part(s) made a significant contribution to the public interest element of the story; and whether the steps taken in investigating and publishing the story were responsible and fair. In their Lordships’ view, the Journal’s story was precisely the kind of investigative journalism which should be protected from charges of defamation, and Baroness Hale stated: ‘We need more such serious journalism in this country and defamation law should encourage rather than discourage it.’ However, defamation law was still thought by many to impede serious journalism, and pressure for reform grew steadily. Eventually the Defamation Act 2013 was passed. Among other things, this introduced: • A new ‘serious harm threshold’. Plaintiffs now must show they have suffered or are likely to suffer serious harm, and in particular serious financial loss, because of an allegedly defamatory statement. • Protection for scientists and academics publishing in peer-reviewed journals. • A statutory defence of truth. This can be brought into play if the defendant can show that the imputation conveyed by the allegedly defamatory material is substantially true. • Protection for those publishing material on a matter of public interest where they reasonably believe that it is in the public interest. • A tightened test for claims involving those with little connection to England and Wales, aimed at reducing ‘libel tourism’. • A single-publication rule to prevent repeated claims against a publisher involving the same material. Until then, every publication of defamatory material could give rise to a separate legal action, and this was of increasing concern in relation to online material as each

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hit on a web page created a ‘new’ publication, potentially giving rise to a separate claim of defamation.

Privacy We turn now to another vexed aspect of regulation which significantly affects the press, namely privacy. This is an area in which judicial proceedings have been significantly affected by the HRA, but its impact has been consistently decried by those newspapers which specialise in prying into people’s private lives. Historically, the English courts attempted to develop the common law in various areas in order to protect what would now be called privacy rights. But their unwillingness to formulate a general principle of invasion of privacy was explained by Lord Hoffman in Wainwright and another v Home Office, 2003. Where Parliament has abstained from legislating on a point that is plainly suitable for legislation, it is indeed difficult for the court to lay down new rules of common law or equity that will carry out the Crown’s treaty obligations, or to discover for the first time that such rules have always existed.1 Of course, this immediately raises the question of why a point ‘plainly suitable for legislation’ has not in fact been legislated. That this is precisely what has happened is certainly not for want of trying to introduce legislation by, for example, Lord Mancroft (1961), Alex Lyon (1967) and Brian Walden (1969). In 1972 a Committee of Enquiry on Privacy was established ‘to consider whether legislation is needed to give further protection to the individual citizen and to commercial and industrial interests against intrusions into privacy by private persons and organisations, or by companies, and to make recommendations’.2 It received more complaints about the press than about any other institution. However, it concluded that the concept of privacy could not be satisfactorily defined and thus that a general law of privacy was not required. Regarding the press, it simply recommended improvements to the composition and operation of the Press Council, although it also pointed to the law of confidence as a possible means of protecting confidential information, which is significant in the light of later developments discussed below. The third and final Royal Commission on the Press, 1977, stated that ‘we regard the case against unwarranted invasions of privacy by the press as overwhelming, and if there were a legal remedy which we considered likely to be effective, readily understandable and practical, we should have recommended it’ (1977: 186). However, it felt that

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(1) it was ‘outside our terms of reference, and, indeed, beyond our knowledge and experience, to recommend a general right of privacy’ (ibid. 187); (2) ‘in the present state of general opinion a measure which allowed a defence of “public interest” to an action for privacy would give inadequate guidance to the courts to balance conflicting claims’ (ibid.); and (3) ‘we consider the Press Council a better forum for establishing rules of conduct for the press in relation to invasions of privacy’, and so nothing should be done which would ‘reduce its status and importance’ (ibid.). It thus limited itself to recommending reforms of the Council’s structure and modus operandi. During the 1980s and early 1990s, behaviour by sections of the press gave rise to not only huge libel payouts to people such as Elton John but also to demands in parliament from Bill Cash (1988) and John Browne (1989) to curb press intrusion. The government then set up a committee chaired by Sir David Calcutt QC to consider the problem. But like previous exercises, the Report of the Committee on Privacy and Related Matters concluded that ‘there is little possibility of producing a precise or exhaustive definition of privacy or, for that matter, public interest’ (Calcutt 1990: 6), arguing that ‘an overwhelming case for introducing a statutory tort of infringement of privacy has not so far been made’ (ibid. 46), and that do so ‘would give rise to an unacceptable degree of uncertainty’ (ibid. 48). However, it did recommend the creation of three new criminal offences relating to trespass and surveillance (ibid. 23) and concluded that ‘the press should be given one final chance to prove that voluntary self-regulation can be made to work’ (ibid. 65).

Figure 4.1  Press Complaints Commission in Salisbury Square, 2008 (© Basher Eyre (https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/764950))

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To this end it recommended that the Press Council should be replaced by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) which, if it failed, should be replaced by a ‘statutory tribunal with statutory powers and implementing a statutory code of practice’ (ibid. 74); this would also be able to grant injunctions and award compensation. Furthermore, in such circumstances, ‘the case for a statutory tort of infringement of privacy might have to be reconsidered’ (ibid. 46). The PCC came into being on 1 January 1991, its progress monitored by Calcutt for eighteen months. However, Calcutt was to be disappointed, and in his 1993 Review of Press Self-Regulation he argued that press behaviour had not improved since his previous report and the PCC had been ineffective; consequently the government should establish the above-mentioned statutory tribunal and consider introducing a new tort of infringement of privacy. The same year the National Heritage select committee report Privacy and Media Intrusion proposed a Protection of Privacy Bill. However, the government rejected not only these recommendations but also those in Calcutt’s first report. Regarding the latter it argued that although it had ‘long recognised that there is, in principle, a case for the introduction of such offences’, it had ‘so far been unable to construct legislation which, in practice, would be sufficiently workable to be responsibly brought to the statute book. It has no wish to introduce bad legislation, it therefore has no immediate plans to legislate in this area’ (Department of National Heritage 1995: 9). As for the privacy law proposed by Calcutt in his second report and by the select committee, the government stated that it did not believe that there was ‘sufficient public consensus on which to base statutory intervention in this area. It would be a significant development of the law and the Government is not at present convinced that the case has been made for it. Secondly, it prefers the principle of self-regulation’ (ibid. 16). As numerous other democratic countries have managed to construct such legislation, it is extremely hard to avoid the conclusion that ­successive governments have been motivated less by concern for press freedom and more by fear of press reaction. In June 2003 the Culture, Media and Sport select committee (successor to the National Heritage committee) published its report, Privacy and Media Intrusion. This explicitly addressed human rights issues and recommended that: The Government reconsider its position and bring forward legislative proposals to clarify the protection that individuals can expect from unwarranted intrusion by anyone­– ­not the press alone­– ­into their private lives. This is necessary fully to satisfy the obliga-

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tions upon the UK under the European Convention on Human Rights. There should be full and wide consultation, but in the end Parliament should be allowed to undertake its proper legislative role. (Culture, Media and Sport Committee 2003: 43) However, the government responded that ‘more legislation is not only unnecessary but undesirable’, since various aspects of intrusion were already covered by legislation, including the HRA. But this also protected freedom of expression, and the weighing of competing rights in individual cases is the quintessential task of the courts, not of Government, or Parliament . . . Because there are two conflicting rights involved, disputes require resolution on a case by case basis, and we believe that it is entirely appropriate for the courts to decide where the right balance lies, rather than setting out boundaries in legislation that attempt to cover all events. (Culture, Media and Sport Committee 2004: 8–9) It is thus entirely unsurprising that action on the privacy front gradually moved to the courts, and that it was they, along with the ECHR and HRA, which were left to become the targets of the all-too-predictable press fury. I want now to concentrate on some of the key cases which have gradually brought about, if not a privacy law as such, then a tort of misuse of private information, utilising the law relating to breach of confidence in conjunction with Article 8, which gave it new breadth and strength. In the case of Venables v News Group Newspapers, 2001, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the High Court Family Division, banned the media from publishing any further information about the two boys who had killed James Bulger in 1993. Invoking Article 2 of the ECHR, which protects the right to life, she was the first judge to decide that a duty of confidence could exist independently of any specific agreement relating to confidence between the parties involved. This judgement was cited in the case of A v B & C, 2002, which concerned the footballer Garry Flitcroft’s attempt to injunct the People from revealing the details of two extra-marital affairs. He was ultimately unsuccessful, but in the course of his judgement, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, explained that: In the great majority of situations, if not all situations, where the protection of privacy is justified, relating to events after the Human Rights Act came into force, an action for breach of confidence now will, where this is appropriate, provide the necessary protection. This means that at first instance it can be readily

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accepted that it is not necessary to tackle the vexed question of whether there is a separate cause of action based upon a new tort involving the infringement of privacy. Following the lead of Butler-Sloss he stated: A duty of confidence will arise whenever the party subject to the duty is in a situation where he either knows or ought to know that the other person can reasonably expect his privacy to be protected . . . [In most cases] its existence will have to be inferred from the facts. Whether a duty of confidence does exist which courts can protect, if it is right to do so, will depend on all the circumstances of the relationship between the parties at the time of the threatened or actual breach of the alleged duty of confidence.3 Breach of confidence played a key role in the case involving Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. When the couple married in 2000, they sold the exclusive right to their wedding photos to OK! magazine for £1m, but sneak pictures were sold to and published by Hello! magazine. The case eventually landed in the High Court in 2003, where Mr Justice Lindsay found for the couple and OK! under the laws pertaining to confidence and data protection as interpreted in accordance with the HRA. He regarded ‘photographic representation of the wedding reception as having had the quality of confidence about it’ because of ‘the quality of commercial confidentiality’ which attached to it. There was also an obligation of confidence, because Hello! knew that the couple had forbidden guests to take photographs and that they had an exclusive contract with OK! Hello! was required to pay OK! £1,033,156, and the Douglases £14,600. Breach of confidence was also central to the case in which Naomi Campbell, who had denied using illegal drugs, sued the Mirror in 2001 for publishing a story about her addiction, including a photograph of her leaving a Narcotics Anonymous (NA) clinic. She conceded that the paper was entitled to correct the false image she had presented, but argued that it was wrong to refer to her attending NA and to publish the photograph. When the case eventually reached the Law Lords in 2004, the majority agreed that her attendance at the clinic was analogous to other forms of medical treatment whose privacy the law should be particularly ready to protect, and that Campbell’s right to privacy in this matter outweighed the newspaper’s right to report it. Regarding the matter of breach of confidence, Lord Nicholls argued not simply that the law had ‘firmly shaken off the limiting constraint of the need for an initial confidential relationship’ but that:

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The continuing use of the phrase ‘duty of confidence’ and the description of the information as ‘confidential’ is not altogether comfortable. Information about an individual’s private life would not, in ordinary usage, be called ‘confidential’. The more natural description today is that such information is private. The essence of the tort is better encapsulated now as misuse of private information.4 Another key aspect of this case was the way in which the notion of the public interest was deployed. The Mirror had argued that its revelation of Campbell’s NA attendance was justified on public interest grounds because it revealed that she had misled the public, and thus that the paper’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10 trumped Campbell’s right to privacy under Article 8. But Baroness Hale raised the question of ‘the nature of the freedom of expression which was being asserted’, and concluded that it was such as not to warrant protection under Article 10. She argued that certain types of expression, particularly political and artistic, are more deserving of protection in a democratic society than others, concluding that ‘the political and social life of the community, and the intellectual, artistic or personal development of individuals, are not obviously assisted by poring over the intimate details of a fashion model’s private life’. A judgement by Lord Steyn in another case in 2004, In re S (FC) (A Child), was important in that it laid out the propositions which would in future be used by courts to guide them in their deliberations about balancing Articles 8 and 10. In particular, the phrase ‘an intense focus’ would find its way into many subsequent judgments: First, neither article has as such precedence over the other. Secondly, where the values under the two articles are in conflict, an intense focus on the comparative importance of the specific rights being claimed in the individual case is necessary. Thirdly, the justifications for interfering with or restricting each right must be taken into account. Finally, the proportionality test must be applied to each. For convenience I will call this the ultimate balancing test.5 The notion of the public interest as a ‘debate of general interest’ and the importance of balancing Articles 8 and 10 both played a key role when, in 2008, Max Mosley successfully sued the News of the World for invasion of privacy over a story headed ‘F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers’. Mr Justice Eady pointed out that:

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The balancing process which has to be carried out by individual judges on the facts before them necessarily involves an evaluation of the use to which the relevant defendant has put, or intends to put, his or her right to freedom of expression. This is inevitable when one is weighing up the relative worth of one person’s right against those of another. He also explained that: It is not simply a matter of personal privacy versus the public interest. The modern perception is that there is a public interest in respecting personal privacy. It is thus a question of taking account of conflicting public interest considerations and evaluating them according to increasingly well recognised criteria.6 He noted that the only circumstances under which it may be legally permissible to infringe a person’s Article 8 rights are those in which ‘there is a countervailing public interest which in the particular circumstances is strong enough to outweigh it’. He acknowledged that while, under particular circumstances, the public’s right to be informed may include the right to know about the private life of people in the public eye, particularly those involved in politics, ‘publications whose sole aim is to satisfy the curiosity of a certain public as to the details of the private life of a person, whatever their fame, should not be regarded as contributing to any debate of general interest to society’. And since the News of the World had signally failed to come up with any convincing public interest defence of its intrusion into Mosley’s private life, it lost the case and had to pay him £60,000. In recent years, newspapers which make a habit of privacy-busting have routinely argued that the regulations discussed above are now irrelevant because the information concerned is readily available online. (These are the self-same papers, of course, which blame the internet for encouraging terrorism, spreading child abuse imagery and fabricating ‘fake news’.) They have not only castigated judges as King Canutes and fossils from a pre-internet age, but have repeatedly tried to exploit Section 12(4) of the HRA, which states that courts in freedom of expression cases must have ‘particular regard [to] the extent to which the material has, or is about to, become available to the public’. However, the courts have refused to bend to the newspapers’ will. Thus in 2011, in a case involving the footballer Ryan Giggs and the Murdoch press, Mr Justice Eady argued that ‘the modern law of privacy is not concerned solely with information or “secrets”: it is also concerned importantly with intrusion’. In this respect, he pointed out that:

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Wall-to-wall excoriation in national newspapers, whether tabloid or ‘broadsheet’, is likely to be significantly more intrusive and distressing for those concerned than the availability of information on the Internet or in foreign journals to those, however many, who take the trouble to look it up.7 In this respect it’s also worth noting that the Leveson Inquiry Report stated: There is a qualitative difference between photographs being available online and being displayed, or blazoned, on the front page of a newspaper such as the Sun. The fact of publication in a mass circulation newspaper multiplies and magnifies the intrusion, not simply because more people will be viewing the images, but also because more people will be talking about them. Thus, the fact of publication inflates the apparent newsworthiness of the photographs by placing them more firmly within the public domain and at the top of the news agenda. (2012: 736)

Official Secrecy The original Official Secrets Act was passed in 1889, almost totally unopposed in both Houses, in three debates lasting nine minutes in all. Consideration was given to new legislation during the Boer War, 1899–1902, partly because of the Manchester Guardian’s reports on the plight of Boer civilians in British concentration camps, but this came to nothing. The early part of the twentieth century witnessed numerous invasion and spy novels featuring Germans: for example, William Le Queux’s 1906 novel The Invasion of 1910, serialised by the Daily Mail (whose proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, also owned The Times and Observer, was a rabid Germanophobe), and Erskine Childers’s 1903 The Riddle of the Sands. As Ian Cobain has noted: ‘Editors were not slow to notice that invasion scare stories sold newspapers, and their reporters were expected to satisfy that demand’ (2016: 19). In 1909 Le Queux published the non-fictional Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting the Downfall of England. Such stories served only to encourage rumour-mongering, and with increasing ‘evidence’ of German spying activities being reported to the authorities, a subcommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence declared that ‘an extensive system of German espionage exists in this country’ (ibid. 24). This led to the establishment of the Secret Service Bureau, which was divided into two departments: the Security Service,

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MI5; and the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. The subcommittee also emphasised the need to amend the Official Secrets Act, noting that public opinion was now more sympathetic to such a measure. By 1910 a new bill was ready, and the opportunity to launch it in Parliament was provided by a German gunboat sailing to the Moroccan port of Agadir in summer 1911. As the British were determined that Germany would not establish a Mediterranean naval base, they sent warships to the area. War looked imminent. In the Lords, the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane, claimed the bill contained no new restrictions on the flow of information and would simply make the previous Act more effective. Only four peers spoke. It was passed unamended, and reached the Commons on 18 August. This was a Friday and the height of the grouse season, so only 117 out of a possible total of 670 MPs were present. Again, the changes were presented as largely procedural and the bill passed in one day by 107 votes to 10. Four days later it received royal assent. And yet, as Cobain claims: ‘This new law would utterly transform the relationship between the British citizen and the state . . . A culture of secrecy would become deeply embedded within the official mind, and across wider society’ (ibid. 29–30). Section 1 was aimed at spies and saboteurs, and carried a penalty of up to fourteen years’ imprisonment. Its target was those who collect or communicate ‘information directly or indirectly useful to a potential enemy’ if they did so for ‘any purpose prejudicial to the State’. Section 2 was directed at civil servants, politicians and members of the armed services, and specifically at the information they possessed. It was also directed at those who wanted to publish that information, such as journalists and historians. This section created more than 2,000 offences in a few paragraphs, and these could be divided into two groups: those most likely to be committed by (1) inside sources, and (2) by journalists who received official information without authorisation. It made it an offence for a government employee to communicate any official information (that is, information possessed or generated by the state) to anyone without official authorisation. As this section had been carefully drafted with the express idea of stopping leaks to the press, unsurprisingly the first prosecution was brought against a war office clerk for supplying information to the Military Mail casting his superiors in a bad light. After the First World War ended, the government introduced a new bill that would allow it to retain some of its wartime emergency powers. This was done via the Official Secrets Act 1920, which also passed with little debate. The Attorney General, Sir Gordon Hewart, assured the

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House that it would not be used against journalists, but in 1937 two journalists were prosecuted under the Act. One was acquitted and the other fined £5 for refusing to tell the police how he had obtained a police message that formed the basis of a story in the Manchester Daily Despatch. In 1958 two Oxford students, William Miller and Paul Thompson, wrote in the student magazine Isis about what they’d seen while carrying out their national service in the Royal Navy­– ­namely evidence of large-scale signals operations, one of the country’s most closely guarded secrets. They not only argued that this was an irresponsible threat to peace, that in carrying out these operations ‘the West has been willing to go to extraordinary lengths of deception’, and that ‘the irresponsibility bred and sheltered by the Official Secrets Act is uncontrollable’, but they also mentioned ‘the statistical analysers at Cheltenham’ (quoted in Cobain 2016: 39). This was a reference to the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), whose very existence was a secret at the time. The Isis offices were raided and occupied, dozens of students questioned, and the authors charged under the Act and sent for trial at the Old Bailey, which was cleared when the work of the ‘analysers’ was discussed. When the two changed their plea to guilty, they were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. The judge told the jury to ‘forget as much as you can about the case’, and a D-Notice was issued. At this point it is necessary briefly to explain that D-Notices were official requests to editors not to publish items on specified subjects for reasons of national security. They still exist to this day, when they are called DSMA-Notices (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notices) and cover military operations, plans and capabilities; nuclear and nonnuclear weapons; ciphers and secure communications; sensitive installations and home addresses; and the intelligence services and Special Forces. The system is now run by the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee (DPBAC), which describes itself as: An advisory body composed of senior civil servants and editors from national and regional newspapers, periodicals, news agencies, television and radio. It operates on the shared belief that there is a continuing need for a system of guidance and advice such as the DSMA-Notice System, and that a voluntary, advisory basis is best for such a system.8 It presents its Notices as: A means of providing advice and guidance to the media about defence and counter-terrorist information the publication of

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which would be damaging to national security. The system is voluntary, it has no legal authority and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned.9 Such Notices have almost always been obeyed by compliant and selfcensoring editors, and what is highly liable to happen when they are not is illustrated by the travails of The Guardian when it dared to publish the Edward Snowden revelations, as is explained below. As Robertson and Nicol argue, for all its talk of being voluntary, ‘it remains a form of censorship by wink and nudge, by threat and through the complicity of media executives’ (2008: 657).

Case Study: The ABC Trial Just how oppressive the Act could be was dramatically illustrated by the 1978 trial of the journalists Crispin Aubrey and Duncan Campbell and the former army signals officer John Berry, known as the ABC trial because of the defendants’ surnames. As in the 1958 Isis case, the defendants were prosecuted for publishing material about the activities of GCHQ­– ­in this instance their intercepting radio signals and tapping phones on a massive scale without any public or parliamentary scrutiny, and their intimate relationship with the US National Security Agency (NSA). The mainstream media wouldn’t touch this subject, which was smothered by D-Notices, but Campbell wrote for the then radical magazine Time Out. However, journalism such as this made powerful enemies of the security services, who were determined to see Campbell prosecuted, and their opportunity arose after Aubrey and Campbell (who was under surveillance) interviewed Berry in 1977 about his work in Cyprus eavesdropping on Turkish and Iraqi signals traffic. All three were arrested by Special Branch, and Campbell’s flat was raided and his library transferred to Scotland Yard by armoured transport. The three were held incommunicado and without access to a lawyer for forty hours, subject to a ‘holding charge’ under section 2, refused bail and then imprisoned in Brixton. They were eventually released on bail, but then charged under section 1, which contains the heaviest jail penalties and is usually reserved for spy prosecutions. Berry was accused of communicating to Campbell information collected during his army career and deemed likely to be useful to an enemy. Campbell was charged with receiving it­– w ­ hich, under the Act, was an offence in itself, although nothing from the interview had actually been published. Aubrey was charged with aiding and abetting Campbell. Thus Campbell and Aubrey were charged simply because they had interviewed Berry. Campbell also faced a section 1 charge

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Figure 4.2  Duncan Campbell appearing on After Dark on 2 February 1991 (Courtesy of Open Media Ltd (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Duncan_Campbell_appearing_on_%​22After_ Dark%​22,2_February_1991.jpg)) of collecting­– ­allegedly ‘for a purpose prejudicial’ to the state­– ­sketches, notes and information regarding defence communications. This was the first occasion on which section 1 had been used against journalists. This prosecution, which was sanctioned by the Attorney General at the behest of M15, was clearly aimed at punishing Campbell for exposing the nature and scale of the UK’s communications eavesdropping and GCHQ’s closeness to the NSA. It was also intended as a warning to any journalists thinking of doing something similar. But as Geoffrey Robertson, who helped to defend the three, observes: The government’s action went uncondemned and virtually unreported in the national press, which appeared entirely unconcerned by this unprecedented attack on its own freedom. This was thanks to a ‘whispering campaign’ by MI5 through its editorial contacts on Fleet Street and in the BBC. Duncan Campbell was slandered as a communist, or as a fellow traveller happy to ‘put lives at risk’. (Robertson 1998: 112) And this remained the case throughout the trial, with the exception of the New Statesman and The Guardian.

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During the trial­– t­he first occasion that the existence of GCHQ had been officially admitted­– i­t emerged that Campbell’s knowledge came not from ‘spying’ but the meticulous collation of material from openly published sources, including army staff magazines, the Civil Service Yearbook and ordinance survey maps. However, in the prosecution’s view, Campbell’s collection went ‘beyond the ordinary inquisitiveness of a journalist’, which, as Robertson notes, was based on the extraordinary idea that ‘there existed an acceptable threshold of journalistic inquisitiveness which Campbell had exceeded by virtue of his ability and expertise’ (ibid. 124). But such was the fate awaiting those rare journalists who refused to self-censor themselves in obeisance to the D-Notice system. As the trial was about to begin, it emerged that the jury had been secretly vetted by Special Branch at the behest of the prosecution, and this in turn led to the revelation that juries had been vetted twenty-five times in the previous four years. As the trial progressed it also emerged that three of the jurors had signed the Official Secrets Act, and that the foreman had served in the SAS. However, the judge, Mr Justice Willis, a former officer in the Royal Signals TA division, refused the defence’s request for the jury to be discharged. Furthermore, he ruled that this information could not be made public. However, the late-night ITV satire show Saturday Night People broke the injunction, causing Special Branch to seize a tape of the programme and the jury to be discharged. Willis then fell ill and Mr Justice Mars-Jones was appointed. The second jury was also vetted, but this time the vetting was revealed to the defence. However, Mars-Jones upheld the ban on the media discussing jury-vetting, although the Attorney General was forced to issue a press statement setting out the guidelines for vetting juries, a practice hitherto shrouded in secrecy. Having heard the evidence, Mars-Jones told the prosecution that he did not agree with continuing with the section 1 charges, and revealed that he was ‘extremely unhappy’ with this ‘oppressive prosecution’ (ibid. 131). These charges were withdrawn, leaving each defendant facing only a charge under section 2­– ­a more general and less serious catch-all provision outlawing communication of official information without authorisation. Mars-Jones declared that the defendants appeared to have no defence to these charges, and invited them to plead guilty, having made clear his view that none of them deserved a custodial sentence. However, they refused, and the jury eventually found these charges proved. Berry received a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and both journalists received conditional discharges. All three were freed. The trial was a public relations disaster for the Attorney General, the security services and the government. However, as Cobain (2016: 231) notes: ‘A large part of the MoD file on the case remains withheld from the public under the “any other reason” clause of the Public Records Act’.

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The Official Secrets Act 1989 The ABC trial demonstrated all too clearly the problems for serious journalism posed by the Act, and how easily it could be exploited to oppressive ends. In spite of most of the mainstream press showing little interest in security matters, calls for reform of the Act nevertheless increased, and in 1989 a new Official Secrets Bill was presented by Home Secretary Douglas Hurd as a ‘charter for liberty’ and ‘an essay in openness which has no parallel in the history of our government since the war’ (quoted in Cobain 2016: 55). The 1989 Act replaced the ‘catch-all’ section 2 of the 1911 Act, under which it was a criminal offence to disclose any official information without lawful authority, but made it much easier to prosecute the sources of revelations about intelligence work, defence and foreign affairs. As Robertson and Nicol argue: ‘It replaced a blunderbuss with an armalite rifle’ (2008: 636). Or as Keith Ewing and Conor Gearty explained, it ceased to apply ‘in those areas where in practice it had no application anyway’ but was ‘sharpened for deeper penetration in those areas where the Government feels vulnerable to attack by enemies, both real and quixotic’ (1990: 208). Specifically, it created offences connected with the unauthorised disclosure of information in six categories by government employees. These are: security and intelligence; defence; international relations; information which might lead to the commission of crime; foreign confidences; and the special investigation powers under the Interception of Communications Act 1985 and the Security Services Act 1989. For employees or former employees of the security and intelligence services, any unauthorised disclosure of a document or information relating to security and intelligence is an offence. However, a Crown Servant (that is, civil servants, government ministers, and members of the armed forces or police) is guilty of an offence only if they make an unlawful disclosure in one of the above categories which is deemed ‘damaging’ by the Attorney General. Section 5 of the Act makes it an offence for journalists to publish material originating from a Crown Servant or government contractor if they have reasonable cause to believe it to be protected by the Act, although the prosecution must prove that they knew that publishing it would harm national security. The Act contains no public interest defence, and no generally recognised definition of national security.

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Case Study: David Shayler Just how effective the new Act was in limiting disclosures to the press by acting or former members of the security services was demonstrated in 1997 when the former MI5 officer David Shayler revealed via the Mail on Sunday a culture of mismanagement and illegal behaviour at MI5 and MI6. Inter alia he disclosed that MI6 had paid a Libyan group linked to Al-Qaeda to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi, and that the security services were routinely feeding willing or credulous journalists with misinformation. (Details of the various allegations can be found in Machon 2005: 199–206). The article was published on 24 August 1997. More revelations were promised the following Sunday, but the paper’s editor, Jonathan Holborow received a letter from the Treasury Solicitor pointing out that Shayler had breached his obligations under the Official Secrets Act, that the security services had stated that the already published material had harmed national security, and that any future articles would need to be ‘properly scrutinised by the relevant authorities’ (quoted in Hollingsworth and Fielding 2003: 217). Holborow refused to comply, and the government obtained a temporary injunction preventing the paper, and thus, under the precedent established in the Spycatcher case, every media outlet, from revealing any further information obtained by him while employed by MI5. Shayler himself was injuncted, and he and his girlfriend, Annie Machon, fled the country. In 1999 Punch hired Shayler as a security columnist. However, after his eighth column, the Treasury Solicitor wrote to the editor, James Steen, reminding him of the continuing injunctions and stating that some of the published articles were damaging to national security. In July 2000 the magazine published an article about the 1993 IRA bomb attack in Bishopsgate which, Shayler claimed, MI5 knew was coming but failed to stop. Prior to publication, the editor had faxed a copy to the Treasury Solicitor, who stated that it was indeed damaging and should not be published until all relevant government departments had commented on it. However, Steen went ahead, and the Attorney General launched an action for contempt. Mr Justice Silber agreed that because the purpose of the original injunctions was to ensure that, before Shayler was tried, no further disclosure of information which he had obtained in the course of his MI5 work should be published, the court’s purpose had been subverted and, consequently, there was a significant adverse effect on the administration of justice. Punch was fined £20,000 and Steen £5,000. Steen appealed, and the judgement was set aside by the Court of Appeal but then upheld by the Law Lords. However, Lord Nicholls warned that: An interlocutory injunction in the wide form used in the present case may well in practice have a significant ‘chilling’ effect on the press and

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the media generally, inhibiting discussion and criticism of the Security Service. Parts of the media may well be discouraged from publishing even manifestly innocuous material which falls within the literal scope of the order. A newspaper may be unwilling to approach the Attorney General, the plaintiff in the action in which the order was made. An application to the court for a variation of the order may involve delay and expense. Even less attractive is the prospect of proceeding to publish without further ado, at the risk of having to face contempt proceedings and penal sanctions. The ability to defend such proceedings, on the basis that disclosure of the material had no adverse effect on the administration of justice, will not usually afford much consolation to a journalist.10 In August 2000 Shayler was arrested and bailed when he voluntarily returned to the UK on condition that he was not remanded in custody pending trial. The prosecuting authorities had originally wanted the jury vetted and parts of the trial held in secret, because they feared that Shayler would make new allegations in court. But, under the terms of section 1 of the Act, all the prosecution had to prove was that he had passed information about security and intelligence to journalists. Whether his allegations about MI5 and MI6 were true, and whether these damaged national security, were irrelevant, as were the motives for his revelations. In pre-trial hearings that could be disclosed only after the case, Mr Justice Moses ruled that Shayler had to show him and the prosecution anything he intended to tell the jury. Home Secretary David Blunkett and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw signed public interest immunity (PII) certificates so as to prevent any information about security and intelligence being disclosed in court. During the trial itself, the prosecution insisted on restricting Shayler’s questioning of the five MI5 officers who appeared as witnesses, four of whom remained anonymous at the behest of the home secretary. Jurors were allowed to see files containing twenty-eight documents which Shayler admitted to passing to the Mail on Sunday, although parts of the 200-plus pages had been censored to protect agents’ identities; little was said of their contents in open court. Four of the documents were marked top secret and eighteen secret. Martin Bright, home affairs editor of the Observer, described it as ‘one of the most baffling trials ever seen at the Old Bailey’. In his summing up, Mr Justice Moses told the jury that ‘in reality there can only be one verdict’ and, entirely unsurprisingly, given the limitations on what Shayler was allowed to say under the terms of the Official Secrets Act, he was found guilty of disclosing documents that came into his possession as an MI5 officer. He was jailed for six months but released under licence after seven weeks.

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Terrorism Legislation As we have seen, ‘national security’ is routinely produced as a trump card in Official Secrets cases, and it almost always works its magic on the media since precious few editors are prepared to query what is really at stake here and appear to be hopelessly in thrall to the James Bond myth. The post-9/11 terrorist threat gives appeals to ‘national security’ even more potency, which is why it is necessary to consider terrorism legislation as a means of regulating journalistic endeavours. Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 makes it an offence to collect or possess information of a kind likely to be useful to someone preparing an act of terrorism. This might not appear to concern journalists, but the kinds of information which fall within the Act’s remit could include a guidebook, a photograph of a building or a map of London. Under section 44, a senior police officer may authorise a particular zone as one in which vehicles and pedestrians may be stopped and searched without reasonable suspicion. This was originally intended by Parliament as a short-term counter-terrorism measure to be used only if, for example, police received a bomb threat naming a specific target on a particular day. But the Home Secretary and senior police officers soon began making rolling authorisations covering the whole of London, on the basis that there was a generalised threat of terrorism in the capital. Between 2000 and 2008, 108,714 people were stopped and searched under section 44. These included journalists covering newsworthy events. So oppressive to press photographers did police behaviour become that in 2009 the photographer Marc Vallée founded the lobby group ‘I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist!’, and the National Union of Journalists joined with bodies such as Liberty and Justice in campaigning strenuously both against the measure itself and the heavy-handed way in which it was being enforced by the police. Furthermore, section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008 made it an offence to publish information about an individual who is, or has been, a member of the armed forces, the intelligence services or the police and which is ‘of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’. Given that the police had long been hypersensitive to being photographed, particularly during arrests and at demonstrations, it was not long before police officers began trying to use the Act to stop them photographing them at all. This led to journalists demonstrating outside Scotland Yard, following which the Home Office was forced to produce a circular which reminded the police that:

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It is a statutory defence for a person to prove that they had a reasonable excuse for eliciting, publishing or communicating the relevant information. Legitimate journalistic activity (such as covering a demonstration for a newspaper) is likely to constitute such an excuse.10 A further problem for journalists posed by the Terrorism Act 2000 is that its definition of terrorism is so broad that their work could easily fall under it. ‘Terrorism’ here means the use or threat of action which is ‘designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public’, ‘is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause’ and ‘creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public’. As Robertson and Nicol point out, this is ‘so wide that it would cover support for all liberation movements and any plans to overthrow any foreign government, no matter how undemocratic, unlawful or oppressive’ (2008: 660–1). And the fact that ‘action’ can be taken to include journalistic activity was starkly underlined when the Brazilian journalist and politician David Miranda was detained at Heathrow in 2013 under section 7 of the Act, which allows travellers at ports and airports to be questioned to find out whether they may be terrorists. They have no right to remain silent or to receive legal advice, and they may be detained for up to six hours.

Case Study: David Miranda, Edward Snowden and The Guardian. Miranda is married to Glenn Greenwald, and worked with him to publish Edward Snowden’s leaks detailing mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA). At the request of MI5, he was detained for nine hours by the police, who seized his laptop, two highly encrypted thumb drives and an external hard drive. Miranda challenged the legality of his detention, but both MI5 and the government argued that the section 1 definition of terrorism is ‘capable of covering the publication or threatened publication . . . of stolen classified information which, if published, would reveal personal details of members of the armed forces or security and intelligence agencies, thereby endangering their lives’, and the Divisional Court agreed. This was the first time that section 1 had been used against a journalist. However, the Appeal Court ruled that the detention powers conferred by section 7 are incompatible with Article 10 ‘in relation to journalistic material in that it is not subject to adequate safeguards against its arbitrary exercise’. The court argued that

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Parliament should provide such safeguards, but thus far it has signally failed to do so. It also argued that: Disclosure of journalistic material . . . undermines the confidentiality that is inherent in such material and which is necessary to avoid the chilling effect of disclosure and to protect Article 10 rights. If journalists and their sources can have no expectation of confidentiality, they may decide against providing information on sensitive matters of public interest.11 The wide definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000 also makes the Terrorism Act 2006 a threat to journalists, section 1 of which makes it an offence to publish anything with the intention of directly or indirectly encouraging members of the public to commit or prepare terrorist acts. Indirect encouragement includes statements which ‘glorify such acts or offences’ (whether in the past, future or generally) and from which it could be reasonably inferred that the conduct is to be emulated at the present time. However, if ‘encouraging’ is a vague term, ‘indirect’ encouragement is so vague as to be largely meaningless, and ‘glorification’ could be taken to include not only expressions of support for or sympathy with terrorism, but also attempts to explain or understand it: for example, a history of the once-banned African National Congress or a biography of the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. The travails of The Guardian when publishing some of the NSA material leaked by Snowden glaringly illustrate the difficulties posed by both the Official Secrets and Terrorism Acts for those all-too-rare journalists wishing to report on matters considered by the authorities to pertain to ‘national security’. After The Guardian began publishing this material in 2013, its editor, Alan Rusbridger, was told by Prime Minister David Cameron’s press officer, Craig Oliver, that officials were unhappy with the revelations, which, just like the articles which led to the ABC case, showed the close relations between the NSA and GCHQ. Indeed, some of them wanted him jailed. After Rusbridger confirmed that he was going to publish material about the massive global GCHQ data interception programme TEMPORA, he was visited by Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood, who explained he was there on Cameron’s authority and told him: ‘You have had your debate. Debate is raging. You don’t need to publish any more articles. We can’t have a drip drip drip of this material into the public domain’ (Harding 2016: 182). Accusing Rusbridger of being in possession of stolen property, he told him that the attorney general and the police would decide whether to take things ‘further’, adding that ‘a lot of people think you should be closed down, and that the Chinese are behind this’ (ibid. 183). Two weeks later he reappeared with Oliver, and when told that copies of the documents were now in America (and thus protected by the First Amendment), Heywood retorted: ‘We can do this nicely or we can go to law’ (ibid. 187). Rusbridger suggested that experts from GCHQ could advise

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on how to store the material securely and perhaps eventually to destroy it. Three days later he received a text from Oliver Robbins, Cameron’s deputy national security adviser, who was under the impression that Rusbridger had agreed with Heywood to hand over the material. When Rusbridger made it clear that no such agreement had been reached, Robbins responded: ‘If you won’t return it we will have to talk to “other people” this evening’ (ibid. 188). The following morning Robbins visited The Guardian and told Rusbridger that it was ‘all over’. Asked: ‘Are you saying explicitly that if we don’t do this, you will close us down?’ Robins responded: ‘I’m saying this’ (ibid. 189). The following week, while Rusbridger was away, Robbins told the paper’s deputy editor, Paul Johnson, that the government wanted to seize The Guardian’s computers and subject them to forensic analysis. Faced with these increasingly serious threats of unspecified legal action, the paper decided to destroy the computers on which the material was held. GCHQ officials wanted to inspect the material before destruction, perform the operation themselves and take away the remnants. The Guardian refused, but a deal was reached whereby three staff members would destroy the laptops, watched over by two GCHQ staff. ‘It was purely a symbolic act’, Johnson said. ‘We knew that. GCHQ knew that. And the government knew that.’ He added: ‘It was the most surreal event I have witnessed in British journalism.’ Simon Jenkins described it as ‘the most bizarre act of state censorship of the internet age’ and the GCHQ staff as resembling ‘book burners sent by the Spanish Inquisition’.

Conclusion What The Guardian case in particular illustrates is a disturbing trend whereby fundamental rights, and in particular the right to freedom of expression, are curtailed in the face of the terrorist threat, a threat which, ironically, has been greatly exaggerated by newspapers themselves on occasion. Furthermore, as I have pointed out elsewhere (Petley 2014), many newspapers have not only ignored the extent to which domestic surveillance of all kinds has been dramatically intensified on the back of the terrorism grande peur but have also overtly encouraged and supported official attempts to prosecute those journalists who have had the courage to tackle this urgent topic. Such behaviour cannot be explained away as resulting simply from fear of infringing the laws relating to terrorism and official secrecy, and it is in fact a key symptom of the peculiarly conservative (and indeed Conservative) nature of most of the national press in England and Wales. This also manifests itself in another topic discussed in this chapter­ – ­namely press hostility to the HRA, even though it established for the first time a statutory right to freedom of expression in

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the UK, something which one would expect newspapers to welcome with open arms. I have suggested that this hostility stems from Article 8’s ability to limit press intrusion into private lives and thus to profit from the resultant stories, but it is also an antipathy to the very notion of human rights. This in turn colours its attitude to the whole question of regulation. It understands press freedom primarily as a property right, that is, the right of the owner to do with his paper as he wishes, and is thus profoundly hostile to any measures designed to regulate the press market, such as restrictions on newspaper ownership. It is equally hostile to laws, such as those pertaining to defamation, privacy and confidentiality, which limit its ability to run circulation-boosting stories about people’s private lives. But, with notable exceptions, it is remarkably insouciant about the kinds of regulation which hinder journalists investigating matters of genuine public interest, and it is surely highly significant that the pressure to reform these laws has come largely from outside the mainstream national press.

Notes   1. Available at

  2. Available at (last accessed 10 May 2019).   3. Available at (last accessed 10 May 2019).   4. Available at (last accessed 10 May 2019).   5. Available at (last accessed 10 May 2019).   6. Available at (last accessed 10 May 2019).   7. Available at 81,000 c. 75,000 c. 42,000 66,183 66,363

< 35,000 c. 50,000 c. 30,000

Horgan 2001 Camrose 1947 Camrose 1947 Pollak 1985 Pollak 1985 Pollak 1985; Greer 2011 Greer 2011 Greer 2011

> 100,000 c. 175,000 153,000 141,310 136,714

c. 54,000 > 42,000 43,609 44,443

formed from a regional town to a political capital. As Rex Cathcart and Michael Muldoon assert, the Telegraph was the behemoth of the Belfast press in these years: ‘Its 70,000 or more copies sold daily in 1920 compared with not quite half that figure for each of the morning papers. The Irish News . . . scarcely reached the circulation of the establishment’s morning papers’ (Cathcart and Muldoon 2010: 677). This establishment emerged with the partition of Ireland along religious and political lines, and the creation of the Protestant-dominated Unionist government. The foundation of the northern Unionist state was marked with the knighting of both Baird and Henderson by King George V in June 1921, ostensibly for their key roles in its creation (Cathcart and Muldoon 2010: 680). Malcolm Brodie describes the Belfast Telegraph as unwaveringly Unionist in the first half of the twentieth century, in one instance voicing an ‘emphatic’ view that the Belfast riots of the 1920s were ‘a terrible thing’ caused by ‘the Sinn Feiners [sic] . . . the Protestants were only acting in response’ (Brodie 1995: 39). This consistent support for the northern state was underlined by the appointment of Unionist MP Thomas Molles as editor in 1922. On the wider issue of partition, the newspaper opined that the choice between a new six-county territory and the historic nine-county province of ‘Ulster’ was one between ‘the feasible and the impracticable’ (Brodie 1995: 40). Its Unionist rival boasted in their own advertisements that ‘Ulster’s Premier Newspaper is the Belfast News Letter . . . Established 184 years ago’. Quoting Edward Carson’s assessment that it was ‘That great recognised organ of public opinion in Ireland’, the News Letter claimed to be ‘first in 1737­– ­first in 1921’. While partition fundamentally transformed the identity of the Unionist newspapers, this process was much more traumatic for the Irish News. Ostracised from the Unionist state, its identity was adapting in a period of uncertainty during these first years of the six-county

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government, with Irish nationalists beset by divisions from the AngloIrish Treaty of 1922 and its partition of the island (not to mention the Irish Civil War). The Boundary Commission, though shunned by the northern government, potentially offered a way out of this dilemma. Yet it was the subject of much derision by the paper in these years, which instead sponsored a somewhat utopian plan for a federated Ireland within the Commonwealth (Phoenix 1995: 24).3 Deliberations over the boundary between north and south were ongoing between 1924 and 1925, and the editorials of the Irish News in the Commission’s final months­– ­November and December 1925­– ­were particularly energised by the imminent outcome. The leak of the results to the London daily the Morning Post on Friday, 6 November, which suggested that much of the disputed territory would transfer north, seemed to inspire a defiant tone from the Belfast paper’s editor Tim McCarthy. The Corkman dismissed the leak as pure speculation: ‘with a map and a little knowledge of the country, anyone can construct a Boundary; if a dozen men “pool” their views, the net result may not deviate overmuch from the Commissioners’ verdict’ (Irish News, 9 November 1925, p. 6). Although responding to individual developments, the Irish News maintained the line that the nationalist community had been almost entirely ignored in the final settlement. This was indicated by the tone of vindication taken in response to the tripartite agreement between the three governments which was reached on 3 December fixing the boundary as it stood: ‘no party or section anywhere is really concerned with the future of the Nationalists in the Six Counties . . . [we] must now depend on ourselves’ (Irish News, 9 December 1925, 6). McCarthy’s consistent resignation to the original settlement faithfully reflected the paper’s Belfast location­– ­which was not under discussion in mostly being held within Antrim, the only county in the north not bordering the Free State­ – ­and was in contrast to more regional nationalist titles like the Derry Journal (Cousins 2008: 294). While the city’s Unionist papers readily embraced the challenge of adjusting their content and circulations to the new state, generally ignoring the Boundary Commission as a farce, the Irish News clearly hoped that some form of nationalist opposition could manifest itself in the northern government. But even when this did come, the paper operated in a hostile context, and its editorials reflected a growing resentment towards the sectarian policies of the government. As if to symbolise this alienation, McCarthy’s successor as editor, the Englishman Sydney Redwood, was successfully prosecuted under the Special Powers Act in 1932 for publishing a letter calling the Royal Ulster Constabulary ‘liars and perjurers’. Indeed the paper took to publishing various series

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of anti-partitionist columns, such as The Truth About Stormont by the anonymous X. Q. Thereafter the editorial lines of the three newspapers became more entrenched. The editorials of the Irish News during the 1930s and 1940s aligned it with the northern Catholic establishment of the day, as seen in its unstinting loyalty to the ‘Irish Hierarchy’ and its religious Latin byline. Likewise, despite changes in editors, the Telegraph and News Letter retained a Unionist ethos. In one instance, the former responded forcefully to the Dublin conservative paper Irish Times’s plea for a united Ireland, saying that Ulstermen were unwilling to ‘put their heads in the noose Mr. De Valera [sic] is preparing for them’ (Belfast Telegraph, 18 January 1938, p. 6). Beyond these local quarrels, the papers also reflected a growing appetite for international reportage. In the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War became a touchstone for outbursts of political and religious convictions north and south, and while all of the Belfast papers supported the government’s policy of neutrality, their support came from different angles. The Telegraph reflected the neutral feeling of much of the British press, whereas the Irish News proclaimed in September 1936 that ‘Irishmen can gain from their own country a high reputation if they concentrate on their own and the country’s needs and leave cloak-and-sword romance to the novelists’ (as quoted in Horgan and Flynn 2001: 53).4 The war also embroiled the Irish News in a controversy with the Labour MP Harry Midgely, who attacked their representations of events and accused them of ‘deluding Catholic workers’ (Phoenix 1995: 31). The Irish News retaliated, defending its somewhat partisan coverage as ‘its duty as a Catholic journal’, and even made contact with Franco’s Spanish Press Services in London (McGarry 2002: 87). During this decade, the prospect of war closer to home also began to make itself felt. In 1938 the Telegraph, reflecting its dominant market share, won the Irish rights to publish a series of articles by Churchill criticising the British government’s appeasement policy with Hitler and Nazi Germany (Brodie 1995: 61). But there were serious fluctuations in readership. The economic depression of the 1930s and large-scale unemployment in Belfast contributed to declining sales, though the Telegraph, consistently the largest paper, managed to retain profits of £67,000 in 1935 (Brodie 1995: 58). In the same year, circulation of the Irish News stood at around 50,000, while the News Letter, it has been estimated, claimed readership of around 30,000 (Camrose 1947: 141).

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The War Years and the Blitz Like the First World War, the years of the Second World War affected the Belfast press both materially and ideologically. The papers all changed in appearance during this period, with the Belfast Telegraph forced to cut down from ten pages to four and similar reductions at the Irish News and News Letter. Rationing meant that paper was at a premium, so circulation was slimmed down and surplus copies were often not available to newsagents (Brodie 1995: 69). While the Telegraph and News Letter retained their pre-war format of front-page advertising, in early 1939 the Irish News became the first newspaper in Ireland to put headline news stories on its front cover. Adhering to the increasing trend for eye-catching and immediate reporting, it was a shrewd move by the paper and by 1944 the Belfast Telegraph had followed suit, and there were more innovations to follow. The Telegraph was the only one of the three papers that had its own war correspondents during these years, which even despite the prominence of censorship, gave it a marked edge over its competitors in coverage relating specifically to the North. All three papers still relied heavily on external agencies for international material, with photos, an expensive premium, often sporadic and grainy (Brodie 1995: 69) but there was little divergence in their coverage of events on what initially seemed like the distant world stage during these years. But this distance would soon collapse. Belfast entered the war suddenly in April and May 1941, when the city was the target of a number of bombing raids by German forces, resulting in a considerable loss of life and widespread damage. Dubbed the ‘Belfast Blitz’, the air raids on 7 and 15 April became some of the defining experiences of the city during the war, and sharpened focus on the need for cross-community aid and communication. This can be especially seen in the response of the newspaper press to the bombings; following extensive damage to the offices of all three papers, both the News Letter and the Irish News were printed in the Telegraph building in the weeks following (Brodie 1995: 82). The Irish News was the worst affected, and had to radically cut its production down to a one-page issue on 16 April. On 8 April, the day after the first attack, the Belfast Telegraph led with the somewhat excited headline, ‘North’s first blitz: night of thrills’. Bringing the North into the war, the article intimated, asserted its presence and importance on a world stage­ – ­but also its distinction from the neutral Irish Free State. In the face of death of thirteen citizens, the Telegraph’s editorial remained stoic: ‘bearing a few scars and mourning our first civilian casualties in this total warfare we shall screw our courage to the sticking

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point and resolve to acquit ourselves in a manner worthy of our kinsmen’ (Belfast Telegraph, 8 April 1941, p. 5). The News Letter similarly placed its news headlines some way into the newspaper, reporting the ‘Enemy Raid on Ulster’ on page five. Other war news from around the world, however, appeared to take precedence; the front page, devoted almost entirely to advertisements, displayed a prominent notice for the Royal Air Force fund. The Irish News, meanwhile, embraced a more lugubrious tone, describing the air raid as the ‘Tragedy of Ulster’. This was perhaps more pronounced than in the two Unionist publications, but the extent of Irish News coverage of the 8 April blitz was in keeping with its contemporaries­ – ­relatively short accounts within a broader context of international war reporting. This equivocation was to be mostly abandoned in the days following the second air attack on the night of Easter Tuesday, 15 and 16 April, which laid waste to large areas of Belfast and left over 1,000 people dead or seriously injured. The material production of the papers reflected the trauma of the city, with daily publication either suspended or greatly reduced. Despite immediate expressions of solidarity, each paper’s coverage in the subsequent days and weeks responded in differing ways to the devastation in the context of Allied war involvement. The News Letter’s leading article of 17 April reports being ‘deeply impressed by the unbroken spirit of the people’ as embodied in the ‘Union Jacks [hoisted] over the smouldering ruins’ (News Letter, 17 April 1941, p. 3). This display of community resilience, and a broader adherence to Unionist principles in the face of ‘indiscriminate bombing’, spoke to the paper’s long-standing support of the war effort. By the next day, coverage of the bombing aftermath had moved to the front page­ – ­an unprecedented move in the history of the News Letter and an illustration of the extraordinary disruptions to social and cultural life during that month. The Telegraph also lingered on the central place of Belfast in the war, headlining its 18 April report as the ‘Latest from Ulster Battlefront’. Its focus was also on the widespread loss of life, describing the city as ‘like a place of the dead’. A striking feature of the coverage across all the papers is the prominence of churches in damage reports. Underlining the deeply entrenched religious divides of the city, each title at various points used the destruction of churches to signal the symbolic and material cost of war, emphasising the centrality of religious attachment to the lives of Belfast residents. The sympathies of the various papers were also visible throughout their reportage of aid efforts in the city. The News Letter reported on ‘Britain’s Sympathy’, quoting British Home Secretary Hebert Morrison in his promise to Belfast that ‘all we can send is at your disposal’ (News

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Letter, 17 April 1941, p. 3). This was a counterpoint to the Irish News’s editorial on its resuming normal publication on 24 April (as stated above, it had little or no presence in the weeks following the 16 April raid), which echoed the sentiments of the Catholic hierarchy in praising the efforts and ‘practical assistance from high and low throughout Ireland’. Calling on the ‘faithful’ to set aside a day of atonement and intercession, the article attacked the ‘horrors of this terrible war, from which the greater part of the island has so far been free’ (Irish News, 24 |May 1941, p.  2). Some weeks later, following another raid on Belfast, the Irish News again looked to the South in declaring ‘a word of high praise is due to the unstinted assistance given by our countrymen in the neutral part of this island to this area’ (Irish News, 7 May 1941, p. 1). This support from the Free State was notably absent in the reports of both the Telegraph and the News Letter. Instead, throughout the disasters, the two Unionist-leaning dailies highlighted the leadership both of the northern premier, as in the case of the News Letter, or that of English aristocracy in the case of the Telegraph (‘Duke and Duchess of Gloucester Visit Ulster Bombed Area’, Belfast Telegraph, 21 April 1941, p. 5). The contents of the papers during these months and years also provide some illuminating details of the social history of a city under wartime conditions. For much of this time they functioned as much as public announcement forums as they did sources of ‘news’. Both the Telegraph and the News Letter gave over their front covers to business notices and classified ads, a custom that was only suspended at times of urgent political crisis. This layout, or the ‘bulletin-board function’ as Horgan and Flynn term it, doubtless kept the papers in good business with advertisers, but also conveyed a sense of community in the prominence given to local birth, marriage and death notices (Horgan and Flynn 2001: 39). During the war years, the changing needs of their readers were reflected in the increasing presence of official announcements, from the Board of Transport to the Belfast Civil Defence Authority issuing information in the wake of aircraft bombings, or blackout warnings (News Letter, 8 May, 1941, p. 1). There were other ways, however, that the war changed the overall look of these pages. Businesses took advantage of wartime needs and their advertising changed accordingly. One notice in the Belfast Telegraph, for example, entreated the readers of the paper to ‘let Koray brand tablets take war worries off your nerves!’ (Belfast Telegraph, 23 April 1941, p. 3). Others assured their customers that they were open for ‘business as usual’ in the wake of attacks, while theatres carried ads for shows such as the aptly titled ‘Carry on Belfast’ (News Letter, 8 May 1941, p. 1).

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If the war years were a catalyst for at least minor changes in the newspapers’ content and format, they also brought into focus the increasingly strained relationship between the press in Belfast and the various lines of authority from which it took guidance. As Horgan and Flynn have described, during these years ‘unionist sentiment and British government media policies were pulling in opposite directions’ (Horgan and Flynn 2001: 66). As pawns in the power play between a neutral Eire and a British administration keen to bring their neighbours on board as an ally, the papers’ attitude towards both governments is highly illustrative of their divided loyalties. The Irish News maintained its all-Ireland perspective in accounts of the war, but both the Telegraph and the News Letter largely sought to ignore any possible connection with Dublin. Following VE Day in May 1945, the News Letter published a revealing column entitled ‘In Eire Now: The Price of Neutrality’: The end of the war in Europe caused not much more general interest in Eire than the success or failure of a favourite on one of our race courses. This may be partly due to the fact that most Eire people see only the local papers, and until the censorship was lifted this week had not information as to the atrocities which have been perpetrated by Germany. Had they had the opportunity of studying the American and British illustrated papers their views might be slightly different, although there are always some people in Eire who think that these statements are English propaganda. (Belfast News Letter, 16 May 1945, p. 3) The News Letter’s statements record how Unionist feeling intensified during the late 1930s and 40s, as the cumulative effect of the war in engendering highly nationalist sentiment had pitted the papers’ editorial lines against any cross-community engagement. While the devastation of the air attacks on the city may have at first promised a relaxing of religious and political divides, the broader context of neutrality versus involvement in the war framed all of these papers’ coverage and ultimately provided a stark choice for the readership of Belfast.

Reporting Post-War Belfast Reflecting a general political détente (sporadic IRA attacks on the border aside) the decade after the war was unremarkable for the three main Belfast dailies. Ownership and editorial stances remained mostly unchanged, though the trend of unionisation among newspaper workers was beginning to take hold. The Belfast branch of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) had been founded in 1926, and by 1947

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included members from the editorial staff of all the newspapers in the city (Horgan and Flynn 2001: 68). There were clashes with proprietors, however, as efforts to gain recognition of the organisation were refused by the management of all three papers (Brodie 1995: 93). In a pushback against standardised rates of pay and working rights, the Telegraph asserted that ‘no organisation, social or otherwise, can operate or function in any part of the company’s premises unless with the direct and specific permission of the directors’ (as quoted in Brodie 1995: 93). This conservative stance was to continue for some decades, reflecting the slow-moving pace of change in the northern press. Indeed the Belfast News Letter only began regularly publishing news on its front page in 1961, and changed name to the shorter News Letter in the same decade. On a more general level, this can also be seen in statistics of readership breakdown during the 1960s and 1970s, which closely resembled those from much earlier in the century. In 1970 the Irish News claimed Catholic readership of 93 per cent, the News Letter catered to 87 per cent Protestants, while the audience for the Belfast Telegraph was split between 68 per cent Protestant and 32 per cent Catholic (O’Brien 2017: 134). Rather than any professed political neutrality, the Telegraph’s relatively more even readership is perhaps mostly explained by the fact that government jobs were advertised there on Tuesdays and Fridays­ – ­coupled with the fact that the state was by far the largest employer in the six counties, rapidly expanding in the latter half of the century (Rea 1991: 120). But there were a number of events during these years that began to articulate a shared space in the six counties. In January 1965 a historic meeting took place between the two leaders of government in Ireland, when Terence O’Neill, northern prime minister, invited the Taoiseach Sean Lemass to talks in Stormont. This was part of a drive to promote better north-south relations, and was mostly welcomed across the political and press spectrum. On 15 January the Irish News led with the headline ‘History-Making Stormont Castle Get-Together’, highlighting the cordiality and openness of both leaders during this ‘sensational event’. The Belfast Telegraph, too, was largely positive in its coverage of the event, captioning the smiling front-page photo as ‘hands across border’ and noting that ‘economic link-up may be [a] possible outcome’ (Belfast Telegraph, 15 January 1965, p. 1). Even the News Letter, traditionally the more trenchantly Unionist of the papers, cautiously welcomed the meeting in its editorial as ‘a day to remember’. It remarked upon the mutual benefits for industry in the case of closer relations, assuring its readers that ‘there never has been any danger to the Constitution of Northern Ireland in talks between heads of the

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two states’ (Belfast News Letter, 15 January 1965, p.  1). Underlining a generally shared positivity towards the visit, only slight reference is made in any of the papers to the opposition shown by the Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of Ulster Protestant Action (which later developed into the Democratic Unionist Party). The emergence of ‘tolerant unionism’ as embodied by O’Neill was perhaps the most striking change in certain sections of the Belfast press from the late 1950s onwards. Inspired largely by Jack Sayer’s editorial reign from 1953 to 1969, the Belfast Telegraph pursued a more liberal line in its relations with mainstream Unionism. Sayer, one of the most influential editors of his day, came from a journalistic dynasty with associations to the Telegraph stretching back generations. His promotion of a more modern, open-minded attitude during these years, however, was not universally accepted. Advocating that Catholics should be able to join the Unionist Party gained him some prominent critics, especially in the Orange Order, and his decision in the 1958 Stormont election to allow opposition parties to have their say in the feature pages of the Telegraph raised some eyebrows (Gailey 1995: 80). But the canny editorial skills and personality of Sayer were to pay dividends for the paper. A former colleague of Sayer’s in the Telegraph was to remark on the gamble he took in alienating influential Unionists, business and management figures, ‘but Jack held firm, knowing that the advertisers needed the Telegraph as much as it needed them’ (Brodie 1995: 106). He was also keenly aware of maintaining a consistency of voice within the paper, particularly in the context of new ownership and management. Following its takeover by the Thomson organisation in 1962, Sayers wrote to a friend ‘I find Thomas an agreeable fellow with editorial sympathies, but the fact is that business policy is dictated from London . . . I miss the sentiment and sense of public service which should be actuating a local newspaper like the T’ (Gailey 1995: 74). It was an approach that won him friends in O’Neill’s administration (indeed, the Premier was often to use Sayers as a sounding board), ultimately resulting in a more intimate connection between the media and political faces of unionism (Gailey 1995: 101). The Telegraph was to benefit immensely from this, becoming the largest-selling daily newspaper on the island during the 1950s and 1960s (Horgan and Flynn 2001: 88). The subsequent two decades of northern life were to be dominated by the onset of what became known as ‘the Troubles’, the epicentre of which was Belfast city from the early 1970s. The three daily newspapers, unsurprisingly, sustained a steady stream of reporting on events. Indeed, their intersecting histories have been most fully elaborated

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in relation to these traumatic years, and the role in which they were cast as bastions of traditional loyalties (Shearman 1987; Phoenix 1995; Brodie 1995). But alongside headline news there were indicators of other social changes that were beginning to affect both Belfast and the island of Ireland. On 22 May 1971, members of the Women’s Liberation Movement took a train across the border to Belfast to buy contraceptives in protest against the ban in the South. Hailed as a landmark for women’s rights, the event sparked controversy on both sides of the border. The Belfast Telegraph, leading with the caption ‘Eire Women Who Find their Law a Bitter Pill’, reported on the group of forty-three who entered a Belfast chemist stating ‘we are going to buy as many [contraceptives] as we can. We are going to declare them and I am willing to be prosecuted’ (Belfast Telegraph, 22 May 1971, p. 1). The News Letter had a somewhat more tongue-in-cheek take on the matter, describing how ‘militant women claim they have succeeded in making Eire’s law against contraceptives an ass’ (News Letter, 24 May 1971, p. 5). These two papers clearly saw the event as little more than a light public-interest spectacle, but the Irish News may have had stronger feelings on the matter. It is perhaps telling that no coverage of the ‘contraceptive train’, as it became known, made it into the pages of the Catholic-leaning newspaper. Indeed considering that the women, as reported by the Telegraph, were strongly critical of the Irish government and how ‘it is manipulated by the Roman Catholic Church’, this period of social liberation would not have sat easily with the readership of Belfast’s largest nationalist newspaper (Belfast Telegraph, 22 May 1971, p. 1).

‘IT’S OVER’: Reporting the Conflict and the Ceasefire As outlined in the introductory paragraphs, because of the vast amount of critical literature about the media coverage of the Troubles this chapter has attempted to align its concentration elsewhere. While the focus here has mostly been to chart the relationship between the Belfast papers before the conflict, an important aspect which was shared by all three titles is the moralising attitude to political developments during these years. As Bill Rolston suggests, the three Belfast titles often displayed ‘less reliance on official sources and an attempt to suggest to the reader which of the conflicting reports of an incident might be correct’ (Rolston 1991: 152). There were significant divergences in terms of the ways in which local deaths were reported upon, with the Belfast papers giving more column inches than their British counterparts to the aftermaths of each death (Hamilton-Tweedale

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1987: 98). There also were occasional bomb attacks on the presses of both the News Letter and the Telegraph during the 1970s, both contributing to and drawing from the polarisation of political feeling which ‘created a bunker mentality that reinforced traditional loyalties . . . in the print media’ (Horgan and Flynn 2001: 140). The advent of TV broadcasting was also to have marked ramifications for the papers’ business, although not always from a negative angle. The Henderson family, owners of the News Letter, consolidated their comfortable financial situation with the acquisition of the television station UTV, which, like the BBC, faced greater restrictions on its coverage than its printed counterparts during the years of the Troubles. This was partly due to the Broadcasting Acts­– ­in effect censorship­– ­emanating from both Dublin and London that limited what could be reported in television and radio in regard to paramilitary ‘subversives’ and terrorist activities. Both the Telegraph and the Irish News in fact supported a more liberalising attitude to broadcasting, perhaps worried by the subsequent prospect of print censorship that threatened to curb their press freedoms. In July 1976, the Telegraph editor Roy Lilley publicly defended the BBC in its opposition to government prohibitions, arguing that the purpose of the media was to report fairly and fully, and not to ‘aid or abet’ terrorism (Savage 2015: 158). Overall, however, both the traditional and newer forms of media were badly affected by the economic implications of two decades of violence, with advertisements declining in the face of economic insecurity. Little exemplifies the dynamic between the newspapers throughout the century more than their accounts of the ceasefire, and equally, the Belfast Telegraph perhaps never justified its evening publication time more than on 31 August 1994. On one of the last days of a summer of negotiations, the long-anticipated statement from the Provisional Irish Republican Army asking volunteers to cease operations came at noon, meaning that the Telegraph was able to steal a march on its morning competitors. The paper’s headline was forthright in both its condemnation of the IRA­ – ­seemingly blaming it for the entire death toll of the conflict­ – ­but also conveying the widespread sense of relief: ‘After 3,168 deaths and twenty-five years of terror, the IRA says IT’S OVER’ (Belfast Telegraph, 31 August 1994, p. 1). The language adorning the article on the front page of the evening paper was less emotive, simply offering an overview of reactions from political figures in Britain and Ireland. However, the inclusion of pictures of victims from the Abercorn, Enniskillen and Shankill bombings on the same page­ – ­placing the victims front and centre­ – ­was a visual avatar for a theme picked up upon by that day’s editorial:

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Time blurs the public’s memory of such atrocities as the Abercorn, Bloody Sunday, and Enniskillen­ – ­as well as the Ormeau Road, Greysteel and Loughinisland massacres­ – ­but they will never be forgotten by those whose lives were permanently damaged. Hardly a family or business in the land has been untouched by tragedy, many several times over. (Belfast Telegraph, 31 August 1994, p. 10) Memory, if not reconciliation, was a strong element of the paper’s content that day, which betrayed the fact that it had been prepared well in advance of the Provisional IRA’s announcement. There was an abundance of material included in the ‘Sixth Late’ edition of the Telegraph under its special section ‘Countdown to Ceasefire’ (a phrase also repeated that morning in the News Letter). This included reflections from up-and-coming political journalists Vincent Kearney and Mark Simpson on the failed 1972 IRA ceasefire, an outline of the long lead-in to the ceasefire spanning from the Hume–Adams talks and the past December’s Downing Street Declaration, as well a short section which outlined a factually sketchy history of the six-county state (Belfast Telegraph, 31 August 1994, p. 7). In their reports of the aftermath, the morning papers were more guarded than relieved, with the front page of the News Letter much less emphatic, instead ­proclaiming: ‘TRUCE­ – ­but war of words continues’ (News Letter, 1 September 1994). Continuing in its nostalgic tradition, the Irish News interpreted the occasion as within the ‘tradition of Patrick Pearse’s noble decision to lay down arms after the Easter Rising of 1916’ (Irish News 1 September 1994, p. 5). In referring back almost eighty years, the Irish News was reinforcing the importance of tradition for both the paper and its readership, exemplifying how despite changes to its title, ownership and context, it retained a strongly nationalist disposition throughout the century.5 Leaving aside the reference to 1916 leader and republican martyr Patrick Pearse, it was a feeling that was reflected in the two other papers, whose roles as articulators of ‘public memory’ were ones that had become a defining element of their reporting during the years of the Troubles­ – ­and indeed for many decades preceding. Structurally, the papers during the twentieth century had displayed a remarkable resistance to change, despite fluctuating economic and ownership circumstances (not to mention the conflicts that shadowed much of the century in Belfast). Although the appearance of the Belfast Telegraph, Belfast News Letter and the Irish News at the end of the twentieth century, with their eye-grabbing technicolour layout, may have borne little

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resemblance to the dense and sober reporting of the beginning of the century, their relation to a defined readership (whether real or imagined) still asserted itself. From the border negotiations in 1924–5 to the cessation of violence in 1994, all three of the papers’ traditional loyalties ensured that their audience could count on a familiar outlook. But beneath these unstinting political and religious commitments, their story is also one of adaptation to these changing times, an adaptability which safeguarded the papers’ survival through the various material and social challenges of the twentieth century.

Notes 1. Curiously, no mention of the Famine of 1845–9 is made. 2. The Unionist morning daily The Northern Whig (printed from 1832 to 1963) has been left out here because it did not survive the century. 3. It should be noted that the Unionist representative on the Boundary Commission, Joseph R. Fisher, was the Northern Whig’s editor until the First World War. 4. The reaction to the Spanish Civil War was an early example of how a single cause could overcome often-bitter sectarian divides. In 2015 commemorations were paid in Belfast to the fifty Catholics and Protestants who served in the Irish Brigades, with the Belfast Telegraph remembering the ‘sublime moment of working-class unity in the city’s turbulent history’. As quoted in Phelan (2017: 356). 5. However, the critical tone adopted by the editorial towards the IRA’s campaign of violence reflected the paper’s admonishment of Pearse himself during and after Easter Week, 1916.

Chapter Nineteen

THE BLACK BRITISH AND IRISH PRESS Olive Vassell

Introduction

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ising out of the need for self-representation and the fight against European colonialism, the black British press has since its inception been rooted in several connected struggles. They are: the push for African and Caribbean independence, and the creation of a collective cultural and political black identity based in African roots; the formation of community and belonging for largely Caribbean immigrants following the post-Second World War mass migration, and the reflection and reinforcement of identity for black Britishborn citizens outside of white political, social, economic and cultural hegemony. However, it has not only played a pivotal role in addressing issues of liberation and community building, but also in helping to define the public discourse surrounding the definition of what it means to be both black and British, not just for blacks, but for the entire British society. This chapter examines the history of black British newspapers and periodicals through these three distinct periods of social change and the critical role they have played in each of them.

The Beginnings The dawn of the twentieth century heralded a new era for black people in Britain. They were beginning to form a collective identity. Key to that formation was the emergence of a black-owned and oriented press transmitting black experiences. The first such publication, the Pan African, was created by Trinidadian lawyer and activist Henry 396

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Sylvester Williams in 1901, a year after he organised the first panAfrican Conference in London in 1900 and, like many of its successors, the journal served primarily as a tool for a political and social movement. Its aim was to speak on behalf of Africans on the continent and those in the diaspora. At the top of its agenda was securing freedom from British rule. However, focus was also given to addressing negative stereotypes of blacks all over the world (Vassell and Burroughs 2014). Williams, who had studied at King’s College London, was secretary of the African Association. Supporting himself by lecturing for the Church of England Temperance Society and the National Thrift Society, Williams denounced colonial rule as a ‘heartless system . . . a synonym for racial contempt’ (Kegan as cited in Fryer 1984). Taking his concerns to the highest authorities, Williams became the first person of African descent to speak in the House of Commons, leading a group of Trinidadians living in London to meet MPs in Parliament’s lower house in 1900. The Pan African’s commitment to the black voice was unapologetic. Its first editorial boldly announced that, ‘No other but a Negro can represent the Negro’ (Pan African as cited in Fryer 1984). The statement reflected the uncompromising stance of the journal’s creators and supporters that self-determination was the right of every black person in Britain and around the world. The publication, however, was shortlived, probably producing only one issue. A little more than a decade later, in 1912, Egyptian-born Duse Mohamed Ali and Sierra Leonean journalist and businessman John Eldred Taylor launched the anti-colonial organ, the African Times and Orient Review, following another gathering, this time the Universal Races Congress in 1911. It became Britain’s first political publication for people of colour and Ali, who lived mainly in Britain from 1883 to 1921, wrote in its first edition that the Congress needs ‘a Pan-Oriental, Pan-African journal at the seat of the British Empire which would lay the aims, desires and intentions of the Black, Brown, and Yellow Races­ – ­within and without the Empire­ – ­at the throne of Caesar’ (African Times and Orient Review as cited in Dabydeen et al. 2007). Housed in the newspaper world’s centre, Fleet Street, and staffed by a multicultural mix, the publication was a gathering place for activists and students, attracting prominent blacks in Britain and beyond, such as composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor and a young Jamaican activist, Marcus Garvey. Like the Pan African, the Review called for an end to colonialism and ‘diligently unearthed abuses of colonial rule in the British colonies and passed on information to Labour M.P.s who asked embarrassing questions in the House of Commons’ (Geiss as

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cited in Fryer 1984). Therefore, it is no surprise that it ‘received the back-handed tribute of being disliked and rather feared by the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office and the India Office’ (Duffield as cited in Fryer 1984). The journal had an international circulation with readership among intellectuals in Africa, North America and the Caribbean and lasted eight years, with its final edition appearing in 1920. When Taylor launched another publication, the African Telegraph, in 1914, he also became its editor. Like its predecessors, it was the mouthpiece for an anti-colonial organisation, this time the Society of Peoples of African Origin, also founded by Taylor, and called for an end to racial discrimination and for sociopolitical reforms in the colonies (Dabydeen et al. 2007: 17). Echoing the need for self-representation, Taylor wrote: ‘We are here because we ought to be . . . because it can be demonstrated that the African colonies and all that pertains to their social welfare have received scant justice at the hands of journalism’, (African Telegraph as cited in Benjamin 1995). Though it primarily focused on West Africa, the publication was quick to expose injustices at home. Its second editor Felix Hercules, who Taylor appointed in 1918, was accused by authorities of ‘inciting the negroes to take matters into their own hands’ (Morrison 2007: 19), for the Telegraph’s reporting of conflicts like the race riots in 1919, in which whites targeted black workers in Cardiff, Liverpool and other UK cities and towns. The newspaper published detailed reports of violent attacks against blacks and the destruction of their homes. In addition, Hercules also captured black sentiment that year after the British government refused to allow black troops to take part in London’s First World War victory celebrations. He wrote: ‘Every ounce of strength was put into the struggle by the black man. He fought with the white man to save the white man’s home . . . and the War was won. Black men all the world over are asking today, “What have we got?”’ (African Telegraph as cited in Morrison 2007). The newspaper was forced to close in December 1919 after Taylor lost a libel case and faced heavy financial damages over a report of a public flogging of two Nigerian women. However, another short-lived publication quickly took its place. The African Sentinel, launched in January 1920, and edited by T. H. Jackson, reported on the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) leader Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line of steamships. An article described ‘the SS Yarmouth, a 727-ton vessel which is owned and controlled exclusively by Negroes’, who were also members of the UNIA-ACL. The publication, which was based in Fleet Street, claimed to be ‘the leading newspaper on African Affairs . . . ­representing advanced native opinion’ (African Sentinel as cited in Benjamin 1995).

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Figure 19.1  An article in the African Sentinel described the SS Yarmouth, part of the Black Star Liner Fleet. Its crew is shown here, c. 1920

Subsequently, the 1930s brought a flurry of new black publications with impressive goals, among them fostering black unity and improving interracial relations in Britain. They included The Keys, a journal and official organ of the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP). Founded in 1931 by physician Harold Moody, the organisation’s mission was to promote the social, educational, economic and political interests of its members, the majority of whom were African or West Indian; to interest them in other people of colour around the world and to encourage racial co-operation. In fact, the LCP was multiracial, also attracting middle-class white liberals, students and servicemen, although Moody opposed Asian membership because ‘coloured meant negro’ to him (Hoyles and Hoyles 2011: 21). LCP began publishing the quarterly The Keys in 1933, specifically to improve racial relations. Its first editor, Bermudan David Tucker, wrote of encouraging the ‘harmonious co-operation of all races’, (The Keys as cited in Hoyles and Hoyles 2011). The journal was later overseen by prominent black intellectuals such as Jamaican journalist Una Marson, while historian C. L. R. James, a member of the LCP, also wrote for the publication. The organisation fought injustice at home and abroad, supporting black seamen in Cardiff in 1935 when they

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Figure 19.2  Learie Constantine was a supporter of the League of Coloured Peoples and a contributor to its publication, the News Letter

were made unemployed and faced calls for their repatriation, and The Keys sided with workers when they protested against working conditions and racism in Trinidad’s oilfields in 1937 (Hoyles and Hoyles 2011: 23). The Keys was published for nearly seven years without interruption until the outbreak of the Second World War and the advent of paper rationing. It was replaced by the News Letter, which survived into the 1950s, with prominent contributors such as pan-Africanist, journalist and author George Padmore and Learie Constantine, the former cricketer, and the UK’s first black peer. Meanwhile, Garvey had brought his Jamaican-based magazine The Black Man to London in 1935 when he came to live in the city. A veteran publisher, Garvey knew the importance of the press to any ­struggle. He had already launched the Negro World, the most successful black newspaper of its time, with readers from the 6 million members of the UNIA worldwide. He had also produced other publications such as La Prensa in Panama and La Nación in Costa Rica. A life-long activist: Garvey was a key global figure in the struggle against colonialism. He travelled the world with a mission to uplift the Black race and

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Figure 19.3  Cover of Negro World, 31 July 1920. Its publisher, Marcus Garvey, brought his magazine, The Black Man, to London in 1935

he started a newspaper at almost every mission post. The six newspapers and journals he founded in his lifetime played their part in the struggle. (Benjamin 1995: 25) The decade also saw the launch of other similarly focused news organs, including the International African Service Bureau’s (IASB) bulletin Africa and the World. The organisation had been co-founded by Sierra Leonean-born pan-Africanist Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson along with Padmore, Ras T. Makonnen, C. L. R. James and Jomo Kenyatta. Wallace-Johnson edited the publication. It eventually grew into the African Sentinel (the second publication with that title) and later the monthly International African Opinion, which James edited. The latter was said to be a tool to help unify African

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people (Fryer 1984: 342; Benjamin 1995: 20), however, like The Keys, its steady publication was disrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939. With the Second World War ended, Makonnen, living in Manchester in 1947, tried again, this time starting the monthly periodical, PanAfrica. In a July editorial, describing its mission, Makonnen wrote, ‘Our readers, united in a common consciousness, are widely scattered; their lives and problems are different and they know little of one another. Can we not introduce them?’ (Pan-Africa as cited in Hoyles and Hoyles 2011).

A Voice of Immigrants The mass immigration of blacks from the Caribbean to Britain following the Second World War brought opportunities to speak to a new black audience composed primarily of former servicemen and women who had stayed on after the war, and those recruited to take workingclass jobs that whites did not want in healthcare, transportation and other services, and a growing number of students. Finding a hostile environment and seeking to maintain a connection with their birthplaces, the new residents turned to the increasing number of publications that were aimed at them. The majority were based in London’s largest black communities. Among them was the Weekly Gleaner, an offshoot of the century-old conservative Jamaican daily, the Gleaner. Launched in 1951, it addressed Britain’s large Jamaican community, which outnumbered other Caribbean residents because of their high rate of service in the Second World War. Writer and activist Dr Augustine John said, ‘There was a Jamaican presence in this country long before the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury Dock in 1948’ (John 2017). Jamaican expatriates supported the newspaper, with demand spreading outside of London to other Caribbean communities in the Midlands. The Jamaican-based editorial team selected stories it thought were relevant for the British market, with topics including the state of the country’s independence movement and sports, especially cricket. Long-time reader Kenneth O’Sullivan said: It [the Weekly Gleaner] was our main link with Jamaica as there wasn’t even the concept of a mobile phone; we had to write letters and that took weeks before there was a reply, when a copy of the Gleaner came you know that you are holding a piece of Jamaica in your hands; there were some regrettable news that you could not miss but there was a lot of good news showing Jamaica developing

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as an independent nation. (Weekly Gleaner 30 June­– ­6 July 2011, p. 22) Though the newspaper targeted Jamaicans at first, it eventually became more inclusive. Gleaner executive George Ruddock explained that ‘In the early days it used to be unofficially known as the Jamaican Weekly Gleaner; people complained that it was too Jamaica-focused. When other publications, like the Caribbean Times, folded, focus shifted more towards pan-Caribbean coverage’ (Ruddock 2017). In 2017, the Weekly Gleaner remains the only British newspaper that has a link directly to the Caribbean. Despite the massive growth of the World Wide Web in the late twentieth century and social media in the twenty-first, the publication still has a strong readership. Its publishers said: We’re living in an age where you don’t have to rely on newspapers for information­ – ­with the Internet­ – ­but you still have a loyal readership. Surprisingly you do have some Jamaicans who have come to the UK to study and they have stayed on, and integrated themselves. You don’t have the mass migration­– ­but you still have a lot of people who are left over from before visa restrictions, so they continue to have that affinity with the Caribbean. (Ruddock 2017) Continuing to use a Jamaican-based editorial staff, the paper now combines news from the Caribbean and the UK. In 1952, a year after the Weekly Gleaner’s launch, Jamaican-born LCP member Billy Strachan’s left-leaning Caribbean News was published by the London branch of the Caribbean Labour Congress, of which Strachan was a member. An active communist, so were his fellow writers, including political activist and journalist Claudia Jones, who briefly ran the newspaper. However, the publication’s stance led to conflict both within and outside its ranks. Banned in all the Caribbean islands because of its writers’ political activities and ideologies (Benjamin 1995: 39), the Caribbean News met its demise, according to Stratchan, after colleagues George Bowrin and Jones took the view that the News was too narrow and sectarian. It folded when Strachan decided he would no longer run it and the free printing provided by one of his communist party contacts ceased (Sherwood et al. 2000: 201). It was soon followed by Jones’s West Indian Gazette, which made history as the country’s first black commercial newspaper (see case study below). The 1960s and 70s saw an increase in the number of black

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newspapers and periodicals catering to the country’s growing black population. Most were short-lived. Among them were: Black Voice, Grassroots, Freedom News, Frontline, Black People’s Freedom Weekly, Black Workers Action Weekly, Black Liberator, Link, Caribe, AngloCaribbean News, Tropic, Daylight International, The Hustler, West Indies Observer, Afro-Asian-Caribbean News, Magnet (Benjamin 1995: 4), the New Independent, the Bradford Black, Scope, Focus and Sepia. Though surrounded by a wealth of competitors, the West Indian World launched in 1971 with high aspirations­ – ­to set the agenda for Britain’s diverse black community, focusing on the social, political and media trends of the time (Benjamin 1995: 48). The first British-based black newspaper sold nationally on the newsstands (Benjamin 1995: 4); it was founded by Aubrey Baynes, a St Vincent-born publisher and editor who had worked in the black press. Baynes had assembled an unprecedented number of seasoned black media professionals, including Len Renwick, who was in charge of advertising and would later leave to join the Afro-Caribbean Post. The black community welcomed WIW’s strong views and editorials. Six months after its launch it celebrated its success in an editorial: When, on June 11th of this year West Indian World was launched there were any number of skeptics of all shades who maintained that it could not be done . . . Well, it has completed its 27th issue of unbroken production. Our paper is selling near 25,000 copies weekly. (West Indian World as cited in Morrison 2007) However, even as it saluted its achievement, the publication was facing challenging financial straights. Baynes left in 1973, selling his shares to Arif Ali, publisher of the Westindian Digest, a monthly magazine also targeting the Caribbean community. Ali was later replaced by photojournalist Caudley George, who would be WIW’s last publisher. The paper folded in 1985 and was bought from liquidators by one of its founders, Tony Douglas, for £1,000. Former reporter Angela McIntyre (then Ackah), who worked at the WIW in its later years, said the newspaper provided an important bridge for Caribbean immigrants and their first-generation British offspring: The West Indian World straddled two worlds­ – ­the Caribbean and the UK and brought them together. We served people who wanted news from ‘home’ and British-born readers who were keen to know what was going on here in the UK. We reinforced

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the fact that we all had a collective identity and a common agenda. (McIntyre 2017) Following his departure from the WIW, Ali returned to newspaper publishing, starting the Caribbean Times in 1981 under his company Hansib Publishing. Like its predecessors, the Times covered news, sport and social developments in the Caribbean, targeting the UK’s West Indian and African-Caribbean population and was ‘an important anti-racist campaigning organ’ (James and Harris 1993: 275). Ali later launched the African Times in 1984, to fill a void in what he described ‘as a growing community that needed positive representation’ (Morrison 2007: 40). In 1997 Ali sold off the newspapers and a magazine to focus on book publishing (see Sherwood 2011). Nearly a decade later, in 2006, the purchasers, Ethnic Media Group Ltd, a national newspaper company, merged the Caribbean Times with the New Nation, which itself had launched in 1996 (Sweney 2006). However, the new publication would only last a few years with its parent company going into administration in 2009, and the rights to the Caribbean Times and other titles sold.

Black, British and Irish A confluence of events and issues preceded the launch of the first commercial newspaper aimed at British-born blacks in the early 1980s. In January 1981, thirteen black youngsters were killed in a house fire in Deptford, South London. While authorities considered it an accident, the black community feared a racially motivated attack since the property was in a National Front stronghold and threats had been made against black residents. Just three months later in April, riots erupted in the heavily black populated South London area of Brixton, after residents believed an injured man who had been taken into police custody was not given adequate medical attention. In addition to these incidents, tension had been simmering between black residents and the police over the latter’s use of what was commonly known as the ‘Sus law’, which allowed police to stop, search and even arrest members of the public who they believed were acting suspiciously, though not necessarily committing a crime. The Voice, founded by Jamaican-born accountant Val McCalla and business partner, Alex Pascall, then host of the BBC’s Black Londoners programme, emerged in this seismic period. It still proudly proclaims that at its founding it ‘campaigned for young Black Britons who faced discrimination at the hands of the law during the 1980s’. (See the Voice

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newspaper, available online. See also the case study below.) The weekly publication, which called itself ‘Britain’s Best Black Newspaper’, was soon joined by a slew of others. The paper’s management itself launched the short-lived Weekly Journal, the country’s first national black broadsheet, targeting black professionals. Competition included Black Briton and the New Nation, both started by former Voice staffers. The weekly print edition of New Nation was funded by Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law, Elkin Pianim, and edited by former Voice staffer and Weekly Journal editor Richard Adeshiyan. Former news editor, Angela Foster, described the newspaper as ‘a brash, young rival to the Voice. At its height, it sold nearly 22,000 copies a week, providing a heady mix of showbiz, hard news and provocative features and nurturing the editorial talents of the nation’s young journalists.’ Foster, writing after its 2009 closure, continued, it eschewed ‘tales of victimhood for aspirational stories and features. It was unashamedly celeb-focused­ – ­that’s what its readers wanted­– ­but also delivered hard-hitting features’ (Foster 2009). In 2017, with New Nation and other challengers long defunct, the Voice remains the longest lasting and best-known publication for black British people. However, the black media landscape is constantly shifting. Recent vacuums have been filled by a number of targeted print and online publications with specific audiences in mind. They include websites like britishafrocaribbean.com for people of Caribbean heritage, and UK Zambians, a lifestyle print and online magazine focusing on that country’s nationals in the United Kingdom. In line with the trend towards focusing on ethnicity and challenging the dominance of Caribbean driven organs, publications run by and focused on the country’s African community also began to appear from the 1990s onwards. UK-based editions of magazines like West Africa had flourished for decades (launched in 1917, it closed its doors in 2005). However, new publications began targeting the country’s rapidly growing number of black citizens of direct African heritage. Nigerian-born businessman Femi Okutubo launched The Trumpet newspaper in 1995, starting as a monthly community newspaper for Africans in the UK. According to Okutubo, The Trumpet was originally aimed at addressing negative stories in the UK media, which portrayed blacks, especially Nigerians, as ‘Benefit Thieves and Fraudsters’ (Klaxi 2012). A digital edition was launched in 2008, expanding coverage to Africans throughout the diaspora and on the continent. In 2017, the print edition was distributed through various outlets including supermarkets, African restaurants, libraries, places of worship, diplomatic

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missions, salons and events visited frequently by Africans and, according to its publishers, reaches over 350,000 readers worldwide (The Trumpet Media Group 2017). Its main rival, the African Voice, which was founded in 2001 by entrepreneur Mike Abiola, has a circulation of 75,000 and a readership of 500,000 according to Abiola. Audience demographics break down into first-generation immigrants (45 per cent), and Britishborn, second-generation Africans (40 per cent) with visitors and nonAfricans accounting for the rest. Most of its readership (70 per cent) is in Greater London. The publication focuses on topics from Africa and the diaspora as well as news from a black British perspective, and is intended to ‘breathe a fresh perspective into the headlines by promoting the positive contribution British Africans make to the UK economy’. Abiola said ‘that changing the portrayal of Africa is not the prerogative of the Western media alone, but that the African diasporic press has a major role to play’ (Bunce et al. 2016: 66, 69). Alongside an impressive array of black newspapers, black-oriented magazines and intellectual and literary journals have made a modest showing in Britain since the mid-twentieth century. The largest and most enduring of them have focused on women or special interests, like politics. The oldest is Race & Class, a journal of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR). It was established in 1959 under its former name Race, but was renamed in 1974. The quarterly academic and political journal describes itself as ‘A journal for Black and Third World Liberation’. Like the majority of publications discussed here, it is based in London. Another IRR-created publication, Race Today, was later published by former members including journalist Darcus Howe, who split from the organisation over ideological differences. Few other organs have sprung up in black communities outside the capital. The Northern Journal, founded in Leeds in the mid-1990s, was one exception. Edited by Dr Carl Hylton, it was affiliated with the Black Men’s Forum, a voluntary collective of men of African descent, which had been formed after the 1997 Leeds Conference of Black Men in Britain­ – ­Marching into the Millennium. The UK’s first black glossy lifestyle magazine, Root, was founded in 1979 by photographer Neil Kenlock, who also worked for the West Indian World. Ali’s Hansib Publications purchased it in 1983 and sold it off along with other titles in 1997. Other popular magazines at the time included McCalla’s Chic, a women’s general interest magazine, which folded after being sold off to a Nigerian publisher and McCalla’s music monthly Black Beat International, the first black-owned glossy publication in the genre (Benjamin 1995: 73, 89).

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Two magazines have stood the test of time. The oldest, Black Beauty & Hair, has been published since 1981. Originally owned by a white company, it was sold to an Asian Zimbabwean and a white Kenyan, former publishing professionals in 1987. Irene Shelley is its long-time editor. Meanwhile, though younger, Pride magazine arguably enjoys a higher profile. Originally acquired by McCalla from three young Londoners in 1993, it targets young women of colour between 18 and 35 (Benjamin 1995: 88). The magazine was later sold to Jamaicanborn financier Carl Cushnie, who named his son CJ as its publisher. In 2007, the magazine had a readership of 200,000. Despite their twenty-year-plus dominance, both magazines have faced intermittent competition from shorter-lived print start-ups including Visions in Black, the first black-owned fashion magazine which was founded in 1993 (Benjamin 1995: 93); Black Hair, which was first published in 1998 and had a nine-year print run before going solely online; Aspire, launched in 2004 and Noir in 2005­ – ­both of which catered to professionals­– ­and Colures, a bimonthly launched in 2007, which was backed by the independent Blackhorse Publishing. Meanwhile, online alternatives like Shola Adenekan’s internet-based thenewblackmagazine.com have been longer lasting. Men’s titles, however, have faired less well. ‘Black British men’s magazines such as Nine (a black Loaded), Drum and Untold (a black GQ) closed because the target market was much smaller than for black women’s magazines, and there was a lack of committed investors’ (Izundu 2007).

Ireland Unlike the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland has produced only a handful of newspapers or periodicals targeted specifically at, or inclusive of, its black citizens. This is due in large part to the absence of a critical mass of individuals and black scholars advocating for having a voice. Both had actively generated a black press in post-Windrush Britain (White 2017). In the late twentieth century, a significant migration of people of colour, including Africans and their offspring, created a newly diverse audience (White 2017) and thus the opportunity to build a fledging black-inclusive press. Mainstream media outlets’ portrayal of Africans at the time ‘brought forth a constant flow of racist representations and the counter-representations produced to challenge them’ (White 2012: 69). It is in this context that in 2000 Nigerian-born journalists Chinedu Onyejelem and Abel Ugba launched the bimonthly Metro

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Éireann to reflect its motto: ‘Many Voices, One Ireland’. According to Onyejelem, the newspaper is intended to ‘provide information for Irish people as well as immigrants; for Irish people to know more about immigrants coming to Ireland and for immigrants to know more about the society they have come to live in’ (Harrison 2007). Although not totally black-focused, the publication’s audience does include Africans, the African diaspora, as well as Asians, Latin Americans and Eastern Europeans, addressing Ireland’s emergent multiculturalism. In 2017 the print run ranged from 4,000 to 10,000. Onyejelem, who came to the country in 1997, worked for a variety of publications including the Irish Times, before deciding to launch Metro Éireann. The Times backed the venture providing human resources and becoming a shareholder, though that relationship ended several years ago (Onyejelem 2017). Similarly, a Nigerian businessman launched Heritage magazine in 2001, targeting middle-class, educated Africans in Dublin. The publication serves to highlight the class distinctions in African communities and to reveal an identity beyond the asylum seeker and immigrant narrative so popular in white Irish society (White 2012: 70). As such Heritage’s inaugural issue featured a wide range of Africans including artists, students and entrepreneurs. Sharing the mandate of its predecessors, Peter Anny-Nzekwue launched his monthly Xclusive magazine in March 2006. Stating that it ‘celebrates African people and affirms Ireland’s multicultural life’, (Xclusive as cited in White 2012) the publication focuses on entertainment, fashion, religious, social and musical events and general lifestyle. It is sold in the major Irish bookshop Eason’s, as well as African shops, and newsagents all over Ireland, and is also available in Belfast and London and published online. Another publication, the online website AfricansMagazine.com, also launched in the early 2000s but was short-lived. With the increasing proliferation of online platforms, just like their white counterparts, the twenty-first century has raised questions about the future of traditional black print media. Sustaining publications continues to be challenging and has led to questions about their viability in an era of fierce competition from the internet’s free information sources. When the New Nation ceased publication in late January 2009, former editor Angela Foster wrote an op-ed explaining that the paper had been felled by this element, but that ‘there were other factors too: the fall in public sector advertising; plus increasing coverage of ethnic minority issues in the national press­– ­which meant its reporters were

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competing for stories with far fewer resources­– ­and lack of investment took its toll’. Lamenting that ‘The demise of New Nation is a tragedy for black media generally’, Foster asked ‘So is there still a need for the black press?’ Her answer was an unequivocal ‘Yes. There are still many issues affecting the black community that do not get covered in many mainstream papers.’ Foster welcomed the internet: ‘Many black journalists and black media outlets have now moved online . . . the web may be one way of providing a forum for those stories that are important to black communities’ (Foster 2009). In the years since then, a host of new internet-based black British publications have done exactly that. Most are owned and operated by blacks and, with fewer financial overheads, enjoy wide circulation. Among them are Precious, Afro Woman Online.com, Ten2Teens Magazine for 10- to 19-year-olds, the Afronews UK and AfroLondon News. Case Studies The West Indian Gazette Britain’s first commercial black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette (later expanded to the West Indian Gazette And Afro-Asian Caribbean News) or WIG as it was known in the black community, launched amid turbulent racial times. In 1958, just a few months after flyers announced its arrival, London’s Notting Hill and Nottingham’s Robin Hood Chase exploded with racial clashes. West Indian Gazette’s publisher, seasoned political activist and journalist Claudia Vera Cumberbatch Jones, was no stranger to turmoil. She had been imprisoned in the United States during the anti-communist era in the 1940s and 50s before being deported to the UK. Jones, who had originally worked on the newspaper’s development with Garvey’s first wife Amy Ashwood Garvey, found an editorial home in the centre of black life, Brixton, South London, above a black-owned record shop­– ­perhaps the country’s first. Its owner, ex-Royal Air Force member Theo Campbell, would later became the Gazette’s sports editor (Hinds 2017). WIG’s longest-serving reporter Donald Hinds, who also worked as a bus conductor at the time, recalls that ‘from late summer to the autumn of 1958, the Gazette’s office did more business meeting worried Blacks than did the Migrants’ Service Department’ (Hinds 2008: 92). Furthermore, Jones used the paper’s pages as ‘a forum of communication and public education; support was mobilized for those arrested while defending themselves and the community against racist attacks’ (James and Harris 1993: 155). In addition, for Jones, the Gazette and the Carnival she helped launch in 1959 were building blocks to help construct a common identity and

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agenda. They ‘were to become the means by which a West Indian community conscious of its history was to be born on British soil’ (Schwarz 2003: 273). Jones’s commitment to community building was understandable. She had met a racially hostile country on her arrival three years earlier. It was a place where: calls for the control of Black immigration were regular . . . Many employers would say that they did not hire coloureds or darkies (if they were being polite). Landladies blamed the fact that they could not rent a room to a coloured person because the White neighbours would object. (Hinds 2008: 91) Black residents were ready for the new monthly organ, since white newspapers generally ignored them and the Gleaner, which had launched seven years before, focused on Jamaica rather than the UK. However, the Gazette immediately faced financial hardship, operating on a shoestring budget, supported by advertising revenue mostly from local black entrepreneurs and businesses. Barely able to meet her expenses, Jones, who would ‘assist’ contributors, had to accept that sometimes one edition would be rolled over into another (Hinds 2017). But Jones remained undaunted, attracting prominent national and international supporters. Hinds said, ‘People would do this for Claudia because of who she was’ (Hinds 2017). Throughout its existence, the newspaper would be a hub for blacks from all walks of life, gaining national and international prominence. Politicians such as then Jamaican Premier Norman Manley, David Thomas Pitt, a Grenadian-born general practitioner and political activist and the second peer of African descent in the House of Lords, as well as celebrities like American singer and activist Paul Robeson, all came to see Jones. Meanwhile, British government officials also engaged with Jones, with Members of Parliament inviting her for tea. The Ku Klux Klan even wrote to the newspaper complaining and ordering that a copy of it be sent to the group (Hinds 2017). The newspaper’s prominence was perhaps due in part to its commitment to reporting both international and local stories with equal vigour. Cultural events from Harlem, the shows and political activities of Harry Belafonte, and Caribbean news, especially from Jamaica, lay along side local reports from Brixton or Notting Hill. In a February 1962 edition of the WIG, for example, Jones wrote a multi-page article about spending a night in a Notting Hill police station, having being stopped after leaving a party (Jones 1962). Jones’s charismatic leadership was short-lived, however. She died in December 1964 aged 49, just six years after the Gazette’s launch. As a testament to her influence, tributes came from across the world and from all strata of society, including from Robeson and W. E. B. Dubois’s widow, Shirley. Meanwhile, the newspaper published a front-page article on her passing

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which was later followed up with a special memorial edition. It was soon clear, however, that the paper would be unable to survive without Jones. Despite the efforts of its new editor A. Manchanda, the Gazette ceased publication just eight months and four editions after Jones’s death. The Voice newspaper When Jamaican-born Val McCalla started the Voice newspaper in London in 1982, few believed that it had a future. However, the former accountant felt that there was ‘a new generation of people of Caribbean and African background who lived in Britain, grew up here and had issues that affect them here, so he wanted a newspaper that could reflect that’ (Ruddock 2017). Fortunately, he had a trump card­– a ­ supply of aspiring black journalists who would work for very little. Previous staffers include former Commission for Racial Equality head Trevor Phillips, filmmaker and novelist Kolton Lee and publisher Steve Pope, among others. Focusing on campaigning again racism, especially in the Metropolitan Police, the Voice, like its predecessors, quickly became a sounding board and resource for black people. Former editor Annie Stewart recalls that readers would not necessarily call about stories, but to get help (Beckett 1996). Despite questions surrounding a start-up loan from Barclay’s Bank, which was doing business in South Africa, the newspaper attracted the attention of British-born blacks, spreading to other cities with significant black populations such as Birmingham and Manchester. At its height, the Voice’s confirmed circulation reportedly hit 57,000 in the early to mid-1990s; it later abandoned its Audit Bureau of Circulation certification altogether. However, the Voice ran into financial problems following McCalla’s death in 2002 and his family sold it to the Gleaner Company in 2004. The Jamaican-based company saw it as a great opportunity to expand in the UK. ‘Because of its market it was serving, it filled the gap that the Gleaner wasn’t serving­– ­the black British audience’ (Ruddock 2017). The Gleaner Company formed the GV Media Group Ltd to manage its new operation­– ­prior to that the newspapers had been managed by separate companies­ – ­the Gleaner by the Gleaner Company UK Ltd, and the Voice by the Voice Media Group. The decision was made to not amalgamate the two, but to target them to two separate markets. Ruddock said the Gleaner represents the older generation who want news from the Caribbean and the Voice, black British people who were born here (Ruddock 2017). In 2017 the newspaper had 100,000 readers per week, a distribution chain of 3,000 retailers and fourteen full-time staffers­– ­including seven in editorial, several columnists and five freelancers, some of whom covered black populations in the country’s northern cities (Ruddock 2017). Today, the Voice’s

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audience is primarily in London, with Birmingham (UK) and New York in the United States following behind. The publication, which also has an online edition, caters to those audiences with a Northern News section, as well as news about America, particularly entertainment. According to Ruddock, the print edition of the Voice remains a viable business despite the financial disruption caused by online competition. Though believing that black print publications, particularly the Voice are still needed, Ruddock admits that the company has been concerned about competition from the internet for some time, but made the decision that it would continue to publish the newspaper while there was a market for it. ‘If there wasn’t a market we would have folded a long time ago. We still get sales every week. If the online revenue would surpass what we get for the newspaper, we would consider whether it would be worth keeping the paper itself. The newspaper still is first in ad revenue’ (Ruddock 2017). Once supported by local government advertising, which dried up after the financial crash of 2008, the Voice now relies on commercial advertising from supermarkets, growing black businesses and money transfer companies. Sales also come from African enterprises because of the newspaper’s decision several years ago to focus on Africa (Ruddock 2017). That shift came after the 2011 census, which indicated that Africans were Britain’s largest growing ethnic group. Mindful of the need to diversify income streams, the company generates additional income from print publications such as an UK black restaurant guide and a special edition during Black History Month. It is also working on monetising its fastest-growing area, its social media platforms, through online advertising on Facebook and Twitter, and its newsletter which features eight news stories a day and reaches 30,000 people (Ruddock 2017).

Conclusion Twenty years into the twenty-first century, it appears that there is still a need for culture-based print journalism to reach the African or Caribbean immigrant who still wants to find news from home in their local stores, beauty salons and other gathering places. There is also a need for black Britons to define their own issues in a sustained, referable way that stands firm even in a social-media-dominated, multicultural (and even intra-racial) environment.

Chapter Twenty

CARTOONS Jane Chapman, Kate Allison, Andrew Kerr and John Cafferkey

Introduction

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ince their spectacular rise to public prominence in the 1840s, when the satirical magazine Punch commissioned John Leech to create the first series of ‘Mr Punch Cartoons’, humorous, politically motivated graphic satire has been a popular mainstay of British journalism. Throughout the twentieth century, cartoons relentlessly appeared in all sorts of newspapers, yet a twenty-first-century reader reflecting on the cartoons created in the first half of the previous century may find it difficult to fully realise the immense impact and journalistic importance of the cartoon in an era before the near universalisation of television consumption. The twentieth century saw many events that were recorded in newspaper cartoons: the First World War, the 1916 Easter Rising, women’s suffrage, the Second World War, the Cold War, inter alia. In fact, by the early twentieth century, the inclusion of political cartoons in editorial pages was already well established as a key element of news coverage, reinforcing the editorial standpoint of a particular article or newspaper. It has been postulated that humorous pictures, cartoons and caricatures are more easily created and understood than comical text. In this sense, the humorous picture serves to communicate a more credible and digestible message than a similar conveyance presented in other media, offering immediacy and accessibility. Most political cartoons are designed to influence viewers with regard to specific political events of the day, but what is the essence of their appeal? Some of the appeal, of course, is due to the easy visual accessibility 414

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of a picture. But some must be due to the visceral punch a cartoon can give to an opinion, affording the reader a thrill of outrage or affirmation they would never get from written paragraphs (Dooley and Heller 2005: 15). Cartoons appeal to readers on a number of levels. Perhaps most importantly, their pictures do not require a high degree of literacy, a fact to which their rapid rise in popularity during the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries is often attributed. Art historian Ernst Gombrich recognised the power of conveying messages to the audience through seemingly incongruous placement of figures in odd situations within cartoons by proposing a six-point filter in order to identify the cartoonist’s method of compressing messages about people and events. These are: figures of speech; condensation and comparison; portrait caricature; political bestiary; natural metaphors; power of contrast (Gombrich 1956: 127–42). A ­publication’s politics are reflected in the telescoping of exaggerated opinions, an effective way to pass on an authoritatively saturated ­message to the readership, so that cartoons represent an organ’s editorial leaning toward a political viewpoint as part of a drive by the publication for increased sales. Thus political cartoons as headline representation are in effect a combination of artistic licence and a critical version of the truth, which means that, attached to newspapers, cartoons make very effective conveyors of an editorial slant. In cartoons about war and extreme events, for instance, opinions are often polarised in a brutal manner and the reader is left in no doubt about the cartoonist’s version of events. In a cartoon, narrative constructs are attached to a historical precedent of truth. Whether the image is a straightforward political one, a composite aimed at, say recruitment, or a gag cartoon, the way it is filtered allows an understanding of the constructs which make up the whole narrative comprehension. What each cartoon does is convey an extreme journalistic slant, hegemonic or counter-hegemonic to the regime. In context, the political cartoon represents an expression of a news story telescoped onto characters and events. Therefore the development of cartoons is analysed here by connecting trends, style and events.

Case study: Pioneering Irish Satire Irish magazine cartoons blossomed in the last decades of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth with the arrival of talented cartoonists like Thomas Fitzpatrick, who set up The Lepracaun in 1905 as a cartoon monthly, and publications such as Irish World and Irish Weekly Independent. The Lepracaun

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Figure 20.1  Front cover, Fitzpatrick, The Lepracaun, Dublin, January 1911 (Figure 20.1) was a monthly anti-establishment paper consisting of several political cartoons over its sixteen to twenty pages. The organ covered many topics of Irish and British politics including activism for Home Rule, the 1916 Easter Rising, and also the effects of the Great War on Ireland. Its front cover illustrated the editorial process; it depicted the ‘Reporting Dept’ as a slow snail, and various speedy pixies representing bringing ‘Copy’, ‘Special Wire’, ‘Stop Press’ and ‘Ink’ to the leprechaun at the centre in his ‘editorial (musha) room’ [sic]. Such an arrangement demonstrates the structure of an illustrated magazine as a narrative construct commenting on the issues of the month. It also shows a hare in front of a moon, a reference to legend, mysticism and madness. In the case of the First World War, types of truth enhancements indicate respective attachment to, or detachment from, imperial institutions­– ­a comparative point between mainland Britain and Ireland that reached a high point in 1916, the year of the Easter Rising. Illustrative satire can provide a snapshot with potential to provide an element of truth and comment about an event. Thus a Bernard Partridge cartoon in Punch (3 May 1916) about Augustine Birrell’s incompetence as Secretary of State for Ireland in 1916, ‘Wanted­– ­A St Patrick’, produced a week after the Easter Rising of April 1916, showed a critical view of the Secretary of State for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, as St Patrick trying to fend off the Sinn Féin snake. According to legend, St Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland but here St Augustine, as his friends knew him, failed to

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drive this serpent away. This snake was topped with a dachshund’s head; this last represented Germany. Germany had attempted to supply arms to the Irish rebels but its ship Aud was sunk off Cork without delivering any of its cargo. Birrell was removed from office not long after this cartoon; his handling of the events leading up to the Rising was judged to be poor. Here the narrative is joined with the context and voice of the design as the image of a real person, Birrell, is combined with legend and historical context. It is worth pointing out that both British and Irish newspapers sometimes erroneously attributed the blame to Sinn Féin, when in this event the real antagonists for the Easter Rising were the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and the Irish Volunteers (Douglas et al. 1998: 185).

Case Study: Football as Visual Political Satire One feature of late nineteenth-century sports history was the rivalry between rugby and football. During the Great War it was football that was the most popular game amongst soldiers, unsurprisingly perhaps because the rank and file were drawn from the working classes who watched the game; the most vocal of the adherents to the amateur, upper-class game took exception to the huge crowds which were attending the Saturday matches of professional football teams. It is against this backdrop that a sustained campaign against the continuation of professional football emerged in the early months of the Great War. Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 and millions of young men began to enlist in the armed forces to fight in Europe. For many sports teams this meant they could no longer fulfil their fixtures because whole teams were volunteering for the Western Front. However, the Football Association decided that the 1914/15 Football League season would go ahead, much to the ire of a number of politicians, media outlets and people in power. Professional footballers were criticised for playing sport instead of joining the army to fight in the war, showing contrasting images of muddy fields­– ­the football pitch and the battlefield. On 21 October 1914, before conscription was introduced, Punch published a cartoon, captioned­– ­‘The Greater Game’, which would be used as a First World War propaganda poster to shame professional footballers into joining up. The cartoon depicts the magazine’s eponymous character ‘Mr Punch’ addressing a professional soccer player, in his kit, holding a soccer ball with fans watching on from the stand. Beneath the illustration the cartoon reads: ‘Mr Punch (to professional association player): ‘No doubt you can make money in this field, my friend, but there’s only one field to-day where you can get honour.’ The fans in the stand are left in no doubt, for they are as much the recipients of the message as the player. The message was targeted in a number of

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ways: at professional sport, in particular soccer and the professional players who are earning money playing soccer instead of fighting in the war; at the ‘idlers’, able bodied, fighting-age young men who are watching professional sport when they could be fighting; and at the Football Association, which had decided to proceed with the 1914/15 professional football season in spite of the outbreak of war. This stance was in opposition to many amateur clubs, who had suspended their seasons, so that players could join up and fight for king and country. According to Assaf Mond, ‘The daily papers, especially Lord Northcliffe’s high-circulation The Times, Daily Mail and Evening News, were the main voices in the debate over professional football’s continuation . . .’ (Mond 2016: 274). Mond describes a sustained campaign by the national dailies against professional football in the southern, right-leaning press. However, the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle was sympathetic to professional soccer players. This may not seem surprising; with the the Evening Chronicle being sold in the mainly working-class north-east, its readers would be supporters of Newcastle United, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. The Evening Chronicle cartoons presented the opposite case to those southern, middle-class newspapers that were angry about professional football continuing during the war. Cartoons feature the characters Geordie and Magpie­– w ­ ith Geordie being a typical, working-class man and Magpie being the mascot of Newcastle United Football Club. This serves two purposes. Firstly, cartoons acted as a recruiter for young, working-class football supporters, depicting shooting practice at St James’s Park (the home of Newcastle United) Geordie and Magpie are seen marching to the recruiting offices and a Liverpool player congratulates Magpie in his uniform, saying ‘Well done Tyneside.’ Secondly, cartoons presented the case for professional football and in particular Newcastle United, reflecting the money that clubs were raising for the war relief fund (Evening Chronicle, Saturday, 29 August 1914, p.  1), players’ wages being reduced to help the war effort (Evening Chronicle, Saturday, 3 October 1914, p. 1) and consistent support for the war effort in its cartoons (Evening Chronicle, Saturday, 19 December 1914, p. 1). During 1914/15, the army was only looking for volunteers and single and childless men were being encouraged. However, for professional footballers, whether they were single or married seemed not to matter, it was the nature of their profession that caused so much outrage: Their tirades ignored the fact that the vast majority of working-class soccer was amateur, and that many of the more than 300,000 players registered with amateur teams had already enlisted in the forces. The First World War football sample of fifty or so cartoons nearly all capture the paradox that existed during the first year of the war. While the upper and middle classes were appalled to see young, fit and healthy men either playing

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football for money or paying to watch it, the reality was that most of the British Army was composed of those same young, working-class men and it was soccer that was embraced by the armed forces. In summary, cartoons during that important first year of the war resisted the criticism from the establishment and the southern-based national press in order to portray soccer from the perspective of the ordinary working-class British soldier.

Trends Developing the Personal As regards longer-term trends throughout the twentieth century as a whole, use of the personal became an enhanced feature of cartoons in two ways. Firstly, one general development in cartooning that began during the First World War and continued throughout the twentieth century was a return to the traditions of personal caricature dating back to the early eighteenth century. In those early days, the works of Gillray and Rowlandson ridiculed the first British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole. Gillray also composed depictions of Napoleon Bonaparte and William Pitt. These early cartoons were published in special shops where amused viewers could see and buy them, either as single sheets or as collectors’ editions. Later, cartoons were published in newspapers that either supported or subverted the status quo. Personalisation clearly emerged in the work of prominent British cartoonist William Kerridge Haselden, who created cartoons and strips for the Daily Mirror before, during and after the Great War. New attitudes towards women were astutely personified in his character Miss Joy Flapperton, while incompetent adjustments to total war on the Home Front office centred on the character Colonel Dug Out. Yet Haselden focused the majority of his political satire onto the figure of Kaiser Wilhelm during the First World War. In the two-panel cartoon (see Figure 20.2), ‘The quick changes of Big and Little Willie No. 4’, Haselden makes a reference to nationalism by first using German chivalry, which is then contrasted with the Allied victory in 1918 led on the Western Front by Marshall Foch. An increased focus on heads of state was combined with an increase in the prominence of ideological symbols such as the swastika of Nazi Germany and the rising sun of imperial Japan. In turn, this heralded a marked reduction in the use of traditional national personification and political bestiary in the forms of Britannia, Germania, Marianne, the British lion and the French cockerel (Bryant 1989). Indeed, the remarkable decline in these heroic national generalisations coincided

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Figure 20.2  ‘The quick changes of Big and Little Willie No. 4’, by W. K. Haselden, 1918

with a democratisation of the hero in British cartoons that forms part of the First World War legacy of Bruce Bairnsfather’s cartoons for Bystander magazine depicting life in the trenches and featuring the immensely popular and dour ‘everyman’, Old Bill. Derivatives and ‘Amateur’ Cartoons Secondly, the cartoon format was adopted derivatively as a means of communication by increasing numbers of people in a large variety of ‘amateur’ newspapers. During the Great War, cartoons created by amateur artists for public formats in trench newspapers and regimental journals reveal some of the ways that soldiers perceived and reacted

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to the war environment. Our research process has recuperated some 350 undigitised and often poor quality trench cartoons. These provide political evidence of the ‘war culture’ of servicemen, in particular the system of habits, values and beliefs that constitute the mentalities and perspectives which were formed in response to the conflict. Indeed, it is through this process of making illustrative cartoons that soldiers endured the effects of the war by imagining and illustrating the conflict. Although soldier cartoons shared a collective purpose of boosting morale among the ranks, they also capture the universal concerns about everyday life, including complaints about officers, medical services, discomforts, food and drink, leave, military routines, and expectations versus emerging reality. While officially backed trench journals (as opposed to the many unofficial and often short-lived regimental or battalion self-­publications) were censored, cartoon illustrators had much more freedom in comparison to the home front, mainstream press. The latter were ­considered by soldiers to be unrealistic pedlars of jingoism and heroism. Unlike the bestselling set of 150 professional cartoons on the war that the British government commissioned from Raemaekers, for instance, trench journals presented issues and topics as ‘disarmingly humourised and shorn of their more demotic dimension’, and this meant that some cartoons had a hard edge. Probably the most devastating comment on the subject of war followed by peace was entitled ‘The Profiteer’. The first panel is captioned ‘France 1918’ and shows a war-weary soldier walking through mud, burdened with kit and surrounded by desolation in a barren landscape. In the second panel, the landscape is also barren and desolate, but it is hot and sunny, and captioned ‘Aussie, 1920’. The same man is now a hobo burdened with a backpack of bedding and a billy-can in his hand, this time sweating, but otherwise in an identical pose. Propaganda During the cataclysm of the Second World War, the propaganda value of cartoon communication for the British public cannot be overstated. This is, of course, not to say that the restrictions of the second ‘total war’ within a quarter of a century did not, on the one hand, bring about a number of problems for the cartoonists of the era. On the other hand, events such as the formation of the Ministry of Information in 1939 and its subsequent imposition of censorship on the British press, combined with the introduction of paper rationing in February 1940 increased the importance of a terse editorial illustration due to the

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reduction in space that could be dedicated to text and the fact that cartoons were not censored as stringently as other elements of the press. Cartoon traditions in Britain at this time marked a return in some respects to the acerbic portrait caricature and metaphorical astuteness of James Gillray, most notably in the work of David Low. Low’s ‘The Harmony Boys’ (1940) and, most famously, ‘The Rendezvous’, invoke the eighteenth-century illustrator’s bitter commentaries on the Napoleonic Wars, such as his depiction of Napoleon and Pitt dividing up the world in ‘The Plum Pudding in Danger’. Low referred to the use of recognisable, physical earmarks such as ideological symbols as ‘tabs of identity’. In the opinion of Low, in the context of the Second World War: My own efforts to keep to the point, which, as I saw it, was the threat to democracy, were vigorous but perhaps no more vigorous than those of many writers, but cartoons were a more direct medium with a wider appeal, since pictures speak even to the illiterate. (Low, cited in Behrendt 1975: 78) Hitler also understood the cartoon’s appeal. As he wrote in Mein Kampf, ‘At one stroke, I might say, people are able to understand a pictorial presentation of something which it would take them a long and laborious effort of reading to understand’ (Hitler 2015: 350). Though Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Reich Minister for Propaganda, does not mention cartoons directly, they satisfy many of the criteria he outlined concerning this specific form of information, in particular, the principle that propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium. As one of the most visual and legible elements of a text-heavy medium such as contemporaneous newspapers, it is easy to see why cartoons did indeed receive large amounts of attention from the British public. Predominantly overlooked in accounts of British war cartoons are the anti-war creations of John Olday that were published in War Commentary for Anarchism, a bimonthly periodical printed and distributed in London between 1939 and 1945. Olday published a collection of these anti-militarist cartoons in 1943 entitled ‘The March to Death’ (Freedom Press). He adopts the same features (mentioned above) as his contemporaries, focusing predominantly on political figureheads as targets for ridicule, though with the notable inclusion of the leaders of the Allied Powers alongside Axis leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini. He also expresses a particular focus on how the ‘everyman’ of each nation was suffering as a consequence of the actions of their

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leaders. The cartoon ‘Peace soup’, for example, published in the War Commentary in mid-September 1944, depicts Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt as the three witches from Macbeth brewing the eponymous peace soup using ‘recipes by Hitler’. Meanwhile, other world leaders such as Evard Beneš and Charles de Gaulle, anthropomorphised as the witches’ ‘familiars’, look on in earnest and fan the flames beneath the cauldron. In the background, crippled and famished soldiers from every nation are standing in the doorway, unpermitted to enter. It is interesting to note that Winston Churchill held little animosity towards the politically motivated cartoons and caricatures that targeted him personally. In fact, he once wrote a vindication of a number of cartoons by eminent British cartoonists that ridiculed both him and his father. Cartoonists such as Low caricatured him as a top-hatted, cigar-smoking member of the British elite, out of touch with the general public and bullishly refusing to retire from public office after the war. Crossing Boundaries The increasing trend during the twentieth century for cartoons to manifest international influences means that British and Irish examples cannot be viewed in isolation from world events. Bairnsfather’s influence, mentioned earlier, has been most widely recognised in the Second World War creations of American cartoonist Bill Mauldin and his characters Willie and Joe, though it can also be seen in British cartoons such as Low’s 1945 ‘Last Tribute’ and Sidney Strube’s prewar creation of the ‘Little Man’. The reciprocal impact of British and American innovations in cartooning throughout the twentieth century is profound and is due partially to the ‘unbroken transatlantic traffic of influences’ between ‘the two most distinguished satirical journals in the English-speaking world’, the New Yorker and Punch. This reciprocal innovation is also due, in part, to the movement of artists and ideas that circulated as a consequence of both the First and Second World Wars. Nancy Bernhard (1999: 17) argues that, faced with a clear failure of their ‘strategy of truth’ against the onslaught of fascist propaganda during the Second World War, Western information agencies began to flood the marketplace of ideas with their own variants of psychological warfare.

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Events Cartoons and the Cold War As we have already seen, the truth was always a possible casualty of war for Western allies, but certainly the prolonged and strategic deployment of propaganda, particularly in the United States, transformed the roles played by intelligence services far beyond their original remit. As Laura Belmonte (2010: 10) outlines, as early as 31 August 1945, President Truman designated ‘information activities abroad as an integral part of the conduct of our foreign affairs’, setting up a new Interim International Information Service in the State Department to handle the flow of information. By the end of the 1940s, the State Department Wireless Bulletin was regularly distributing motion pictures, photo exhibits and cartoons to promulgate their world view in this new war. As we have already seen, the introduction of the Ministry of Information in the United Kingdom in 1939 transformed British propaganda efforts, and Sarah Davies has demonstrated how this continued in productions such as Anglia, a magazine designed to extend British soft power into the USSR during the Cold War (Davies 2013: 297). While cartoons might have been more freely exchanged in the West, they were also commonly deployed in the Soviet Union. Writing about Krokodil and Ogonek, illustrated supplements that have appeared in Russia since the 1920s and continue today, Richard Stiles observes: The cartoon was the main and probably most noticed vehicle of the two-sided Cold War narrative: the peaceful development of a historically great and progressive people on the road to socialism and prosperity; the aggressive interference of the United States and its allies in Europe. (Stiles 1999: 91) At its most extreme, cartoons and comics were press-ganged into the crudest forms of service in the ongoing information war. In 1956, a New York Times reporter on assignment in the USSR photographed a billboard showing a well-dressed cadaver labelled ‘Capitalism’ surrounded by tycoons stitching a tag with the word ‘People’ onto his lapel, itself a mockery of the ‘People’s Capitalism’ exhibition planned to promote the American economy abroad. The most effective deployment of cartoons to support the Allied cause operated through an ostensibly free press which demonstrated the principles of free market capitalism in practice. Thus, for example, Leslie Illingworth continued the cartoons he had produced during the

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Second World War for the Daily Mail, this time focusing on a new enemy­ – ­socialism­ – ­both within and without as in his famous depiction of Vyacheslav Molotov, James Byrnes and Ernest Bevin for his 1946 image ‘Don’t fence me in! Made in Moscow’. This referenced Molotov’s increasing discomfort with Stalinism following the end of the war. In a similar vein, Illingworth’s 1967 cartoon of the Cuban missile crisis showed Lyndon Johnson and Brezhnev dividing up the world between them. Once again, this harks back to the trope of world leaders consuming the world, as developed by Gillray in ‘the Plum Pudding in Danger’ during the Napoleonic Wars. E. H. Shepard’s 1947 cartoon for Punch, ‘The Truman Line’, showed that long before Vietnam relations between Western allies could be ambivalent. Showing Truman hammering a series of fence posts in the shape of dollar signs along the border between Western and Eastern Europe, it demonstrated not so much the economic rejuvenation of Europe as part of the Marshall plan as a significant contribution to the freezing of relations between East and West as gung-ho new superpowers sought to divide the old, failed European empires between them. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, cartoons often served as part of the soft power machinery of both East and West. In the United States and Western Europe, unsurprisingly, reaction set in during the 1960s and 1970s as part of a general counter-cultural assault on the hegemony of the Cold War, for example in the 1975 amusingly entitled classic How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart. As Wagnleitner argues, Dorfman and Mattelart demonstrated how Disney comics constantly represented a triumph of advanced Western culture over ‘exotic’ backwardness, promulgating Victorian values of imperialism that had survived into the new Cold War, and that such cultural criticism was only the beginning of a new wave of assault on the use of cartoons as propaganda (Wagnleitner 1994: 105). Cold War to Vietnam While the USA and USSR may have avoided direct conflict, proxy wars between the superpowers in Korea and Vietnam frequently caused a sense of unease within Britain during those decades when its own preeminence was declining. Thus a 1965 cartoon from the New Statesman showed a diminutive Harold Wilson alongside Lyndon Johnson as a colossus before the White House, the British prime minister completely ill at ease in a huge Texas Stetson as the president casually

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Figure 20.3  Ken Mahood cartoon published in Punch magazine, June 1982, depicting Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan

informs him, ‘We’ll knock hell out of ’em!’, referring to the entry of America into the Vietnam war. If Vietnam represented a low point in Anglo-American relations, however, then the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan was a meeting of minds that appeared to breathe new life into the special relationship that had frequently suffered during the immediate decades following the Second World War. By today’s standards, the gentler humour of Punch was capable of personalising the Cold War in what would be construed as a sexist way today, with Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev (Figure 20.3). The Punch example is by no means the most egregious: George Schultz’s cartoon for the Sun in 1987, depicting Gorbachov and Thatcher descending from a plane to join Reagan for a summit meeting, depicts the US president whispering to an aide: ‘Once Maggie starts talking she never stops.’ Reduced to that most facile of stereotypes, the nagging woman, one result of such a cartoon was to reduce

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Thatcher’s political status (even if that was not its avowed intention). For the Punch cartoon showing Thatcher machine-gunning a Russian general while Reagan looks on star-struck, the invocation of her status as the Iron Lady was much less dismissive than the tone struck by Schultz: nonetheless, the sexualisation of her as a beautiful woman when angry fed into a narrative that still placed the United States and Reagan as the leading players in Cold War politics, continuing an anxiety in British politics that was evident in many cartoons following the end of the Second World War. Cartoons and ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland Whereas earlier Irish cartoon satire such as the monthly Dublin Opinion (an illustrated satirical magazine that ran from 1922, on the eve of the Irish Civil War, to 1968) was usually gentle and aimed at its Free State and republican readership, in Northern Ireland during the state of conflict known as ‘The Troubles’ (late 1960s to 1998), cartoons, both national and international, became more focused. They frequently targeted the political personalities involved in the conflict and used humour to simplify bewildering issues, rather than attempt to polemicise elements of a complex sociopolitical, economic and religious conflict. For example, a two-panel illustration for the Irish Times by English political cartoonist Martyn Turner, entitled ‘With the declaration of this second ceasefire . . .’ (originally 1994, republished 2002) deals with the difficult ambiguity surrounding the post-ceasefire activities of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), two of the main paramilitary organisations on either side of the conflict. The cartoon itself functions in the same fashion as a ‘one-liner’ joke, the first panel serving as ‘set-up’ and the last panel as ‘punchline’. However, both the humour and the simplicity of this illustration belie reference to a difficult and convoluted issue that still plagues Northern Ireland today. As such, a deep knowledge of the context of this cartoon is essential for an understanding of the seemingly superficial, dark humour and the illustration’s wider political relevance. In the first panel, two nearly identical male individuals stand side by side. The one on the left is designated as being a member of the IRA through a patch under the left lapel of his military-style camouflaged jacket, while the other on the right is identified as a member of the UDA by a similar patch on his black leather ‘bomber’ or ‘flight’ jacket. Both types of jackets possess underlying associations with the organisations these individuals supposedly represent. On the one

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hand, the IRA claimed to undertake guerrilla actions and their propaganda frequently depicted their operational members in camouflaged green boiler suits. On the other, the UDA sought to have a more visible, ‘defensively antagonistic’ presence and consciously aligned themselves with key elements of British military history such as the RAF. However, other than this distinction, and the more minor demarcating stereotypes of headgear, facial hair and the tint of their glasses, the similarity between these two figures is emphasised by their saying in tandem, ‘With the declaration of this second ceasefire we are both totally, utterly, completely, fully committed to the process of peace.’ This ‘set-up’ of expectation is then undermined by the ‘punchline’ (no pun intended) of the concluding panel in which both individuals state, ‘And if anyone tells you otherwise, we’ll break their knees . . .’ However, in order to comprehend the wider implications of this seemingly facile statement a thorough contextual understanding of the post-ceasefire activities of both organisations is required. On 31 August 1994, the IRA declared the first of two major ceasefires that would occur during the 1990s (excluding the earlier three-day ceasefire declared on 5 April 1994). This first major ceasefire lasted until 9 February 1996, when a lorry-bomb exploded in the London Docklands, killing two civilians and causing damage worth an estimated £85 million. Between these two events, however, the IRA claimed responsibility for the assassination of three Northern Irish drug dealers, one prison escape, one punishment beating and the nonsanctioned murder of a Post Office worker during a robbery. The second IRA ceasefire was declared on 19 July 1997, with the announcement by the IRA Army Council that, ‘We have ordered the unequivocal restoration of the ceasefire of August 1994. All IRA units have been instructed accordingly’ (BBC, 19 July 1997). This decision was taken, according to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, to demonstrate a commitment to inclusive peace talks (ibid.). This, in turn, led to the organisation having their classification as a terrorist organisation removed by the US government on 8 October 1997. Curiously, it was not until 28 July 2005, that the IRA Army Council announced an official end to their armed campaign, stating that they would from thence forward dedicate themselves to achieving their ends solely by political means. However, in the five years between the declaration of the second ceasefire in 1997 and the end of 2002, the date that Turner’s cartoon was republished, the IRA is known to be responsible for fourteen murders, mostly assassinations of drug dealers, police informants and members of rival paramilitary organisations, one prison escape, one attempted murder and two punishment beatings. As well as this,

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two IRA squads on active service were detained by police from the Irish Republic on their way to anticipated armed robberies. Similarly, the Combined Loyalist Military Command declared a ceasefire on 13 October 1994, which indicated an end to the violent activities of the UDA under the caveat that: ‘The permanence of our cease-fire will be completely dependent upon the continued cessation of all nationalist/republican violence’ (New York Times, 14 October 1994). However, between this ceasefire and the end of 2002, the UDA were known to be responsible for nineteen murders, eight attempted murders, a large number of pipe-bomb and blast-bomb attacks and several large-scale riots. The vast majority of these activities were directed against members of their own organisation, rival paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) as part of an ongoing Loyalist feud, or members of the Protestant community believed to be engaging in criminal activities such as drug dealing. It is only with this level of contextual information in mind that it is possible to understand Turner’s cartoon with any clarity and, indeed, to avoid a superficial reading of Northern Irish political cartoons as historical sources. Only with such key knowledge of the continuing violence undertaken by both organisations after their declared ceasefires, predominantly turned inwards towards members of their own communities, does it become clear that Turner’s cartoon is not simply a humorous, politically framed ‘one-liner’ but, in fact, a darkly comical reflection on the continued hostility and intimidation that exists beneath the deceptively tranquil surface of a proclaimed peace in Northern Ireland. Crucially, as this example indicates, in order to reflect critically on the nuanced, politicised depths provided by the seemingly glib social commentary of cartoons concerned with the Troubles, one must undertake to engage fully with the convoluted history of key events connected with both sides and within the wider context of the conflict and its aftermath.

Conclusion: How Cartoons have Changed Trends Tim Benson writes that political cartoons have ‘witnessed an extraordinary increase in the numbers of women in British politics’ (Benson 2017: v); this has been seen in both newspaper and periodical pages in the twentieth century. International characters such as Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton have all been drawn in British and Irish newspapers; it is the rise of these figures, inter alia, in such pages that have ‘transformed the nature of political satire’

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(ibid.). Women have appeared in political cartoons for a long time; but they were usually used to portray either figures of fun in Gillray and Hogarth’s cartoons or to show the nation state in the nineteenth century, for example John Tenniel’s work in Punch and Thomas Fitzpatrick’s designs in The Lepracaun in the early twentieth century. Benson states that even in the 1950s the Queen as head of state was treated with deference, but as society became more permissive in the late 1960s ‘cartoonists became more confident about satirizing her’ (Benson 2017: vi). Even Irish newspaper cartoons using female figures sought to convey a genteel version of events. For example, a closer economic association between Ireland and Britain in 1960 was portrayed in the Dublin Opinion’s cartoon of Erin and Britannia, centuries-old adversaries, peacefully taking tea together having set aside their attributes of harp and trident. In 1961 Private Eye burst onto the scene, tearing apart the gentility and tastefulness of Punch’s text and image, and publishing cartoons that no other newspaper would print until the mid-1960s. The 1970s saw an increase in newspaper cartoonists concentrating on Irish politics. One particular cartoon by JAK for the Evening Standard showed MP for Mid-Ulster Bernadette Devlin being escorted from the House of Commons after crossing the floor and slapping Reginald Maudling in the face. The caption read, ‘By Jove, that nearly woke Reggie up!’ (JAK, Evening Standard, 2 February 1972). This cartoon had been drawn after the events of Bloody Sunday on 30 January that year. Devlin had been a witness to the unprovoked killing of thirteen unarmed men and the wounding of seventeen others by the British Army and she saw Maudling as a liar and hypocrite for defending the paratroopers’ actions. In the 1980s Thatcher was rendered as macho by her all-male cartoonists with a strange ‘blundering misogyny’ that undid her very presentation as a well-dressed female politician (Steve Bell, in Benson 2017: vi). Perhaps the cartoonists failed to see that her strength lay in the very outfits she chose which masked her considerable power and standing in global politics, as represented in British and Irish newspapers like The Guardian, The Times and Irish Times. Political cartoons changed in scope regarding both content and delivery. They have come to represent vivid, imaginative insight into politics and popular opinion, now present on every computer screen. Today’s political cartoons represent a fusion of pop culture and politics. The web has become a new outlet for political cartooning as newspapers seek to increase their sales globally. The emergence of the internet serves to transport these newspaper and periodical images worldwide

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and at the click of a search button. As part of the publications’ editorial remit, the cartoon now sometimes restores the drawn image to the website’s front page, thus neatly squaring the circle whence the newspaper cartoon originally came. Style Aspects of characterisation of cartoons mentioned above continued through to the end of the twentieth century: political satire, cartooning and comic strips still provided inspiration for diverse strands of creativity, but the crossover influence of visual satire between various media platforms became more common. At the same time, the format dealt effectively with ‘permissiveness’ in the 1960s and 70s; controversial cartoons depicting racist or sexist imagery sometimes prompted fallout from these depictions­– ­but cartoons had become more versatile and cartoonists as well as the personalities that they focused on had become more resilient. Indeed, the versatile way that political cartoonists moved between the single cartoon image and multi-panel cartoon stories in book form was well demonstrated by Steve Bell in 1992 when he used for a comic-book front cover a single image of John Major on the toilet with oversized underpants over the outside of the rest of his clothes. This image was further developed in the title pages and opening gambit of If . . . Goes Down the John. This cartoon book uses a cricket analogy to describe the ‘story’: Things looked bad. His side needed 326 to win and time was running out. Only one man had the balls to say he could do it in singles. One man alone at the crease assisted only by a large number of national newspapers, the City, the Banks, an undisclosed sum of money, the CBI, MI5, MI6, and the divine intervention of Dame Barbara Cartland. While studies of historical, cultural and visual theories, and art historical analysis abound, and exhibition catalogues on cartoons or books using cartoons are plentiful, editorial cartoons are sadly neglected in the academy, even within their own journalistic context. This point particularly applies to Irish history. Here, national and international newspapers used cartoon personalisation as a way of offering comment on an otherwise densely convoluted Northern Irish conflict. Types of truth enhancements in each cartoon indicate the cartoonists’ respective entrenchment with, or detachment from, the political status quo, thereby signalling in a variety of ways an attempt at attitudinal persuasion targeted towards readers. Such attempts can move

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beyond party politics to a range of different areas of society, as analysis of the sample of football cartoons from the First World War demonstrated. Previously overlooked by scholars, these highlighted the threat to their profession from the war­ – ­providing evidence of the potential scope of the cartoon for political comment. The section on ‘Transnational connections’ demonstrates a feature that cartoons are strong on, namely the personalisation around a character or characters and the caricature process for leaders. Although the issues raised during the Cold War were actually more important politically than the personalities, cartoons adapted the discourse into a conflict between personalities. In the case of the Second World War, British cartoons constitute an invaluable avenue for further historical and journalistic study. Overlooked artefacts presenting alternative voices and counter-hegemonic interpretations of the war, such as the anti-war cartoons of Olday, merit deep analytical engagement that will enrich our understanding of unacknowledged British perspectives engendered by the conflict. In general, there exists a certain degree of targeted malice in the twentieth-century cartoon. This derives from the traditions of caricature established by figures such as William Hogarth and James Gillray, combined with the acrimonious humour of contemporaneous stereotypes and collective prejudices. While it is possible to argue that the cartoon’s potential to give offence appears to have developed a higher profile during the twenty-first century, witnessed by controversies over ‘the Mohammed cartoons’, for instance, the medium’s repertoire of usages and influences continues to expand, due to the twentiethcentury legacy. By the turn of the twentieth century it was clear that twenty-first-century cartoonists would be able to inherit and develop a versatile and powerful choice of style for their art­– ­one reason in itself that the cartoon continues to thrive and to influence. In democratic societies like those of Britain and Ireland, it is still rare for politicians to complain about the depictions attributed to them by cartoonists. Rather, artistic licence and representations that manifest forms of creative acerbity are usually seen by the people who are targeted as a badge of fame and public recognition. Celebrity aside, arguably, the use of cartoons as a democratic tool for communication­ – ­firstly in usage by non-professional artists and secondly by usage to depict the concerns not just of leaders but also of ordinary people­ – ­represents a healthy attitude that bodes well not just for the survival of the medium but also for the future liveliness of discursive participation in the public sphere.

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Thanks to AHRC for their funding of Everyday Lives at War: First World War Centenary Commemoration grants AH/L008351/1 and AH/P00668X/1.

Chapter Twenty-One

BRITAIN’S IMPERIAL PRESS SYSTEM Simon J. Potter

Introduction

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ost histories of the British press are decidedly insular, and some do not even venture beyond the borders of England. This is both unfortunate and misleading. It should be a truism that the history of the newspaper press is, in large part, transnational. Certainly, newspapers have played a significant role serving economic, political, social and cultural requirements, both local and national. Yet newspapers have also acted as one of the most important interfaces between Britain and a wider world. From the earliest days of their existence, newspapers brought news, opinion and commercial information from overseas. During the nineteenth century, and for much of the twentieth century, they were arguably the single most important means by which ordinary people could comprehend and imagine the world beyond Britain’s shores. The idea that newspapers created national ‘imagined communities’ has offered many historians a useful shorthand in their attempts to explain how the press helped transform the nature and scale of modern societies (Anderson 1991). However, like all such concepts, it is inevitably a radical simplification. Not only does it ignore the fundamental role played by the press in sustaining other forms of identity (including those based on locality, religion, class and gender), but it also fails to encompass the function of the press as a transnational connector (on transnational connectors see Saunier 2013: 57). The modern press has simultaneously acted as a part of, and a facilitator for, larger worldwide flows of goods, ideas and people. Newspapers developed in the seventeenth century to serve the interests of commerce and finance: from 434

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an early stage, such interests were transnational, as well as national, in nature (Parsons 1989: 18). Print capitalism was subsequently driven by the inexorable logic of the market to seek ever-wider opportunities for commercial expansion beyond Britain’s shores. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the British press created myriad connections with the United States and Europe. Arguably, these places provided the news that most interested British newspaper readers (on links with the US see Wiener and Hampton 2007; Wiener 2011). However, the press also played a key role in connecting Britain with its empire overseas. Imperial readerships, business relationships, and communication links helped shape the commercial and institutional development of British newspapers and periodicals (Potter 2003; Potter 2017). These connections also influenced the news and other content printed by British newspapers and helped create an imagined imperial sense of community. For contemporaries, there was not necessarily a contradiction between the national and imperial functions of the press. As The Times commented in 1930: The newspaper Press is possibly the most vital working part of the twin-geared driving machinery of the Empire. It is the means on which each country has relied for the nurture of distinctive nationhood. Simultaneously it is the means by which each country is enabled to visualize itself as a unit in an otherwise incomprehensible world-order. The Press is the chief instrument which has vitalized nationality and vitalized the Commonwealth and daily preserves and increases the vitality of both.1 The press was thus seen, by some, as essential to the functioning of empire, helping to build and reconcile national and imperial identities. Yet this was of course only one side of the story. Newspapers also offered anti-colonial nationalists a powerful means to subvert imperial authority, and colonial and imperial officials sought in response to turn the press to their own ends (Kaul 2003). As a result, the contradictions between ideas about liberty and the freedom of the press on one hand, and autocratic colonial rule on the other, became increasingly apparent. Institutionally and commercially, British newspapers and news agencies came to occupy a position at the centre of what was, by the beginning of the twentieth century, a vast imperial press system. This system also encompassed the colonial press, a counterpart and offshoot of the British press industry, which had been created by the development of settler, expatriate and indigenous newspapers in Britain’s colonies. Often based on British models, colonial newspapers played a key

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role as products, and facilitators, of British overseas expansion. Locally produced newspapers and periodicals helped build the colonial economies that yielded food and raw materials for export, and thus sustained the imperial relationship. Their boosterism was vital to maintaining the colonial ‘progress industry’, attracting migrants and capital to the colonies from Britain and elsewhere (Belich 2009: 185–92). Locally produced newspapers were also crucial to the life of colonial towns and cities, the creation of structures of colonial governance and self-rule, and the maintenance of imperial trade networks. These papers served local colonial, as well as imperial, interests: the export of British ideas about the role of a free press, for example, played a key role in allowing white settlers to challenge and break the authority of colonial governors appointed in London, the better to appropriate land and labour from indigenous peoples (Botha 1984; Bonwick 1890). British and colonial newspapers were linked together in numerous ways. Journalists could follow the frontier of opportunity and enjoy imperial careers, as they moved around the empire seeking work. Models of journalistic practice often travelled with them (Potter 2003: 16–27). By the early twentieth century, professional and industry bodies such as the Empire Press Union (see case study below) provided a forum for joint discussion among and action by journalists and newspaper proprietors across the empire. Most importantly, huge volumes of news flowed from place to place, within (although also across) the boundaries of the imperial press system. These flows and connections were largely the product of commercial interest and voluntary co-operation, rather than state intervention or direction. Newspapers traded news with one another (or pirated it) as a cheap and effective means to cover world affairs. Private enterprise established shipping lines that carried vast quantities of newspapers in the mails, and built a system of telegraph lines and undersea telegraph cables that transmitted news around the world. News agencies profited by establishing syndicated news services, building on the possibilities of electrical telegraphy. However, it would be wrong to see the imperial press system purely as the product of unrestricted free enterprise, even if the self-mythologising of the newspaper industry might encourage this belief. Shipping companies, telegraph and cable companies, newspapers, and news agencies often sought to establish monopolies and restrictive practices in order to increase and protect their revenues. Moreover, such organisations were often willing, and sometimes eager, to accept state subsidies or other forms of government assistance to strengthen their operations (Silberstein-Loeb 2014). Thinking about the transnational and imperial aspects of press history helps us to see

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how in reality, despite the industry’s prevalent rhetoric of a Fourth Estate holding the government to account, private enterprise and state intervention often went hand in hand. Reuters provides perhaps the best example of how this dialectic shaped the creation, and disintegration, of Britain’s imperial press system. For over a century, Reuters was the pre-eminent British international news agency. It provided newspapers in Britain and across the empire with much of their international news, occupying a key niche in the empire’s press industry. Yet it was also an important tool of British geopolitical interests, and accordingly developed a close relationship with the state. The analysis that follows examines what the case of Reuters can tell us about how the links between empire, private enterprise and state intervention shaped the development of the British press.

The Imperial Press System At the beginning of the twentieth century, the British press sat at the centre of a world-spanning imperial press system. In print, a significant volume of British newspapers continued to be distributed to readers around the empire by mail, and many colonial newspapers made their way to Britain that way too. Not only were print newspapers read overseas, but they continued to be mined for news by editors, following the time-honoured practice of clipping articles and reprinting them, often without permission or acknowledgement. Meanwhile, correspondents around the world sent letters to editors in London, and London correspondents mailed despatches to newspapers in the colonies. A great deal of news thus continued to be provided as hard copy, slow to arrive even with the spread of railways and steamship routes around the empire, but relatively cheap to procure, and offering detailed coverage of a wide range of affairs (Potter 2004). During the second half of the nineteenth century, these connections had been supplemented, and in some cases superseded, by news carried over the empire’s growing system of overland electric telegraphs and undersea telegraph cables. This made possible the near-instantaneous transmission of news across vast distances. Individual newspapers, in Britain and the colonies, certainly made use of the new telegraph cables. However, the cost of doing so was often prohibitively expensive. It was Reuter’s Telegram Company, universally known as Reuters, that was first to exploit the resultant niche in the market for a syndicated service of cable news. Reports could be gathered by a single agency and sold to multiple subscribers, in Britain and overseas, sharing the costs

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Figure 21.1  General Post Central Telegraph Office, London, c. 1898

while generating a profit for the agency. International news agencies were among the world’s first transnational corporations (Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen 1998). Reuters capitalised on London’s position as the hub of the largely British-financed and British-owned international cable system. It set up offices in successive colonial centres as they were connected with London, allowing it to feed news (and, more profitably, financial and commercial information) back and forth between imperial ‘core’ and colonial ‘periphery’. Reuters emerged as the ‘news agency of the British empire’: other British news agencies generally occupied a subordinate position and, crucially, only served newspapers in the UK itself. For Reuters, Egypt and India proved important bridgeheads, allowing further expansion into the Far East, Australasia and southern Africa. In India Reuters enjoyed a profitable, dominant market position; elsewhere, it often had to make compromises with local news agencies, which sought to control international news supplies in pursuit of their own business interests (Read 1999: 61–5, 87–90, 176, quote at 1). The less prosperous parts of the empire, notably in Africa, meanwhile tended to be poorly connected to the submarine cable network, and were thus not fully integrated into the imperial press system Reuters’ desire to profit from state support was apparent during this early period. In many places, colonial governments offered Reuters subsidies that played an important part in its expansion, and which placed it in close relationships with civil servants and politicians,

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leading some to question its independence. An ‘underlying patriotism’ meant that while Reuters claimed to provide true, accurate, nonpartisan news, it was generally regarded in official circles as a reliable supporter of British interests overseas. The agency maintained close contact with the Foreign Office, and from 1911 was directly subsidised by the British government to distribute official reports and speeches as part of its service to subscribers (Read 1999: 65–8, 90–5, quote at 67). Reuters’ position was also strengthened by its participation in the so-called ‘international news ring’. This was an oligopolistic arrangement with two other news agencies, Havas (based in France) and Wolff (based in Germany). Together, in an agreement signed in 1870 that endured for more than sixty years, they divided up the world market for syndicated news (the US Associated Press, the AP, joined the cartel in 1893): Reuters sold and gathered its news in the British empire, China and Japan; Havas controlled Western Europe, French colonial Africa and South America; and Wolff staked its claim to Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The agencies exchanged news among themselves, to provide global coverage, but agreed to refrain from selling news direct to subscribers in each other’s territory (Read 1999: 57, 86). Together with the formidable influence of the large London newspapers, and of the world of international financial services focused in the City of London, this arrangement further strengthened the information gathering and distributing role of the British capital, making London the news hub of the British empire, and indeed to some extent of the globe. The First World War posed significant challenges for transnational businesses such as Reuters, which relied on the flow of information across borders and on news-exchange arrangements with agencies based in countries which were now counted among Britain’s enemies. By 1914 Reuters was already encountering serious financial problems, and a wartime ban on the sending of coded messages made the situation worse. The British government was concerned by the fragile state of the agency, and by the prospect of foreign ownership or influence. When Baron Herbert de Reuter, the company’s managing director, committed suicide, Roderick Jones, the company’s general manager in South Africa, was appointed to run the company. Jones arranged for the existing shareholders to be bought out, using a loan guaranteed by the British government. In his official history of Reuters, Donald Read showed how, in the process, the government secretly secured the ability in 1916 (through a single ‘public policy share’) to nominate a Reuters director with powers to veto the appointment of any other director. These powers were retained, probably unused, until 1919. Reuters meanwhile distributed a large ‘Agence-Reuter’ news service

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Figure 21.2  Roderick Jones, Managing Director of Reuters 1916–41

to subscribers across Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and the British empire, and a smaller ‘Official Service’, both paid for by the British government. Although aspects of Reuters’ propaganda role were obvious to contemporaries, the details of the government’s wartime powers were largely kept secret (Read 1999: 119–22). There has been some debate among historians concerning the exact nature of Reuters’ relationship with the state. As official historian, Read tactfully posed the question of how far the arrangement compromised the agency’s independence, without explicitly answering it (Read 1999: 133). Peter Putnis subsequently argued that the state sought actively to secure a measure of control over Reuters and its news services, and that the new arrangement amounted to ‘effective British government control’ of the agency. The deal satisfied both Reuters’ need for income and the patriotism of its directors, and opened the tap for the subsidies mentioned above. It allowed the state to review Reuters’ links with foreign news agencies and to intervene in the agency’s affairs if necessary (Putnis 2008: quote at 141). Taking a different view, Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb presented the 1916 deal as driven not primarily by the requirements of the British state, but instead as a canny masterstroke executed by Jones that rescued Reuters from its financial woes. According to this interpretation, Reuters remained in control of its

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destiny, and used the state to secure its own business interests: Jones ‘pulled [the Foreign Office] around by the nose to fulfil his strategic ends’ (Silberstein-Loeb 2010: quote at 288). Yet as Putnis subsequently argued (and had indeed suggested in his original article), these two drives­ – ­Reuters’ search for profit and market dominance on the one hand, and the British state’s desire to secure a means to influence Reuters and its news as and when required on the other­ – ­were not mutually exclusive (Putnis 2010). Examining the relationship between Reuters and the state in the 1930s reinforces Putnis’s claims. During debates about government support for Reuters in this later period, the Foreign Office was fully aware of Jones’s desire to protect his company’s (and his own) financial interests, arguably at the expense of the taxpayer and of other news agencies in the empire. Civil servants were anxious to ensure that the government, rather than Reuters, remained in the saddle.

Reuters, the Foreign Office and the Challenges of the 1930s In many ways, during the 1920s Britain and France attempted to restore the pre-war global order in modified form. They had some success in this quest until the onset of the Great Depression (Boyce 2009). As a result, geopolitical challenges to Britain’s world role, on the surface at least, seemed manageable. This was reflected in the domain of global news flows, and in the roles of Reuters and the British state in shaping those flows. As noted above, with the end of the war, the mechanism which allowed for direct government influence over Reuters was abolished. Nevertheless, Reuters continued to receive state subsidies in return for sending official news on request, while loudly proclaiming its independence (Read 1999: 158). To disseminate news abroad, the Foreign Office News Department also maintained the British Official Wireless (BOW) service, which had been established during the war (Taylor 1981: 57–64). BOW served the overseas press (later also broadcasters) with news from Britain ‘of a political, commercial and general character’, which could be re-used without payment for copyright. BOW was distributed mainly by wireless telegraphy and, reportedly, was widely used.2 Reuters viewed all this as poaching on its own preserves, and lobbied throughout the interwar period to take over and run the service in return for a subsidy.3 During the 1920s challenges to Reuters’ commercial position overseas were generally met successfully. The monopolistic structures that had previously shaped the flow of news emerged from the First World

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Figure 21.3  Wellington General Post Office foyer with a telegraph sign visible at the back, c. 1920s (Courtesy of Archives New Zealand)

War largely intact; the international news ring arrangement was modified to reflect new geopolitical realities, with Reuters and Havas taking control of Wolff’s territories (Read 1999: 169–72). At home, Jones strengthened the agency’s financial underpinnings by arranging for the sale in 1926 of a majority of its shares to the Press Association (PA), the organisation representing the British and Irish provincial press, and one of Reuters’ principal customers. Reuters also adapted to the advent of radio, distributing an increasing proportion of its news to subscribers using wireless telegraphy instead of cables, and signing news supply agreements with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and broadcasters overseas to bring in additional revenue and prevent the emergence of new sources of competition.4 However, during the 1930s the outlook for Britain’s imperial press system, and for Reuters, deteriorated significantly. The underlying weaknesses of Britain’s changed geopolitical situation were revealed by the Great Depression and the intensification of foreign challenges to the international status quo, most notably from the fascist powers. Reflecting this growing instability, during the early 1930s the international news ring began to break down under pressure from the American AP (Rantanen 1998: 35). In 1930 the AP served notice of withdrawal from the news ring, and its subsequent determination to drive Reuters out of Japan triggered an escalating conflict between the two agencies which, in February 1934, resulted in a humiliating climbdown by Jones: a new agreement even allowed the AP to sell its news direct to the British PA rather than via the intermediary of Reuters

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(Read 1999: 180–3; Cooper 1969: 203–63). Reuters also faced serious competition in overseas news markets from French, German, Italian and Japanese news agencies. Large subsidies from their respective national governments meant that these agencies could supply their services to newspapers and broadcasters in foreign markets at much lower rates than Reuters (Read 1999: 192–8; Taylor 1981: 208–11). During the 1930s it became clear that the old imperial press system, focused on the territories of the British empire, and with a great monopolistic private company dominating the distribution of news, no longer served British interests. The key challenges to British overseas influence came not in the ‘formal’ empire, but in a wide range of independent countries scattered across the globe. The threat was particularly acute in the so-called ‘informal’ empire, the territories on the margins on Britain’s world-system­ – ­notably in the Far East and South America­ – ­that had in the past been subject to strong British diplomatic, economic and cultural influence (on informal empire see Gallagher and Robinson 1953; Lynn 1999). The forces that held these regions within Britain’s orbit were weakening during the 1930s, as other powers­ – ­the fascist states, but also France and the USA­ – ­expanded their influence at Britain’s expense. By the end of 1936, Britain’s dwindling presence in overseas news markets was causing alarm in official circles.5 At the Foreign Office, civil servants emphasised how difficult it had become to secure ‘an adequate presentation abroad of British news and more particularly of British views on international affairs’. However, they were not convinced that state subsidies to Reuters offered an effective remedy. This was partly due to Reuters news-exchange arrangements with other agencies, which meant that the agency was potentially recycling propaganda from hostile countries within its news services. It was also the sheer scale of Reuters’ decline that made subsidisation seem pointless. In South America for example, where the Foreign Office deemed it imperative to strengthen British influence in the face of foreign propaganda activities, Reuters was largely excluded from the market for news by Havas and the US news agencies. Indeed, in many places the strength of competition from unsubsidised US news agencies seemed to pose a greater threat to Reuters than did state-subsidised foreign agencies. Meanwhile, outside of South Africa and India, Reuters seemed to be losing control even of empire news markets. The Foreign Office thus argued against subsidising Reuters, and insisted that if a subsidy was granted, then the government would need to secure ‘some measure of control over the character of the news’ distributed by the agency.6

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In November 1937, Jones submitted a request for a hefty, disguised state subsidy in the form of reduced rates for wireless transmission of news from General Post Office (GPO) transmitters, to allow an expansion in the volume of news distributed by Reuters. Jones highlighted the threat posed by state-subsidised foreign competitors, and the ‘undesirable consequences, especially during any period of international tension, of having British political news, British public opinion, and British newspaper comment, presented to foreigners, not by a British organisation but as seen through German, French, Italian, and Japanese eyes’.7 Jones assured the GPO that if it provided the requested concessions, Reuters would exclude news provided by foreign agencies, and only distribute reports provided by its own correspondents.8 However, the Foreign Office argued that rather than seeking to support British interests, Reuters in fact wished to use subsidised news to establish a monopoly position for itself in the empire. By flooding empire markets with cheap news, Reuters could drive local news agencies out of business and establish its own dominance. The Foreign Office therefore repeated its argument that if a subsidy was granted, ‘a much tighter form of control [over Reuters] would be necessary’ to prevent such an outcome.9 Over the course of 1938, the position of Reuters in the Far East continued to deteriorate. Edged out of Japan, the agency was also increasingly excluded from China as the Japanese occupation expanded and intensified.10 By July 1938 the British government had provisionally agreed to make an annual payment of around £39,500 to Reuters ‘with the object of providing Governments and the public overseas with an accurate and impartial service of news, especially on topics or events in which British interests are concerned’. In return, the government insisted that: Reuters will at all times maintain the closest co-operation and liaison with the Foreign Office and other Government Departments at home and through their agents overseas with British missions and official representatives overseas. While maintaining complete independence of direction or control by H. M. Government they will at all times bear in mind any suggestions made to them on behalf of the Government as to the development or orientation of their news service or as to the topics or events which from time to time may require particular attendance.11 This was a peculiar notion of ‘complete independence’, to say the least, and concerns about whether such an arrangement could be kept secret preventing a final agreement being reached.12

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It was the Munich Crisis that finally prompted the government to act, and in September 1938 it was agreed that for the duration of the emergency, the state would provide the pro rata equivalent of £12,000 p.a. In return, Reuters would send an additional 2,000 words daily to its foreign subscribers, tripling the size of these services.13 However, the Foreign Office resisted requests from Reuters that this arrangement should be made permanent.14 It also refused to comply with Reuters’ demands that it hand over the running of the BOW to the news agency, and pay Reuters for handling the service. Civil servants argued that such a move would give Reuters even greater monopoly powers, while also possibly resulting in a ‘substantial loss of British publicity’. After the Munich Crisis had passed, the government discontinued the subsidy to Reuters for providing subscribers outside Europe with additional news (although subsidies for the service to Europe continued).15 The Foreign Office also suggested the formation of a non-commercial ‘British News Corporation’, similar in nature to the BBC, to manage both incoming and outgoing news. This would have entailed a merger of all British news agencies, and financial support from the state, meeting the threat of foreign competition without creating a private monopoly.16 Reuters continued to press its case for subsidisation, and the Foreign Office continued to resist, until the outbreak of the Second World War.17 As in 1916, the relationship between Reuters and the British government was the product of the interaction of their respective interests. In the 1930s, these interests did not coincide, and Reuters was certainly not able to lead the state in whatever direction in pleased.

Case Study­– ­The Empire Press Union The case of Reuters illustrated how empire, geopolitics, private enterprise and state intervention combined to shape the press industry. A further example, which sheds additional light upon the structural and institutional impact of empire on the British press, and which also helps reveal some of the further paradoxes of press freedom and state intervention, is the Empire Press Union (EPU, later renamed the Commonwealth Press Union). The EPU was one of the key institutions which helped bind the newspaper industry in Britain and its empire together during the twentieth century. It was founded in the immediate aftermath of the Imperial Press Conference of 1909, which had brought delegates from around the empire to meet with their counterparts in Britain and discuss matters of common concern. With sections in the dominions and colonies, and a head office in London, the EPU presented itself as the protector of the collective interests of the empire’s newspapers, newspaper proprietors and journalists. Most of the delegates who attended

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the early conferences held by the EPU were white, and were also generally people who saw themselves as members of a world-spanning ‘British’ community. There was only one non-white delegate at the first conference, though participation by non-whites did slowly increase over the decades that followed (Potter 2003: 132–59, 205–10). Indian engagement with the EPU became particularly significant, despite periodic tensions over issues including state censorship and press freedom: notably, the imperial press conferences came to provide ‘a rare forum for Indian journalists to raise concerns and grievances on an international stage’ (Kaul 2006: 139). The EPU was particularly active in lobbying for reductions in press cable (and later wireless) telegraph rates, although in the wake of disagreements at the 1909 conference, care was taken to avoid measures that would fatally undermine existing cable news cartels. Campaigning was accompanied by a great deal of imperial rhetoric. It was argued that improved press communication would help bring about imperial unity, and that state intervention in, aid for, or even ownership of, the cable and wireless system was needed to secure this ambitious goal. Like the Foreign Office in its approach to Reuters, the British GPO was not always convinced as to the disinterestedness or validity of these requests for government assistance. Nevertheless, modest reductions in press cable rates were secured at the 1909 conference, and further concessions were obtained over the decades that followed (Potter 2003: 132–59). In April 1939, following a sustained campaign by the EPU, an empire-wide flat rate of 2¼ d per word for press telegrams came into operation.18 The EPU also worked in other ways to facilitate the work of newspapers, particularly those from the colonies and dominions. During the First World War, the EPU helped to coordinate the activities of dominion press correspondents in London (securing important facilities for them, in order to help cover the war effort), and also to distribute propaganda overseas. EPU lobbying for reduced press cable rates resumed after the war, and the principle of holding regular imperial press conferences was established to help secure this and other goals (Potter 2003: 191, 205–6). The EPU took great pains to ensure that broadcasting of news by the BBC’s new Empire Service did not infringe on the commercial interests of its overseas members.19 During the 1930s, the EPU co-ordinated activities on a wide range of other issues, including copyright, advertising practices, libel laws, newspaper postage rates, training for journalists and access to newsworthy events for dominion journalists in Britain.20 A proposal for a single imperial news organisation, amalgamating Reuters with other British and dominion news agencies and cartels, had been put forward at the 1909 Imperial Press Conference (Potter 2003: 140). This idea resurfaced in EPU discussions from 1930 onwards, with proposals for a single empire-wide ‘co-operative news association’, merging Reuters, the Press Association and other agencies. Canadian members were prominent among

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those arguing for an extension of the co-operative principles that underpinned their own news agency, the Canadian Press Ltd. These proposals were considered at the Imperial Press Conferences of 1930 and 1935, and at the EPU’s first annual conference in 1936, but ‘little definite progress’ was made, probably due to resistance by vested commercial interests.21 As noted above, the idea of a ‘British News Corporation’ similarly beguiled the Foreign Office. The creation of the Reuters Trust after the Second World War went some way towards the realisation of this goal (see below). During the latter part of the 1930s, the EPU became increasingly interested in preserving and championing press freedom, and in preventing the encroachment of censorship in the various parts of the empire. At its first Annual Conference, the EPU passed a resolution arguing for censorship only ‘in times of grave emergency, or when racial or communal passions are aroused’, and for minimal censorship even at such moments. The ideal was ‘free co-operation between officials and [the] newspaper Press’, to ensure that censorship operated in accordance with ‘definite, reasonable and known rules’ and was accompanied by prompt official statements about the events in question.22 On the eve of war, the EPU also expressed its collective alarm at ‘the number and gravity of the instances of encroachment by legislation and otherwise upon the freedom of the Press which have been reported to it from many parts of the Empire’, and urged on its members ‘the need for watchfulness lest restrictions which individually may not seem serious should cumulatively weaken the performance of essential duties’. The EPU proposed a collective, public, empire-wide response to any infringements of the freedom of the press, wherever in the empire they occurred.23 Considering the activities of the EPU as a whole during this period, it seems clear that state intervention was to be courted when it served the commercial interests of the press, accepted and carefully managed when mutually convenient, and resisted or rejected if it threatened the fundamental interests of newspaper enterprises. This pragmatic attitude was characteristic of wider press responses to government involvement in the business of selling news.

Decline Reuters took a long time to rid itself of both its hunger for state subsidisation and its imperial role. During the Second World War, a close relationship was established with the Ministry of Information, the government’s co-ordinating body for propaganda, and payment for the transmission of official news continued. By 1948 the ownership structure of Reuters seemed further to entrench its status as the news agency of the British empire. As the newly established Reuters Trust, it was jointly owned by the PA, the UK Newspaper Proprietors’

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Association, the Australian Associated Press, the New Zealand Press Association and the Press Trust of India. It was not until the 1980s that Reuters moved decisively to sever its links with the British state, and to shift from its Commonwealth orientation to a more global business strategy (Read 1999: 291–437). The imperial press system proved surprisingly long-lived, despite the broader pattern of Britain’s post-war retreat from empire. Nevertheless, Britain’s imperial press system clearly enjoyed its heyday during the first three decades of the twentieth century, and declined thereafter. It was during the early twentieth century that an interlocking set of cultural affinities, mutual interests and ­commercial (often monopolistic) arrangements worked to create an empire-­ spanning mechanism for the exchange of news, sustained by a complex set of competitive and collaborative relationships among myriad newspaper companies and news agencies. London became the empire’s news hub. During the first half of the century, in the eyes of some at least, the press helped simultaneously to build, sustain and perhaps reconcile both national and imperial communities. This powerful machinery for disseminating information, ideas and opinion was successfully mobilised to support an imperial war effort during the First World War. Just as much of the damage done to Britain’s world-system by that war was not immediately apparent to contemporaries, so during the 1920s did the imperial press system seem to have emerged unscathed. Nevertheless, during the 1930s it became clear that Britain was losing ground in key foreign news markets, and that a structure oriented towards communication within the boundaries of the empire, dominated by a great private monopoly, was poorly adapted to meet new challenges to British influence overseas. As during the First World War, Reuters pressed the British government to provide subsidies that would bolster its profits and enable it to entrench its position in ‘safe’ empire news markets. However, the Foreign Office was keen to ensure that the state did not become the servant of a private monopoly. It repeatedly and successfully argued that there were better ways to transmit news from British sources to overseas audiences, and thus help secure British interests overseas, than to prop up Reuters. In the decades that followed the Second World War, many of the institutional and commercial connections which linked together press enterprises around the empire­– ­or what was increasingly referred to as the Commonwealth­– ­continued to function. The post-war histories of Reuters and the Empire/Commonwealth Press Union underline this. Journalists meanwhile continued to move around the Commonwealth in search of employment overseas, news continued to flow and British

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newspaper enterprises sought to establish business interests in other Commonwealth markets. Yet the press also played a key role in anticolonial nationalist movements, a means by which political leaders could mobilise opinion in colonies, in Britain and internationally, against continued imperial rule. British newspapers meanwhile provided in-depth coverage of, and to some extent facilitated, Britain’s retreat from empire (Coffey 2015). By the end of the century, the nature of the British newspaper industry was still clearly transnational, but few traces of its imperial past remained. The purchase of Reuters by the Thomson Corporation of Canada in 2008 had little to do with any sense of a Commonwealth connection.

Conclusion As this chapter has demonstrated, the overseas influence exerted by Britain’s news industry depended on a mixture of private enterprise, restrictive and monopolistic market practices, and state intervention. The press was willing, and sometimes eager, to accept state assistance in order to promote its commercial interests. Thinking about the imperial ramifications of the British news industry is important for historians of the British press, for it helps us to challenge some deeply ingrained assumptions about the freedom of the press from state intervention, and about the devotion of the press to the principle of free enterprise. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the British press certainly developed a strident rhetoric of commercial and political freedom. However, when we consider the issue of news supply, it becomes clear that newspapers and news agencies colluded and formed restrictive practices to protect the commercial interests of existing enterprises. Moreover, through intervening in and subsidising the operation of news agencies, the state could play a significant, although often hidden, role in the broader newspaper industry. Press historians should not treat news agencies as something essentially extraneous to newspaper history, to be left to those working in the field of communications studies. Rather, we should place them more centrally within our frame of analysis, and consider how doing so might reshape our understanding of the history of the British press.

Notes   1. ‘The Empire Press’, London Times, Empire Press Number, 31 May 1930.   2. UK National Archives (henceforth UKNA), CAB 32/84, ‘E.E. (B) (30)

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30­ – ­Cabinet­ – ­Imperial Conference 1930­ – ­News Services between the United Kingdom and the Dominions and India’, August 1930.   3. UKNA, FO 395/578, ‘Future of the British Official Wireless’, 14 December 1938.   4. ‘News by Cable and Wireless’, London Times, Empire Press Number, 31 May 1930.   5. For the GPO’s views see UKNA, FO 395/552, F. W. Phillips to Bowyer, 29 December 1936.   6. UKNA, FO 395/552, N. E. Nash to R. Leeper, 16 December 1936; Nash, memo, 5 March 1937; quotes from Nash, ‘British News Abroad­ – ­Interdepartmental meeting at the Foreign Office, 28 October 1937’, 2 November 1937.   7. UKNA, FO 395/576, ‘Aide Memoire on News Services for the Right Honble. the Postmaster-General by Sir Roderick Jones’, 23 November 1937.   8. UKNA, FO 395/576, memo of meeting between Jones and Postmaster General, 23 November 1937.   9. UKNA, FO 395/576, Nash to Leeper, 15 December 1937. 10. UKNA, FO 395/585, letter from British Embassy, Tokyo, 27 April 1938. 11. UKNA, FO 395/577, H. J. Wilson to Jones, 11 July 1938. 12. UKNA, FO 395/577, memo of meeting 15 July 1938. 13. UKNA, FO 395/577, minute re: expansion of Reuters service, 22 September 1938 and Phillips to E. N. R. Trentham, 26 July 1938. 14. UKNA, FO 395/577, minute by Nash, 28 October 1938. 15. UKNA, FO 395/578, minutes by Nash, 3 and 10 November 1938. 16. UKNA, FO 395/578, Leeper to Sir A. Barlow, 18 November 1938, and memo of meeting between Foreign Office and Treasury, 11 November 1938. 17. UKNA, FO 395/578, ‘Reuter Wireless News Services­ – ­Copy of Letter dated 30 November 1938 to Sir Alan Barlow from Sir Roderick Jones’, and Nash to Leeper, 7 December 1938. 18. Commonwealth Press Union Archive (henceforth CPUA), Senate House Library, London, ICS 121 2/2, The Empire Press Union’s News Letter, April 1939. 19. CPUA, ICS 121B/4/1, minutes of EPU Council meeting, 4 November 1935. 20. See for example CPUA, ICS 121B/4/1, minutes of EPU Council meeting, 4 February 1936 and ICS 121 2/2, Empire Press Union News Letter, May 1935. 21. CPUA, ICS 121B/4/1, ‘Minutes of a meeting held in pursuance of the following Resolution adopted by the Council of the Empire Press Union on January 14th. 1931’. ICS 121B/4/1, ‘Proposal by Mr. J. F. B. Livesay, on behalf of the Canadian Press, for telegraphic interchange of background news by the Dominions news associations’, c. January 1937. 22. CPUA, ICS 121 2/2, The Empire Press Union’s News Letter, June 1936. 23. CPUA, ICS 121 2/2, The Empire Press Union’s News Letter, July 1936.

Chapter Twenty-Two

THE ENTERTAINMENT PRESS Patrick Glen

Introduction Coleman joined the Melody Maker at their Fleet Street office in 1960, and at first found it hard to adjust to a different style of showbiz journalism. He couldn’t see what was ‘newsworthy’ about a string of Cliff Richard tour dates and preferred to stir up a row with the BBC or research a heavily angled investigation into the music business. Feeling frustrated, he planned to defect to the Daily Telegraph. Then he encountered a classic put-down from a Telegraph executive at his job interview. Asked where he worked, he replied: ‘The Melody Maker.’ And before that? ‘The Manchester Evening News.’ After a long pause, the executive inquired icily: ‘Tell me, Mr Coleman, why did you leave journalism?’

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he anecdote, taken from Roy Coleman’s obituary (Independent, 13 September 1996) reveals a common preconception about the entertainment press; it was a journalistic backwater, a place for fanatics and second-rate journalists, where publishers made easy money. The view misses the significance of a medium where the entertainment industry and the public came together to discuss the creative practices, performances and commercial products of artistes. These journalistic and publishing practices were not performed in isolation; the entertainment press, often implicitly but also knowingly, constructed and represented broader understandings of society, politics and culture. The term ‘entertainment press’ describes journals, papers, magazines and web pages that cover music, theatre, film, vaudeville, variety performance, comedy, television and radio. With the growth of com451

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mercial publishing markets from the late-eighteenth century, publishers created journals covering entertainment that grew to command a significant audience in the nineteenth century. Numerous entertainment papers allowed the public to find and attend live performances and added critical judgements so ‘discerning’ people could find something that suited their tastes (there were, however, already rumblings of discontent about the ethics of reviewing and coverage). This chapter covers the twentieth century and analyses Sight & Sound, a film magazine launched in 1932, and Melody Maker, a music paper formed in 1926, as representatives of the wider entertainment press. These publications are of particular interest because Sight & Sound was, soon after its establishment, taken over by the British Film Institute (BFI), and therefore it served the film industry, rather than simply profiting from it. Melody Maker provides a counterpoint. It informally represented the music industry and was considered by its publisher to be a ‘trade periodical’, but, like Sight & Sound, it had a dual mission as a de facto mass-market entertainment publication. Both publications arguably offer a point where the entertainment industry and public intermingled in a way that might not be as clear in papers more focused upon gossip and consumer-oriented news. When sketching out the general characteristics of the entertainment press, the chosen publications afford a useful overview of what shaped the field. One of these is geography, as the papers emanated from the centre of London, a space that historians such as Frank Mort (2010) and Matt Houlbrook (2005), for instance, have demonstrated had a disproportionate impact on British culture and society. Another is class and social identity; both publications were, typically, written and edited by middle-class white men. The publications provided space for resistance and alternative perspectives, but the results of inequality and market considerations frequently shaped reporting and decisions about newsworthiness. Using the methodologies outlined by Adrian Bingham (2004: 16), who argues that the press is an arena for debate that constructs social meanings which inform the public, and Stuart Hall’s (1993: 107–10) strategy for considering texts along with their production and reception, the entertainment press can provide a window into twentieth-century discourses on class, race and gender, politics and social mores, that underpinned understandings of entertainment, leisure, art and criticism.

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Sight & Sound The first issue of Sight & Sound was published in spring 1932 from an office in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. Edited by R. W. Dickinson, the paper was, at first, a ‘quarterly review of modern aids to learning’ published by the British Institute of Adult Education. It focused upon film-makers and those who might use film or sound recordings in a professional setting, particularly educators. The new technologies covered had provoked laughter in Parliament a year before, but the magazine argued that the emerging methods of capturing, editing and screening sounds and images simultaneously to audiences would profoundly change education. The paper was not the first publication geared towards film-­makers, cinema managers and cinema-goers. Optical Magic Lantern and Photographic Enlarger (OMLPE) was launched in 1889 by E. T. Heron for those interested in projecting images from still transparencies and was found at ‘all Newsvendors, Railway News Stalls or by subscription’ (OMLPE, January 1896). When cinema presented the opportunity to write about moving images it became, first, Cinematographic Journal (1900) and then Kine Weekly (1907). It grew to be the publication for British cinema managers who, around the time of the Great War, were treated to 200 pages of densely packed information. The paper catered for the industry more than Sight & Sound which, in spite of being on the side of film-makers, published articles that appealed more to the interests of an informed member of the public. Sight & Sound was, nonetheless, less accessible than publications such as Picturegoer, which was aimed at fans and provided news and gossip about stars alongside reviews of new films. Unlike its competitors, which were typically established by an entrepreneur and ran as independent magazines, the British Film Institute (BFI) took over the paper in 1934 (concurrently launching Monthly Film Bulletin (MFB)). The BFI, in keeping with its institutional mission, faithfully continued to champion film as an educational tool, from which Sight & Sound benefitted financially as educational institutions were a significant market for firms that made 16mm projectors and audiovisual equipment and which paid for advertisements (NowellSmith 2012: 237). In spring 1935, after the paper told the story of a reel of film that was hurried to Kenya to aid a surgeon in ‘saving a man’s life’, the editorial board argued that ‘there is no branch of knowledge in which the film can act as a greater benefactor to mankind’ (Sight & Sound, Spring 1935: 1).

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Despite representing the film industry, Sight & Sound was frequently critical of domestic popular cinema. The paper, for instance, prefaced its quarterly review of new films in the 1935 issue containing the feature on medical film with a sardonic account of the artifice and patchy results of the growing domestic commercial film industry. Alistair Cooke, a Salfordian journalist who had replaced Oliver Baldwin (Stanley Baldwin’s son) as the BBC’s film critic, wrote, ‘the growing confidence and volume of British publicity agents is something that Wardour Street may look upon with pleasure’. When he visited the cinema, however, he now found himself, ‘fighting through excited mobs, alert policemen, scathing arc lights, rows of boiled shirts . . . and for what? For, usually, just an ordinarily banal opus [which] encourages a critic to dislike it more than he should’. Cooke then disparaged Hollywood’s populist film-making revealing an elitist scorn for films made as mass entertainment. In the 1930s and 1940s, the paper reproduced writings from Paul Rotha, a celebrated documentary film-maker, László Moholy-Nagy, a professor at the Bauhaus and visual artist, the directors Alfred Hitchcock and Sergei Eisenstein­ – ­individuals at the cutting edge of their fields. Hitchcock (Sight & Sound, Summer 1937: 61–3) enthusiastically observed the public’s burgeoning acceptance of film-makers blending drama and comedy, while Eisenstein (Sight & Sound, Spring 1946: 12–13) praised ‘His Highness’ Charlie Chaplin. Yet these men, with their social, cinematic and artistic clout, could too be dismissive of popular cinema: Moholy-Nagy’s (Sight & Sound, Summer 1934: 56–7) ‘open letter to the film industry’ began: ‘Shall we look on while the film, this wonderful instrument, is being destroyed before our eyes by stupidity and dull-witted amateurism?’ In winter 1935 a Sight & Sound editorial reconsidered the importance of the ‘entertainment film’ after Simon Rowson published the findings of his ‘Statistical Survey of the Cinema Industry in Great Britain in 1934’ in The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Rowson, as the editorial put it, provided ‘striking evidence of the vast scope of the industry and justified the description of the cinema as one of the sociological wonders of the world’. Despite being a ‘wonder’ in sociological terms (as Annette Kuhn (2002) has demonstrated, cinemagoing was an essential aspect of society in the 1930s), the BFI argued that the cinema needed to ‘cater more than they do for those filmgoers who not only expect better films, but who wish to discriminate between the films that they go to see’ (Sight & Sound, Winter 1935–6: 1–2). The entertainment film was ‘a problem’, and the editorial suggested that British cinema could be adapted, according to their professional

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Figure 22.1  Paul Rotha directing a scene, 10 September 1962 (Courtesy of the Dutch National Archives and Spaarnestad Photo (https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/fotocollectie/ aa16ff32-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84))

c­ riteria of value, through an accreditation scheme, founding specialist and repertory cinemas outside of London, and by adding worthy films to the National Film Library. After the Second World War, during which the magazine’s length had been limited by paper restrictions, Sight & Sound was challenged by a new publication, Sequence. Consequently, Denis Foreman relaunched Sight & Sound in an attempt to attract ‘New Statesman readers’ (Foreman 1997: 24)­ – ­in some part due to a pro-Labour and internationalist editorial position, New Statesman had increased its circulation from 13,000 copies sold weekly in the early 1930s to around 70,000 readers per issue by 1945. The paper recruited Sequence’s ­writers, who were influential members of the British Free Cinema movement: Peter Ericsson, Lindsay Anderson, Penelope Houston, Gavin Lambert and Karel Reisz. In April 1950, during the brief period (1950–2) that the paper was a monthly publication, Frank Enley exemplified the paper’s critical approach and aesthetic values when reviewing The Blue Lamp (1950), the film that introduced the hero of the long-running television series, Dixon of Dock Green. Enley denounced The Blue Lamp as ‘a

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peculiarly specious brand of mediocrity which, to put it mildly, is having a fine run for its money’ (Sight & Sound, April 1950: 76–7). Enley argued that the film was a crass expression of British cultural chauvinism that cast ­certain characteristics­– ­bravery, for instance­– ­as intrinsically ‘British’ to provide easy myths for the public. In October 1953 Sight & Sound asked critics and film-makers ‘to clear the ground as to the relations between critics and film-makers’ in the name of solidarity (Sight & Sound, October 1953: 99–104). The questionnaire, completed by seven film-makers and ten critics, asked whether the ‘freedom of the critic’ was ‘reality’ or ‘illusion’. The journalists concluded ‘reality’ but their responses revealed some telling limitations: they acknowledged the ‘unconscious pressure’ placed on critics to fall in line with the public’s reception of films; and Freda Bruce Lockland admitted to being ‘ticked off’ by her editor for devoting two pages of an unnamed paper to films produced by a studio that did not advertise. The article explained how the critics felt a ‘double responsibility’ to both the films reviewed and the public. It explained how many critics were wary of developing friendships with film-makers to preserve ‘critical judgement’. Film-makers, on the other hand, saw critics in a positive light and implied that the journalists might not have been entirely honest about their social interactions with film-makers. Sir Michael Balcon admitted that they had ‘put him through every mood in the calendar from triumphant to suicidal’, had ‘the tendency to wisecrack unfairly’ and often failed to strike a constructive balance between criticism and gossip, but like his colleagues considered their writing helpful. The debate over the role of the critic continued throughout the 1950s and onwards. Lindsay Anderson (Sight & Sound, Autumn 1956) reconsidered the principles underpinning film criticism. He described his preference for the rough but meaningful over the polished yet superficial, and argued that film should be judged according to its success in defending ‘moral, social, poetic’ ideals ‘with intelligence as well as emotion’ (Sight & Sound, Autumn 1956: 63–9). When considering ‘The Critical Question’ four years later, Penelope Houston (Sight & Sound, Autumn 1960) remarked that, ‘Mr Anderson was welcomed rather like a bowler caught throwing in a test match.’ (Sight & Sound, Autumn 1960: 108). The questions of ‘commitment’, that Anderson brought up, Houston admitted, remained fundamental to critical discussions of film but suggested that critics follow a pseudo-objective style. She also argued against the ‘perverted’ approach of ‘the new critical school’ who saw no bad subjects, no chances for affirmation, no social significance, no sympathetic characters nor any reason for narrative.

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Sight & Sound offered perceptive responses to the varied and sometimes challenging films of the 1960s. David Wilson (1982: 18) recalled, ‘the 1962 London Film Festival . . . included films by Renoir, Bertolucci, Satyajit Ray, Ozu, Bruñel, Polanski, Kurosawa, Wadja, Bresson and Godard. Sight & Sound, making a broad church rather than a narrow cult of the cinema, could respond to all of them.’ This cosmopolitanism was attractive to certain types of reader. Norton, who came of age and attended university during the 1960s (one of Sight & Sound’s typical readers and a respondent to the UCL/AHRC Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s survey), for instance, remembered reading the magazine: ‘for info and for the cultural experience­ – ­it made me feel cool’. He became a Francophile who idolised Truffaut and Godard because their films were ‘intensely personal’; when he mentioned that the Nouvelle Vague ‘“spoke to me” socio-culturally’, he used language and concepts to explain his cinema experiences that could have come straight from the pages of the magazine. The new forms of international cinema that were popular in the 1960s often challenged Sight & Sound’s journalists, particularly those who described themselves as ‘humanistic’. An article by Gabriel Pearson and Eric Rhode (Sight & Sound, Autumn 1961: 160–8) described the transitions between sequences, mood swings and lack of obvious coherence in Godard’s Breathless and Truffaut’s Shoot the Pianist as ‘like a cat teasing a ball of wool, the thread of a tale may be arbitrarily picked up, played with, and just suddenly dropped’. They considered the film as either amoral or the fruit of an unpredictable moral compass that followed an ‘alien logic’. As representatives of the ‘humanist critic’ rather than the New Wave, they noted a difference in ontologies, between their search for a ‘stable reality’ and others who believed ‘none such now holds’. In response, they provided a list of ‘assumptions of the humanist critic’ with criteria for the conditions in which ‘great art’ could be created. During the 1970s, Sight & Sound moved from the BFI’s offices to Dean Street in Soho and began to publish longer and more detailed articles afforded by, as of 1971, an expanded format. At the turn of the 1970s and under the editorial stewardship of Penelope Houston (who held the role until 1990), Sight & Sound had a circulation of 30,000 and could ill afford to alienate its readership by becoming a journal for the growing discipline of Film Studies. There was, however, some overlap. In autumn 1976, for instance, the paper found space for writings on television by Stuart Hall, the Marxist sociologist. He concluded that television made ‘real the utopian slogan that appeared in May 1968 adorning the walls of the Sorbonne: “Art is dead, let us make everyday life.”’ (Sight & Sound, Autumn 1967: 246–52).

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In light of current controversies regarding sexual abuse in the entertainment industry and the particular scrutiny on the film industry, it is notable that Sight & Sound ignored Roman Polanski’s flight from legal action following the alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl, Samantha-Jane Gailey, at Jack Nicholson’s home in Los Angeles. Sight & Sound was cautious when reporting upon the private lives of celebrities. In autumn 1962, for instance, a front-page editorial reflected on the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. It argued that the pair had been exploited and the division between public lives and personal personae blurred (Sight & Sound, Autumn 1962: 159). The decision that the Polanski case was not newsworthy, however, sided with the exploiter and hints at a close link between the paper and industry that most likely resulted in abuses of power going unchallenged. In summer 1978, the year that he fled bail, he was mentioned once in a paragraph explaining how he had attended the Łódź Film School with Jerzy Skolimowski (Sight & Sound, Summer 1978: 146–7). When Polanski’s film Tess (1979)­– ­an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles which featured a scene depicting the rape of ‘Tess’ (played by 18-year-old Nastassja Kinski)­ – ­was released in UK cinemas, the magazine did not review it. Indeed, they mentioned Polanski sparingly over the next decade: sixty-four articles mentioned Polanski in the 1960s and the 1970s, but only sixteen in the 1980s. Despite the selection criteria that promoted criticism over personal matters, the decision not to report on the Polanski affair was a considerable oversight that conceivably contributed to a culture that emboldened sexually abusive men in the film industry. Sight & Sound’s circulation began to fall at the beginning of the 1990s. This was common across the entertainment press as writing migrated online and, since the 1980s, as Mort (1996: 19) argues, developments in printing ‘disciplines and technologies’, changes in retail and distribution, alongside the rise in free papers and postal subscriptions ‘radically reshaped the expectations of many consumers’. The declining interest in ‘art-film culture’ was seen as a specific concern to Sight & Sound (Nowell-Smith 2012: 249) along with new titles entering the market such as Empire (1989) and Total Film (1997). Houston stepped down and was replaced by Colin McCabe who merged the magazine with MFB, made it a monthly publication and revoked the immediate subscription privileges that came with BFI membership. He was replaced by Philip Dodd shortly afterwards. Dodd adapted the paper to include VHS releases and as Nowell-Smith (2012: 250) notes, ‘Queer cinema, body-horror, cyber-punk, topics that the old Sight & Sound would have treated gingerly if at all, made it to the front pages of the magazine and even on to the front cover.’

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Nick James took over as editor in 1997, launched a website, and returned the magazine to something more closely resembling the paper before Dodd’s changes. In 2001, however, its monthly readership was 23,249 and by 2010 it had further declined to 19,137. James was, at first, bullish. In July 2006, after a conversation over dinner with two unnamed newspaper reviewers at the Cannes Film Festival, he wrote how newspapers were afflicted by ‘desperate short termism’ in the face of the internet and new media overtaking them as recipients of advertising revenue (Sight & Sound, July 2006: 3). He asked: ‘Surely, a confident newspaper would want the reader to be able to trust the ratings and opinions of its reviewers? Surely, that’s what they pay their reviewers for?’ James’s sangfroid did not last, and in October 2008, he wrote an emotionally charged article asking ‘who needs critics?’ in the age of the internet 2.0 (meaning user-generated content) (Sight & Sound, October 2008: 16–18). He argued that bloggers, who often wrote for free and without professional responsibilities, undermined the public’s demand for professional critics. In defence of criticism, James printed excerpts from Anderson’s essay ‘Stand Up! Stand Up!’, Cooke’s ‘Letter from America’ and Houston’s review of Last Year in Marienbad alongside contemporary film writing from critics. Mark Fisher, the Marxist theorist and author of the K-Punk blog, countered: A measure of (justified) frustration with the old media is no doubt a motivating force in much blogging, just as it was in the case of fanzines in the 1970s. But many successful bloggers also write for print publications and their most effective writing is still often to be found on their own sites, where they are able to pursue their own agendas free from the pressure of word counts and independent of the commodity-time of consumer capitalism.

Melody Maker Lawrence Wright, a composer, founded Melody Maker in 1926 from 8 Denmark Street in London, and it was first edited by Edgar Jackson, who led a big band orchestra. Denmark Street, or ‘Tin Pan Alley’, was the heart of London’s commercial music industry, which, at the time, mainly sold sheet music and promoted live music. While only five minutes’ walk from Sight & Sound’s offices in Bedford Square, the two settings were very different; Bedford Square’s Georgian architecture and well-tended garden made it clearly part of Bloomsbury, whereas Denmark Street, on the cusp of Soho was cramped and significantly less upmarket.

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In the first fifteen years, Melody Maker generated sufficient advertising and circulation revenue by covering the dance band scene. From the first issue onwards (January 1926), Melody Maker’s editor, Wright, interviewed himself (under the nom de plume Horatio Nicholls) to discuss his personal compositions. Despite the paper’s sometimes dubious ethics, its writers were obliged to have a level of musical knowledge; Melody Maker only hired journalists who could read sheet music­ – ­a stipulation that survived into the 1970s. The dance band scene was buoyant; there were multiple dance halls in most towns and cities. In July 1931 the Locarno in Streatham averaged over 1,500 attendees per month and similar crowds were reported in cities across Britain (Nott 2015: 25). There were, however, as Roberta Freund Schwartz (2016: 2–3) notes, a number of styles and genres competing for the public’s interest: British bands had been recording American-influenced styles such as ‘ragtime’ since 1889, the year phonographs and cylinders became more widely available; syncopated dance bands emerged around the time of the First World War and by 1918 ‘jass’ reached the public. From the late 1920s into the 1930s, the public’s interest in jazz grew, but Melody Maker struggled to cover the music meaningfully. Jim Godbolt (1984: 271), a jazz historian, considered Jackson ‘ill-informed’ but accepted that it was ‘hardly surprising, since Jackson has no discographies, histories or biographies to consult, and the musicians concerned were 3,000 miles away’. Jazz papers began to compete with Melody Maker and better their coverage: Rhythm, which featured Spike Hughes’s writings, was formed in 1929, followed by Hot News and Swing Music in the 1930s. New forms of jazz­ – ­or, for that matter, the people who invented, recorded and performed the new musics­ – ­sometimes concerned Melody Maker’s writers. Derek B. Scott (2003: 88) and George McKay (2005) have noted Edgar Jackson’s prejudice towards black people. Jackson, like others in music industry, considered a moral code as an element of musicians’ professional standards which, in this case, were informed by ideas of white supremacy. In 1926, for instance, John Souter’s painting ‘The Breakdown’­– ­picturing a black jazz musician seated, playing saxophone for a naked white woman­– ­compelled Jackson (quoted in Godbolt 1984: 28) to write: We demand that the habit of associating our music with the primitive and barbarous negro deviation shall conclude forthwith . . . ‘Breakdown’ . . . lacks the respect due to the chastity and morality of the younger generation but in the degradation it implies to

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modern white women there is a subversive danger to the community and the best thing that could happen to it is to have it . . . Burnt! Jackson’s words demonstrate a common belief about music influencing young people. The music profession, as a consequence of this idea, made efforts to control the people permitted to make music in public and, therefore, the messages and sounds transmitted. Melody Maker gave voice to concerns about people, behaviours, sounds or ideas that might be deemed transgressive and would therefore, threaten the music industry. Jazz from the US, composed and performed by predominantly black men, did, nevertheless, gain a footing which forced the music press to adapt. Spike Hughes, now regularly contributing to the Melody Maker under the pen name ‘Mike’, used his authority as a performer who understood the European musical tradition to create sympathetic criteria for analysing jazz and conferring relative standing within the genre (Arvidsson 2009). Matt Brennan (2013) argued that a similar shift in rationale was required to justify rock ’n’ roll. Hughes, as Alf Arvidsson (2009: 259) argued, contributed to the perception ‘that the African-American musician was the primary source of jazz’s inherent and defining qualities’. Melody Maker survived the Second World War despite bomb damage prompting a move to 19 Denmark Street. The paper was still scorned by jazz enthusiasts as it had been before the war. In the PL Yearbook of Jazz, Albert McCarthy wrote that Melody Maker was: ‘A newspaper of wretched aspect designed for the British dance-band musician and those who make their money out of dance music in this country’, adding ‘the reviews of Edgar Jackson are of no interest whatsoever to the genuine jazz enthusiast’ (McCarthy 1946: 28). McCarthy ran Jazz Forum which started in June 1946 and specialised in, as Godbolt (1984: 271) put it, ‘esoteric features’, but such was the success of Melody Maker­ – ­which at this point, had an average weekly circulation of 44,136­– ­that McCarthy’s writers contributed frequently to its rival. In 1955 Jack Hutton, a trad jazz trumpeter who, before serving in the RAF, had worked on children’s comics, replaced Edgar Jackson as the editor of Melody Maker. Jackson left the paper with a growing circulation that in the opening six months of 1955 averaged over 100,000 copies per week. In some respects, this was due to enthusiasm for the new rock ’n’ roll craze attracting young people with greater disposable income and steady employment. It was not all rock ’n’ roll though, as Hutton brought in jazz writers who would loom large in the music press for the next decades like Max Jones, Laurie Henshaw,

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Chris Hayes and Bob Dawbawn. He also added a voice for modern jazz, Bob Houston, and Diz Disley­– ­a banjoist in thrall to Django Reinhart. Chris Welch, who went on to write for the Melody Maker, remembered the paper of the 1950s fondly. He told Paul Gorman (2001: 19) that ‘the Melody Maker seemed incredibly hip. There was no television to speak of in those days, but it carried weekly coverage of this almost underground music scene, which made you feel like part of a secret society.’ Of course, Welch was in a position to romanticise the paper and the scenes it covered, but the paper of the late 1950s and 1960s was the place to follow and­– ­through classifieds and concert listings­– ­participate in popular music. The paper was dominated by jazz and stars like Count Basie, the big band swing jazz pianist, were treated with reverence. In the 12 October 1957 issue, Melody Maker announced that Basie was voted the ‘world’s top jazzman’ and lauded as ‘sensational’ Melody Maker, 12 October 1957: 1) when invited to re-open the Royal Festival Hall (RFH)­– ­performing to members of the Royal Family. Over the next few years, jazz luminaries from the US such as Louis Armstrong and Thelonius Monk, along with British jazz artists including Humphrey Lyttelton, George Melly and Ronnie Scott, all performed at the RFH­– ­next door to the British Film Institute’s National Film Theatre, no less. In 1961 the paper’s tagline remained ‘the best in jazz’ and, later that year, the Melody Maker’s (8 June 1961) festival in Blackpool ‘rocked’ but rock ’n’ roll and skiffle performers were given secondary billing to the trad jazz stars. Melody Maker’s cosy relationship with jazz meant that it lost out to the New Musical Express (NME) when the Beatles became wildly popular in 1964. Maurice Kinn, a Soho man-about-town and publishing entrepreneur, bought the NME in 1957 and, in a move that was anathema to Melody Maker’s staff, decided who was covered in his paper according to the top 30 of the singles chart­ – ­which Record Mirror had begun to publish from July 1956. By tapping into the beat trend, the NME’s circulation rose from 88,839 copies per week in 1957 to 306,881 in 1964. Melody Maker did not have a close relationship with the Beatles, whereas Alan Smith at the NME, Disc’s June Harris and Keith Altham who, at the time, wrote for Fabulous! did. From 1958 Melody Maker’s circulation was in general decline. The paper was more successful from 1967, when it managed to balance its interest in the jazz, folk and blues scenes, with popular progressive and underground rock. Melody Maker described the nascent rock scenes as justifiable alongside other established musics by valorising the musicians’ technicality and knowledge of prior musical canons (particularly the blues) alongside their role in representing

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youth, a changing society and politics (Glen 2018). Melody Maker gave journalists and musicians space to be outspoken, within certain limits. After employing Ray Coleman, Melody Maker picked fights with the BBC over radio regulation and censorship and dug into their affairs of the music industry. Melody Maker was outspoken in its defence of the Rolling Stones, for instance, after they were arrested for the possession of drugs in 1967 (Glen 2018: Ch. 2). The paper survived Jack Hutton leaving in 1969 to form Sounds­– ­‘a left-wing Melody Maker’­– ­and was revitalised by young writers recruited from local newspapers: Chris Charlesworth, Richard Williams, Roy Hollingsworth and Michael Watts. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s fans really invested in Melody Maker’s writings. Mark Ellen (2014: 31), who would go on to be a music journalist, remembered: I taped a picture of Julie Driscoll to my school folder. There were female pop stars but only two girls in British rock, the low-lidded Christine Perfect of shadowy blues-wailers Chicken Shack and the smouldering Driscoll with the whirling chart hit ‘This Wheel’s on Fire’. I went for Driscoll, a panda-eyed siren with a shaved head and polka dots. This was partly out of loyalty to what Melody Maker called our ‘home-grown rock scene’. In 1972, the National Readership Survey presented a snapshot of the Melody Maker’s readership. While it did not keep readers-per-copy figures like its competitor NME, which had the relatively high level of nine readers per copy, later in the decade the paper was read by around six people per copy and therefore reached about 1,200,000 people every week. If other titles are considered­ – ­Sounds and Record Mirror along with specialist or single-genre papers­ – ­the music press’s total readership was easily over 3,000,000 every week during the 1970s. The gender split of readers was biased towards men­ – ­only 38 per cent of its readers were women­ – ­most readers (48 per cent) lived in the south-east, and the vast majority were under 24 years old (68 per cent). Likely due to its more eclectic coverage and force of habit, more over-35 readers read the Melody Maker than the NME, however. The dominance of London and the south-east did mean that music-making in other regions was largely overlooked; this discrepancy caused, for instance, the formation of the Manchester Music Force. The local musicians’ collective incorporated to draw the Melody Maker’s attention to the ‘character of the new north west, working-class, radical musicians against the establishment’ (Lee 2002: 94). Melody Maker adapted well to the so-called ‘Golden Age of Rock Writing’ and led the field­– ­in terms of circulation­– ­during the first half

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of the 1970s. Journalists drew inspiration from the New Journalistic writing of Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson found in US publications like Rolling Stone and Creem to bring the subjective experiences of experiencing music and the stories behind the sounds to the page. The much-mythologised music journalist on tour with a band and ensconced in various hijinks and debauchery emerged in this period. Melody Maker gave readers a taste of the world, and particularly America. Hollingsworth (Melody Maker, 21 December 1972: 20–1) wrote, during his stay in Melody Maker’s Manhattan apartment, evocatively about seeing Suicide for the first time in New York and Charlesworth (Melody Maker, 2 February 1974) brought Georgia to life when visiting Capricorn Records, for instance. As Britain’s punk scene emerged in 1976, Melody Maker gave Caroline Coon a place to cover the new scene in a sociological manner with reflections on class and subculture. This perspective was powerful, and the interest in young, working-class punks resulted in music papers having to carefully navigate moral panic and re-evaluate, through a sometimes patrician lens, their duty of care towards readers­ – ­now young participants in a subcultural scene rather than fans who passively consumed a cultural product. The paper recruited Ian Birch, Jon Savage, Vivien Goldman, Mary Harron and Simon Frith to provide more punk coverage. Around this time, Melody Maker dropped its prerequisite that journalists read music and, according to Birch, when Jon Savage was recruited on the back of his London’s Outrage fanzine, he could hardly use a typewriter. The paper was, to some extent, at odds with the music, fans and musicians who purported to challenge the music industry and society. Coon, for instance, was reprimanded by Coleman for giving a self-released seven-inch single the coveted title ‘single of the week’ over a single released by a record label that paid for advertising. With its ‘Street Heat’ feature, however, the paper made some effort to report on scenes outside of London. With the music industry’s complicity in cases of sexual abuse, it would be remiss not to mention the paper’s part in turning a blind eye to abusive behaviour. Melody Maker, along with its competitors, had an often reductive and sometimes toxic way of describing women, and many instances of physical and workplace abuse also went unreported and rarely challenged. Mick Farren, who had contributed to Melody Maker in the early 1970s (striking up a dialogue with Tony Benn over music and politics) but is better remembered as the editor of International Times and as an NME writer, recalled members of Led Zeppelin being ‘brought’ underage women. He explained that reporting this would contravene the espirit de corps of the tour group,

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engender hardships on the road and prevent future access to artistes. Chris Charlesworth noted how Jimmy Savile, the Radio 1 DJ and serial sexual abuser, would take out expensive legal action in response to any bad press. Women working for music papers ran into difficulties due to gender prejudice. Val Wilmer (1989: xii) recalled how, in the 1960s, an editor prohibited the publication of a photograph of her sitting next to Little Brother Montgomery, a black blues pianist. As more women began to write in the music press towards the end of the 1970s, the gender dynamic in the workplace led Caroline Coon to hold women’s discussion sessions. Indeed, sexism led some feminist musicians of the late 1970s and 1980s to be reticent to discuss sexual politics in music papers, a subject that they would more openly discuss in fanzines. The early 1980s proved difficult for Melody Maker. In 1979 Ray Coleman was moved into a publishing role as editor-in-chief and replaced by Richard Williams, returning from a few years at Time Out. Williams redesigned the paper and appointed Simon Frith as features editor but opposition from Coleman and a six-month strike­ – ­in which Coleman tried to put out a ‘strike-breaking issue’ and Williams resigned in protest­ – ­ended with IPC (the publishing company that owned Melody Maker) making the Melody Maker’s journalists redundant. Allan Jones respond by throwing a typewriter through a window and Mike Oldfield was made editor. As Jones put it, ‘we had sales of 60,000 a week, a third of which were probably only interested in the bass-player ads at the back’ (Gorman 2001: 275). Compounding the internal struggles, the music press was fragmenting as several titles launched: Smash Hits, The Face, The Wire, Select, Kerrang!, Vox, Mojo and Q. Smash Hits, a biweekly pop paper, hit circulation levels unprecedented since the NME during Beatlemania. Changes in publishing technologies made new glossy papers cheaper to produce and more refined market research found consumer niches to exploit. After Oldfield left the paper, Jones became editor and the paper moved towards the style and tone that would endure until it was merged with the NME in 1999. Having missed out on post-punk and new romantic coverage to the NME, and street punk along with the new wave of British heavy metal to Sounds, the paper began to establish a new identity. During the mid-to-late 1980s and 1990s, the paper changed its logo and layout as new journalists, including Simon Reynolds and David Stubbs, reinvigorated the paper’s writing but ultimately failed to arrest its declining circulation. The paper was, perhaps, too focused on esoteric musicians and failed to capitalise on the popularity of hip hop and dance music. Melody Maker (2 April 1989)

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put the Butthole Surfers on the cover, for instance. The Austin band are adored by some but could be rather alienating to those who prefer their musicians not to perform while tripping on acid and setting fire to their instruments. The Butthole Surfers cover is, however, testament to how the paper provided significant coverage of the American DIY underground’s forms of avant-garde rock music and its UK and European equivalents. These bands were, however, reticent with the press and rarely had the major label backing that would attract broad audiences and higher circulation for the Melody Maker. Despite this scene’s valorisation by ‘grunge’ musicians and Nirvana’s success temporarily helping sales, as did Britpop, the paper’s circulation halved during the 1990s to 32,206. On 14 December 2000, NME.com announced that Melody Maker would merge with the NME. The NME took Melody Maker’s classified section­– ­that helped the Stranglers, Killing Joke and Kajagoogoo complete their line-ups­– ­and folded the paper. The NME’s circulation was declining, however, as it struggled­ – ­in some part also due to the dire editorial guidance of Conor McNicholas­ – ­to compete with bloggers and websites like The Quietus, Pitchfork, Stereogum and Drowned in Sound. From 2008 there was also a marked decline in readers’ disposable income and employment prospects. The advent of illegal MP3 downloads in the late 1990s and viable online streaming sites in the 2000s meant that the music industry’s physical sales fell sharply and music could be found for free online. A gatekeeper was no longer vital and advertising revenues fell. NME ultimately tried to move into Loud & Quiet’s territory as a free music paper, but as of Friday, 9 March 2018 its print edition was withdrawn.

Conclusion The entertainment press reached millions every week, providing news, criticism about entertainment and the arts, while also providing a window into British culture and society. The messages and images presented to the entertainment press’s readers were shaped by institutional pressures and commercial concerns, demanded by changing levels of circulation and advertising revenue, but remained beguiling because they could reveal what Lawrence Grossberg (1992: 98) called ‘maps of identification and belonging’. Even if a journalist or editor didn’t get it (they often did), a reader might find someone who did through a review, an offhand comment in an article or an advertisement­– ­and perhaps there lies the entertainment press’s cultural power. There was certainly an autodidactic culture, which grew with the expansion

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of higher education from the 1960s, within which the entertainment press was influential. In spite of the frequent compromises made by papers forced to provide a commercial product or represent­ – ­either formally or informally­ – ­an industry, the entertainment press offered the chance for readers to absorb the results of others’ imaginations: new images, sounds, texts, understandings, ideas, ideologies, chances for radicalism, resistance and social change. The entertainment press led people to spaces of enjoyment beyond the everyday, articulated desire and emotions. It was the first place of reference before going out. The ideas of critical freedom that journalists held, and the examples of how they were sometimes curtailed by editors, demonstrates how broader social and cultural trends­ – ­in this case determined by freemarket capitalism­ – ­shaped the entertainment press. But it is only one of several ways in which the entertainment press reveals impressions of British society and culture. Papers and magazines articulated the concerns of young people more often from the 1960s, but also shaped their publications according to politics, social norms and values. The entertainment press is, similarly, a mine for media representations of class, gender, sexuality and race. The author interviewed Keith Altham, Ian Birch, Chris Charlesworth, Caroline Coon, Mick Farren, Paul Rambali, Jon Savage and Richard Williams.

Chapter Twenty-Three

FEMINISM AND THE FEMINIST PRESS Kaitlynn Mendes and Jilly Boyce Kay

Introduction

W

  ith 2018 marking the centenary of the extension of the voting franchise to (some) women in Britain, it is an opportune moment to reflect on the complex relationship between the press and the feminist movement(s) in the context of British-Irish politics­– ­and the ways this relationship has changed over time. This opportunity for reflection involves the shifting ways that newspapers have represented feminist activism, and the ways feminists have themselves used the press in various ways to agitate for change. This chapter has three objectives: to offer an overview of existing scholarship; to provide new insights from original research; and to indicate salient and productive areas for future research. Significantly, the focus on both Britain and Ireland seeks to challenge what has been identified as a highly London-centric approach to the history of the women’s suffrage movement (Pedersen 2017) as well as of feminism more broadly. Given space constraints, it is not possible to account exhaustively for the highly complex gender politics and feminist histories of Britain and Ireland across the expansive timeframe of 1900–2017, or across all geographical regions (see Forster and Hollows 2020). Instead, this chapter seeks to consider the complexities of both feminism and media within a more transnational frame­– ­and as such, to be more attendant to regional and cultural specificity as well as historical periodicity. James Curran famously suggested that media history is the ‘neglected grandparent of media studies’ (Curran 2002: 3). Curran has also suggested that feminist approaches now constitute the fastest growing 468

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area of media history. Certainly, in recent years, there has been increasing attention paid to gender histories of media, as indicated by the establishment of the journal Feminist Media Histories. However, we would still nonetheless suggest­ – ­following Curran­ – ­that women’s media history can be considered the neglected grandmother of feminist media studies, given that much research in this field proceeds without an understanding of what has come before. As such, this chapter thinks historically about gender, media, activism and social change, encouraging further scholarly investigations into the multiple and complex relationships between feminism and media. The chapter is structured around ‘waves’ of feminist activism­ – ­the dominant historiographical mode through which feminism’s past is narrated (Henry 2004). While we acknowledge that the history of feminism in both Britain and Ireland expands beyond the particular time frame of our chapter, we begin with a focus on what is most often understood as the ‘first wave’ of feminism and the campaign for women’s suffrage (see Bryson 2003).

First Wave Feminism The first wave of the women’s movement in Britain and Ireland gathered pace in the second half of the nineteenth century, before manifesting as concerted, organised activism in the early twentieth century. The first petition seeking female suffrage was presented to the House of Commons in 1866, and it included twenty-five Irish women as signatories (Cullen Owens 2001) at a time when Ireland was ruled by the United Kingdom. It was not until 1918 that women over 30 with certain property qualifications were granted voting rights. In Ireland, all citizens over the age of 21 were enfranchised with the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 (Cullen Owens 2001: 43). It was not until 1928 that British women were awarded equal voting rights on the same terms as men. In Britain, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was founded by the Pankhurst family in Manchester in 1903, while the Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL) was founded by Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Margaret Cousins in Dublin in 1908. These two organisations were the most visible public manifestations of campaigns for women’s suffrage in Britain and Ireland respectively, and both adopted militant tactics (other suffrage organisations were committed to more gradualist reform). While there was significant admiration for and engagement with WSPU activities on the part of IWFL, this must be understood alongside an explicit intention to build a distinctively Irish women’s suffrage movement.

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Both feminist movements at this time cannot be abstracted from the context of the ‘national question’ or the struggle for independence from British rule. Diane Urquhart suggests that in Ireland, ‘[e]ffectively, the home rule issue alienated many women from joining the Irish suffrage campaign as many perceived Ireland’s fate to be of more consequence than votes for women’ (2002: 273). Many historians point to a fraught and unequal relationship between British and Irish suffragettes, one that exacerbated existing political and religious tensions in Ireland. Margaret Ward (1995), for example, argues that the imbalance of power between the well-resourced British suffragettes and the politically marginalised Irish suffrage campaigners meant that British feminists’ interventions in Ireland were deeply problematic (see also Fletcher 2000: 103; Burton 1994: 9). The Feminist Press During the First Wave As Maria DiCenzo et al. (2011) argue, the emergence of periodicals in support of the women’s suffrage movement is too often understood as a ‘niche’ area of press history­– ­as a forum where feminists merely spoke inwardly to one another. However, these numerous and diverse publications were very much publicist in their orientation, seeking to engage with, and participate in, a much broader conception of the public. The mainstream daily press was of great significance to the movement, not least in that it ‘served as the barometer for change’ (DiCenzo et al. 2011). DiCenzo et al.’s analysis of feminist publications from the Edwardian period­ – ­including Votes for Women (1907–18), The Englishwoman (1909–21) and The Freewoman (1911–14)­– ­shows how periodicals, while representing a multiplicity of views and approaches, served two key purposes: countering the under- or mis-reporting of the movement by the mainstream press, and functioning as a means of communication between, and information for, feminist activists. These early twentieth-century feminist periodicals were produced when journalistic cultures more broadly were in a period of flux, not least in relation to gender. The rise of ‘new journalism’ from the 1880s onwards­ – ­which sought to attract a much larger female audience and employed women as professional writers to do so­ – ­took a much greater interest in issues designated as belonging to the ‘private’ sphere (Conboy 2011; Kay and Mendes 2018). In 1903, the Daily Mirror was established as the first ‘paper for gentlewomen, written by gentlewomen’ (see Chambers et al. 2004: 21). However, by 1904 it was converted into a more conventional illustrated publication because of its failure to achieve commercial success­ – ­indicating the highly ambiva-

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Figure 23.1  Votes for Women, 10 October 1907 (Courtesy of LSE Women’s Library Collection)

lent and contingent ways in which this new journalistic culture was open to women’s participation. In the Irish context, the pro-suffrage, feminist-produced newspaper the Irish Citizen can be understood, according to Dana Hearne (1995: 1), as ‘the most crucial indicator of Irish feminist ideology in the early twentieth-century’. Similarly, for Mary Ryan (1992: 105), the Irish Citizen can be read as ‘a microcosm of the movement’ that also ‘represents the diversity of opinion within that movement’. It was sympathetic to the cause of Irish self-determination but pointed out that Home Rule without suffrage for women would equate to ‘Male Rule’ (ibid. 107), and it played an important role in linking up the scattered groups around Ireland (ibid. 110).

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Historians of women’s suffrage have relied extensively on feministproduced periodicals as important historical documents of the movement. For example, Ian Christopher Fletcher (2000: 109) points to the editorial politics of suffragette periodicals to analyse the imbrications of the English suffragettes in the imperial British state. Print media provide a rich resource for understanding the complex entanglements of feminist activism in national, imperial and transnational politics­ – ­an area that we suggest is ripe for future research, not only in relation to Ireland, but also to other spaces and contexts within the imperial history of Britain. First Wave Feminism in the Press Representations of the women’s suffrage movement in the mainstream press is a topic that remains significantly under-researched, especially so in the Irish context. There are some notable exceptions in relation to Britain. Kat Gupta (2016) focuses on representations of suffrage campaigners in The Times between 1908 and 1914, arguing that the newspaper conflated diverse suffrage identities, and focused narrowly on direct action at the expense of other activities. Sarah Pedersen’s (2017) book considers how the press engaged with and represented the women’s suffrage movement in Scotland, as well as the ways that different Scottish groups attempted to use the press to get their message into the public sphere. As such, it constitutes an important counter to the London-centricity of existing scholarship. Jilly Boyce Kay and Kaitlynn Mendes’s (2018) analysis of newspaper representations of Emily Wilding Davison illustrates the shifting ways in which the suffragette was constructed in British newspapers between 1913 and 2013, from being cast as ‘hysterical’ and a ‘lunatic’, to being recuperated as a legitimate activist. Katherine Kelly’s (2004) analysis of London newspapers between 1906 and 1914 suggests that the public spectacles of suffragette protest were beneficial for both the sensation-seeking commercial press and the women’s movement, between whom there was a kind of implicit collaboration. Jane Chapman (2013) analyses the relationship between the press and the emergence of gendered citizenship from the 1860s to the 1930s in India, Britain and France. It includes rich insights into British suffrage campaigners’ engagement with both the mainstream and feminist press. For example, Chapman notes a very early example of a press publicity campaign, when Emily Davis drew up a list of 500 newspapers and periodicals to which articles and copies of J. S. Mill’s petition to Parliament were sent (Chapman 2013: 123).

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Case Study: Newspaper Representations of Irish Suffrage Campaigners’ Protests in 1912 In 1912 a third Home Rule Bill was introduced, offering limited self-­governance for Ireland. The IWFL had launched a determined campaign to include women’s suffrage in the bill (McAuliffe 2016); however, despite the fact that some Irish Parliamentary Party members were committed to the principal of female suffrage, the party united to defeat all bills that sought to include this (Cullen Owens 2001: 40). In response to this, as well as to the exclusion of women from a national Home Rule convention, the IWFL adopted militant tactics, and in June 1912 Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, along with seven other IWFL activists, were arrested after breaking windows in government offices in Dublin (ibid.). This case study presents findings from newspaper representations of this militant action and its immediate aftermath. Using the search terms ‘Dublin’, ‘women’, and ‘Home Rule’, between 13 June and 20 June 1912, texts were retrieved from The Times, the Manchester Guardian, the Belfast Newsletter and the Dublin Daily Express. An alternative search using the term ‘suffragist’ in place of ‘women’ was also conducted, but yielded no additional results. The twenty-one articles were analysed for the ways that they discursively constructed the campaigners’ activism, its il/legitimacy, and its relative importance to Home Rule. Strikingly, the two British newspapers yielded only three articles for analysis, with the remainder in the Belfast Newsletter (10) and Dublin Daily Express (8)­– ­indicating the extent to which Irish suffrage was (in) visible and considered (un)important to mainstream British politics. The single article from The Times, entitled ‘Dublin Suffragist Raid’ (14 June, p. 4), framed the action as an unexpected turn of events: ‘The action of the women caused much surprise, as the Dublin suffragists have hitherto carried out their campaign in the most peaceful way.’ The Guardian, however, presented the women as being already-militant in the headline ‘Raid by Irish Militant Suffragists: Window Breaking in Dublin’ (14 June, p. 4). While the overall framing of the text emphasises the violence of their actions­– s­ tones that were ‘flung’ and ‘fired’ at property, and the fact that, upon arrest, ‘each lady had a handbag containing a number of stones, some of which weighed half a pound’, the article also contains the full text of a letter written by the IWFL to Prime Minister Asquith requesting an amendment to the Home Rule Bill­– t­hus giving some space, at least, in which the suffragettes’ own argument could be voiced in public. In the Dublin Daily Express there was also surprise at the unexpected militancy, which was understood as a replication of WSPU tactics: ‘The peaceful tactics heretofore adopted by the Dublin Suffragettes underwent a sudden change early yesterday, and in emulation of their sisters in London a window smashing campaign was entered upon’ (‘Window Smashing in Dublin’, 14

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June, p. 11). The full text of the IWFL’s letter to Asquith was again reproduced, and the newspaper gave a highly detailed account of both the direct action and the subsequent arrests. However, the article’s position on page 11 of the publication indicates the relative lack of importance accorded to the suffrage cause in the context of Home Rule. The Belfast Newsletter carried the story on page 7 (‘Suffragist Raid in Dublin: Windows Smashed in Government Buildings’, 14 June), emphasising both the spectacular nature of the protest­– ‘­Crash went the glass windows in all those public buildings’­– a ­ nd undermining the legitimacy of the women’s grievances by pointing to their privilege: ‘all of them occupying good positions in life’. Some days later, a demonstration was held to keep the momentum up around the suffrage activism. The Belfast Newsletter’s front-page report of this event was highly trivialising. It was entitled ‘Dublin Suffragettes Heckled: Amusing Scenes in Phoenix Park’ (20 June, p.  1). The article privileged the mocking voices of the hecklers: it reported that when IWFL organiser Margaret Cousins stood on a lorry, as ‘she began her speech somebody shouted “Go home and mind the baby,” laughter and cheers greeting the sally’. These articles provide a brief snapshot of the ways in which the fight for women’s suffrage in Ireland was discursively positioned as subordinate to the dominant question of Home Rule, u ­ nderlining once again the central and critical importance of feminist newspapers such as the Irish Citizen for mobilising the politics of nation and gender together.

Second Wave Feminism in the Press In both the UK and Ireland, the second wave of the feminist movement took place between the late 1960s and the early 1980s (see Bouchier 1983; Mendes 2011a; Smyth 1988) and was interested in issues such as equal pay, reproductive rights (although abortion remained divisive amongst Irish feminists) and affordable childcare. Irish feminists, operating in a morally conservative society influenced by the Catholic Church, were additionally concerned about housing, rights for widows, unmarried mothers and deserted wives. Where abortion and lesbian sexuality were regularly addressed in the UK (although not always supported), these, along with the national question, were often de-emphasised by Irish feminists because they were too divisive (Smyth 1988). Within Ireland there were a few well-known feminist organisations including the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) and Irishwomen’s Union (IU w ­ hich emerged from traditional women’s organisations, and were, as Smyth (1988: 332) argued, from the start ‘self-consciously radical and leftist’, although at times worked within the system to agitate for change. The UK movement in contrast tended to actively oppose formal and ­hierarchical organisation, preferring instead to use a collective political structure.

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As with first wave feminism, the women’s liberation movement at this time was remarkably active in terms of producing its own print media. In mainstream newspapers, women’s pages­– ­which had proliferated since the 1950s (Chambers et al. 2004: 32)­– t­here was a marked politicisation of content from the mid-1960s as the movement began to gain momentum (ibid.). In the 1970s, ‘agony aunt’ columns became what Martin Conboy (2011: 72) has called ‘an influential commentary on the changing mores of British women’, indicating the ways in which the feminist movement was increasingly an important discursive context for the mass media. Within the UK, feminists produced a range of independent, often anticapitalist publications such as the newspaper Outwrite (1982–8), home-made zines such as Shocking Pink (1979–82, 1987–92) and the magazine Spare Rib (1972–93), which provided feminist alternative perspectives and stories than those found in the mainstream media. In Ireland, research has shown that traditional women’s magazines such as Woman’s Way (1963–present) and Woman’s Life (1936–59) played an important role in addressing ‘taboo’ subjects such as equality, sex, menstruation, fertility and contraception, pushing boundaries in an otherwise morally conservative society (Clear 2016). Despite the many examples of local feminist collectives, who often produced their own print media content, with the exceptions mentioned above, they tended to lack effective communication tools which limited their ability to connect with other groups, organise large events or attract media attention (Bouchier 1983). As a result, while British feminists were prolific in forming their own alternative publications, neither these, nor feminists themselves, attracted significant mainstream visibility (see Mendes 2011a). Where there is a dearth of research into representations of the first wave, there is a healthy body of literature examining representations of the second wave, particularly in the American (Ashley and Olson 1998; Bradley 2003; Dow 2014), Canadian (Goddu 1999; Freeman 2001), and British press (Mendes 2011a; Morris 1973a). In contrast, although scholars have paid attention to the history of the Irish women’s liberation movement (see Connolly 2002; Levine 1982; Ryan 2010; Smyth 1988; Stopper 2006), we have found no studies to date which examine representations of second wave feminism in the Irish or Northern Irish press. This is despite claims by Irish feminists that the second wave within Ireland had ‘caught the attention of the media as no group of Irish women had ever done before’ (Smyth 1988: 334). The case study below presents a first attempt to address this gap in knowledge. When examining representations of the second wave in the British press, a few clear themes emerge. This includes the ways feminists were frequently framed as radical, deviant and militant (see Mendes 2011a; Morris 1973b). Other scholars (Mendes 2011a; Mendes 2011b; Morris 1973b) have found that the use of ridicule, condemnation, and claims that the movement was

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Figure 23.2  Outwrite, May 1988 (Courtesy of LSE Women’s Library Collection) fragmented, lacked progress or was an outright failure, were common delegitimising tactics. While this dismissive coverage was unexceptional, it was certainly not universal; scholars are increasingly attuned to the ways the press at times supported second wave feminism, and framed it as united, effective and liberating for women (see Mendes 2011a).

Case Study: The IWLM in the Press Using variations of the term ‘Irish Women’s Liberation Movement’, between 1970 and 1982, we found 582 relevant articles from six Irish newspapers (Irish Independent, Irish Press, Evening Herald, Sunday Independent, Nationalist and Leinster Times and Irish Examiner). Using systematic sampling, we selected 194 articles and analysed them using a thematic analysis (Guest

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et al. 2012). Below are some key themes emerging from coverage.

Action, Protest and Activism An examination of news articles from this sample indicates that the IWLM was highly active during this period. Articles recorded sit-ins, protests, meetings, pamphlets and petitions against a range of issues including contraceptive laws, mothers’ rights, equal pay, lack of female politicians and sexual double standards. Many articles appeared supportive with headlines such as ‘Women’s lib on the march: 800 attend first meeting’ (Irish Press, 15 April 1971). Recording the large turnout to such events is a common legitimising tactic (see Mendes 2015a), and one repeated throughout coverage. In fact, revealed throughout this sample are the ways that many newspapers took women’s lib seriously and relayed their concerns to the public. For example, one article in the Sunday Independent recounted the aims of the movement and is particularly noteworthy for further challenging sexual double standards which ‘produce the unmarried mother, while the unmarried father remains invisible’ (‘The dignity of women’, 17 October 1971, p. 12). To see patriarchal norms confronted so clearly is striking and is something that is largely absent within the British context at the time (see Mendes 2011a). Similarly, many other articles took seriously the issues raised in the 1971 IWLM pamphlet ‘Irishwomen­– ­chains or change’­– ­pointing out the ways women are discriminated against in legal, judicial and educational systems. Others took a more personalised approach, profiling individuals to highlight how these discriminatory practices impact upon Irish women. One such article featured senior architect Mrs Frances Quillinan, explaining how, despite her expertise, discriminatory laws prevented her from securing a permanent position because she was married (‘When marriage gets in the way of a job’, 16 March 1971, p. 6).

Key Moments Key moments in the history of Irish feminism were also recorded in the press. For example, many newspapers covered the first IWLM meeting in 1971. What is significant here is that articles not only reported on its proceedings (‘The suffering sex’, 19 April 1971, p. 7), but advertised the meeting ahead of time, providing detailed information about the date, location and time (‘Public meeting by women’s lib’, 8 April 1971, p. 9). As scholars have noted, this is significant for a movement’s chances of success because ‘people only have the opportunity to participate in activism if they know it is going to take place’ (Mendes 2015a: 59). Other well-reported events were the ‘contraceptive train’ protest, where

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dozens of IWLM members flouted the law by importing contraceptives from Northern Ireland to the Republic. Although this act of protest was at times described in highly feminised terms­– i­n one case as a ‘shopping trip’ (‘Women’s lib shopping trip tests law’, 24 May 1971, p.  20), most news articles appeared to be supportive of this initiative­– ­ a perspective which garnered backlash from some readers (‘Involve’, Sunday Independent, 6 June 1971, p. 11). In most cases however, the newspapers recorded this historic protest as a huge victory for women. One article, for example, reported that although these ‘flustered’ authorities were well aware of this legal breach­ – ­with some protesters taunting customs officials by waving devices in their faces­– ­‘no [legal] action was taken’ as a result of women’s determination and ‘stubbornness’ (‘Women’s Lib’, 24 May 1971, p. 20). Although a handful of articles and letters to the editor appeared to critique this act of protest, with claims for example that it undermined ‘the entire concept of love and marriage’ (‘Women’s lib tactics lashed’, 29 May, p. 4), most seemed to delight in feminists flaunting the law.

Benefits for Widows As indicated earlier in the chapter, a clear focus of IWLM activities centred on securing better protections for widows and single women. This agenda was not only prominent in the 1971 pamphlet ‘Irishwomen­– c­ hains or change’ mentioned above, but in other initiatives which for example sought better benefits for widows (see ‘Seek double benefits for widows’, 24 March, 1971, p.  14). Significantly again, coverage did not often merely focus on tactics already taking place, but included contact details and ways to get involved. This was the case in one article advertising the formation of ‘An action group seeking justice for single mothers, deserted wives and widows in the Dublin area’ (‘Women’s Lib’, 17 May 1971, p. 6). Similarly, another article titled: ‘Widows “cannot afford to be ill”’ (26 March 1971, p. 4) critiqued discrepancies in the law, where widows do not receive full sickness or unemployment benefits as men, despite paying full national contributions. Due to space constraints, we cannot provide a comprehensive summary of all our key findings. What is significant about this small case study however is the legitimisation given to the IWLM and its initiatives­– ­even those which broke the law. This was done by not only reporting on the seeming popularity of the movement, but detailed and often supportive coverage around its various initiatives­– e ­ ven socially sensitive ones such as contraception and sexual morals. Although small in number, we also found critiques of patriarchal norms and structures, including the Catholic Church (see for example ‘Bishop “can’t see women as people”’, 4 September 1974, p.  5). While this has been a small drip of a much larger pool of research, future scholarship could pay

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attention to gendered stereotypes in coverage­– ­for example, a range of articles used adjectives such as ‘bossy’ or ‘wilful’ to describe feminists. Attention could also be paid to the humour included in coverage­– ­for example, newspapers recording the quick wit of Irish feminists (one article recorded a feminist’s retort that a senior official should ‘take an aspirin’ when complaining how women’s libbers were giving him a headache). As with the first wave movement, second wave activism in Ireland had sufficiently different social, political and economic contexts to suffice its own investigation.

Third/Fourth and Postfeminism in the Press The period following the 1980s is often referred to as the third wave of feminism­ – ­a term used to represent both a generational and ideological shift (see Henry 2004; Dean 2010). The third wave is often said to comprise the ‘daughters’ of the second wave, who understand and are committed to tackling the intersectional nature of oppression. While interested in many of the same issues as the second wave, they regard the media and popular culture as both key sites of oppression, and resources to challenge them (see Baumgardner and Richards 2000). With the rise of the internet and social media, others refer to feminism’s turn to the digital as the ‘fourth wave’ (Munro 2013). While there is no doubt that there is an increased visibility of feminism in British and Irish newspapers over the past decade, this has not necessarily translated to scholarship on the topic (for exceptions see Darmon 2017; Jonsson 2014; Mendes 2015a; 2015b). In general, despite the thriving network of blogs, websites, hashtags and other digital feminist campaigns, there is little scholarship focusing on representations of the third/fourth waves of feminism in the press. Instead, most research in the UK, Ireland and beyond, focuses on the ways feminists are turning to digital platforms for their activism (see Keller et al. 2016; Mendes et al. 2019; Olson 2016; Rapp et al. 2010; Shaw 2012). Whereas the first of the fourth waves of feminism can be thought of as a political movement, ‘postfeminism’ refers to a set of discourses (Tasker and Negra 2007) or a ‘sensibility’ (Gill 2007) which highlights women’s newfound empowerment, while at the same time emphasising feminism’s pastness, redundancy and harms (McRobbie 2004; Mendes 2011a). Within Britain and Ireland, there is a large body of work which examines the proliferation of postfeminist discourses, most often in advertising, film and novels (McRobbie 2009; Talbot 2000; Tasker and Negra 2007; Whelehan 2000), and to a lesser extent, in the press (Darmon 2017; Dean 2010; Gill 2007; Hinds and Stacey 2001; Mendes 2011a; 2011b; 2015a; 2015b). Susan

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Faludi (1992), for example, provides one of the earliest accounts of postfeminist discourses in the press, and details both the British and American news media’s delight at not only recounting the second wave’s supposed downfall, but a string of ‘problems’ it created for women, including a rise in female criminals, a ‘man shortage’, and increased infertility. Within studies of third/fourth wave feminism in the press, attention has been paid to the decoupling of the feminist label from its accompanying activism (Mendes 2015b), and the emergence of iconic feminist figures with different symbolic meanings (Hinds and Stacey 2001). Although feminism has gained increased press attention, scholars have traced its ‘domestication’­ – ­a process in which ‘radical’ forms of feminism are delegitimised while securing ‘a place for a more moderate, less excessive feminism in the present’ (Dean 2010: 393). While this trend extends back to the second wave (see Mendes 2011b), the desire to reconcile feminism with a desirable femininity appears to have increased over time, and has opened up space for the media to celebrate figures such as the ‘feminist [Playboy] bunny girl’ and the ‘girl power’ represented by the 1990s pop group the Spice Girls (see Hinds and Stacey 2001:153). Despite the fact that feminism has maintained a presence in the British press since the second wave, a longer-term analysis reveals the way news of feminist activism (e.g. marches, demonstrations, concrete actions) has been erased in favour of coverage portraying feminism as an individualised lifestyle choice (Mendes 2011b). This has opened up space for the analysis of feminist vs postfeminist discourses in the press, ranging from studies on news of shifting gender roles (Ging 2009), and specific feminist campaigns (see Darmon 2017; GarciaFavaro and Gill 2015).

Postfeminist Analysis In both Ireland and the UK, scholars have traced shifts from feminist to postfeminist sensibilities within the news media. Debbie Ging (2009: 57) for example, argues, ‘The most significant development of the past twenty years has been the trajectory from a feminist to a post-feminist framing of gender issues’­ – ­a change which emphasises empowerment, choice and most importantly, consumption. Although not focused specifically on the way feminism has been framed, she traces the reification of binary gender roles underpinned by gender essentialism and bio-determinism. While this trend in and of itself is not unique to Ireland, Ging highlights the ways these postfeminist dis-

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courses emerged in the aftermath of the Celtic Tiger­– ­a term referring to Ireland’s economic boom between the mid-1990s to 2000s.

Feminist Campaigns Scholars have also attended to press coverage of specific feminist campaigns. In 2011, the anti-rape movement SlutWalk emerged in Toronto, attracting both mainstream press and scholarly attention. To date, a number of publications have studied press coverage of the movement (see Carr 2014; Dow and Wood 2014; Kretschmer and Barber 2016), though only a few have focused on coverage in the UK (Darmon 2014, 2017; Mendes 2015a; Mendes 2015b) and none on Ireland (which hosted marches in Galway and Dublin). In her study of the London SlutWalk movement, Keren Darmon (2017) argues that despite the prevalence of feminist framings on social media, the mainstream press often framed the movement via a postfeminist sensibility, which at times focuses on the personal over the political, and the individual over the collective. In contrast, Mendes’s (2015a) extensive study of the movement argues that press coverage was significant because it overwhelmingly drew upon explicitly feminist, and often radical discourses, including the notion that rape is about power, violence and control. While praising the mainstream news for its use of feminist frames and discourses, Mendes cautions about the revolutionary potential of all texts, and joins other scholars who have questioned the extent to which mainstream news is capable of fostering radical social and cultural change.

Conclusion Organised around ‘waves’ of feminism, this chapter has offered a review of existing literature on the shifting representations of feminist activism in the press over the years, as well as a discussion of the ways feminists have created their own print materials to agitate for social change. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, we considered how Irish and British feminist periodicals constitute invaluable resources for understanding the complex, diverse and shifting ideologies of the women’s suffrage movement. At the same time, it was recognised that academic analyses of mainstream print media are similarly crucial for understanding the ways in which the movement was ignored, marginalised or ridiculed in broader media discourse­– ­and yet simultaneously crucial to the movement with its highly publicist orientation. A case study of British and Irish newspaper representations of militant IWFL

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action demonstrated how women’s suffrage in Ireland was positioned as an insignificance or distraction in the wider context of debates over Home Rule. The chapter moved to consider second wave feminism and its relationship to the press, noting the striking absence of media scholarship on this topic in the Irish context. A case study of the representation of IWLM activities from 1970 to 1982 in six Irish newspapers sought to address this significant gap, finding that mainstream newspapers played an important role in documenting key moments in the movement and opportunities for the public to get involved. As such, this points to a rich seam of data that could be further considered by feminist media historians. Finally, the chapter considered the third/ fourth wave of feminism, and the relative dearth of analyses of print media in this area. It was noted that with changes in the news industry, the rise of the internet, and the explosion of feminist blogs and social media campaigns, scholarly attention has been diverted away from the press and traditional news media, to social media. In using a transnational frame, the chapter has sought to dislodge the focus of much scholarship which has been highly London-centric, and to reflect on the ways that feminists from Ireland and Northern Ireland are often ignored from public imaginings and recollections of the movement. This, we argue, represents a fruitful yet under-­ investigated area of inquiry which we urge future scholars to explore. In all, our intention was for this chapter to address a gap in knowledge about the historically shifting representation of gender politics and feminist activism in the British and Irish press­– ­and, as James Curran argues, there is much we can learn about contemporary representations by examining the past.

Chapter Twenty-Four

THE LGBTQ PRESS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITAIN AND IRELAND Alison Oram and Justin Bengry

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  his chapter traces the changing aims, content and readerships of the newsletters, newspapers and magazines that we label the LGBT or queer press. There is no homogenous LGBTQ identity; nor can today’s identities simply be mapped onto the past. The language of same-sex love and gender non-conformity has changed significantly across the twentieth century and indeed over the past few decades. It ranges from coded references to queerness since the late nineteenth century to experimental discussions of gender and desire in the 1920s and 1930s. We also trace the histories of more cautious and self-­ effacing homosexual publications and newsletters of the 1950s and 1960s, the political punchiness of the 1970s–90s LGBT and queer press, and finally the slick, consumerist lifestyle and homonormative glossy magazines of the 1990s and 2000s. We examine the shifts (that were not necessarily linear) between the LGBTQ press as a vehicle for political purposes, staffed by committed, often voluntary activists, and the more mainstream and commercial magazines that began to appear from the 1970s. The latter were financed by publishing companies that saw an opportunity in monetising the ‘pink pound’. We argue that elements of this pink pound­ – ­especially the awareness that some queer men had surplus cash to spend on lifestyle-related magazines and products­ – ­appear as early as the 1930s. And while these publications were commercial, many nonetheless continued to play important community roles even into the 1990s and 2000s.

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Coded Desires The earliest examples of press appeals to queer people relied on codes knowable only to queer audiences. Historians Laurel Brake and Matt Cook have demonstrated how fin de siècle arts journals’ use of Hellenic imagery and male beauty signalled queer tastes and interests (Brake 2000; Cook 2003: 127–9). Where The Artist and Journal of Home Culture (1880–1902) relied upon literary references, The Studio: an Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art (1893–1964) used images. Homoerotic photos by Wilhelm von Gloeden and Frederick Rolfe invoked ancient Greece with images of naked youths. The single-issue magazine The Chameleon (1894) used the language of male friendship to promote what writer and reformer George Ives called the ‘cause’, or increased tolerance of homosexuals. This coded use of friendship was used a quarter of a century later in The Quorum: A Magazine of Friendship to signal same-sex desire to readers. Described by Timothy d’Arch Smith as ‘the first endeavour at floating a homosexual magazine’ since The Chameleon, The Quorum likewise only achieved a single issue in January 1920 (d’Arch Smith 2001: 2). Readers’ use of some publications also indicate elements of a protoqueer press. Queer men used magazines such as The Link, launched in 1915, to find each other using personal adverts from at least the early twentieth century. In one example, someone calling himself Ioläus, a reference to Edward Carpenter’s book on male friendship of the same name, sought his ‘manly Hercules’. The Link’s queer matchmaking ended in 1921, however, when police discovered how it was used (Cocks 2009: 4–15, 22–3). The earliest British men’s lifestyle magazines also navigated engagement with queer audiences in their project to attract a consuming male. Following the infamous trials of Oscar Wilde only three years before Fashion (1898–1904) appeared, homosexual desire was already associated with sartorial indulgence (Shannon 2006: 91–127; Breward 1995: 247). Masculine consumers were to avoid styles associated with aestheticism, non-normative gender expression or sexual ambiguity. But in making these warnings these publications simultaneously identified transgressive styles that might appeal to queer consumers. The Modern Man (1908–15) further included coded discussions of queer friendships, fashion, blackmail and sites for sex between men (Bengry 2009; Cook 2003: 31, 40). Coded references in men’s lifestyle magazines continued into the interwar period. Producers of the widely distributed monthly interwar magazine Men Only (est. 1935) deployed textual cues and visual codes that only queer readers would

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Figure 24.1  The Artist cover, August 1899

­ nderstand. Beginning with Men Only’s first issue, some cartoons’ u images of coded fashions, subcultural language and camp humour all signalled the magazine’s potential queerness (Bengry 2009). The magazine was still careful, however, to differentiate homosexual men from its primary audience of other male consumers. In the same period the periodical Urania (1916–40) promoted a utopian philosophy of gender fluidity and same-sex love. Its founding editors included Irene Clyde or Thomas Baty, a gender non-conforming legal scholar based in Japan, together with the Irish poet and feminist Eva Gore-Booth, often quoted in the magazine, and Gore-Booth’s life-long partner Esther Roper (Oram 1998; Oram 2001). Urania was published three times a year and claimed a circulation of 200 to 250.

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Figure 24.2  Cartoon from Men Only, November 1936

It was free and privately circulated to ‘friends’ and to various women’s organisations and colleges. Its mission­– ­‘Urania denotes the company of those who are firmly determined to ignore the dual organisation of humanity’­– ­suggests it was trying to support a queer feminist community (Oram 2001: 62–5). Urania’s title might be a coded reference to Edward Carpenter’s intermediate sex or Uranians, but also referenced its spiritual ideals. What is so striking about Urania is its radical call for the abolition of sex and gender difference, both within society and for the individual: ‘Sex is an accident’ (Urania 121 & 122, Jan–April 1937). But drawing on history and anthropology it also ran stories about female husbands and the delights of love between women ranging from convent ­schoolgirls

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to orientalist visions of same-sex love in the harem. Urania’s politics was derived from a strand of pre-war suffrage feminism that saw heterosexual marriage as exploitative of women, but also from feminist Theosophy which emphasised spiritual rather than carnal love, and the mutability of sex and gender through reincarnation (Dixon 1997, Oram 2001). Its promotion of same-sex love and its enthusiasm for androgyny and stories of people changing sex means that Urania has relevance for both lesbian and trans histories. The magazine explicitly rejected contemporary concepts of inversion and perversion, and should be seen as a queer outlier and advocate for same-sex love and non-binary gender (Oram 1998; Oram 2001).

Physique and Leisure Magazines After the Second World War, and the realisation that queer men were beginning to constitute a significant readership, physique magazines that focused on the male body expanded in number and became less circumspect. From the 1950s, titles like Male Classics, Man Alive and Man-ifique were part of a growing genre covertly directed toward queer male readers. John Barrington, who had been selling images of male nudes since 1948, launched Male Model Monthly in November 1954 (Deslandes 2013: 267). There was no doubt, despite the pretence of providing artistic and physical culture examples, that the physique photographs and discreet nudes in the magazines were in fact intended for and consumed by queer men (Smith 1997). Queer entrepreneur and publisher Philip Dosse recognised the same commercial opportunity. Homosexual men constituted an identifiable target market with sufficient disposable income for consumer goods, travel and increasingly specialist magazines (Bengry 2013). From its very first issues, Dosse’s magazine Films & Filming (1954–90) included articles explicitly intended for queer men, but also printed same-sex personal ads alongside internationally renowned film criticism and reviews. The launch of the counter-culture publication International Times (IT) in 1966, which advocated a libertarian philosophy, created a further platform for gay contact adverts. In the case of IT, however, the relationship was entirely strategic and financial. IT was nonetheless prosecuted for publishing the adverts in 1969 (Robinson 2007: 54). Films & Filming, however, managed to publish increasingly explicit same-sex personal ads without prosecution across three decades. So well known was Films & Filming for its queer content, in fact, and so overwhelmingly gay was its production staff, that it might be termed Britain’s first mainstream gay men’s magazine.

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After the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts in 1967, the range of gay publications rapidly expanded, though they were primarily male and London-centric (Cook et al. 2007: 189; Weeks 1977: 180–1). Spartacus (est. 1969 as The International Males Advertiser and retitled in October) identified itself as a magazine ‘for homosexuals, about homosexuals, by homosexuals’ and is among the first of the publicly and self-consciously gay-owned publications (quotes in Deslandes 2013: 280). The Brighton-based magazine, edited by John Stamford, was more explicit than previous titles and published the first full frontal male nude in Britain. Alongside its erotic content, the magazine included travel features and personal ads, while articles and editorials openly discussed sexual identity (Weeks 1977: 180; Buckle 2015: 43–5). In 1971 Stamford was prosecuted for distributing indecent or obscene images. His defence argued that the images were no different than female pin-up pictures, but was unsuccessful (Deslandes 2013: 281). After decamping to Amsterdam, Stamford published the Spartacus International Gay Guide annually from 1972. Also appearing from 1969, TIMM: The International Male Magazine included articles ranging from psychiatry to fashion accompanied by photos of semi-naked men. Ads for the Albany Trust, the charity arm of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, suggest that it sought a more affluent middle-class audience (Buckle 2015: 42–3). The glossier and trendier Jeremy likewise appeared in 1969 and was embedded in the youth and fashion scene of Carnaby Street. Its audience included metropolitan gay and bisexual men interested in film, clothes and an urban lifestyle (Weeks 1977: 181). Both Spartacus and Jeremy were edited for a time by journalist Peter Burton, who had previously managed Le Duce, a gay coffee bar in Soho’s D’Arblay Street. Little UK research has explored queer commercial networks organised around erotic magazines. A notable exception is Paul Deslandes’s work on post-decriminalisation gay pornography. After 1967, ‘selfconfidently gay and assertive entrepreneur[s]’ sold magazines, erotica and pornography to a ‘burgeoning community of gay men’ eager to consume (Deslandes 2013). Many of these entrepreneurs were queer themselves and invested in other queer business interests ranging from magazines and photos, to books and travel. Millivres (founded 1974) played an important part in subsequent gay periodical publishing. In 1999 it merged with Prowler Press to form Millivres Prowler Group (LGBT Archive).

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Reform and Community The Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded in 1958 to lobby the government to enact the Wolfenden Committee recommendations, released the previous year advocating the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts. Its newsletter Spectrum focused on the Society’s work and updating supporters while its journal Man and Society operated from 1961 as a liberal publication dedicated to influencing ‘progressive opinion’. It attracted contributions from a wide range of professional allies and operated as a ‘theoretical journal’ (Weeks 1977: 170–2). A small group of women involved in the movement for homosexual law reform set up Arena Three, the first magazine for lesbians in Britain (Oram 2007; Jennings 2007b: 134–72; 2007a). Springing from the cautiously named Minorities Research Group (MRG), Arena Three was itself bold in working vigorously for cultural and social change, promoting a modern, if respectable, lesbian identity. It was published monthly from January 1964 to March 1972 and its initial readers were mainly middle-class lesbians. In its early years, Arena Three was subscription only, but by 1969–70 its print run had reached 2,000 copies and the editors began a push for public sales via newsagents. This proved tricky and the magazine folded, though its readers and ethos were immediately inherited by Sappho (1972–81), spearheaded by lesbian campaigner Jackie Forster. Arena Three had two broad aims. The first was to foster a sense of community among its often isolated readers, adopting a jolly, upbeat and often defiant tone. It reviewed contemporary novels and films with lesbian content and encouraged the formation of MRG branches across the country. Its second aim, like the HLRS publications, was to educate public opinion. As well as monitoring the reporting of lesbianism in the media, Arena Three and the MRG sought to ‘promote and collaborate in unprejudiced research in this field’, especially psychiatric research, which they hoped would demonstrate the lesbian to be a ‘normal person’. (Oram 2007; Jennings 2008). Arena Three helped spearhead the new social movements of the 1960s in the field of sexuality, activities that reached a further radical stage in the Gay Liberation Front from 1970 to 1971 (Oram 2007). The Committee for Homosexual Equality (CHE) was launched in 1969 (renamed the Campaign for Homosexual Equality from 1971), having emerged from the more radical wing of the British homophile movement, Alan Horsfall’s North-Western Homosexual Law Reform Committee. Often contrasted with the more publicly assertive Gay

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Figure 24.3  Inside page of Arena Three, December 1969

Liberation Front (GLF), by 1972 it was nonetheless the largest gay organisation in the country (Robinson 2007: 79). The significance and readership of its publications, including the CHE Bulletin and Lunch (1971–4) should therefore not be underestimated (Robinson 2007: 123–4).

Lesbian and Gay Liberation With the slogans ‘Come Out’ and ‘Gay Pride’, the 1970s and 80s saw the growth of unashamed journalism reflecting the gay liberation movement. Demanding revolutionary social change (as opposed to simply reformist rights), nothing was off the table. Feminism had a profound

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influence on lesbian and gay magazines while various debates and splits within the movement led to further publications. Newsletters proliferated, as did a regional gay press in a political environment that made such community publishing possible. The Gay Liberation Front magazine Come Together was first published in 1971. Organised by the GLF media workshop, it was not a professional publication, but contrasted itself to consumerist magazines such as Jeremy. Other gay liberation papers included Birmingham GLF’s Glad Rag and Bradford GLF’s Graft (Weeks 1977: 219). Come Together reflected on shared gay identity and activist politics proclaiming in its first issue ‘We’re Coming Out Proud’ (quoted in Weeks 1977: 192; Buckle 2015: 45). The magazine initially sought to highlight sexism and women’s issues in gay liberation, declaring in issue 5: ‘All men are male supremacists. Gay men are no exception to the maxim’ (quoted in Weeks 1977: 196). By late summer 1971, however, fractures within the GLF threatened the media workshop and also the future of Come Together. As the GLF went into decline from 1972, Come Together became known instead as ‘Fall Apart’ (Robinson 2007: 86). Members of GLF London went on to set up International Gay News. Later, former GLFers and members of CHE came together to found Gay News, Britain’s first national gay newspaper. Gay News was published fortnightly from 1972, and under editor Denis Lemon it soon became a professional, news-oriented publication. Gay News succeeded in part because of the early popularity of its contact ads. It swiftly built a circulation of some 20,000, making it the largest circulation gay newspaper in the world at that time (Weeks 1977: 221). Gay News was at the centre of several conflicts. The Gay Activists Alliance picketed WH Smith for refusing to carry it, and Lemon was arrested for obstruction after photographing police harassment around the Coleherne, a gay pub in Earls Court, West London, in 1978 (Cook 2007: 182–3). Most famously, Gay News and its editor were charged in 1977 with ‘blasphemous libel’ in an action brought by purity campaigner Mary Whitehouse. The case centered on James Kirkup’s poem ‘The Love that Dare not Speak its Name’, which imagined a sexual encounter between Jesus and a Roman centurion, leading to the first trial for blasphemy in Britain since 1922. Gay News lost both the case and its appeal, but, as historian Lucy Robinson notes, the case brought homosexuality out as a political concern to the wider Left (Robinson 2007: 125). Gay News continued until 1983 when it was sold and became New Gay News (Buckle 2015: 123). Left-wing gay publications continued after the demise of the GLF.

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A range of collectives published Gay Marxist between 1972 and 1974, and the quarterly Gay Left (1975–80) was committed to a Marxist analysis of homosexual oppression (Weeks 1977: 219, 233). Its collective had been involved in the GLF, the CND, the Labour Party, trade unionism and other left and radical political activism. They were frustrated by both CHE and GLF’s resistance to considered political analyses. Primarily comprised of gay men, Gay Left also engaged with lesbian issues and feminist activism. By the third issue it was printing 3,000 copies with distribution extending to Canada, the US and Australia. Until the early 1980s, it was the ‘most widely read gay radical paper in the world’ (quoted in Robinson 2007: 127).

A Diversifying LGBT Press Starting in the 1970s and expanding during the 1980s we can trace a politically inspired proliferation of LGBT newsletters and newspapers, some produced by unpaid collectives, others paying modest salaries to their staff and journalists. Accompanied by more commercially based newspapers and magazines from the 1980s, these titles were available in radical bookshops, lesbian and gay centres, clubs and pubs, and increasingly in conventional newsagents. In the 1980s and 1990s, the LGBT press became a mass circulation press, accessible across the whole country. As political activism declined from the late 1990s, however, and radical bookshops began to close down, the distribution of freesheets via clubs and pubs and the conventional mainstream distribution of commercial titles became increasingly important. The LGBT press developed in the context of radical publishing more widely and many publications spoke to several audiences. During the 1970s and 1980s especially, a number of feminist magazines were produced by teams of lesbians and heterosexual feminists, and aimed to serve the lesbians among their readership. A high proportion of ­readers of Spare Rib (1972–93), the leading national feminist magazine, were lesbians, as was a changing proportion of its editorial collective and this was reflected in its articles, ads, listings and book reviews. Shocking Pink (1981–92) grew out of Spare Rib and was aimed at younger women and girls as a radical alternative to Jackie, the popular mainstream girls’ weekly. After beginning with 3–4 issues in the early 1980s, it was relaunched in October 1987 and published sporadically about four times a year until 1992. The women on the collective themselves were in their late teens and early 20s, and most of them were lesbian or bisexual (Carolin 2017). Successful and empowering, Shocking Pink used photostories, cartoons and montage to discuss topics such

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as sexuality and racism in an accessible way, somewhat in the style of punk fanzines (Grassroots Feminism 2009). The production and distribution of Shocking Pink (1981–92) demonstrates the logistics of DIY radical publishing. Free or cheap office space, supportive printers and distributors, and sales across a network of radical bookshops and women’s or lesbian and gay centres, enabled LGBTQ magazines to start up and sustain publication. Former collective member Louise Carolin described how everything they needed was available in Brixton. From a meeting room at The Leveller premises on Acre Lane, they moved to a free room at South London Women’s Centre, then subsequently to offices in housing co-ops or squats. Their final office was at the anarchist centre at 121 Railton Road in Brixton. Shocking Pink was printed at East End Offset (the Socialist Workers Party printers) on cheap newsprint and sold through radical bookshops via the left-wing distributor Central Books or direct to the public on marches and demos (Carolin 2017). The title never lost money, but by 1991–2 political differences were emerging within the collective and some members were moving on to paid work and other LGBTQ journalism. As lesbian-feminist politics became increasingly confrontational during the 1980s lesbian ‘sex wars’, so lesbian and feminist newsletters and magazines often polarised along political divides. Some newsletters aligned with revolutionary feminism and lesbian separatism (such as The Revolutionary and Radical Feminist Newsletter c. 1979) and were circulated as women-only publications. The end of the 1980s saw more ‘sex positive’ publications by lesbians. The glossy erotic magazine Quim (1989–95) was fairly short-lived but made the point that pleasure in sexual imagery and writing was not confined to gay men. Gay’s The Word bookshop declined to stock it; scarred by the police raid and prosecution in 1984–5 for selling obscene material, its policy was not to sell overtly sexual publications. The gay and lesbian art quarterly Square Peg (1983–92) brought a higher standard of production values to the gay magazine market. In the wider context of anti-discrimination activism, Square Peg endeavoured to include lesbians as well as gay men and queer people of colour in its pages and on its collective (though not always successfully). With hindsight, this shift towards a more visually appealing (if also more expensive) presentation and design among activist-produced titles foreshadows the commercial glossy gay and lesbian magazines that began to dominate in the 1990s. As Topher Campbell, co-founder of the rukus! Black LGBT archive, has written: ‘In the early days the black press and the gay press

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ignored the Black LGBT presence and still sees it as a minority interest’ (Campbell, rukus!). Black lesbians and gay men were involved in a number of queer publications in the 1980s and 90s, including Quim, Shocking Pink and Square Peg and, very centrally, in the internationalist and anti-racist feminist newspaper Outwrite (1982–9) (Mason-John 1995: 15–16). In the mid-1980s some specifically queer black magazines and newsletters began to appear, a number of them produced by the Black Lesbian and Gay Centre in London, including Blackout (1986) and Blast. The magazine Wickers & Bullers, describing itself as ‘An almost serious Black lesbian and gay publication’, ran for several issues in 1993–4 and took its title from Trinidadian and Barbadian slang for queer men and women (Ajamu X 2017). Publications for British trans and non-binary readers followed on from international examples and were closely tied to early social organisations. First published in 1960, Transvestia, put out by Virginia Prince’s Chevalier Publications from the US, was only available at fringe bookshops in the UK. Prince popularised the use of the word ‘transgender’ in the 1960s and 1970s and the magazine helped inspire the foundation of the Beaumont Society in London, the first support organisation for cross-dressers and transsexuals in Britain (Burns 2018: 29). Domestic publications soon appeared, created by Britain’s emerging trans organisations. The Beaumont Bulletin began as an eight-page newsletter every two months from 1968, growing to twentyfour pages by 1970 (Alice L 100, 2018). Renamed Beaumont Magazine in 1993, the publication is now a glossy quarterly for members of the society. The Self Help Association for Transsexuals (SHAFT) was started in 1980 as the first group specifically for transsexual people. The Shaft Newsletter was edited by Alice Purnell from 1984. After the collapse of SHAFT, Purnell and others founded The Gender Trust in 1988. Its GEMS News was widely read for intelligent discussion of trans issues (Burns 2018: 122). While The Gender Trust welcomed a wide spectrum of trans people, the FtM Network focused on trans men and published Boy’s Own (Burns 2018: 123). Trans activism and publications were not limited to England. In 1983 the Scottish TV/TS Group began social support meetings in Edinburgh. Its newsletter Tartan Skirt grew to a 52-page quarterly magazine by 1992 (Burns 2018: 232). Most recently, Beyond the Binary, an online magazine for UK gender non-binary people, appeared in 2014 written by and addressing anyone whose lives fall outside of male/female binaries (Burns 2018: 294; Beyond the Binary, n.d.).

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Beyond London Not all queer publications emerged in the capital. The LGBTQ press that served specific countries and regions in the British Isles and Ireland, nonetheless, followed a similar pattern of largely activist-led publishing. The English regional LGBT press has been immensely important in fostering specific local and urban LGBT identities and communities, publicising social meeting places and building awareness of political activities. It includes subscription newsletters connecting individuals in rural areas as well as long-running papers and magazines such as Mancunian Gay (1978–86), followed by Gay Life (1986–9) and Scene Out (1989–92), serving Manchester and the northwest. Many of these publications are at least partially collected in local archives, and offer opportunities to excavate and analyse the specificities of local LGBT communities and politics, which have their own trajectories independent of the national story of LGBTQ history. Local alternative publications frequently included news and events listings for lesbians and gay men among their wider agitprop remit. Leeds Other Paper (1974–91) included a dedicated lesbian and gay information section from its early years in addition to regular lesbian and gay editorial content and feature articles. Like the London listings magazines Time Out and City Limits, these otherwise non-specialist magazines were easy and safe to access by anyone without declaring their sexuality to family or workmates. In Brighton, too, the gay press interacted with the wider heterosexual and alternative communities. G-Scene began life in 1993 as a fourpage insert within the wider Brighton weekly listing magazine Impact; the scene literally folded into a broader account of the city’s social life. It became its own entity in 1995 and quickly gained a reputation for its community focus. Founding editor James Ledward noted that ‘we were never a fluffy magazine. We always had a strong campaigning edge’ (quoted in Jastrzebska and Luvera 2014: 103). Scotland The 1967 Sexual Offences Act that partially decriminalised male homosexual activity did not extend to Scotland or Northern Ireland. The Scottish Minorities Group (SMG), founded in Glasgow in 1969 and initially led by Ian Dunn, campaigned for legal reform, publishing SMG News under Dunn’s editorship as a monthly newsletter beginning in 1971, becoming SHRG News in 1978 when the SMG changed its name to the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group. Later as Gay Scotland, the

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publication lasted as a typewritten newsletter until 1982 when it was published in magazine format. In the 1990s, ScotsGay (1994–2016), founded by editor John Hein, became the most prominent LGBT publication in Scotland. These domestic publications circulated alongside the London-based gay press in Scotland. Bookseller Bob Orr recalls selling Gay News in the Duke of Wellington and The Waterloo pubs in Glasgow in 1972 and 1973 and again when he set up the Open Gaze bookstall in 1976 (Bob Orr, Personal Correspondence, 2017). Specifically lesbian publications soon emerged after SMG News, including the SMG Glasgow Women’s Group magazine Gayzette (c. 1976). Increasingly the SMG itself, however, became less responsive to women’s issues, which founder Ian Dunn reportedly described as a ‘red herring’, distracting activism away from the task of decriminalisation. Women responded with their own publication titled Red Herring (c. 1975–6), focusing on lesbian issues (Dempsey 1995). Bookseller Sigrid Nielson, who ran Lavender Menace, recalls: there were English lesbian publications such as Sappho and Artemis which we sold in the shop, but no Scottish ones that I know of. London-based feminist publications, mainly Spare Rib, were what many lesbians would have read. Later there was a London feminist magazine called Trouble and Strife with a lot of lesbian content. (Sigrid Nielson, Personal Correspondence, 2017) By the 1980s, lesbian news figured in feminist publications such as Edinburgh Women’s Liberation Newsletter and St Andrews LesbianFeminist Newsletter (Bob Cant, Personal Correspondence, 2017). Ireland The Republic of Ireland has had a continuously active LGBTQ press since the mid-1970s. The main Dublin-based gay liberation groups published newsletters from 1976, including two versions of the periodical In Touch (variously from 1977 and 1979–81) (Kerrigan 2017; Mcdonagh, Personal Correspondence, 2017). The National Gay Federation’s Identity magazine (1981–4) was refused distribution while the words lesbian or gay appeared on the cover, and found it difficult to attract advertising, so not surprisingly folded, while its NGF News ran from 1982 to 1988. Censorship also affected the circulation of British publications: Gay News had enjoyed limited availability since the mid-1970s, but was impounded by Cork customs in 1982 (Kerrigan 2017; Mcdonagh, Personal Correspondence, 2017). Cork was at least as important as Dublin as a centre of Irish lesbian and gay activism and in

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1977 four issues of a Cork gay newsletter, Corks Crew, were published by the Cork branch of the Irish Gay Rights Movement, followed in 1978 by the city-specific newsletter Sapphire (Egan 2017a). From 1984, Irish culture was changing sufficiently to allow more openly LGBT publications. Out magazine was founded in 1984 as a bimonthly successor to Identity, and in a significant development the retail chain Eason’s agreed to distribute the magazine. This gave the Irish gay press a new legitimacy, Páraic Kerrigan argues, and was particularly important during the HIV/ AIDS crisis (Kerrigan 2017). In both Ireland and the UK, the LGBT press was at the vanguard in circulating information about HIV/ AIDS, safer sex and support groups, at a time when the mainstream press was launching homophobic attacks on gay men as carriers of disease on both sides of the Irish Sea. After Out ceased publication in 1988, the NGF sponsored Gay Community News (GCN). A free monthly newspaper, at first mainly distributed in Dublin, it grew to become the key source of LGBTQ information across the country and was significant for regional networking. Orla Egan recalls how Cork produced the Munster GCN in the 1990s, a four-page supplement to GCN which would appear outside the main paper in Munster, and as an insert in the rest of the country (Egan, Personal Correspondence, 2017b). It has retained its community basis and continues to be available in print as a free monthly. In Ireland, as in the UK, the overlap between feminist and lesbian politics and publishing was fruitful; for example in Cork, the Women’s Space newsletter of the late 1980s included much lesbian content. Production skills were developed and shared in a cross-border exchange (funded by the Co-operation North Exchange programme) between the women’s centre in Cork and the Women’s News Collective in Belfast (Egan, Personal Correspondence, 2017b). The first issue of LINC magazine (Lesbians in Cork) was published in 2000 and continued, with EU funding, for several years. The importance of voluntary sector and indirect public funding to the Irish (and indeed the UK) LGBTQ press deserves further investigation. Discrimination in law, homophobic moral panics and police harassment of gay men and lesbians was worse in Northern Ireland than in the Republic in the late twentieth century. Sex between men remained illegal in Northern Ireland until 1982. Gay rights activism started in Belfast in the late 1960s (creating several early publications) and the Gay Liberation Society in 1971. The Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association (still the central body for LGBTQ activism) was established in 1975 to address the specific situation in the region and published a number of periodicals: NIGRA News from 1975 to 1980, followed by

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Northern Gay and the quarterly Gay Star (1980–91) (PRONI 2017; Mcdonagh, Personal Correspondence, 2017). Update, which quickly became upstart (1985–2001) was initiated to circulate news about increased local harassment and provide news on the HIV/ AIDS crisis, and was printed for many years by the union Unison. LGBTQ organisations and publications became considerably more visible, especially in Belfast, following the 1994 ceasefire and the subsequent peace process.

The Commercial Gay Press Post-decriminalisation commercial magazines initially focused on the consuming potential of gay men. The new commercial gay bookstores of the 1970s sold these glossy publications trading in erotic images of men combined with articles, letters and advice. Titles including Jeffrey, Line-up, Quorum, Man to Man, Play Guy and Q International proliferated, though many soon folded (Deslandes 2013: 268; Weeks 1977: 219–20). A series of Him publications, influenced by gay liberation and celebrating interest in the naked male body as part of a shared sexual identity, was more successful (Deslandes 2013: 269). Photographer and film-maker Alan Purnell founded Him Exclusive (1974–6) as a magazine unashamedly directed at gay men. The magazine swiftly fell under official scrutiny and on 19 August 1975 Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Squad seized 16,500 copies of the September issue. In response, Purnell encouraged readers to ‘keep putting the Sex back into Homosexual’ (Deslandes 2013: 282). After the publication was declared obscene the following year, Purnell published the magazine himself as Him International (1976–8). Both the magazine and the HIM bookstore suffered further raids, and in May 1979 officials confiscated a further 20,000 magazines. By 1982 Him Monthly’s (1978–83) formerly nude models were now clothed, a decision that Purnell attributed directly to the ‘thought police’ who restricted ‘civil liberties’ (Deslandes 2013: 285). Zipper publisher Alex McKenna later relaunched Him Monthly, combining it with Gay Times (Buckle 2015: 123). Launched in 1984, Gay Times addressed gay issues, challenged government policies, relayed news of the London scene and provided an early source for HIV/AIDS information. In the 1990s the magazine sought to balance its commercial focus with the needs of a diverse community, later even grappling with the meaning of ‘queer’ (Buckle 2015: 126–8, 193). London’s weekly Capital Gay (1981–95) came onto the scene around the same time, reporting on news affecting gay men and expanding coverage in the 1990s to include lesbians. Like Gay Times,

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it was critical of the government’s slow response to the AIDS crisis (Jivani 1997: 185). For over twenty years, the Pink Paper (1987–2009) was the ubiquitous source of information and debate for LGBT people across Britain. Founded as a fortnightly free newspaper in response to mid-1980s activism around homophobic Thatcherism, Section 28 and the HIV/ AIDS crisis, it was available in bars, clubs, public libraries, community centres and alternative bookshops nationwide. Although its content tended to be male-dominated, the Pink Paper was read by lesbians and gender non-conforming folk as well. It employed well-respected lesbian and gay journalists: the GLF activist Lisa Power was one of its founding editors and Susan Ardill from the Spare Rib collective was one of its columnists. Owned by Chronos and later by Millivres Prowler, the Pink Paper’s circulation was in the tens of thousands; by 2006 it was recorded as 40,000 per issue and may have been significantly higher in other years (Campaign 2006; Bell 2009). In 2009 its print edition suddenly ceased, leaving only the electronic edition, arguably emblematising the changing context of LGBTQ publishing. By the 1990s gay magazines replicated the lifestyle interests of mainstream non-gay publications. Attitude, launched in 1994, sought to cut across lines of sexuality with its focus on music, film, celebrities and consumer products. Attitude remained focused on affluent gay men who participated in the expanding consumer economy, even as it included news and issues, politics, and history for a wider audience (Buckle 2015: 190–2). By 2009 Attitude was outselling straight men’s lifestyle monthly Esquire at railway stations (Bell 2009). Diva was the first commercial, glossy magazine for lesbians and is significant for its success both in terms of its longevity (from 1994 and ongoing) and its broad market reach. Launched at a brief moment of ‘lesbian chic’ and during the ascendancy of gay publishing across print culture generally, Diva broke even after three years. It was the first British lesbian magazine with mainstream circulation and paid its contributors. Diva went straight into many branches of WH Smith, on the back of owner Millivres’s deal to distribute Gay Times, reaching lesbians and bisexual women in towns across the country (Turner 2009b; Carolin 2017). In many respects Diva was a parallel publication to the commercial magazines aimed at gay men. It had a similar business model to Gay Times and was funded by paid advertising for clubs and bars. However, Diva was less well resourced, mainly because it didn’t carry the volume of conventional big brand advertising that the gay men’s magazines benefitted from in the 1990s. This was partly due to inefficient market-

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ing, but it was also a political decision­– ­editors focused on their readers’ needs rather than the balance sheet (Carolin 2017). When circulations of women’s and LGBTQ magazines began to decline in the late 2000s, Diva’s position remained resilient for longer, despite lesbians being early adopters of internet platforms. Diva had a large subscription base and no market competition. However, for its parent company, Millivres Prowler Group, the bottom fell out of the wider gay market around 2010. The lucrative pornography market collapsed with the rise of user-generated online content, while LGBT news and scene information was increasingly sourced online. MPG sold Diva to lesbian-owned Twin Media in 2016, and in the following year sold off Gay Times and went into receivership (Carolin 2017).

Conclusion The heterogeneous magazines and newspapers we have discussed were driven by a number of motives: support for specific LGBTQ communities, political activism and commercial profit making. It is important to note the political motivations of even clearly commercial and erotic publications; pornography’s message was often to celebrate same-sex desire. Politics, community building and economic viability are always operating in a dynamic relationship and are prioritised differently by various publications. Perhaps it is only the newsletters and magazines published by organisations specifically for their members that can avoid commercial concerns or the need to be aware of changing market forces. This survey of the pink press also conclusively demonstrates its longterm political motivations. Early magazines such as The Quorum or The Chameleon aimed to promote greater tolerance of love between men from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The sustained production of Urania between the First World War and 1940 developed a theory and politics of non-binary gender. From mid-century, activist LGBTQ magazines organised around various politics, from law reform (Man and Society) to revolutionary gay liberation (Come Together). Successful continuing publications (Arena Three, Gay News) appealed to a community base combined with a degree of commercial savvy. From the 1980s and 1990s, more clearly market-orientated titles (Gay Times, the Pink Paper, Attitude, Diva) took commercial advertising, but in a climate of much greater lesbian and gay visibility successfully spoke both to community needs for news and debate alongside listings for the LGBTQ cultural economy. Magazines and other publications aimed primarily at gay men domi-

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nated the LGBTQ market throughout this period, but we also see a sustained press from the 1960s that was specifically made by and directed at lesbians. In the 1970s and 1980s many feminist publications also had significant lesbian content and editorial control. The diversification of the LGBTQ press from the 1970s onwards also included important specialist publications within the trans, bisexual and queer black communities. Regional publications had important local significance, but circulated alongside the London-based press, even outside England. Both these local and specialist titles, as well as the long-standing national publications (such as the Pink Paper), demand considerably more research to determine their rationale, personnel, structures and influence on Britain and Ireland’s LGBTQ readers.

Chapter Twenty-Five

THE PRESS AND THE LABOUR MOVEMENT Thomas Dowling and Adrian Bingham

While we hold to existing formulas we shall ask wrong questions, or be left to the sterile debate between those who say that at any rate the press is free and those who say that at any price it is trivial and degraded. We need to get beyond this deadlock, and the history of the press is the means. (Williams 1961: 201)

Introduction

T

  he relationship between the press and the labour movement can be recognised as one of modern British history’s most enduring antagonisms and­– ­like most longstanding conflicts­– ­it is an association that serves to tell us much about the respective antagonists’ essential historical character. Indeed, it would be difficult to project a comprehensive image of either the press or the labour movement during the twentieth century without at least some reference to the symbiotic presence of the other. With that said, relatively little attention has been paid to considering what this relationship, taken as a whole, might suggest to us about the idiosyncrasies of British political culture more generally. As it is, most studies tend be framed from the perspective of either the labour movement or the press, with scholars taking as their remit such perennial concerns as the extent of the press’s political influence, the prevalence of partisanship and editorial bias, and the changing forms of popular representation and collective political engagement in an era of expanding mass-communications and mass-democracy. In recent years, a number of more penetrating historical studies focusing on, amongst other things, the ways in which the labour movement sought to negotiate or offset the ‘virulent anti502

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Labour hostility of the emerging popular press in the inter-war period’; the Labour Party’s growing accommodation of media and publicity from the mid-1930s onwards; and the generally faltering attempts on the part of labour activists and intellectuals to furnish an alternative ‘left press’ capable of countering the perceived ‘hegemonic domination’ of Fleet Street, have opened up the possibility of less reductively binary analytical entry points (Thomas 2005; Beers 2010). Arguably, however, even in these cases long-standing assumptions about the nature  of popular political consciousness, the role of the press and other forms of mass media in opinion formation, and a tendency to construe ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ largely or exclusively in terms of the outcome of national elections, have served to hamper the emergence of a more far-reaching historical overview. The persistence of the assumption of a fundamental and irreconcilable opposition between the press and the labour movement is not, of course, surprising. To some extent, the theoretical and strategic divergences which emerged in the labour movement in relation to the press and other forms of mass media during the first half of the twentieth century can be seen as a microcosm of those which characterised its approach to British democratic routines and practices in this period more generally. Thus, from early on, a palpable tension between those who construed attempts on the part of socialists to broach any form of accommodation with the ‘commercial’ or ‘capitalist’ press as little better than ‘dealing-with-the-devil’, and those ‘determined to pla[y] Lord Beaverbrook at his own game’, set the tone for much of the ensuing debate (Paul 1925: 561; Bevin, quoted in Beers 2010: 202). Correspondingly, in many accounts, a familiar dualism between socalled ‘pragmatists’ and ‘idealists’, ‘social-democrats’ and ‘revolutionaries’, ‘traditionalists’ and ‘modernisers’, soon comes to assert itself. These overly drawn distinctions, however, not only obscure important nuances and convergences between respective labour positions, but also help to reinforce a by now long-standing perception of labour as a social and political movement perpetually undermined by its own internal Manichean tensions and contradictions (Pierson 1979; Wainwright 1987). Whilst­ – ­as certain recent developments might be thought to attest­– ­such an interpretation is not without justification, it can also yield a misleadingly circular impression of labour’s twentiethcentury trajectory, one in which the movement appears not so much to have moved as revolved around variations on the same constitutional and strategic questions and dilemmas. In what follows, we want to suggest that as far as labour’s apprehension of the press goes such an impression would, however, only be half

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right. Indeed, recognition of the need to negotiate or counter the growing pre-eminence of the press and other forms of mass-­communications media compelled some of the twentieth-century labour movement’s most original intellectual and strategic advances. Equally, at other moments, a tendency on the part of beleaguered labour leaders to overestimate the hegemonic reach of the ‘right-wing’ or ‘capitalist’ press­ – ­‘too great a reliance on the pleasures of “conspiracy theory”’­– ­served to mask shortcomings and lacunae in the movement’s own ideological and strategic perspectives (Hoggart 1995: 187). We want to move beyond some of the familiar oppositions and binaries outlined above. Rather than approaching the relationship between labour and the press as one of essential conflict and antagonism, we seek to understand them as two aspects of the same ongoing historical process.

Two Strands of Modernity It is important to emphasise from the outset that neither the press nor the labour movement should, at any point in the twentieth century, be considered as singular, monolithic entities, either in an ideological or institutional-organisational sense; neither, as it were, ever spoke in one voice. Even in what is generally regarded as the most sustained and coherent phase of ‘anti-Labour’ press hostility in the 1920s, newspapers could be surprisingly ideologically capricious. Similarly, the term ‘labour movement’ can, at least in Britain, only ever be considered to have represented a tentative alliance of multifarious social forces and ideological positions­ – ­from trade unionists and ‘guild socialists’ to Fabian social democrats, revolutionary Marxists and myriad other sectional ‘left’ interests­ – ­rather than a coherent or univocal position. As E. P. Thompson once wryly observed: ‘Only death could have bought some of these men and women together, some of whom couldn’t have endured five minutes in each other’s company’ (Thompson 1974: 14). Moreover, at several junctures of the twentieth century it appeared to many as if the alliance could be on the verge of total disintegration, not least over the question of how its adherents should comport themselves in relation to a rampant mass-commercial culture whose primary function often appeared to be to negate or nullify the very ground on which labour sought to stake its claim. It is worth reminding ourselves, however, that the antipathy between labour and the press was by no means guaranteed from the start. Indeed, in their primitive manifestations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries one could be forgiven for assuming that

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both the labour movement and the press had grown out of the same historical impulse or sensibility. The press was often implicated with notions of popular radicalism and dissent. Newspapers were crucial in publicising ‘grassroots campaigns’­ – ­such as those for the extension of the franchise­– ­presaging the mass petition as one of the key vehicles of popular political expression. Drawing on Foucauldian theories of ‘governmentality’, the historian Patrick Joyce has shown how during the mid-nineteenth century, the social/public function of the press began to undergo a marked transformation. In concert with what Joyce identifies as the ascendancy of the Victorian liberal state, newspapers took on more ‘distinct political colorations, Tory on the one side, Liberal on the other’ as part of a much wider process aimed at securing, in Joyce’s words, ‘the greatest possible differentiation of those elements which were to be ruled over, elements known as “individuals”’ (Joyce 2003: 124). This shift not only undermined the older conception of the press as a crucial ‘fourth estate’ and check on arbitrary authority, but also helped to foment a new popular perception of newspapers as somehow complicit with the prevailing ‘bourgeois’ order itself. At Stephen Koss describes it, from this point, ‘[t]he primary function of political journalism was to inspire confidence in a system of which it was, by design and consent, an integral part’ (Koss 1984: 684).

The Emergence of the Labour Party Ironically, it was the evolution of the relatively modest Labour Representation Committee into the parliamentary Labour Party during the first decade of the twentieth century which perhaps did most to bring the question of press partisanship and editorial bias back into broad public consciousness. It was recognised by the Labour Party’s founders that in order to stand any meaningful parliamentary chance the labour movement would need to establish both ‘a literature of its own, and a Press of its own’ (Blatchford 1894: 17). Even at this point, some socialists questioned the extent to which any such parity of opportunity could be realised within a national culture and society still overwhelmingly governed by commercial and imperial interests. Writing in the Leeds Mercury in 1906, the journalist A. R. Orage went so far as to suggest that ‘in creating the Labour party, [British] Socialism [had] created an obstacle to its own realisation greater perhaps than any obstacle that had previously existed’ (Orage 1906: 270). The Clarion­ – ­‘the first Socialist paper that ever paid its way in this

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country’­– ­had been launched by Robert Blatchford and Alexander M. Thompson in Manchester as early as 1891, achieving regular weekly sales of 40,000 to 50,000 by the end of the century (Miller 2013: 24). This was rapidly followed by the Christian-Socialist Labour Prophet and Keir Hardie’s weekly Labour Leader. The Daily Citizen and Daily Herald both appeared in 1912. The Citizen was short-lived, ceasing publication in January 1915, but the Herald, under George Lansbury’s editorship, quickly emerged as the primary organ of the Labour Party’s minority, if vociferous, left wing. As a primarily self-educated man Lansbury was eager for the paper to be recognised as more than simply a vehicle of socialist agitation or propaganda. Correspondingly, under his editorship the Herald drew on a remarkably diverse range of contributors including Edmund Blunden, H. N. Brailsford, G. D. H. Cole, Maurice Dobb, Havelock Ellis, Aldous Huxley, Robert Graves, Wyndham Lewis, Katherine Mansfield, Bertrand Russell and Leonard and Virginia Woolf. By the beginning of the First World War the paper was achieving regular daily sales of between 50,000 to 150,000, offering its readers ‘a wide and lively discussion of socialist ideas’ (Hinton 1983: 95). By 1922, however, confronted with an advertisers’ boycott, and growing concern amongst sections of the party leadership about the paper’s increasingly strident left-wing stance, Lansbury was finally compelled to cede editorial control. In September that year, the Labour Party and the TUC assumed sole financial and editorial control; by the end of the decade, half of the TUC’s stake had been sold to J. S. Elias’s Odhams Press, and in the 1930s the Herald, while still toeing the TUC line, became far more commercially oriented (Richards 1997). Correspondingly, by the 1920s what had less than half a century earlier been heralded by most of the pioneers of the labour movement as ‘perhaps the most important medium, through which reforms could be fought for, corruption and chicanery exposed’, was already seen by some socialists as simply one of ‘the most efficient instruments for maintaining economic and political power ever devised by any ruling class in history’ (Paul 1925: 561). It may be tempting from this vantage point to see Paul’s assertions as a species of extreme left conspiratorial hysteria or paranoia. By the mid-1920s, however, evidence of something very like a covert alliance of powerful anti-Labour interests­ – ­incorporating Liberal and Conservative politicians, disenchanted aristocrats, business leaders and ‘press barons’­ – ­appeared entirely plausible. A 1922 inquiry by the Labour Research Department described the press as a vehicle for ‘general capitalist propaganda and for direct attacks on workers’. Ownership and control, it suggested, remained virtually exclusively

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‘in the hands of capitalist groups . . . interested either in making direct profits out of the newspaper trade . . . or in using it as a means of maintaining the system with which profit-making is possible’. Journalists and editors were cowed and timorous for fear of ‘[offending] their advertising clients’ (Labour Research Department 1922: 27, 44–5). As the veteran editor of the Nation, H. W. Massingham, saw it, most newspapers were ‘quite frankly organs of business, supplying the wares they think their customers want, and changing them whenever a new demand arises’ (Massingham 1925: 131). There was plenty of evidence to sustain these views, most spectacularly the Daily Mail’s publication of the infamous ‘Zinoviev letter’ four days before the 1924 general election. This forged letter purported to be from Grigory Zinoviev, the Soviet head of the Communist International, and offered financial support for revolutionary activities planned by the Communist Party of Great Britain. It revealed, the Mail declared, ‘a great Bolshevik plot to paralyse the British Army and Navy and to plunge the country into civil war’: voters could not trust Ramsey’s McDonald’s Labour party to protect the nation from this grave threat (Daily Mail, 25 October 1924, p. 9). ‘Vote British, Not “Bolshie”’ was the Mirror’s blunt message (Daily Mirror, 29 October 1924, p. 1). This inflammatory rhetoric, fomenting anxieties about communist infiltration of the labour movement, helped to polarise British politics around the question of socialism, a tendency further entrenched by the General Strike in 1926. Both the Mail and the Mirror became platforms for the increasingly idiosyncratic views of owner Lord Rothermere, leading to the publication of sympathetic portrayals of Mussolini and Hitler, and, in the first half of 1934, support for the Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 73–6). Even at the time, it was acknowledged that Labour’s crisis was as much a result of the flaws of its leadership as it was any sustained ‘anti-Labour’ agenda or conspiracy­– ­regardless of whether such a conspiracy existed or not. As R. H. Tawney suggested in 1932: The great weakness of British Labour . . . is its lack of creed. The Labour Party is hesitant in action because divided in mind. It does not achieve what it could because it does not know what it wants. It frets out of office and stumbles in it . . . If the Labour Party is to tackle its job with some hope of success, it must mobilise behind it a body of conviction as resolute and informed as the opposition in front of it . . . the function of the party is not to offer the largest possible number of carrots to the largest possible number of donkeys. (Tawney 1932: 338)

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Such arguments underpinned efforts on the part of a diverse range of Labour theorists, during the 1930s, to forge a more coherent and unified national party programme and strategic direction. The Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda (SSIP) was founded in June 1931, by G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole; the New Fabian Bureau in 1931, attracting the likes of Douglas Jay, Evan Durbin, Ernest Bevin and the young Hugh Gaitskell. It was also in this context that a number of influential Labour thinkers including Herbert Morrison, Sidney Webb and Ellen Wilkinson came to challenge what they saw as Labour’s, hitherto, insouciant attitude towards the press and other mass-communications media. The historian Laura Beers goes so far as to suggest that this hard-won recognition, on the part of certain ‘pragmatic’ Labour strategists, of the need ‘to compete successfully in the new arena of mass media politics’ was to become nothing less than the decisive element in the Labour Party’s ensuing recovery from the nadir of the early 1930s, and eventual ascent to power in 1945 (Beers 2010: 202). According to Beers, ‘Labour’s embrace of a national media strategy’ can be seen as indicative of the party’s growing political maturity in the 1930s and renewed ‘commitment to winning over a broad coalition of British voters, including women, clerks and service ­workers, the professional classes, and even agricultural labourers’ (Beers 2010: 201). As a result of this attitudinal shift, she argues, within less than a decade Labour’s national image was transformed from that of picaresque and ramshackle ‘working class interest group’ to that of ‘credible’ and ‘legitimate’ government-in-waiting (Beers 2010: 2). Attlee’s 1945 victory, meanwhile, can be regarded as ‘the culmination of an election campaign that had reflected a degree of professionalization hitherto unknown to British politics’ (Beers 2010: 1). As Beers sees it, ‘[t]hese two developments­ – ­of the Labour Party’s evolution into a national party, and a party comfortable with new modes of mass communication were intimately related’; indeed, in her view, ‘[a] commitment to consensual “one nation” politics and the embrace of the mass media have continued to go hand in hand throughout Labour’s history’ (Beers 2010; 1, 9). While Beers insists that her vindication of Labour’s ‘turn’ to national publicity and media in the 1930s, and of the role it played in establishing the conditions for victory in 1945, is not intended to discount ‘the role played by [other] social forces, local activists, or contingent moments such as the two world wars’, there remains throughout her analysis, a distinct privileging of a certain kind of ‘moderate’, or ‘centrist’ high-party figure­ – ­not least, Herbert Morrison­ – ­over what might be termed the party’s more ‘rank-and-file’ or left-wing adherents

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(Beers 2010; 4). As such, she is unimpressed by what she characterises as ‘many Labour supporters’ hysterical contemporary rhetoric about the crisis of capitalism’ in the 1930s, the endemic structural iniquities of interwar British society, or related ‘conspiratorial’ notions of partisanship or ‘hegemonic resistance’ on the part of an embattled social and political elite (Beers 2010: 142). The overriding impression we are left with is of a relatively small band of heroic, ‘forward-thinking’ party strategists dragging an otherwise inchoate, idealistic and piously impractical labour movement into the era of modern professional politics and mass communications. As it is, there is compelling evidence to suggest that while ‘Labour’s embrace of a national media strategy’ may well have helped to secure the Attlee victory in 1945, it was to prove of far less significance once the party was in office and the tensions and contradictions in its Janus-faced socialist/social-democratic programme could no longer be hidden behind an enticing poster of sun-dappled suburban housing or a well-framed article in the Daily Mirror. Indeed, the beginning of 1946 was to see ‘an abrupt end to Labour’s honeymoon period, with its lead over the Conservatives being cut from 19 per cent to a mere 3 per cent between January and May’ (Hinton 1992: 59). By 1947­ – ­the effective annus horribilis of the Attlee government­– ­Labour was confronting a virtually daily barrage of criticism in the national press for its ‘lack of drive’, including from ‘papers like the Manchester Guardian which had [hitherto] generally shown it at least a benevolent neutrality’ (Marquand 1963: 155). Tellingly, rather than tackle this criticism head-on, the government’s primary response was to resurrect the familiar bogeyman of press partisanship, going as far as to implement a full-scale Royal Commission on ‘the control, management and ownership of the newspaper and periodical Press and the news agencies, including the financial structure and the monopolistic tendencies in control’, in 1947. Nevertheless, as George Orwell suggested the following, the real difficulties Labour faced in power derived not so much from the hostility of the commercial and right-wing press as from the more endemic set of popular attitudes and assumptions that the press and other forms of ‘mass’ communications media had encouraged to propagate during the first half of the century. Indeed, in Orwell’s view, Labour was ‘handicapped, in fact, not by any positive desire to return to capitalism [on the part of the British electorate] but by the habits of mind acquired during prosperity (including the ideology of the socialist movement itself)’ (Orwell 1948: 436). Concluding her analysis as she does in 1945, Beers is not obliged to explain why, if Labour’s media and communications strategy proved

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so decisive during the ten years between 1935 and 1945, it appeared so relatively ineffectual once the party was in office, and, indeed, throughout much of the 1950s and early 1960s­– ­a period when, arguably, under the self-consciously ‘pragmatic’ leadership of Hugh Gaitskell, the party became more anxiously preoccupied with its public communications and ‘glossy’ media image than at any prior point in its history, and when according to James Thomas there was, if anything, a ‘reduction in individual press partisanship’ (Jones 1959; Thomas 2005: 2). One can only conclude, with Orwell, that something rather more endemic remained in play and that for Labour at least the winning of elections could not be taken as synonymous with that of its wider struggle to transform belief and opinion.

The New Left Critique As it was, by the mid-1950s recognition of just such an entrenched and self-perpetuating cultural hegemony, or ‘establishment’, in Britain­ – ­incorporating parliament, public schools, universities, the civil service, the press, the BBC and even key figures with the Labour Party itself­ – ­was an idea with purchase far beyond the outer fringe of the labour movement (Annan 1955; Priestley 1957; Thomas 1959 (Smith 1975: 17)). At the forefront of those seeking to make sense of these changes were a number of intellectuals associated with the self-styled New Left. Underscoring their analysis was a much deeper emphasis on the interplay between ‘popular culture’ and politics. While this also entailed ‘a powerful critique of the specious populism and banality of popular newspapers’ (Owen 2008: 1), it also pointed to a path beyond the reductive either/or distinctions that had characterised most left/labour thinking on mass media during the previous half century. As Raymond Williams put it in 1958, in their discussions of the press socialists had allowed themselves to become the ‘the prisoners of a formula’: popular culture was projected either as a direct mirror of working-class values and tastes, or as a pernicious ‘assault from the outside’. In place of this false opposition Williams emphasised ‘the need for a new equation, to fit the observable facts’ (Williams 1958: 13). As Williams saw it, ‘the building of the labour movement, both industrially and politically’, had been nothing if not also ‘a continuous struggle to create a particular political and social consciousness’. This struggle had, however, been hampered throughout by an equally sustained ‘campaign, by other social groups, to check and confuse and sidetrack this movement’. Newspapers needed to be approached as more than just ‘noisy channels which connect one end of an informa-

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tion exchange with another’; rather they were comprehensive ‘structures of meaning’, offering their readers a comprehensive identity (Smith 1975: 17). New Left thinkers insisted that ultimately the only way to challenge the ‘hegemonic’ authority of the press and other commercial media in Britain was through the fomentation of an alternative campaigning culture of the left, incorporating its own newspapers, its own networks. The collapse of the News Chronicle in 1960, and sale of the TUC’s shares in the Daily Herald in 1964­ – ­setting in chain the sequence of events that would eventually lead to Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of the latter under its new name, the Sun, in 1969­– ­appeared to many to signify the end of a certain kind of political press in Britain. As Anthony Smith noted, with the Herald’s demise, ‘no newspaper remained which avowedly belonged to a single class’ (Smith 1975: 177). By 1966 it was questioned if ‘any such thing as a left-wing press in Britain’ had ever existed, at least in the sense of ‘a coherent, distinctive and effective press reflecting and providing a rallying point for that half of the population which votes Labour’ (Waller 1967: 75). The new left or ‘culturalist’ approach by Williams and Richard Hoggart in the late 1950s, and later refined by Stuart Hall and others associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies after 1968, offered an important detour from the reductive, culminating in the publication of such seminal works such as Policing the Crisis (1978), Working-Class Culture (1979) and Culture, Media, Language (1980). The best of this work was distinguished by its authors’ focus less on the explicit content of newspapers, than with the ‘language and rhetoric, of style and presentation’; ‘how meaning is conveyed and not simply what is conveyed’ (Gray 2007: 7). Not least, it projected a view of mass popular audiences as more than just unwitting products of ‘false consciousness’, ‘cultural dupes’ or ‘empty vessels’ on to whom ‘the middle classes and the mass media can project, tabula rasa, whatever they want’ (Hall 2008: 24). By the mid-1970s, however, in the midst of global economic downturn and sustained industrial strife, the first portents of a more decisive political and cultural sea change were already coming to be registered. As Stuart Hall later described it, suddenly ‘the forces we were trying to understand began to return to the stage with unstoppable force and profound consequences for culture’ (Hall 2008). A notable side effect of this shift for the Labour Party was ‘a more relentlessly hostile press coverage than at any time in the post-war era’ (Thomas 2005: 2). In the second half of the 1970s, the Mail and the Sun, in particular, began to align themselves with the emerging ‘new right’ thinking around Margaret

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Thatcher, and the tabloid press’s creativity in narrating a disparate set of industrial disputes as the ‘Winter of Discontent’ did much to damage the incumbent Callaghan government (Hay 1996). The 1979 general election campaign witnessed the type of vitriolic political journalism that had characterised the 1920s. One notable example was the Mail’s infamous ‘Labour Dirty Dozen’ attack of 26 April 1979, which translated a tendentious Conservative Central Office press release into a dramatic front-page exposure of ‘12 lies designed to frighten voters into staying with a bankrupt Labour Government’. In 1980, the TUC pamphlet Behind the Headlines unsurprisingly argued that partisan press coverage played a key role in Labour’s defeat (Tunney 2007: 59). One response was to find legislative means to intervene in the market to challenge the structural forces that seemed to tilt the newspaper industry in the right’s favour. From the mid-1970s, party members, academics and activists developed proposals to dilute the concentration of newspaper ownership, redistribute advertising revenue, and to involve journalists and the wider community in editorial decisionmaking, all of which were designed to produce a more democratic and diverse press. The People and the Media, published by the National Executive Committee’s Communications Study Group in 1974, and informed by the historical awareness of media scholar James Curran, recommended newsprint subsidies and the creation of an Advertising Revenue Board to rebalance the market. Wary of encroaching onto the ‘freedom of the press’, Harold Wilson followed his predecessor, Attlee, in appointing a Royal Commission on the Press. As in the late 1940s, the commission’s disquiet about the performance of the press did not translate into a consensus for specific reforms, although the interventionist recommendations of the minority report, penned by David Basnett and Geoffrey Goodman, commanded a considerable amount of support in the Labour party. In 1980 print trade unionists established the Campaign for Press Freedom (later Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom) to campaign for the ‘right of reply’ as a means of correcting inaccurate and distorted newspaper coverage. Over 100 constituency Labour parties backed the campaign in its first year (Tunney 2007: 68). Despite a widespread sympathy for legislative action to reform the press, however, the persistent ideological tensions between the party’s left and right wings made it difficult to develop a coherent approach to this topic, as to many others. As in the 1950s, successive election defeats would be taken as licence for a profound reshaping of Labour’s ideological perspectives and related electoral strategy. The labour movement, one contemporary observed, was effectively ‘scythed into

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two opposing camps’ (Samuel 1986: 60). As even Raymond Williams was subsequently compelled to acknowledge, the building of ‘an alternative campaigning culture’ capable of forestalling a hegemonic ­ascension of these proportions appeared to necessitate ‘much harder kinds of change’ (Williams 1982: 16). At the forefront of those seeking to makes sense of these developments was an unlikely coalition of writers, intellectuals and politicians associated with the Communist Party journal Marxism Today. The journal had been launched as far back as 1957, but it would emerge as ‘more or less the theoretical organ of Labour revisionism’ during the 1980s (Rustin 1990: 303). Building on the ‘culturalist’ perspectives set out by new left thinkers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the journal looked to provide a space where the central questions of the time ‘could be considered outside the established frameworks (Hobsbawm 2005: 273). Its contributors sought to identify and interrogate the essential characteristics of the emergent macro-economic paradigm that would later be described as ‘neoliberalism’. Socialists and other left-wingers, it was suggested, could not possibly hope to contest this shift without first seeking to understand both the depth and appeal of its accompanying cultural appeal: ‘Certain ways of thinking, feeling and calculating’, it was suggested, ‘characteristic of Thatcherism [had] entered as a material and ideological force into the daily lives of ordinary people.’ Thatcherism had largely succeeded in promoting itself as the new ‘common sense of the age’ (Hall 1988: 6). In an analysis which now seems portentous, Dick Hebdige argued that ‘mutations of the codes of journalism’ (Hebdige 1989: 83), were increasingly serving to ‘free . . . readers from any obligation to believe in the kind of bourgeois myth of disinterested truth’. The aggressive manipulation of a Thatcherite ‘common sense’, freed from the constraints of adherence to the truth, was most evident in the tabloid press’s relentless attacks on the so-called ‘loony left’, ranging from MPs (favourite target: Tony Benn), union leaders (Arthur Scargill), minority rights campaigners (Peter Tatchell) or local government leaders (Ken Livingstone and Bernie Grant). From the Sun’s attempt to smear Scargill by picturing him apparently giving a Nazi salute, to tendentious claims that local London councils were banning nursery rhymes such as ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ or promoting homosexuality in schools, a wave of tabloid scare stories portrayed the labour movement as being packed with extremists out of step with the attitudes and aspirations of the ‘ordinary’ public (Curran et al. 2018; Williams 2009).

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Figure 25.1  Tony Dubbins, General Secretary of the NGA, on the picket line during the Wapping dispute, 1986 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Tony_Dubbins.jpg)

The Emergence of New Labour For some within the movement, the pragmatic solution to this press assault was not to seek to take on and restructure the industry, but to accept existing structures and work more effectively within them. In 1986 the Shadow Communications Agency was established under the leadership of Peter Mandelson, with Philip Gould, a public relations expert, recruited to interpret public opinion through polling evidence and, increasingly, focus groups. Mandelson sought to professionalise Labour’s media operations and cultivated connections within leading political journalists (Mandelson 2010). The difficulties of operating this strategy within a right-wing dominated newspaper landscape were glaringly exposed, however, by the coverage the party received during the 1992 general election campaign. The tabloid press, led by Kelvin MacKenzie’s Sun, relentlessly questioned the competence and credibility of Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader, and sought to exploit negative voter perceptions of the party’s taxation policies by exaggerating the potential cost of a Labour victory. The eventual Conservative victory was heralded with claims of ‘It’s the Sun Wot Won it’, an analysis which the resigning Kinnock bitterly accepted. He lamented that ‘The Conservative-supporting press has enabled the Tory Party to win yet again when the Conservative Party could not have secured victory for itself on the basis of its record, its programme or its character’ (Tunney 2007: vi). Labour’s fourth consecutive electoral defeat had a searing impact on

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the party, and, after the premature death of John Smith, Kinnock’s successor, in 1994, it served to legitimate the modernising project led by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Alistair Campbell, in conjunction with Mandelson and Gould. ‘New Labour’ was a rebranding operation that sought to free the party of perceived historical baggage­– ­notably leading to the rewriting of the party’s ‘Clause 4’ constitutional commitment to public ownership­ – ­and enable it to compete on the political centre ground. Mandelson and Campbell deployed an effective combination of flattery, inducements and threats to win more positive press coverage, and in July 1995 Tony Blair travelled to Hayman Island in Australia to meet Rupert Murdoch and persuade the News Corporation senior management that he was a plausible, and business-friendly, future prime minister. In the short-term, this strategy paid dividends. As soon as polling day was announced in 1997, the Sun declared that it ‘Backed Blair’ and Labour, for the first time in its history, conducted a general election campaign with the support of the majority of the press by circulation. A broader press realignment facilitated a second landslide victory in 2001, when the Express and The Times made historic shifts to support Labour. In the aftermath of the second poll, one could have been forgiven for concluding that the political centre of gravity had moved leftwards, dragging the press with it (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 90–3). As New Labour’s lustre was gradually dulled by the divisions over Blair’s handling of the (Second) Iraq War and the economic turbulence of the debt-crisis of 2007–8, it became increasingly clear that the fundamentals of British political culture had not been overturned. New Labour did not pose a decisive challenge to the Thatcher settlement, and the party moved rightwards as much, if not more, than papers such as the Sun moved leftwards. The Blairite conviction in the power of the press over public opinion, rooted in the defeats of the 1980s and early 1990s, created a timidity in pursuing policies that might upset the Sun and the Mail, and led to persistent, and damaging, accusations that the party was driven by ‘spin’. After 2010, familiar patterns were ­re-established as the Sun, Mail and Times returned to the Conservative stable, and, with the election of Jeremy Corbyn to party leadership in 2015, many of the traditional lines of attack on ‘old Labour’ were redeployed. The labour movement had not been able to establish the alternative campaigning culture that New Left critics had sought, and territory captured was easily lost.

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Conclusion: New Battle Lines The biggest challenge for both the press and the labour movement (such as it still exists) in the first decades of the twenty-first century continues to be the ongoing devolution of communications and perhaps by extension political power towards newly proliferating forms of so-called ‘social media’. While this shift may invite certain parallels with the political and democratic challenges posed by the advent of mass-circulation newspapers at the beginning of the twentieth century, or the rise of commercial television in the 1950s, the long-term political implications of the current media revolution are, as yet, far more difficult to anticipate­ – ­though, conceivably, the ascendancy of ‘populist’ leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in Britain, and Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the United States may indicate one likely direction of travel. During the 2017 general election, the Labour Party under Corbyn enjoyed something of a rejuvenation after what had, until recently, been widely billed­ – ­at least in the ‘mainstream’ media­ – ­as the party’s most serious existential crisis since the 1930s. Corbyn’s tenacious grip on power in the face of unprecedented personal criticism and hostility appears to serve as yet further exposure of popular newspapers’ diminishing political influence and authority in an age of Twitter and Facebook. If nothing else, the well-worn tactics and strategies deployed by usual suspects such as the Sun, Mail and Express– depicting the Labour leader as a terrorist sympathiser, a ‘treacherous’ anti-Royalist, a ‘Maoist’ revolutionary, etc.­ – ­appear to have lost some of their purchase. In some ways, the antagonism between labour and the press now looks like a peculiarly twentieth-century phenomenon­ – ­a symptom or manifestation of the much deeper confrontation between ‘commercial’ culture and society and what eventually became ‘socialism’, as it developed from the late eighteenth century onwards. As it is, the ‘mass’ constituencies to whom, in their different ways, both labour and the press sought to appeal arguably no longer exist, at least in the way they did during the first half of the twentieth century. Both labour and the press need to be careful that while they appear intent on re-enacting the familiar antagonisms of the twentieth century the real battle lines of the twenty-first century are not being determined elsewhere.

Chapter Twenty-Six

THE TABLOID PRESS: TALES OF CONTROVERSY, COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC LIFE Sofia Johansson

Introduction

W

  hen the 35 -year-old Anglo-Irish businessman Alfred Harmsworth was invited by American press magnate Joseph Pulitzer to guest edit a special edition of the World for one day only, on 1 January 1901, he used the term ‘tabloid’– initially trademarked by a pill manufacturer as a combination of ‘tablet’ and ‘alkaloid’– to describe the newspaper of the future: a small, easily digested news pill. In an event held as a New Year’s party, with staff working throughout the night in evening dress, he instructed reporters to keep paragraphs and sentences as short as possible, and for stories not to exceed 250 words. When the paper appeared in the morning, it had, to the shock and curiosity of its readers, been reduced to half the standard broadsheet size, with a one-page editorial headline ‘All the News in Sixty Seconds’, boasting: ‘The World enters today upon the Twentieth or Time-Saving Century. I claim that by my system of condensed or tabloid journalism hundreds of working hours can be saved each year.’ Although this edition of the World sold out quickly, the experiment was met with suspicion from journalists and the public, and it would take some time before it was repeated in full. However, it is often cited as an example of journalistic innovation, and it provides a pertinent illustration of how ‘tabloid’, even early on, demarked a style of journalism that entailed a strong emphasis on transience and plainness (Pound and Harmsworth 1959: 265–8; Tulloch 2000: 131–2; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 1). Sometimes referred to solely as a compact newspaper format­– ­about half the size of a broadsheet­ – ­‘tabloid’ equally connotes a particular 517

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type of journalism: populist, condensed, accessible and brash, and often boundary-pushing and provocative. Over the course of the twentieth century, this particular type of popular journalism was epitomised by certain British newspapers, with the leading London titles providing millions of readers with their daily portion of news, amusement and titillation, at times achieving some of the biggest circulations in the world. From the Daily Mail to the News of the World, such papers, despite critics’ views of them as sensationalist, manipulative and ‘gutter press’, succeeded spectacularly in establishing an everyday bond with their readers, just as much as they gained a conspicuous role in politics and the wider cultural sphere. This chapter chronicles the development of tabloid newspapers in Britain across the twentieth century, with a focus on the most influential and popular daily titles. It investigates the exceptional rise and subsequent demise of the tabloid as a distinct newspaper form, which has stirred as much controversy as it has shaped public debate. How did tabloid newspapers come to attract such vast readerships? What basis for the formation of public opinion did they provide, and how did they impact on the wider journalistic and media climate? Drawing on a review of historical research, as well as on some archival research for examples of content, the chapter pays attention to, firstly, the rise and development of the tabloid as a distinct newspaper format, which contributed to a significant change within the entire press system. Secondly, it explores a notable history of controversy, characterised by the papers’ tendency to push ethical and taste boundaries, and by the introduction of new, sensationalist, journalistic styles and content orientations. Finally, the chapter considers the complex influence of tabloid newspapers within public life, as a basis for the formation of public opinion, and as a political force. This entails, too, consideration of how the history of tabloid journalism can be regarded as one of building a sense of community among readers, through, for instance, the provision of an inclusive address, and the interlinking of news with forms of popular culture. Overall, attention is paid to the tabloid as journalism’s ‘other’, which had significant political and cultural impact throughout the century.

The Tabloid on the Rise The Daily Mail and the Transformation of the Newspaper Industry As Harmsworth predicted, the tabloid was the newspaper of the future. Although its origins can be traced as far back as the popular street

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l­ iterature peddled on markets and highways in Europe after the advent of printing, as well as to the radical journals that helped organise workers in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century (Shepard 1962; Bird 1992: 2–4; Conboy 2002: 23–42, 71–9), it was from the very beginning presented as catering to the demands of modern life. More direct predecessors can be found in the commercial publications that emerged as the British press became industrialised in the second half of the century, and in the sensational ‘penny press’ that had flourished in America since the 1830s. The latter favoured a light, lively style of reporting, in a language close to spoken English, an approach that existed to an extent in Britain in the popular Sunday newspapers, which included a more entertainment-based agenda than the dailies. However, it was not until the latter decades of the nineteenth century that this style of American journalism was more fully explored in Britain, in weekly magazines and in daily evening newspapers that expanded on reading material in areas of crime, scandal, romance and sport (Berridge 1978; Lee 1976; Engel 1996: 32–5; Conboy 2002: 80–6). With the launch of the Daily Mail in May 1896, however, a British version of ‘New Journalism’ entered the more high-profile morning newspaper market, representing a starting point for the development of tabloid newspapers. Owned by the same Harmsworth who was to orchestrate the World stunt four years later, the Daily Mail was promoted from the first issue as the ‘The Busy Man’s Daily Journal’. It assured its readers that its relatively compact size had no bearing on respectability or quality, but was merely a matter of convenience: ‘The size of the paper has been selected with a view to the convenience of travelling readers’ (Daily Mail, 4 May 1896, pp. 1, 4). Deviating from the dry norm of Victorian daily journalism, the reporting was simple and engaging, and included a focus on sport, sensational crime news and human interest as well as campaigns on a wide range of everyday issues, ranging from calls for purer milk to a push to install telephones in police stations (Chalaby 2000: 34–45; Harris 2013: 3). Journalist Hamilton Fyfe recalled in a memoir how the ‘Chief’, as Harmsworth became known to his staff, wanted his new paper to ‘touch life at every point’ (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 7; see also Horrie 2003: 17–20), addressing ­readers’ immediate concerns. Harmsworth, who had made his fortune in magazine publishing, held the view that these concerns in many cases involved a desire for entertainment and escape from the humdrum of the day-to-day, rather than an exhaustive focus on politics and public affairs. He was also, as opposed to most newspaper proprietors and editors at the time, convinced of the commercial potential of female

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readerships, and the Mail included a gossip column, serials and features on fashion and domestic issues. Allowing the gist of an article to be taken in at a glance and sold at the cheap price of half a penny, it became a truly mass-circulation newspaper, with a circulation nearing a million within four years of its launch (Engel 1996: 101; Williams 2010: 125–50; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 7–8). Adrian Bingham and Martin Conboy note that the commercial success of the Mail relied not just on its novel approach as a morning newspaper, but also on a pioneering business model involving substantial investment in production, technology and publicity in return for mass readership and high-cost advertising, as well as intricate distribution systems to ensure delivery across Britain. As such, the ‘revolution’ represented by the Daily Mail went beyond style and content, to a transformation of the entire press system: Harmsworth’s revolution ushered in the tabloid century, where developments in the popular newspaper began to drive the practices of the entire press and beyond that, the media in general. The very scale of his success left other proprietors little choice but to adapt their newspapers to match or improve upon his template. (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 8) The Mail can also, as pointed out by Kevin Williams, be regarded as a starting point for a trend towards a polarisation in the British press, ‘between down-market, mass circulation tabloids and up-market, elite broadsheets with small circulations’ (1997: 56). Nevertheless, both the Mail and the competing Daily Express­– ­launched in 1900 and bought by Canadian business man Lord Beaverbrook in 1916­ – ­appealed to readers from different social classes, drawing on a conservative ­‘middle-brow’ sensitivity understood to be appealing to working people (Conboy 2002: 126; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 168). It was left to another newspaper to eventually pick up the torch from the early radical press, in providing an astute working-class identity for its readers as it emerged as the first fully modern popular British tabloid. The Daily Mirror­– ­A Popular Tabloid for the Working Class1 Founded in 1903, also by Harmsworth (ennobled in 1905 as Lord Northcliffe), the Daily Mirror started its life as a tabloid-sized newspaper aimed at women, but changed to an illustrated paper for both men and women a year later. It initially had little competition in its playful outlook and novel focus on photography and illustration, including the introduction of the American-inspired cartoon strip. Its

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pioneering photography allowed it, at points, to achieve circulations exceeding those of the Mail, but its size, emphasis on human interest and a fondness for glamorous society women also led to a reputation as a ‘non-serious’ paper, and it lagged behind competitors after the First World War. However, the beginning of the 1930s saw intensified competition for market growth among working-class readers, initiated by a successful relaunch of the Daily Herald, a socialist paper part-owned by the Trade Union Congress (TUC), and also given momentum by a significant redesign of the Express­ – ­market leader from the mid1930s­ – ­which, guided by editor Arthur Christiansen, included attention to photography, bolder headlines and a more fluid page design. In this context, the Mirror underwent an important relaunch, with a new formula influenced by American tabloids popular at the time. This involved the abundant use of black type, an emphasis on sensation and sex, shorter articles and an ear for common speech (Engel 1996: 151–3; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 13). Opinion-stirring news stories began to appear on the front page, and bold block headlines distinguished the paper. It also pushed the boundaries of British journalism through the introduction of the agony aunt Dorothy Dix, whose advice column, according to Matthew Engel, was ‘to cast aside Victorian morality by giving readers robust daily common sense’ (1996: 159). The tone of the pre-war Mirror was young, abrasive and sensationalist, with a sense for the humorous and bizarre, but it had a serious political agenda. Its editorial director Harry Guy Bartholomew (‘Bart’) was from a simple background and inherently suspicious of social elites, and his editorial team, which included Basil Nicholson and the young Hugh Cudlipp, applied a reformist approach supported by Cecil King, Northcliffe’s nephew (Cudlipp 1953: 48–62; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 13). The ‘Cassandra’ column, penned by William Connor, had a sharp populist edge that took a stand against unemployment, social rigidity and the smugness of elites, in a language able to provoke debate. Engel describes this paper as ‘an intelligent chap’, rough but honest: In the fuggy atmosphere of a bare-floored pre-war pub, the Mirror was the intelligent chap leaning on the corner of the bar: not lahdi-dah or anything­– ­he liked a laugh, and he definitely had an eye for the girls­– ­but talking a lot of common sense. (1996: 161) The ‘common sense’ offered by the Mirror included the view that British involvement in a war against Hitler’s Germany was imminent, a view that was unpopular with many other papers at the time. During the Second World War the Mirror became regarded as the ‘forces’

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Figure 26.1  Cecil King with Marlon Brando and Ann Miller, California, 1959 (Courtesy of Teresa Stokes (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ stokesblandfullerkingancestry/6803353909))

paper’, standing firmly on the side of ordinary men and women, and criticising Nazis just as well as wrongdoings done to ‘ordinary blokes’ by their own government. In 1945, it adopted the slogan ‘Forward with the People’ and joined ‘popular opinion’ in support of the Labour party­ – ­even though its articulation of politics was never tied explicitly to the unions or other Labour institutions. In 1949 it overtook the Express as the bestselling newspaper in Britain. On 9 June 1964, a headline could boast it had topped a circulation of 5 million. No daily newspaper had regularly sold that many copies before, and it continued to climb until its, still unmatched, peak in 1967 of 5.25 million daily sales (Engel 1996: 167; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 14–16, 79–80). Yet there were signs that the Mirror had begun to slip. Engel points out that it never quite came to terms with the revolution of 1960s youth culture; uncomfortably placing the word ‘rock’ in quote marks and in a pop review describing the Beatles as ‘a very cute bunch’. Furthermore, while its affiliation with the Labour Party meant it had access to privileged information, for example having articles written especially by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, it also left it vulnerable to turns in public

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opinion (Engel 1996: 195–6). These weaknesses could be exploited by its nemesis the Sun, as it began its rise on the tabloid horizon. The Sun Setting the Scene In 1964, the socialist Daily Herald, which in 1933 had become the first daily newspaper to sell 2 million copies, was relaunched by  the International Publishing Corporation (IPC) as the Sun. But the initiative proved unsuccessful and in 1969 Rupert Murdoch, owner of the popular Sunday newspaper News of the World, was able to buy the loss-making Sun for the bargain sum of £800,000. Murdoch and his new editor, Larry Lamb, aspired to give the paper a fresh start as a tabloid, inspired by the Mirror in its glory years in the 1950s; a vision described in journalists Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie’s history of the Sun as ‘strident, campaigning, working class, young, entertaining, politically aware, cheeky, radical, anti-establishment, fun, breezy and, most of all, hugely profitable’ (1999: 13). With banners at news-stands promoting the Sun as ‘the paper that CARES’, it emphasised being on the same level as ordinary people, encouraging readers­ – ­defined from the first issue as ‘the folks’­ – ­to identify with its anti-establishment spirit. Lamb had a rule that all letters must be answered within forty-eight hours; the Sun involved its readers in prize draws and competitions and appeared to side with ‘the folks’ on social issues. Crucially, it identified television as an area of relevance to the lives of its readers, and also broke newspaper conventions when it pushed a wealth of upfront and steamy sexual stories in their hands. An important feature of the paper­ – ­a regular from November 1970­ – ­was the topless page 3 girl (Chippindale and Horrie 1999: 13, 21–35, 41–3; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 16–20). With the sex, a ‘folk’ appeal that was young but also connected to the anti-establishment spirit so successfully defined by the wartime Mirror, and a tabloid design brimming with graphic hooks for the eye, the Sun had a winning formula. It went from selling 650,000 to 1.5 million copies within its first 100 days. In 1978, this ‘soaraway Sun’ overtook the Mirror with sales at more than 4 million. In direct competition for downmarket readers with the other ‘red-tops’, the Mirror and from 1978 also the Daily Star, it remained Britain’s bestselling daily paper (Chippendale and Horrie 1999: 35; see also Lamb 1989). If the launch of the Mail had represented a new style of journalism and a new business model for sustaining it, and the Mirror had proven the commercial potential of the popular tabloid, the Sun boldly underlined its profitability. By the end of the 1970s, all popular daily newspapers had converted to the tabloid format.

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Controversy, Sex and Sensation Stirring Emotions The mid-market Mail and the Express, while populist, aspired to an air of respectability even after they made the move to the tabloid format, whereas the Mirror, and later the Sun and the Star, were unashamedly brash, with the Mirror’s 1930s slogan ‘vulgar but honest’ from the start making clear its brazen and frank appeal to its readers. Encapsulating much of the times and politics in Britain around and after the Second World War, the Mirror, likewise, succeeded in reaching out to working-class readers partly by developing a highly strident and sensationalist style. This included paying close attention to common vernacular, as well as the development of the tabloid headline. Boisterous headlines such as ‘SINGLE UNTIL 91­ – ­NOW TO WED’, ‘SHIP SINKS IN SEA OF FLAMES’ or ‘LOVER SHOOTS GIRL DEAD IN SHOP­ – ­DIES BY GUN’ (Daily Mirror, front pages, 11 February 1939, 28 July 1939, 28 February 1939), already in place by the late 1930s, set a stylistic precedent. As noted by Martin Conboy, in the hands of the Mirror the tabloid headline was indeed ‘made into a weapon of both popular indignation and sensation’ (2002: 127)­– ­which also came to effectively make use of puns, wordplays and colloquialisms, and entailed a strong emphasis on ‘fun’ and self-referential playfulness. In combination with what has been described as a ‘circus poster layout’ (Welles, in Bird 1992: 29), these stylistic elements came to define the popular tabloid­ – ­contributing to its ability to cause controversy and outrage both regarding its content and the methods used for obtaining this. The aptitude for stirring the emotions of readers and critics alike, then, is no doubt one of the distinguishing features of the popular press throughout the century­ – ­evident early on in examples ranging from the Mail’s strident campaigning to the early Mirror’s risqué pictures of young women in flimsy clothes. But the period from the 1970s onwards provides an especially fertile ground for examples of tabloid controversy, with the 1980s seeing the escalation of aggressive reporting, epitomised by the Sun’s increasingly ruthless attempts to stay ahead of competition. This paper had gradually turned from support of the Labour Party in the early 1970s to attacking the party, persuasively urging its largely working-class readers to vote for Margaret Thatcher’s Tories in the general election of 1979­ – ­determinedly expressed in an editorial titled ‘Vote Tory This Time’, published on the eve of the election night (Sun, 3 May 1979, p.  1). Under the new editorship of Kelvin MacKenzie from 1981, the Sun continued a manifest backing

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of right-wing politics, but also sharpened its sting in order to follow his ‘shock and amaze on every page’ formula; highlighting nationalist and homophobic rhetoric, hunting down celebrities, royals, official figures and members of the public with paparazzi tactics, and making common use of chequebook journalism (Chippendale and Horrie 1999: 101–27; see also Williams 2010: 197–220). During the Falklands War in 1982 the ‘GOTCHA’ headline on the sinking of Argentinian ship Belgrano, which led to the deaths of 368 seamen, caused outrage among both journalists and the public, and in 1987 the Sun had caused more complaints to the Press Council than any other British newspaper (Chippendale and Horrie 1999: 370). In 1989, after the Sun, under the headline ‘THE TRUTH’, wrongly accused Liverpool supporters of being solely responsible for the forty-one deaths at the Hillsborough football tragedy, readers in Liverpool and surrounding areas answered by boycotting the paper, causing ongoing financial losses for News International, Murdoch’s media empire, which at that time had come to include Sky TV as well as The Times and the Sunday Times.2 From ‘Bathing Belles’ to ‘Bonk Journalism’ The ‘lusty young Sun’, as the paper self-referentially highlighted its liberal stance on sexual content, would also come to epitomise the controversy around the tabloid with regard to sex and gender, an area of popular journalism appearing to be as enticing to readers as it was always an object of controversy. This was the case not only in the 1970s­ – ­when Lamb and Murdoch’s insistence on sex as a selling point invited critiques of press morals as well as sexism­– ­but, in fact, was part of the tensions around the tabloid newspaper project throughout the twentieth century. As Northcliffe had broken with the conventions of the ‘serious’ daily press of the Victorian era by recognising female readers as attractive to advertisers and able to boost circulation, the Mail can, on one level, be credited with having contributed to inviting women into the public sphere, even though it did so primarily by emphasising gender difference, with women’s content from the start relating primarily to fashion, beauty and the domestic realm. At the same time, Northcliffe’s belief in the allure of ‘attractive ladies’ and ‘bathing belles’ (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 131) equally pointed to what from the 1930s would develop into a persistent tabloid pin-up culture, and the sexualisation of the tabloid press (see Holland 1988). Bingham and Conboy (2015: 138–49) identify the pin-up and the problem page as two key tabloid formats where sexualisation became especially evident; the latter as a source of advice and guidance on

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Figure 26.2  The agony aunt Majorie Proops, 1974, long-serving author of the ‘Dear Marje’ column for the Daily Mirror (© Allan Warren (https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Majorie_Proops_Allan_Warren.jpg))

personal and sexual matters. With agony aunts such as Dix, Ann Temple, Marje Proops and Clare Rayner during the period from the mid-1930s to the 1970s being among the most highly paid journalists in Fleet Street, the problem page provided a high-profile space for some female journalists (Sun, 3 May 1979, p. 1), as well as a forum for real-life concerns of ordinary women and men. Conversely, the pin-up, during the Second World War popular in cartoon form in the Mirror’s sassy ‘Jane’ strip (Loncraine 2007: 104), and in the 1950s centring on the ‘treasure chests’ of famous ‘busty beauties’ such as Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, paved the way for the prevalent objectification of women still most conspicuously expressed in the page 3 girl feature. This bare-breasted feature­ – ­so central to the Sun’s brand until its demise in January 2015, and constituting a profitable marketing opportunity with the extension to page 3 calendars and playing cards­ – ­was initially in line with an era more permissive of nudity, and justified by Lamb and his editorial team as embracing a modern notion of sex; simply portraying, as Lamb expressed it, ‘nice girls’ (Holland 1983; Loncraine 2007; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 158). However, ­alongside

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competition from the Star, which, with its own ‘Starbirds’ and a steady diet of entertainment, sport and ‘bonk journalism’ contributed to a blurring of the lines between news journalism and soft porn, page 3 came during the 1980s to more frequently lean aesthetically on the tropes of pornography (Chippindale and Horrie 1999: 83). It was the subject of persistent feminist campaigning from the mid-1980s. This feature, alongside initiatives such as the Sun’s ‘national cleavage week’, has remained illustrative of a tabloid preoccupation with gender, and of the narrowly defined gender roles frequently given prominence (see Johansson 2007: 100–10). Page 3­– ‘­The Most Famous Page in the Newspaper’ There is probably nothing quite as emblematic of the British tabloids as the topless ‘page 3’ girl. Appearing regularly in the Sun from 17 November 1970, the feature­ – ­for over four decades­ – ­remained one of the most potent signifiers of redtop content. As self-reverentially exclaimed by the Sun at the beginning of the twenty-first century, page 3, with its bare-breasted woman smiling amicably at the reader, indeed became ‘the most famous page in the newspaper’ (Sun, 3 November 2003, p.  15), while continuing a well-traversed history of tabloid pin-up culture. Amidst notions of a ‘permissive society’ celebrating nudity and sexual candour, page 3 initially drew on photography from the naturist tradition, or was exhibited with cheeky humour, but the feature aligned more closely with pornographic aesthetics in the 1980s, alongside competition from the downmarket Star and its full-colour topless ‘Starbirds’ (Chippendale and Horrie 1999: 83). Favouring a particular kind of accessible and pliable femininity, and generally featuring white and often blonde models, page 3 clearly contributed to the gendered framework from within which readers were offered to interpret the news, contrasted by the aggressive images of sporting masculinity emphasised on the sports pages in the Sun and other tabloids (see Clayton and Harris 2002; Johansson 2007: 102–4). While criticised for objectifying women­ – ­what the first Sun editor Larry Lamb in 1989 acknowledged as ‘an element of sexploitation’ (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 159, Lamb 1989: 110)­ – ­it was justified by the Sun as an invite, not only to heterosexual men but also to women, into a discourse of sexual enjoyment and freedom (Holland 1983: 93, 97). For some of the models, stints on page 3 would equally function as a springboard to wider fame, exemplified in the celebrity careers of popular models such as Linda Lusardi, Samantha Fox, Melinda Messenger and Jordan (Katie Price).

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When Labour MP Clare Short in the mid-1980s attempted to introduce legislation aiming to ban ‘sexually provocative’ photographs in the press, she received thousands of letters from women concerned about the pin-up (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 159), but was also heavily vilified by the Sun; a personal onslaught repeated again in 2004 when the paper branded the MP, by then a grandmother nearing her pension, a ‘killjoy’, and ‘fat and jealous Clair’ for her criticism of the topless models, parking a double decker with half-naked women outside her London home.3 Feminists, meanwhile, continued to argue that sexualised images of women in such widespread newspaper discourse contributed to real women feeling less secure in public arenas and public life generally (see Holland 1983: 18–19); critiques revived not least in the ‘No More Page 3 campaign’ launched by writer Lucy Anne Holmes in 2012. When the Sun dropped page 3 under editor David Dinsmore at the beginning of 2015, it was widely regarded as a response to a notion that the feature simply had passed its sell-by date­– ­not just in the eyes of women, but, more importantly, some advertisers too. Despite the fact that the Star, carrying on with the newspaper pin-ups, wistfully described the page 3 girl ‘as British as roast beef and yorkshire pud, fish and chips and seaside postcards’ (Daily Star, 21 January 2015),4 it seemed that she, once so provocative and alluring, had finally become­ – ­just like some of those postcards­ – ­merely a nostalgic symbol of the past. Celebrity While the popular tabloids’ emphasis on sex transformed ideas of what was acceptable in newspaper content, so, too, were they to blur the boundaries between public and private in their coverage of famous people. Public and society figures provided opportunity for gossip, drama and personal viewpoints for the popular press, with the gossip columns of the Mail and the Express in the first decades of the century filled with details of society figures and aristocratic circles. However, these were covered with relative respect, with Beaverbrook adamant that the Express’s prominent column ‘Talk of London’ would contain ‘good clean wholesome news about People who matter’ (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 106). With subjects ranging from the Ascot races to ‘pretty’ debutantes, famous authors or royal whereabouts, ‘Talk of London’ kept a certain distance, even if, as in the following extract from January 1925, remarking on how the women’s fashion of polo neck jumpers was spotted worn by men, it could be both moralising and insinuating:

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The other evening, however, I saw two young and much talked of actors wearing these sweaters under their coats instead of normal dress. If they had not achieved a certain reputation I suppose their studied eccentricity might have been unkindly misinterpreted by their friends. (Daily Express, 18 January 1925, p. 4) In the 1930s, with the growing prominence of movie-going as a leisure activity, the focus turned to the stars of cinema, with its leading men idolised and the fashions and characteristics of female film stars paid eager attention to, with female readers treated to style ‘secrets’ and advice on how to attain some of the glamour of stars such as Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo. The stormy lives of film stars, likewise, provided exhilarating material for speculation. Yet, in the mid-century, with the growing interest in new kinds of personalities from the television and music industries, celebrity reporting came to involve more intimate revelations, with popular Sunday newspapers working with stars to publish tempting confessions. The People, for example, ran a popular serial of Errol Flynn’s memoirs under the title ‘My Wicked, Wicked, Life’ from October 1959, while the News of the World paid £36,000 to purchase the rights to Diana Dors’s autobiography, Swinging Doors, presented from January 1960 in serial form as the ‘frank and full account of the men she loved and the wild life she has lived’ (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 116–18). Yet, this acquiescence of celebrities was eventually shattered by more intrusive editorial approaches aligning with new editorial priorities and technological developments such as long-lens cameras. In the 1980s, McKenzie ensured that the ‘kiss and tell’ genre­ – ­salacious testimonies of former lovers­– ­became a central element of daily tabloid journalism, with editors appearing more willing to risk legal damages in pursuit of exposés, exclusives and entertainment, as a wider celebrity culture gained prominence, as exemplified in the Sun’s ‘Bizarre’ and the Mirror’s ‘3am girls’ gossip columns (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 127–9). The former, launched in 1982 and heavily marketed as an invitation into the marvellously ‘bizarre world’ of pop and youth cultures, relied, not least, on newly formed relationships with young ‘paparazzi’ photographers (Chippendale and Horrie 1999: 173–5). The most apparent example of the push towards intrusive celebrity reporting was no doubt the relentless pursuit of Princess Diana, which involved the intense tabloid scrutiny of every aspect of her life, from her pregnancies and motherhood to her failing marriage and alleged affairs, as well as the publication in the Sun of bugged phone calls

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between the princess and friend James Gilbey (the ‘Squidgy tapes’, complete with a hotline where readers could phone in to listen for themselves), and between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in the Sun and the Mirror in the early 1990s (Chippendale and Horrie 1999: 462–72; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 124–5). Diana’s death in a car accident in Paris in August 1997, following a chase by paparazzi, caused widespread public distress, not just in the mourning for the princess, but also with regard to the disastrous consequences of tabloid ethics­ – ­famously condemned in her brother, Earl Spencer’s, funeral oration, which described his sister as ‘the most hunted person of the modern age’.5 This example is further indicative of the imperative for the tabloids to push legal boundaries to stay ahead in the gossip game. The exposure of press delinquency at News International, initiated by The Guardian and revealed in detail by the Leveson enquiry in 2012, would demonstrate the questionable methods utilised for obtaining content, including illegal phone call interception not only of celebrities, royals and public figures, but also, perhaps more damningly, of ordinary citizens. Apart from leading to the closure of News of the World and the jailing of the former Sun and News of the World editor Andy Coulson, the enquiry underlined how the lengths that some journalists had gone to in the hunt for stories had come at a price: perhaps an irreparable loss of public trust.

The Tabloid in Politics and Public Life An Influential Force Partly driven by individuals behind the scenes, such as certain proprietors and editors, these developments must, however, be understood in the light of a dramatically transforming media landscape, where increased competition for media consumers put particular pressure on the tabloid market, as well as in relation to changes in the economy, work patterns and attitudes (see Rooney 2000: 95). The tabloid, no doubt, was intimately linked to the national culture in which it existed­ – ­but it also influenced it. Despite the emphasis on sensation, entertainment, human interest and sport, politics remained a key part of the content throughout the century. Popular journalism in Britain, moreover, developed as strident and campaigning, blatantly aiming to impact on political developments. Northcliffe, his brother Lord Rothermere and Beaverbrook, emboldened by mass readerships and lucrative advertising, openly used their newspapers to attack their adversaries and endorse their friends, and became courted by ­political

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figures who had come to regard their support as key to power (see Thompson 2000; Chisholm and Davie 1992a). Lloyd George, elected prime minister in 1916, was for example criticised for having appointed the ‘press barons’ to official positions in return for beneficial publicity (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 72). These proprietors, furthermore, did not stop at ‘making or breaking’ political figures, but challenged the political system in ways that the press had not done before. In July 1929 Beaverbrook used the Express as a platform to launch a new political party, a ‘party of Empire Crusaders’, with aim of challenging the Conservatives on Britain’s free trade regime and strengthen the ties of the British Empire. Supported by Rothermere, and thus with the massive publicity of both the Express and the Mail at its disposal, the United Empire Party came to pose a serious threat to Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin, and did not come to a halt until Baldwin gave his influential ‘Power without Responsibility’ speech in March 1931­ – ­calling out the ‘press barons’ papers as ‘engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men’ (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 76–7). Yet, while Baldwin’s speech marked an end to proprietors’ most barefaced grabs for political power, aspirations for political influence remained key to the tabloid newspaper project, sometimes involving a close entanglement with political representatives. For instance, the Mirror played a key role in promoting Harold Wilson as candidate for prime minister in the early 1960s, with prominent Mirror staff such as Cudlipp and Cecil King contributing to Labour’s manifesto and advising on key speeches, even if the paper later became critical of Wilson’s performance (Greenslade 2003b: 208–11; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 83–4). Likewise, Margaret Thatcher formed cordial relations with owners and editors of the Conservative tabloids, describing the Sun as a ‘friend’ in personal communication (Moore 2013: 440), and rewarding advocates in the tabloid press with honours and favours. Lamb was, for example, sent a personal thank-you letter after the Sun’s emphatic support in the 1979 election, and was subsequently knighted in the 1980 New Year’s honours list. It is also possible to note that Murdoch’s media operation gained from such warm relations, with the acquisition of The Times and Sunday Times smoothly ushered through in 1981–2, and the controversial move of News International from Fleet Street to Wapping in 1986 opposed by trade unions yet generously given the full support of the Metropolitan Police (Chippendale and Horrie 1999: 74; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 87–8).

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Checks and (Im)Balances­– ­Political Outlooks Conservative political stances dominated in the popular press over the course of the century, but the forms of support varied, with the period until the ‘Power without Responsibility’ address characterised by staunch conservativism, although not, as in the case of Baldwin, necessarily loyalty to Tory politicians. The Mail, the Express and the early Mirror, reflecting their owners’ own political views, argued against an expansion of the state in areas such as pensions, equitable tax schemes and unemployment insurance, with the Mail and the Mirror in particular portraying reformist Liberals, and especially the Labour Party, as dangers. In the 1920s, the relatively moderate British Labour was regularly linked to Bolshevism and the supposed threat of the ‘Red Peril’, with the Mail, four days before the general election of 1924, even publishing the forged ‘Zinoviev letter’, supposedly penned by a Comintern chief and described by the paper as plotting to ‘plunge the country into civil war’, suggesting that Labour was beholden to communists. In the early 1930s, Rothermere’s Mail, amidst a polarised political climate, became unequivocal in support for the fascist movement, with Rothermere’s infamous 1934 article titled ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ commending Hitler’s and Mussolini’s domestic agendas (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 74–7; Daily Mail, 15 January 1934). From the 1930s through to the late 1960s the range of political outlook in the popular press became more even, with the commercial reorientation of the Herald and the Mirror’s rebirth as a left-of-centre tabloid signalling a more balanced climate in Fleet Street. The period from 1945 is also considered a time of less polarised politics (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 81), even if popular journalism would continue to stick to demarcated lines of political loyalty. As in this example of the Mirror’s editorial leading up to the Labour party conference in 1954, titled ‘BRITAIN’S CHALLENGE TO LABOUR’, where the paper asked the party to ‘SHOW US YOUR HAND’, critique alongside ideological lines was also possible (Mirror, 24 September 1954, p. 1): ‘Tell us how many houses and schools you will build. How will you tackle the slums? The railways? The mines? The roads? The cost of living? What will you do for the pensioners?’ But with the 1970s seeing the Sun’s gradual turn towards supporting Conservative politics, and the Mail rising to renewed prominence as a mid-market tabloid, now edited by David English, a massive rightwing dominance was once again established. The 1980s Sun and the Mail, described by Bingham and Conboy as representing ‘brash conservative populism, capitalist cheerleading, glitzy consumerism and

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self-confident moralising’ (2015: 89) vigorously propped up Thatcher along with the rest of the tabloid papers apart from the Mirror; cheering on ‘Maggie’ as well as the Falklands War, and offering the government support against the contentious Miners’ Strike. Left-wing political figures deemed ‘extreme’, such as Tony Benn, branded by the Sun as ‘Benn the bogeyman’, and Ken Livingstone, ‘red Ken’, were mercilessly ridiculed, as was Labour leader Neil Kinnock. With John Major emerging as the Conservative leader in the 1990s, the tables turned somewhat again, although he initially had the Conservative tabloids’ support. On the polling day of the 1992 election, the Sun pictured the Labour leader with his head inside a lightbulb on its front page, next to the headline ‘If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.’ After a relatively even election in the Conservatives’ favour, it boasted: ‘IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT’. Yet, with Major’s star falling, and his party riddled by scandals and ‘sleaze’, the 1990s were characterised by a less clear-cut political orientation, with both the Sun and the Mirror supporting New Labour during the 1997 general election, with the ‘THE SUN BACKS BLAIR’ headline running the day after the polling date was set, but with the paper arguably keeping a right-wing stance on most issues, noticeably immigration and crime (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 90–2; Greenslade 2003a).6 Creating a Sense of Community Irrespective of political partisanship, the style of tabloid political reporting remained premised on the notion that connecting to primarily lower-middle- and working-class readers meant an engaging and accessible presentation of politics, with an emphasis on people, drama and conflict. The tabloid news style, correspondingly, has been compared to melodrama as a cultural genre, characterised by moral polarisations, strong emotionalism and a theatrical textual and visual display (Gripsrud 1992). Yet it is also important to note the central position of the joke; with puns, witticisms and word games characterising the popular tabloids and contributing to engaging readers in laughter as well as indignation (Johansson 2007: 90–2). This ability to conspicuously promote a mediated relationship with readers cuts across political stances, as well as particular periods in time­ – ­with the tabloid presenting itself as a champion, crusader and friend of ordinary people, speaking on their behalf against elites and a noncaring establishment addressing readers directly and informally and involving them in campaigns, tips, competitions and prize draws.

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Figure 26.3  Don’t Buy the Sun campaign sticker. These stickers as well as posters were being distributed around Wembley Stadium before the League Cup Final between Liverpool and Cardiff City on 26 February 2012 (https:// www.flickr.com/photos/36593372@N04/6932997707)

Such a stress on the involvement in wider communities of readers, equally, relied on textual and rhetorical devices operating within a dialogic framework­ – ­for example the Sun introducing its page for readers’ letters as ‘THE PAGE WHERE YOU TELL BRITAIN WHAT YOU THINK’­– ­which discursively linked this stress on community to nationalism and national identity, but also to other identity positions related to, for example, gender, heterosexuality and ethnicity (Law 2002; Conboy 2006; Pickering 2008). Thus, as tabloid newspapers engaged a broadened electorate in public discussion­– ­helping to make politics understandable, reaching out to disenfranchised readers and

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at times succeeding to bring attention to crucial social problems, political misdeeds and questions of significance to citizens’ lives­ – ­they also contributed to upholding potentially constraining social structures and ideas, and can equally be problematised with regard to partisanship, simplification and even distortion of political issues. Complex and straightforward at the same time, the tabloid, then, defies simple analysis, while its role in twentieth-century public life in Britain can hardly be overestimated.

Conclusion By the end of the century, the steady decline in newspaper circulations, ongoing since the 1960s, showed no signs of reversing. The tabloids still had a strong market domination, with combined average net circulations of the mid-market and popular tabloids extending to over three quarters of the total circulation of the national daily press (see Sparks 1999). However, the multitude of news sources available on the internet and through satellite and cable TV, and the expansion of reality TV and a host of celebrity and lifestyle magazines, meant increased competitions for readers’ time and attention. There were signs that the tabloids, which arguably had ruled the popular news agenda throughout the century, were in the process of losing not only readers but also at least a portion of their previous standing. At the same time, worries about a ‘dumbing down’ and ‘sexualisation’ of the media abounded in public discourse, voiced by journalists as well as politicians and media critics. Such concerns were echoed in numerous scholarly debates, placing these papers at the forefront of a development of ‘tabloidisation’, thought to push the entire media landscape towards increased sensationalism, entertainment and ‘sound-bite’ journalism; diverting attention away from matters of consequence and encouraging a distrustful, apolitical citizen. In this respect, the tabloid newspaper had come to interlink with wide-ranging debates about media ­standards, with reverberations in many national and international contexts (Sparks and Tulloch 2000; Jönsson and Örnebring 2004; Johansson 2007: 31–6). In many ways, questions about the role of popular journalism and the wider functions of the media in the public sphere, are equally­ – ­if not more­ – ­relevant today, where aspects of the tabloid form and approach have been incorporated into other mainstream media and news outlets, and where public trust in traditional journalism is at the forefront of debates about ‘fake news’ and the spread of networked news forms. It would also be a mistake to assume that tabloid newspa-

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pers, having gone from steady to steep circulation falls in the twentyfirst century, and coming out with a severely tarnished reputation after the Leveson Report, no longer matter. On the contrary, some of the papers pinpointed in this chapter remain integral to the fabric of British news media, and have gained prominence in an online and international context, too, with the Sun still the most popular British daily newspaper, and the MailOnline, launched in 2003, one of the most visited English-language newspaper websites, with Audit Bureau of Circulation figures showing almost 14 million daily unique browsers in November 2017.7 Having made a deep imprint on the public imagination and discussion in Britain over more than 100 years; emphasising certain ways of thinking and speaking while supplanting other discourses and perspectives, tabloid newspapers, moreover, still appear to frame public discussion when it comes to certain key matters, such as migration, Brexit or crime (see Greer and McLaughlin 2018). Yet, if one is to understand the legacy of the tabloid in a contemporary setting, it is perhaps towards the multifarious emerging digital news and personal media genres where it is necessary to direct the analytical gaze; attempting to understand these genres, ranging from populist online news sites to confessional YouTube videos, in part as a continuation of the tabloid address, news values and melodramatic articulation of the world. The tabloid represented journalism’s contested ‘other’, which, existing parallel to official discourses and more reputable news forms, managed to present itself as the ‘voice of the people’. A pertinent question, therefore, would be to ask where that voice is making itself heard today.

Notes 1. The summary of the histories of the Mirror and the Sun in parts overlap with material I have previously covered in Reading Tabloids: Tabloid Newspapers and Their Readers (Johansson 2007). 2. The Sun, front pages, 4 May 1982, 19 April 1989. The ’Gotcha’ headline was pulled quickly by the Sun, and did not appear in a later edition. See Harris (1983), Chippendale and Horrie (1999: 128–51) and Bingham and Conboy (2015: 54–7) for details of tabloid reporting of the Falklands War. 3. Cited in Ciar Byrne, ‘Sun turns on “killjoy” Short in Page 3 row’, the Guardian, 14 January 2004. Available at (last accessed 6 March 2020). See also (last accessed 27 August 2018). 4. Available at (last accessed 29 August 2018). 5. ‘Full Text of Earl Spencer’s Funeral Oration’, BBC. Available at

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(last accessed 8 November 2016). 6. The Sun, front pages, 9 April 1992, 11 April 1992, 18 March 1997. The Neil Kinnock front page stunt was repeated for the 2015 general election, this time depicting Labour leader Ed Miliband with his head inside a lightbulb, with the same headline running across. 7. Available at (last accessed 2 January 2018).

Chapter Twenty-Seven

THE SUNDAY PRESS Martin Conboy

Introduction

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  he Sunday newspaper is an often-neglected component of the twentieth-century news media landscape, despite the fact that it enjoyed the greatest circulation success. Indeed, the popularity and profitability of Sunday papers grew to make them flagships of cultural and commercial trends and an essential complement to most national daily productions. This chapter will consider the ways in which this success drew on perspectives of social class and political stratification already established among British and Irish newspaper reading publics.

General Overview Let us begin by outlining the traditions of Sunday newspapers. From their emergence at the end of the eighteenth century, they had always had to distinguish themselves from their daily rivals and none had a direct daily relation until well into the twentieth century. This had much to do with the rather disreputable nature of the Sunday press with its emphasis on sport, crime and sensation mixed with editorial opinions designed to appeal to a broader readership than the traditional daily press that prided itself on its appeal to a bourgeois clientele. As the nineteenth century progressed there was also more scope and time for the inclusion of illustration. In combination, this meant that the Sunday press developed along very different lines to daily newspapers. This distinctiveness could sometimes provide the financial success that allowed an owner to engage experimentally in 538

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the daily market, as was the case when Moses Levy used his Sunday Times as a financial lever to start up the Daily Telegraph from 1855 to oust The Times from its position as market leader. So where was the Sunday press at the start of the twentieth century? Continuity came in the form of the Observer (1791), the Sunday Times (1822), the News of the World (1843), Reynolds’s Weekly News (1850) and Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (1842). A Sunday Daily Mail and a rival Sunday Daily Telegraph were introduced at the end of the nineteenth century but were forced out by sustained criticism from religious lobbies. Despite such a disappointing start for this new generation, the Sunday newspapers that continued successfully into the twentieth century bore all the hallmarks of this style of newspaper as it had peaked in the late nineteenth century. The News of the World, a long-standing feature of the Sunday scene, was to become galvanised by an incremental concentration on sensation, illustration and entertainment (Brake and Turner 2016: 43–62) which would eventually lead it to specialise exclusively on the sleazier end of the market into the mid-twentieth century and in this guise it became the paradigm of mass popular Sunday success. Twentieth-century innovation came not only in the form of titles emerging onto the market but with the tendency for the owners of successful daily popular titles to launch their own Sunday complements to expand their market share. To that extent, 1896 was as much a watershed for the Sunday press as it was for the daily press, given that the emerging daily popular press that Harmsworth launched with his Daily Mail set new standards for financial success that drove the expansion of the Sundays. Newspapers that were launched at the start of the twentieth century such as the Sunday Pictorial in 1915 (Harmsworth) and the Sunday Express in 1918 (Beaverbrook) out of editorial operations that included a daily edition obviously had various advantages. They could use the print facilities for an extra day a week instead of them lying idle, and they had a brand that they could further develop while staff on longer projects could take more time to develop investigations. Most of the early twentieth-century Sunday papers, even the most popular, continued to have a strong news element to them, but changes to this tradition accelerated throughout the century especially under the influence of the accumulation of trends known as ‘tabloidization’ (Bingham and Conboy 2015). Increasingly, we see a divergence between the ‘Sundays of Record’ and the entertainment press with the result that at the elite end of this market, only in the twentieth century does the Sunday paper develop eventually into a reputable journalistic product.

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National and Regional Varieties Sunday publications spread regionally and nationally across Britain and Ireland on account of their commercial appeal. Regionally, titles that still survive to this day include the Sunday Mercury in the West Midlands which claims to be the oldest, founded in 1918, while the Sunday Sun (Newcastle) was also founded on the crest of this new wave in 1919. An early Scottish example of the trend towards Sunday publications was the Scottish Sunday Post from 1915 based in Dundee. It introduced popular cultural icons in the form of strip cartoons The Broons (1936) and Oor Wullie (1937) both largely written in Scots and by 1969, according to the Guinness Book of Records, it had highest national penetration of any newspaper in the world. The Sunday Mail (1919) was launched out of Glasgow as a complement to the Daily Record (1895) and their gestation fits the pattern of mass press expansion in England. In the 1980s, new Sunday titles conformed to the developments south of the border, for example Scotland on Sunday (1988) as an accompaniment to The Scotsman and belatedly the Sunday Herald (1999). The Sun, Express and Mail all have named Scottish editions (Temple 2008: 102) and in fact this represents the completion of the longstanding strategy of printing in northern cities so as to provide easier access to markets including Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Irish Sunday press had always to overcome competition from UK-based Sunday papers that often exploited the proximity of an anglophone market in lowering their cover prices to boost their sales figures. For instance, British Sundays accounted for over 20 million sales in 1949 (Breen and O’Brien 2018: 15). The Sunday Independent was the first Irish Sunday, founded in 1905, and it tapped into the appeal of the weekly newspaper for a popular audience with news and events on its front page, in addition to striking satirical illustrations of Irish political and cultural life. It was also the longest lasting, surviving through changing political times and cultural tastes. In the 1990s it could be seen as a purveyor of the consumerism and confidence engendered by the Celtic Tiger, a period when establishment views and cultural norms were challenged like never before in Ireland (Breen and O’Brien 2018: 38). In 1949 the Sunday Press was launched to reinforce the position of political party Fianna Fáil in opposition to the Fine Gael supporting Sunday Independent. By 1955 it had taken the lead over its rival with a weekly circulation in excess of 400,000 (Breen and O’Brien 2018: 26). Its peak circulation came in 1963 when it included a fullcolour ­supplement celebrating John F. Kennedy (Breen and O’Brien

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Figure 27.1  Oor Wullie statue, Edinburgh (© Richard Webb (https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3616986))

2018: 29). Its sales were compromised at both ends of the market spectrum by the launch of the tabloid Sunday World in 1973, and at the upper end of the market the Sunday Tribune in 1980 and the Sunday Business Post in 1989 (Burke 2018: 94). As a consequence of these processes, the Press closed in 1995. Ireland was also no stranger to tabloid experimentation. In 1957 the Sunday Review was launched as the first Irish tabloid Sunday (Breen 2018) but it was a short-lived experiment, folding in 1963. Subsequently, the Sunday World came at a different time and in a different context. By the time of its launch in 1973, Ireland was a society in transition and one which was eager to taste values and provocations based on the British Sunday tabloid template. In 1982 it became Ireland’s biggest selling newspaper. It emphasised its innovative role in ventriloquising the British tabloid tone asking with double-entendre: ‘Are you getting it?’ Within ten years it was second only in circulation to the Sunday Independent (Ní Dhuinn and Uí Chollatáin 2018: 126, 129).

Twentieth-Century Sunday Newspapers­– ­General Despite the fact that Sunday papers have tended to be designated to a ‘secondary role’ (Williams 2010: 8) in studies of the British and Irish

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media, they have long demonstrated significant commercial and cultural vitality. According to Raymond Williams (1965: 215–36) newspaper reading became securely embedded across society as a regular habit from as recently as 1918 and this coincided with the continuing expansion of the Sunday press which, in itself, was a direct response to increasing numbers of readers especially, as with the popular massmarket dailies, among the lower-middle and working classes. Hoggart reinforced this point, stating that: ‘two out of three in the adult population read more than one Sunday newspaper and more than one out of four read three or more Sunday newspapers’ (Hoggart 1958: 275). Throughout the twentieth century Sunday papers remained the most popular in terms of sales and readership, a fact that had not changed since the early nineteenth century. The News of the World had reached 1.5 million by 1910, eclipsing even the first million-selling Sunday, Lloyds. This had reached 3.4 million in 1930 and an all-time high of 8.4 million in June 1950 (Butler and Butler 2000: 538). By the early 1950s daily national newspaper sales overall had reached a combined highpoint of circulation with 16.6 million per day and Sunday papers almost doubled that with 30 million per week, meaning that ‘saturation point’ (Bingham 2009: 16) had been reached especially as commercial television had by this point become another rival for audience and advertising. The Sunday press provided more illustration, a feature long associated with the mass market and denigrated by the elite press until the second half of the twentieth century. The Sunday Graphic as the weekly counterpart to the Daily Sketch and the Sunday Pictorial (Daily Mirror) were pioneers of this trend. They tended to exercise greater licence in court reporting with prurient details of rape stories and divorce cases providing titillation for readers and notoriety for the titles. They developed approaches to reveal the story behind the story which extended the remit of investigative journalism and drew upon the publication of memoirs of the rich, famous and infamous to boost their popularity. Another notable early contributor to this twentiethcentury popular Sunday tradition was the Sunday Chronicle, a liberal publication that had printed Marie Stopes’s articles based on Married Love in 1918, expressing concern about general ignorance of sex. It had reached a circulation of 1.1 million in 1945 (Greenslade 2003b: 6). As a self-styled, mid-market publication, it still felt the need to compete with the spread of ‘glamour’ pictures from the 1950s, as pinups became standard fare throughout the popular newspaper market. The People, Sunday Pictorial/Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Express were continually vying for second place in the circulation race behind

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the News of the World. By the mid-1950s the first two had circulations of over 5 million, the third, 3 million (Seymour-Ure 1991: 30–1). The 1950s saw two events that had major significance for newspapers. First, in 1955, ITV was launched, providing an attractive new medium for advertisers to reach audiences, and second, in 1958 rationing of newsprint was ended. The lifting of paper rationing meant that newspapers were free to expand pagination and coverage. On top of mergers and closures in the daily morning and evening press, the Sunday market was radically reduced by the competitive energies released: the Sunday Graphic (1960), Sunday Dispatch (1961), Sunday Citizen (formerly Reynolds’s News) (1967) all went out of business or merged with more successful partners, as in the case of Empire News (formerly Sunday Chronicle) which merged with the News of the World in 1960. The popular Sunday papers revelled in­ – ­some might say drove­ – ­the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but as the publication of more explicit material became more widely accepted, Sunday newspapers which had been the main source for mainstream consumption of titillating news had to share this interest as the values of Sunday populars migrated in turn into the popular daily press. Most noticeably, the Sun leapt onto this trend, turning itself into a daily version of News of the World from 1969. In response, the popular Sundays ran increasingly sensational exposés while the Sunday qualities saw sales rise on the back of increasingly authoritative investigative journalism and the development of magazine spin-offs. From the mid-1980s, there was a further expansion in advertising, a boom of upwardly mobile young professionals with aspirational lifestyles, and weekends became more intensely commercial as Sunday trading laws were revolutionised. In a virtuous consumerist cycle, the rise of luxury brands was facilitated by printing techniques deployed in the Sunday press (Brett and Holmes 2008: 200–3). These trends were supplemented by an increase in commentary, lifestyle and women’s confessional writing. Grandstanding columnists in all these areas (McNair 2008: 118) were cheaper than in-depth investigations. From 1986, in the wake of the Wapping revolution, computerised input, colour printing and specialist sections, there was a brief experimental boom in Sunday titles as epitomised by the acrimonious struggle between the Independent on Sunday and the Sunday Correspondent (Greenslade 2003b: 486–90). The technological and political shifts post-Wapping seemed to offer much in terms of expansion, but the economic power-plays of the heavy investors meant that little of this potential was fulfilled in the long run. News on Sunday was a novelty; left-wing, ‘no tits but a lot of balls’. The Sunday Correspondent lasted

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a little over a year, closing in 1990. Scotland on Sunday and Wales on Sunday were both launched in 1988. The Independent on Sunday launched as a spoiler to the Sunday Correspondent as a companion to the daily Independent and was another longer-term success. It championed freedom of expression and political non-alignment and was strong on culture and photojournalism, and while it undoubtedly took readers from the Observer, it was the Sunday Times that was the winner in the quality circulation stakes.

Popular Sunday Newspapers The People The People had been an early addition to the Sunday market as far back as 1881 and it emerged from the Second World War as a strong rival to the News of the World with a circulation of 4.6 million in 1945 (Greenslade 2003b: 5). To consolidate that position, it shifted increasingly to a sensationalised and sexualised agenda. For example, the paper ran its own survey over eight weeks in the summer of 1950 by social scientist Geoffrey Gorer. Ostensibly a broad survey of the paper’s readers on the English character, it was its insights into the sexual activities and attitudes of the nation that commanded most attention, displaying all the characteristic ambivalence of the popular press to sexual mores. On 3 September 1950 its headline ARREST THESE FOUR MEN provided what has been described as ‘the most daring journalistic exposure of the sex trade since Stead’ (Bingham 2009: 167). In June 1953 the People published a story that was already widespread in other European and American newspapers and magazines; the affair between Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend. The recently formed Press Council pronounced that it was ‘contrary to the best traditions of British journalism’ (Greenslade 2003b: 85). ‘My Wicked, Wicked Life’, the serialisation of Errol Flynn’s memoirs published on 18 October 1959, boosted circulation by 200,000 and its notoriety was amplified by the front-page claim that lawyers were trying to prevent publication because of the stars who would be exposed in Flynn’s narratives of sex, drink and drugs in Hollywood. It ran a confident headline asserting: ‘We’ve got it and WE’LL PRINT IT!’ Nevertheless, it also won widespread admiration for the crusading quality of its investigations, particularly with its team of heroic crime reporters headed by Duncan Webb. There was variety in its scoops as well. In 1964 it exposed an infamous football bribery scandal at top

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club Sheffield Wednesday. Some years later, in another investigative coup, Mary Beith provided the ‘Smoking Beagles’ photo and story on 26 January 1975 out of her undercover work at Macclesfield’s ICI factory that exposed the secret experiments undertaken to gauge the effects of smoking on live animals. It converted to a tabloid format in September 1974 and continued to gain on the News of the World even as its sales dipped from their peak. However, the prospect of catching up with the News of the World meant that it dropped much of its more serious investigative work and went instead for more revelations and scandal leaving the more serious popular material to the Sunday Mirror. Sunday Pictorial The Sunday Pictorial was launched in the midst of a world war, in 1915, when its daily stable-mate, the Daily Mirror, was having huge success with its pictorial format. It was selling a million copies at the end of its first full year in circulation. As part of the rebranding of both Mirror publications (Bingham and Conboy 2009), Hugh Cudlipp was appointed as editor at the age of 24 in 1937, and led it to an innovative combination of sensationalism and social awareness. Indicative of its direction under Cudlipp, it printed the first nude in a British newspaper on 17 April 1938 and ended the war with a circulation of 3.4 million (Greenslade 2003b: 5). From 1948 it was the Sunday Pictorial that gave most coverage to Kinsey’s report on the Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, using it to promote the paper’s self-proclaimed mission to provide the basic information about sex that was lacking in formal educational settings. It used the report to generate correspondence with readers about their own sexual concerns, a dialogue that had become so characteristic of the Mirror operation (Conboy 2017) as well as related follow-up articles. Very much in contrast to approaches to heterosexuality more broadly expressed in coverage of Kinsey and Gorer, in 1952 the ‘Evil Men’ story provided a highly controversial, highly sensationalised exposé on the subject of homosexuality that clearly disapproved of such behaviour. On the social front, the Sunday Pictorial under Cudlipp claimed to have led the way in challenging outdated deferential attitudes, especially to the Royal Family, as part of a ‘new, healthy mood of questioning authority’ (Cudlipp 1976: 180). An early example of this was its reader survey of 1947 on whether Princess Elizabeth should marry Philip. Despite opposition from the expected bastions of the establishment this may well be interpreted as the start of the rush towards royal exclusives as it proved so popular with readers. Furthermore, its cover-

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age of the Cambridge spy ring of Burgess, Philby and Maclean in 1962: ‘Spies­– ­the facts’­– ­was an explicit criticism of the ‘old-boys’ network of elite players in treachery. Well in keeping for its target audience with its anti-establishment and left-leaning preferences, it stressed in these revelations the corruption at the heart of the socially privileged. Sunday Express The Sunday Express was founded in 1918, two years after Beaverbrook bought its daily counterpart. This first daily-Sunday combination under one owner and one title was a clear indication that Beaverbrook considered that there was a market for a Sunday variation on the diet of his daily newspaper. Editorially, for example, it was very much opposed to Stopes’s attempts to broaden her campaign for sexual information in terms of a public health issue as it had been presented in the Sunday Chronicle and it was this stance that set the scene for its position on morality and sex generally. It led the popular market in 1924 by printing the first crossword in a British newspaper, imported from American practice as with much in its daily sibling, the Daily Express, which had long been successful in introducing American innovations into the British press such as news on the first page (Conboy 2010). To boost sales and tie in readers over sequential weeks, the Sunday Express provided early serialisation of novels such as All Quiet on the Western Front after its publication in English in 1929. It pioneered popular horoscopes from 24 August 1930 when Richard Naylor provided Princess Margaret’s birth chart, linked to a feature, ‘What The Stars Foretell For The New Princess’. He followed the success of this coup with political predictions and brief birthday predictions for every day of the coming week. From 1936 he provided the paper with the first regular twelve-column, sun-sign horoscopes and in the view of the editor of its daily relation, ‘Naylor and his horoscopes became a power in the land’ (Christiansen 1961: 65). John Gordon took over the sole editorship from 1931 and until 1952 presided over great success in sales, building on a circulation of 2.3 million in 1945 (Greenslade 2003b: 6). With its combination of right-wing patriotic stories, gossip, cartoons and good sports coverage, it was the epitome of the British middle-brow in the post-war years, a generational stalwart! Its gossip was, in the main, less vicious and less salacious than its competitors but strong on political scepticism. Well in keeping with its traditional reactionary stance on such matters, in 1953, it was the only Sunday paper to object to the second Kinsey Report (Female). The recently formed Press Council also noted

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c­ oncern but approval of an open discussion of sex was established across society as a whole. John Junor, its editor from 1954 to 1986, continued in the Beaverbrook tradition of powerful political commentary with patriotic fervour at its core, combined with attractive consumerist content and excellent layout. This formula maintained profits for its owners for many years but it failed to attract younger readers at a time when this was still possible at both ends of the market. Moving rather belatedly, it introduced its own colour magazine in 1981. However, this unchanging nature while clearly a strong identifying attraction, led to a steady drop in sales and, despite a late shift to the tabloid template on 5 July 1992, it was overtaken by the Mail on Sunday. Sunday Mirror Deciding to double its Sunday profile, if not its money, the Mirror group launched the Sunday Mirror in 1963 to replace the Sunday Pictorial and to emphasise its links to the daily Mirror brand. The People remained as an in-house rival while the Sunday Mirror attempted to provide a judicious balance of serious reporting, opinion and lighter entertainment and gossip features; left-of-centre and avoiding the sordid sensation of some of the other Sunday staples. It was well placed to cover the 1963 Profumo Affair to align with its anti-establishment editorial positions and ran a very popular weekly advice column with Clare Rayner as agony aunt. Despite its more liberal attitude towards heterosexuality, it was not however always a progressive voice on sexual matters with its notorious, ‘How to Spot a Potential Homo’ on 28 April 1963. From 1980, along with most other popular Sunday titles, it became obsessed with multiple royal stories. This culminated in November 1993 with the secretly taken Diana-in-the-gym pictures which led to a national outcry but a corresponding circulation boost. From 1988 it had started its own colour, glossy magazine. Mail on Sunday The Mail on Sunday was launched with little initial success on 2 May 1982 with the by-now-obligatory Sunday magazine, ‘You’, and a colour comic supplement­ – ­a British first. It was selling up to 1.3 million after five months, positioning itself between ‘the haughties and the naughties’ according to Saatchi and Saatchi’s slogan for the paper (Greenslade 2003b: 414–17). By the end of the decade it had become the mid-market leader employing a similar concentration on news fea-

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tures and opinion as its daily stable-mate, with a similar political orientation. Bucking the declining trend in Sunday sales, it moved from 1.6 to 2.27 million between 1985 and 2007 (Franklin 2008: 9). Heavily supportive of Thatcher’s ‘share-owning democracy’ and ‘right to buy’, it included a prominent finance section from 1994 as with all Sundays from the 1990s, with emphasis on personal finance and feature-style advice on mortgages, investments and savings. News of the World In terms of circulation and cultural impact, the twentieth century was very much the News of the World’s high point. After the First World War, it was the most widely read of the Sundays, a position it never relinquished until its closure in 2011. However, into the 1920s, the ‘racy crime and gossip content that arguably came to define the paper and drive circulation in the 20th century was more muted’ (Brake and Turner 2016: 57). It was renowned for its extensive court reporting, which was thorough in the journalistic sense as well as being intrusive and scandalous for the time. The news element of the News of the World was for many years used as a front-page disguise to mask the increasingly sensational brew within the paper. This meant that from the outside at least there was the appearance of a respectable newspaper. Up to the outbreak of the Second World War it added more on crime, vice-rings, gangsters and Soho clubs, giving its readers a vicarious and enjoyable frisson of the criminal underworld. It was also pushing its rivals with its increasingly ambitious investigative journalism (Cole and Harcup 2009: 147). The 1950s were the turning point for murder reporting, triggered to a large extent when in 1949 it paid £10,000 towards the costs of the defence of John Haigh ‘the acid bath murderer’ in exchange for exclusive rights to his life story and inside details on the crimes. There was a shift from the sort of court reporting that had made the reputation of the News of the World to going directly to criminals for their accounts of events. Killers were paid by the press, most notoriously John Christie, and the News of the World employed its own Murder Gang under the supervision of chief crime correspondent, Norman Rae. He met with serial killer Christie while he was on the run from police, a final straw that led to the law on this behaviour being changed. The News of the World continued to push this aggressive approach in 1963 with the original modern ‘Kiss and Tell’ story that set the template for others to follow, its purchase and serialisation of Christine Keeler’s account of sex, politics, espionage and corruption in the establishment.

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After Profumo’s resignation on 5/6 June, it began serialising Keeler’s story on 9 June. During the 1950s, the paper had developed an approach that was adopted by many popular newspapers in the UK with ‘a brand of modern conservatism that was happy to endorse the future when it involved pleasure and material improvement but otherwise judged the present by setting it against a selective version of the past’ (Stokes 2016: 198), styling itself in retrospect: ‘as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding’ in a leading article by its editor, Stafford Somerfield, on 20 October 1968. In large part, this was often used to explain the public interest façade to intrusion into private lives. The basic appeal incorporated a modern morality which was very judgemental, taking special delight in highlighting instances of hypocrisy and duplicity in establishment figures. A circulation of 8 million copies was a plateau of success for the News of the World from 1949 to 1954, but then it suffered the start of a long decline. Somerfield was appointed in 1959 and the Diana Dors’s coup, the serialisation of her memoirs, Swinging Dors, was the first indication of his recipe for at least maintaining its market-leading position. These were serialised from 24 January 1960, setting a new benchmark for the cross-over between sexualised scandal and celebrity in the UK. It ran for twelve weeks, establishing the News of the World as an exponent of new depths of vulgarity: ‘a disgrace to British journalism’ (Press Council, Annual Report 1960, p.  31). It had faced down and outbid rivals such as the Sunday Pictorial for exclusive access and publication had provided a temporary boost of 100,000 within a pattern of falling sales. Hard news suffered as they continued to develop a more raucous sex and sensation agenda and ceased competing with the daily press on serious stories. It pursued ever more desperate ways of getting shocking exclusives that would moderate declining sales such as in 1965 when it indulged in the extraordinary payment of the chief prosecution witness in the trial of Brady and Hindley­– ­the Moors Murderers. In May 1984, the News of the World, very belatedly, went tabloid, but this further squeezed the content into a format that privileged sleaze and sensation even more. Payments to celebrities for stories, and for rebuttals of those same stories, increased, with stars of the ever more popular television soap operas becoming particularly prominent. The News of the World infamously exposed the sex and drug activities of television presenter Frank Bough in 1988, while the style of investigation that the News of the World ran was increasingly of the cheap and even entrapping kind perfected by Mazeer Mahmoud, who was later to be imprisoned for perverting the course of justice in the pursuit of

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such scoops. It certainly earned it the reputation as ‘The Hansard of the sleazy’ (Bainbridge and Stockhill 1993: 115). The News of the World moved onto footballers as celebrities and their wives and not-wives. Its continued railing against the political hypocrisy of establishment figures was recast for the permissive age in which the hypocrisies and contradictions of sex rather than greed and privilege in themselves had become the targets of an invasive press. In 2000 Rebekah Wade as editor drove the campaign for ‘Sarah’s Law’ and its corresponding stench of vigilantism in the pursuit of changes in laws regarding public awareness of the presence of paedophiles in communities. There was a huge pressure to match online revelations and for-free gossip provided by digital-only providers or social media sites. This ultimately led to the desperation encapsulated in the phone hacking scandal that prompted the abrupt closure of the paper in 2011. Sunday Sport If the popular Sunday press had always provided scope for testing the tolerance of sexual content, then the arrival of David Sullivan onto the Sunday scene from 14 September 1986 with his Sunday Sport was to prove that the boundaries had actually been reached if not transgressed, as well as demonstrating perhaps the limits of popularity for this sort of content. David Sullivan, a sex industry tycoon, pushed the sexual element of tabloids to the extreme with little pretence to serious news content. His claim was to provide a blend of sex, sport and self-promotion, added to absurdist claims and news scoops, with an emphasis on the Sunday paper as an escapist, lurid fantasy publication. Its notoriously characteristic response to criticism was best summed up on its front page of 4 March 1990: ‘Bollocks to the Press Council’.

Quality Sunday Press Observer By 1905 the paper, for all its tradition of liberal, campaigning zeal, had been bought by Northcliffe who wanted an upmarket paper to complement his mass popular spectrum. He appointed J. L. Garvin as the editor, with a brief to get the paper selling up to 100,000 copies a week. Garvin did not hesitate to reinforce the paper’s independent credentials by criticising views he knew were those of its owner and when faced with an ultimatum from Northcliffe in 1911 he successfully lobbied for a new owner to take charge of the paper. The Astor family

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obliged and subsequently bought it in 1911. Garvin wanted a paper of influence in preference to chasing mass popular success so chose to commission regular individual contributions rather than aping the dailies with lots of copy from regular journalists. Garvin’s stamp on the paper made it a highly influential conduit for politicians in the post-WWI era. To a large extent, this provided a first draft of what was to become the quality Sunday template. After the First World War the paper was selling 200,000 a week and had begun to take on the structure that would come to establish its identity; a strict separation of news and opinion with a full offering of literary, theatre, music and film reviews. Its film critic, Lejeune, stayed in post from 1925 to 1960, indicating how prescient Garvin was in identifying the cultural and commercial importance of the medium. In 1942 Garvin’s political preferences led him to a terminal falling out with the more liberally inclined David Astor who took on the editorship full time after the Second World War. Astor (1948–75) encouraged a wide range of exploratory approaches to what he considered the most pressing issues of the day, which were often very different from the editorial selections of most other newspapers. In doing so, he sought a mid-way position in terms of the main political parties. He was, for instance, an early advocate of concern at

Figure 27.2  James Louis Garvin, editor of the Observer 1908–42, in his office during the First World War

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the turn of events in South Africa from the election of the National Party in 1948. By the mid-1950s, it was reaping the rewards for a style that was more attractive to young, affluent readers, being more liberal than the staunchly conservative Sunday Times. It hired more specialist reviewers, while Hugh Massingham’s witty political sketches succeeded in drawing readers into political discussion with current political debate. On 10 June 1956, it devoted most of an issue to Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin; it also opposed Suez and campaigned for the abolition of capital punishment and nuclear disarmament. By the 1960s, it had become the leading and most consistent British voice in supporting the claims of the black majority in South Africa, despite the prominence of the Communist Party in the struggle. It continued to be a paper that drew writers with strong liberal associations to its ranks, particularly the young and idealistic. Kenneth Tynan as theatre critic was one of the most impressive appointments in this longstanding tradition of the paper that had included Orwell and Koestler. It was strongly anti-capital punishment, and supported a thorough reconsideration of Britain’s place in the post-war world. Politically, in addition to support for Mandela’s ANC, a feature on political prisoners around the world on 28 May 1961 is credited with starting the process that led to the founding of Amnesty International. It added sports coverage, a business section and its own colour magazine in September 1964. As with the Sunday Times, high quality advertising brought very high revenue. Its circulation of 907,000 by 1967 proved, however, to be its high-water mark. By the late 1960s other quality Sunday papers such as the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph were fighting back. Increasingly, even liberal readers left for the livelier and more commercially astute Sunday Times, whose financial success enabled it to attract top writers to its team. The Observer eschewed investigative journalism in the main and lost out to the harder nose for news of its competitors. Astor backed American intervention in Vietnam as a consequence of his anti-Communism and also backed the Conservatives in their proposed anti-Trades Union legislation, infuriated as he was by the activities of print unions on his paper. Many saw this as the end of the left-liberal tradition of the paper. Donald Trelford (1976–93) took over in September 1975 on the resignation of Astor. In his turn, he shifted it from a weekly review and opinion publication into a more general newspaper, albeit still with an emphasis on debate rather than hard news. Writers were hired to interpret current affairs at home and abroad rather than reporters to dig out stories. In 1983 Tiny Rowland took over ownership, in part motivated by the possibility of using the paper’s excellent standing in Africa to curry

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favour with newly liberated African states in which he had significant commercial interests. By 1984 he had caused a furore when it was revealed that, on account of his close commercial ties with the country through his Lonhro company, he had attempted to suppress news that Zimbabwean soldiers had killed unarmed civilians. The ‘Agony of a Lost People’ story by Trelford, reporting from Zimbabwe himself, outlined atrocities committed by Mugabe’s army. Rowland wanted it pulled as it endangered his business interests in Zimbabwe while Trelford insisted that the story would run. The issue was resolved through a compromise in which both retained credibility. This was followed by the Lonrho, Al Fayed, Harrods war of editorial words throughout the 1980s which further damaged the paper’s former high standing (Greenslade 2003b: 392). The paper was sold to Guardian Media Group in 1993 and from 1998, with Roger Alton as editor, it added popular monthly magazines. The Sunday Times Although the Sunday Times was founded in 1821 as the New Observer, imitating the successful Observer but shifting its name to the Sunday Times the following year, it had no connection with the daily paper until 1966. Its twentieth-century history begins with the purchase of the paper in 1915 by the Berry brothers, later to be ennobled as Lord Camrose and Viscount Kemsley. They continued to grow both the size and the reputation of the paper, until by 1943 they launched the Kemsley newspaper group, the largest in the UK at that point, with ambitions to make the Sunday Times their flagship publication. From a position where it was small in circulation, status and influence, the Kemsley group closed four Sundays­ – ­Empire News, Sunday Graphic, Sunday Chronicle and Sunday Dispatch­– ­but made the Sunday Times into the market leader and a huge commercial and editorial success, trebling sales between 1945 and 1965 (Tunstall 1996: 16). During this period, it developed an ability to generate more profit per copy than any other British paper, with more pages, more supplements and more advertising space than its rivals Denis Hamilton was the architect of this post-war success, introducing the serialisations that would, to a large extent, reshape its commercial appeal. The ‘Big Read’ was its distinctive contribution from 1957. Apart from Daily Telegraph’s coup in getting Churchill’s memoirs in 1961, it monopolised the rest of the ‘big reads’ such as Field Marshall Montgomery’s memoirs, Chaplin’s autobiography and the middle-brow Montserrat’s Cruel Sea. On 4 February 1962 a ‘colour section’ was launched with the intention of continuing to develop its commercial

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appeal and was formally named as the Sunday Times Colour Magazine on 9 August 1964. A few weeks later on 27 September a separate business section was launched. Quickly becoming the dominant player in the quality Sunday market, selling more than its rivals combined, it was brought into the same ownership by Thomson who already owned The Times (1959–81) in 1966. Particularly with Thomson as owner, the Sunday Times made enough profit to compensate for the declining revenues of The Times. Journalistically, it founded its modern reputation on the strength of a dedicated investigative team, ‘Insight’, from 1963 under Clive Irving (Hobson et al. 1972: 380–3). From 1967 to 1981 Harold Evans, as editor, used this investigative strength to establish a distinctive identity for the paper. ‘Insight’ stole the thunder of a previously downmarket specialism: the investigation. This was, in fact, what wellresourced elite Sunday newspapers could do better than their daily counterparts and television with more time to devote to longer news cycles. In 1967 it began the Thalidomide scandal story, first on safety issues, but subsequently on claims for compensation for the victims and their families from the Distillers company who had trialled the drug. Distillers, as their biggest advertiser, withdrew their business(Evans 1983: 64) but the editor continued to be supported. This coverage reached a crescendo when the story ‘Our Thalidomide Children’ started on 24 September 1972 with the headline ‘Our National Shame’. The courts gagged further coverage amidst a national outcry and political embarrassment. It took till 1976 to lift the injunction and for the law on the reporting of civil cases to be changed. Meanwhile, the industrial unrest that affected all newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s led to a strike of printworkers that closed both newspapers for a year from November 1978. Evans was subsequently moved aside to edit The Times by Murdoch in 1981 after he had bought them both as complements to his mass-market offerings the Sun and the News of the World and it became aligned editorially to an enthusiasm for Thatcherism that many found compromised its previous editorial independence. To this end, under Andrew Neil (1983–94) it returned to its more pronounced right-wing preferences of the 1950s. It exploited the potential of Wapping’s production facilities to generate Britain’s largest multi-section paper through the late 1980s and into the 1990s when its circulation peaked at 1.3 million, making huge profits from its ten sections and consequently assisting Murdoch in his investment in Fox television in the US. In 1992 it published serialised extracts from Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, indicating the extent to which deference to the institution of the monarchy had broken down. The Sunday Times, unlike its daily compact version,

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remains defiantly broadsheet, as too does the Sunday Telegraph in line with its daily partner. Sunday Telegraph The Sunday Telegraph was launched in 1961 and did not aim for the younger readers that had become so attractive to its upmarket rivals but chose instead to maintain a focus on a similar demographic to its daily companion. ‘Filling the gap’, became its slogan, meaning between the political gap between the Observer and the Sunday Times, though it saw its priority to draw readers away from its most natural competitor, the middle-brow Sunday Express. It successfully embodied what has been described as the domain of the ‘Romantic High Tory’ (Melly 1967: 148). It followed the Sunday Times’s lead on the colour supplement along with the Observer but initially ran its version on a Saturday. Michael Leapman was of the view that the paper, with Peregrine Worsthorne (knighted in 1991 by Margaret Thatcher) as deputy editor and high-profile columnist, did much in ‘contesting the liberal assumptions that dominated political debate in the 1960s and 1970s’ (Leapman 1992: 164). Conrad Black as owner preferred a more hardline, free-market editorial and appointed Charles Moore to affect this in 1991. It continued this rightward trajectory with Dominic Lawson from 1995 to 2005.

Conclusion Sunday papers had provided a century of success for owners and enjoyment for readers at both the popular and elite ends of the market. In common with all forms of print journalism, they saw a precipitous decline into the twenty-first century. It is worth noting that the popular Sundays lost circulation earlier and more quickly than other sections of the market, and that the tradition of a separate character/identity for the Sundays has declined still further with the replacement of the News of the World by the Sun on Sunday. Their objective would appear to be limited to survival now and yet on another level, on entering the digital era, the magazine style and commentariat that the Sunday press has championed may hold out possibilities for aspects of long-form, literary or investigative journalism in a world of instant mediation in other formats. Ultimately, past glories may not be all they have to look forward to.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

SATIRICAL JOURNALISM Felix M. Larkin – Case Study by James Whitworth

Introduction

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atire, whether in literary or visual form, is generally regarded as something that ‘punches up’­ – ­in other words, a weapon of the powerless against dominant groups and people. Even in ancient times, Aristotle defined wit as ‘educated insolence [pepaidumene¯ hubris]’ (Beard 2014: 33). Satirical journalism is thus identified mostly with anti-establishment sentiment, but in Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century it was by no means confined to organs that were overtly anti-establishment and/or satirical in character. The mainstream press also featured work by notable individual satirical journalists, and a well-displayed editorial cartoon would become an important element in the armoury of many daily newspapers. Nor, of course, is satirical journalism always anti-establishment. Satire that targets subaltern or other vulnerable categories of persons is, however, always controversial and public opinion in the twentieth century tended increasingly to deprecate it. This has had the effect of curtailing­ – ­though not eliminating­ – ­the negative racial stereotyping and other similar tropes that were common in earlier periods, especially in cartoons. Moreover, despite the anti-establishment tone of much satirical journalism, the effect of such journalism may be less to undermine the establishment than to prop it up by channelling discontent into laughter and making the powerful seem less of a threat by ridiculing them. One of the classical interpretations of humour and laughter is ‘relief theory’, often associated with Sigmund Freud, and this posits that laughter serves to release tensions. It is, in the words of Mary Beard, ‘the emotional equivalent of a safety valve’ (Beard 2014: 556

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38). In the same vein, the editors of Dublin Opinion, the foremost satirical journal of twentieth-century Ireland, claimed ‘that humour is the safety valve of a nation, and that a nation which has its values right will always be able to laugh at itself’ (Kelly and Collins 1952: Foreword). Satire by this reckoning is rarely more than political therapy, through which ‘outrage turns into elation and a joke’­– ­to quote John O’Farrell, the British comedy scriptwriter (Williams 2016)­– ­and criticism of the establishment is neutralised. The history of satirical journalism in Britain and Ireland during the twentieth century is a testament to the capacity of the people of both islands­ – ­the establishment included­ – ­to laugh at themselves. Satire was tolerated, and enjoyed, to an extent that was remarkable by any standards. It is salutary to recall that such tolerance is not normal in many parts of the world, and never has been. In Britain, not only did the establishment tolerate satirical journalism at its own expense, but on occasion political honours of the highest rank were conferred on its most distinguished practitioners. John Tenniel, the principal political cartoonist for Punch for over fifty years, was the first of several satirical journalists so honoured, knighted in 1893, and soon after he retired in January 1901, he was fêted with a testimonial dinner at which Arthur Balfour, the quintessential pillar of the British establishment, presided. The ‘gentlemanly decorum’ (Low 1942: 20) that permeates Tenniel’s cartoons, absent only when he simianised the Irish, especially physicalforce separatists, had already gone out of fashion before his retirement. Satire in the Victorian era had seen a dramatic retreat from the scatological and sexual exuberance of Swift, Hogarth, Gillray and Rowlandson­ – ­the pioneers of satirical humour in Britain and Ireland. Tenniel’s work had thus possessed what Perry Curtis called ‘a dignified, even Olympian, quality’ (Matthew and Harrison 2004: 54.134) and this was not compatible with the so-called New Journalism of the 1880s, with its emphasis on investigative reportage and moral purpose, or with the later development of mass-circulation newspapers at a reduced price and with a popularised presentation of news and features. A different cartoon form, less detailed in execution and less respectful in tone, emerged to complement the innovative mode of presenting news. The most prominent cartoonists in the forefront of this new wave of cartooning were W. K. Haselden in the Daily Mirror and Percy Fearon (‘Poy’) in the Evening News and Daily Mail­ – ­all Northcliffe publications­ – ­and Will Dyson in the Daily Herald. They were not the first political cartoonists associated with a daily newspaper­– ­as distinct from a periodical­– ­in Britain or Ireland; the first was Francis Carruthers Gould, employed by the Pall Mall Gazette under the editorship of W. T.

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Stead in 1887. The first regular cartoonist on an Irish daily newspaper was Ernest Forbes (‘Shemus’), who joined the staff of the Freeman’s Journal in 1920. A native of Yorkshire, he introduced into Ireland the new style of cartooning by then well established in the London press. For Haselden, cartooning was originally a sideline while he worked as a Lloyd’s underwriter; but in 1903 he joined the staff of the Daily Mirror, where his work, mostly cartoons of subtle social commentary, continued to appear until 1940. He originated the newspaper strip cartoon in Britain. In contrast, both Fearon and Dyson were primarily political cartoonists and both were outsiders in British society. Fearon, born in China, had been raised in New York and the brash tone of his cartoons reflected his American roots. The great American cartoonist, Charles G. Bush, had been an early mentor. His pseudonym, ‘Poy’, was derived from the way New Yorkers pronounced his name: ‘Poycee’. When he came to England, Fearon first worked for the Hulton newspaper group in Manchester and then joined the Evening News in London in 1913, where he remained for the next twenty-five years. His work also appeared in the Evening News’s sister newspaper, the Daily Mail. His most notable cartoon creations were the ineffectual bureaucrats ‘Dilly and Dally’. Dyson, an Australian who came to London in 1910 and found a congenial berth as the cartoonist on the radical Daily Herald, was both brash and biting in images attacking capitalism and the political system that supported it. His cartoon, ‘Curious! I seem to hear a child weeping’, published on 17 May 1919, is famous for accurately foretelling that the harsh terms imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles would lead to another war. Many of the best satirical journalists in Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century were, like Fearon and Dyson, outsiders. Their outsider status provided a degree of detachment that facilitated the pursuit of their quirky craft. Ernest Forbes too was an outsider, an Englishman in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and Civil War. His ‘Shemus’ cartoons in the Freeman’s Journal were daring and hard-hitting, in line with the editorial policy of that newspaper. Up to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, their main target was the increasingly brutal nature of British rule in Ireland, while afterwards they attacked the new government of Northern Ireland and the die-hard republican forces challenging the writ of the new Irish Free State authorities. During the Civil War in Ireland, the publicity efforts of the republican side were strengthened by the services of two talented women cartoonists, Grace Gifford and Constance Markievicz. Their cartoons had particular importance since few print outlets were available to the republicans and even fewer had the capacity to include photographs.

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In these circumstances, ‘the political cartoon . . . offered an ­alternative means of harnessing the persuasiveness of the visual medium’ on behalf of the republican cause (Ellis 2016: 27). There were, in fact, very few women cartoonists in Britain or Ireland during the twentieth century. This reflects the fact that until very recently political journalism generally, like politics itself, was largely the preserve of men. There was also a feeling that women were temperamentally unsuited to cartooning, not sufficiently combative and ruthless. Apart from Gifford and Markievicz, the only other woman cartoonist of note in Ireland is Isa Macnie (‘Mac’); a selection of her caricatures of members of the government of the Irish Free State was published as The Celebrity Zoo in 1925. In Britain, only five women have made a serious mark in the world of cartooning: Posy Simmonds, Martha Richler (‘Marf’) and Nicola Jennings in national newspapers; Kathryn Lamb and Grizelda in Private Eye. Jennings’s work is more political than that of the other women. It has an understated quality that is just as effective in conveying a message as the more aggressive approach of her male counterparts. For example, her 2001 cartoon ‘Harp and Guns’ (Figure 28.1) is a highly sophisticated response to the uglier manifestations of Irish nationalism­– ­both past and present. The harp is a time-honoured symbol of Ireland, but in Jennings’s cartoon the strings have been replaced with guns and ‘the shadow of a gunman’ heaves into view, a genuflection towards Seán O’Casey’s play set in Dublin in 1920 during the War of Independence. Instead of the winged maiden usually depicted on the Irish harp, there is a dove as an acknowledgement of an aspiration to peace despite the violence endemic in Ireland. In March 1922, as Ireland drifted towards civil war, two young men­ – ­Arthur Booth and Charles E. Kelly, both Dubliners and both gifted cartoonists in the new style­ – ­launched the aforementioned Dublin Opinion, a monthly miscellany of cartoons and other humorous features. They were later joined by Tom Collins, another Dubliner, as the principal writer. The journal was modelled on a similar British magazine, London Opinion, published between 1903 and 1954. The first issue sold out, and that was the start of a successful run that went on until 1968. Its light tone at a time of great political upheaval in Ireland seemed to catch the public imagination. Seán T. O’Kelly, Ireland’s second president, would later praise it for ‘pouring . . . the balm of laughter on our wounds’ (Irish Press, 29 January 1940, p. 3). It claimed not to have any politics, but instead to be on the side of the people and generally against whatever government was in power. Its policy was to give only kindly criticism which meant that, as Kelly wrote, ‘we made no enemies and our victims became our friends’ (Irish Press, 15 October 1970, p. 9). It

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Figure 28.1  Nicola Jennings, ‘Harp and Guns’, 2001

did not, however, always exercise such restraint as when in March 1925 it published a cover cartoon of Éamon de Valera, the political leader of the republican faction recently defeated in the Civil War, standing so tall that his head pushes the top border of the cartoon upwards and distorts the legend above it, with the caption ‘High Treason’. Kelly and Collins became joint editors of Dublin Opinion in 1926­ – ­after the premature death of Arthur Booth, the first editor. Both were employed as civil servants in Dublin and edited the magazine in their spare time. The character of Dublin Opinion was defined by the culture of the civil service­ – ­quoting Robert Blake on the novels of Trollope, in Dublin Opinion ‘one constantly detects just below the surface that contempt, or if this is too strong a word, that bewilderment which civil servants so often feel at the conduct of their ostensible masters’ (Blake 1966: 217). It was also, however, a perceptive critic of the civil service. For example, Kelly drew a series of whimsical cartoons depicting individual departments and offices, imputing to each a host of imagined absurdities. Another series illustrated certain stock phrases that civil servants use in correspondence. A cartoon in this series, entitled ‘The Department regrets’, shows an office full of middle-aged men weeping copiously. It was unusual for serving civil servants to be so openly associated with a publication like Dublin Opinion, and this sometimes gave rise to controversy. The editors’

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dual roles were tolerated most ­probably because Irish politicians were as amused as everyone else by the fare on offer in Dublin Opinion and they recognised its value in reducing the tensions in Irish public life after the Civil War. In the words of Vivian Mercier, ‘two generations of Irish readers were taught humour and humanity by Dublin Opinion’ (Mercer 2003: 490). Dublin Opinion virtually monopolised cartooning in Ireland during its years of publication. When the Freeman’s Journal went out of business in 1924, Ernest Forbes returned to England. Except for the work of Gordon Brewster in the Evening Herald and Sunday Independent, and that of Victor Brown (‘Bee’) in the first two years of the Irish Press (1931–3), the editorial cartoon was thereafter largely absent from Irish newspapers and periodicals other than Dublin Opinion until the 1970s. Brewster’s cartoons mostly eschewed Irish politics, focusing instead on lifestyle and socio-economic matters. Incongruously in the Ireland of that time, they were quite international in scope. Brown, like Forbes, was an Englishman­– ­another outsider­– ­but his newspaper, the Irish Press, was the organ of the Fianna Fáil party founded by de Valera in the aftermath of the Civil War and his cartoons were accordingly highly partisan. In contradistinction to the Irish experience, in Britain the epicentre of satirical journalism moved away from the periodical press to daily and Sunday newspapers during the first half of the twentieth century. A much diminished Punch remained the main satirical journal until the advent of Private Eye in 1961. While its circulation continued to grow until the late 1940s, it was tired and could not or would not, in deference to its tradition of ‘decorum’, rise, or stoop, to the acerbity of the cartoons and other satirical journalism being published in the newspapers. Founded in 1841, its period of greatest influence had been in the late nineteenth century and it seemed now to lack contemporary relevance. It lost circulation steadily after 1950. Malcolm Muggeridge, editor from 1953 to 1957, has written that the Punch office at that time ‘was a sombre place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter . . . I and my staff, all anguished men, would sit together trying to discover what, if anything, was funny, and sadly reaching the conclusion that nothing was’ (Muggeridge 1966: 10–11). Neither Muggeridge nor later editors such as William Davis and Alan Coren could halt the decline in the magazine’s fortunes, and it ceased publication in 1992. It was revived in 1996 by the businessman Mohammed Al-Fayed as a rival to Private Eye, which was severely critical of him, but it again ceased publication in 2002. It was an ignominious coda to its long history. 1066 and all that, the hilarious debunking of the pieties of English history by

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W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, published in book form in 1930, first appeared serially in Punch. The greatest humorist of the interwar years in Britain, the one who really packed a punch (pun intended!), was David Low. Born in New Zealand, he worked for the weekly political magazine The Bulletin in Australia before and during the First World War, and was already well known for his vicious cartoons targeting the Australian prime minister, Billy Hughes, before arriving in England in 1919. He first worked in London on the Evening Star, recruited to rival Percy Fearon of the Evening News. He transferred to the Evening Standard, a Beaverbrook organ, in 1927. He enjoyed unprecedented freedom to express his own opinions in his work for the Standard, in contrast to the norm elsewhere then that political cartoons were subject to editorial control, and his strong stance against the British foreign policy of appeasement in the 1930s put him firmly at odds with his employer. When his stance was eventually vindicated, his cartoons acquired retrospectively an iconic status. His portrayal of Hitler and Mussolini as strutting, manic and unmistakably dangerous clowns defines how we see them today and he varied his evisceration of them, following a complaint by Goebbels, by creating a fictitious dictator ‘Muzzler’ who combined features of both. The architect of appeasement, Neville Chamberlain, who always carried an umbrella, was depicted by Low as an umbrella in human form. After Low left the Standard in 1949, he joined the Manchester Guardian, a newspaper more in accord with his own values and he hung on there until shortly before his death in 1963. His best work had been done at the Standard. He accepted a knighthood in 1962, having refused one in the 1930s; the outsider finally accepted the embrace of the establishment. Like Low, Dyson and Fearon, Lord Beaverbrook was an outsider in Britain, a rude colonial from Canada, born in 1879. Gaining control of the Daily Express in 1916, he assembled a first-rate staff and increased its circulation sixfold over the next twenty years to over 2.3 million copies a day, the largest circulation of any newspaper in Britain or Ireland. He bought the Evening Standard in 1923. Despite his links to the Conservative Party, the Express and Standard were politically independent newspapers, optimistic in tone, but always with a hint of irreverence. Satirical journalism was welcome in both, manifested not only in the cartoons of David Low, but also those of Osbert Lancaster, Carl Giles, Michael Cummings and others. Lancaster was the first in Britain to produce the single-column, or ‘pocket’, cartoon. His cartoons gently mock the English way of life, with social pretension a particular target. They appeared in the Express from 1939 to 1981, earning him

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a knighthood in 1975. Giles contributed cartoons to the Express from 1943 to 1991; his work, commenting on topics of the day, featured a fictional family of memorable characters, notably, the formidable Grandma. The work of Michael Cummings in the Express from 1949 to 1990 was more controversial, particularly his anti-immigration cartoons, for example once drawing a boatload of immigrants as golliwogs arriving in Britain. The Express was also home to the ‘Beachcomber’ column, wherein D. B. Wyndham Lewis and J. B. Morton developed a surreal, anarchic style of humour that helped shape later comic art in Britain. Wyndham Lewis­ – ­not to be confused with his namesake, the artist Percy Wyndham Lewis­ – ­began the column in 1919. When he moved to the Daily Mail in 1924, Morton took over and kept it going for over fifty years. The post-Beaverbrook management sacked him in 1975, aged 82. Both Wyndham Lewis and Morton were Roman Catholics, part of a set of Catholic writers including Belloc, Chesterton and Evelyn Waugh­­who were influential in the interwar years. Perhaps as a consequence of their Catholicism, both were ill at ease in ­twentieth-century Britain and their unease was the source of their humour. They had prolific imaginations, and much of their writing might be described as ‘comic nonsense’, with literary antecedents in the work of Lewis Carroll. Morton excelled in creating outlandish characters with weird names whose antics he would record in the style of regular newspaper reportage. He had a prodigious output, with a daily column until 1965, and a weekly one thereafter. During the Second World War he parodied official propaganda­– ­an obvious, though sensitive, target for satire­ – ­but he also poked fun at Hitler by, for example, conjuring up something called ‘bracerot’ that caused Hitler’s trousers to fall down at unexpected moments. Some of his most effective pieces ridicule the arcane and archaic rituals of the law, with endless litigation involving Morton’s ‘red-bearded dwarfs’ evoking the Jarndyce case in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, and today his dictum about the legal system is still often quoted: ‘Justice must not only be seen to be done; it must be seen to be believed.’ Such pithy, witty comments were his forte. In the 1940s, the cartoons of Lesley Illingworth were admired almost as much as those of David Low. He had succeeded Percy Fearon as political cartoonist of the Daily Mail in 1939, and remained there until 1969. He also contributed cartoons to Punch. His politics were conservative, in tune with the editorial policy of his newspaper, but so too was his cartooning style. His work was thus relatively uncontentious, and his posthumous reputation has suffered accordingly. However, unlike other cartoonists working in Britain during the

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Second World War, Illingworth had the advantage of having seen the Nazi leaders in person­– ­at a German ski resort he visited in the 1930s­ – ­and could draw on that memory when depicting them in his work. He later recalled that the only one of the leaders for whom he did not feel an instinctive dislike was Goebbels. A Welshman, Illingworth had begun his career on the Western Mail in Cardiff. The Western Mail was one of the earliest newspapers in Britain to have regular political cartoons, publishing cartoons by Joseph Moorwood Staniforth from 1893. Illingworth succeeded Staniforth on the latter’s death in 1921, and Illingworth was succeeded in turn by J. C. Walker in 1939. Staniforth and Walker also drew cartoons for the News of the World, but neither was ever lured away from their Welsh base. A Scots cartoonist of note, Archie Gilkison, likewise was not enticed to London­– ­though he might well have been if he had not died of pneumonia in November 1916, shortly after being conscripted. His work appeared in the Glasgow Herald and Evening Times between 1914 and 1916, and is unusual for its time in its very direct portrayal of the horrors of war. Gilkison’s images anticipate anti-war cartoons of the late twentieth century. It is gratifying to record that he has recently been ‘rediscovered’ and given the recognition he deserves (Taylor, The Herald, 10 November 2018). The tone of satirical journalism in Britain sharpened after circa 1940 with the arrival of a new generation of practitioners, born in the twentieth century­ – ­most, but not all, entering from stage left. The first of these to come to prominence was Philip Zec, cartoonist on the Daily Mirror after its transition in the 1930s from a genteel newspaper to a radical organ: ‘articulating a more stridently proletarian voice than any other newspaper’ (Conboy 2006: 7). During the Second World War, Zec’s depiction of the Nazi leadership was venomous, often drawing them as snakes, toads or monkeys. In 1942 his cartoon entitled ‘The price of petrol has been increased by one penny’, showing a shipwrecked sailor, incurred the wrath of the government for appearing to suggest that petrol companies were profiteering at the expense of sailors’ lives. Zec claimed that he had been misinterpreted, but the matter was debated in parliament and almost resulted in the paper being closed down. His ‘Here you are! Don’t lose it again’ cartoon has been credited with helping the Labour Party win the 1945 general election; this is the subject of the case study below (Zec 2005). Victor Weisz (‘Vicky’) succeeded Zec on the Daily Mirror when the latter withdrew from cartooning after 1945. They were near contemporaries, and both were of Jewish extraction­– ­outsiders. Zec was born in England, but Weisz had come to England from Germany as a refugee in 1938. In 1958 Weisz moved to the Evening Standard on a contract

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that, like David Low’s, gave him complete freedom of expression. His work there, until his death by suicide in 1966, focused on exposing the foibles and failings of individual politicians, but what James Cameron called ‘the abrasive cruelty of his criticism’ was always ‘free from malice’ (Cameron, Evening Standard, 24 February 1966, p.  7). His most famous caricature, that of Harold Macmillan as ‘Supermac’, was intended to belittle the then prime minister but the tag ‘rebounded to become, instead of a term of opprobrium, one of affectionate admiration making the intended victim something of a folk hero’ (Horne 1989: 149). Macmillan, with his languid, faux aristocratic manner, was an ideal subject for satire and the BBC television programme That Was The Week That Was (TW3) and Private Eye magazine would exploit to the full his potential as the butt of their jokes. One of the TW3 team, Bernard Levin, wrote a regular column for the Daily Mail in the 1960s and then for The Times from 1970 to 1997 on a wide range of topics, often of a satirical nature, though he was more contrarian than humorist. His lampoon of Macmillan and his successor-but-one, Harold Wilson, as ‘Walrus and Carpenter’ (Levin 1970: 201), borrowing imagery from Lewis Carroll’s poem about two ‘very unpleasant characters’, is possibly the cleverest of many expressions of distrust of the political establishment in Britain during their premierships. The establishment in Britain and, indeed, Britain itself had suffered an enormous loss of authority in the Suez Crisis of 1956. Dean Acheson, former US Secretary of State, would proclaim in 1962 that Britain had ‘lost an Empire and not yet found a role’ (Brinkley 1990: 599). Humour was one way of bridging the gap between that reality and the pretensions of politicians and others that Britain was still a major world power. This created the circumstances for a remarkable effusion of satire in Britain in the 1960s. It took various guises: theatre (Beyond the Fringe), television (TW3) and print (most notably, Private Eye). What distinguishes the satire of this period from what comes before and after is that it arose from within the establishment rather than from below. It was not ‘punching up’, but ‘punching sideways’ through the work of young, disillusioned, upper- or middle-class people revolting against their parents and their parents’ values, both political and social. ‘Educated insolence’ describes the nature of it perfectly. Beyond the Fringe, the progenitor of it all, was a product of Oxford and Cambridge universities­ – ­a compilation of the best of the student revues staged by the Oxford Revue and the Cambridge Footlights. Similarly, Private Eye was the creation of four alumni of Shrewsbury public school who had collaborated there on a student

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magazine: Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton, Christopher Booker and Paul Foot. One of its original financial backers and eventually its owner outright was Peter Cook, the most celebrated of the cast of Beyond the Fringe because of his impersonation of Macmillan. In the words of one of Macmillan’s biographers, D. R. Thorpe, ‘these Young Turks were not in charge of the tumbrils’ (Thorpe 2010: 780). Private Eye was launched in October 1961, and is extant. It is published fortnightly. Booker was briefly its first editor, Ingrams succeeded him and he was succeeded in 1986 by the current editor, Ian Hislop. The last days of the Macmillan government­ – ­‘swamped by [a] plethora of scandal’ (Ingrams 1971: 13)­ – ­provided the new magazine with much material in its earliest, and arguably finest, days. The Profumo affair was the last in an accumulation of disasters for the government, and Private Eye played an important role in keeping rumours about the scandal afloat until finally it became public knowledge. Then, when Macmillan retired and was succeeded by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Private Eye concluded that ‘words were no longer enough [and] direct action was called for’ (Ingrams 1971: 15). Bizarrely, they put Rushton up as an independent candidate in the Kinross by-election of 7 November 1963 which returned Home to the House of Commons after he renounced his peerage in order to become prime minister. Rushton, predictably, got a derisory number of votes. Ingrams later wrote that ‘events themselves had overtaken satire’ (Ingrams 1971: 13) and he felt that ‘a strongly abusive note should be sounded . . . to cope with the horrors of 1963’ and from that time onwards, the tone of Private Eye ‘became more strident, abusive and left wing’ (Ingrams 1971: 17). Nevertheless, the two most popular features in Private Eye in the following years were relatively benign offerings: ‘Mrs Wilson’s diary’, supposedly written by Harold Wilson’s wife and debunking his carefully cultivated image as an ordinary man of the working class; and the ‘Dear Bill’ letters, letters purporting to be from Denis Thatcher to the journalist William Deedes during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Deedes had earlier been partly the model for ‘Boot of the Beast’ in Scoop, Evelyn Waugh’s great comic novel about the press. Private Eye was also responsible for giving another prime minister whom it disdained, Edward Heath, the sobriquet ‘Grocer Heath’. It even targeted newspapers and fellow journalists: Fleet Street, where Britain’s press was once largely based, was denigrated as the ‘Street of Shame’ with ‘Lunchtime O’Booze’ and ‘Glenda Slagg’ as its archetypal denizens, male and female respectively. In its heyday in the 1960s, Private Eye became required reading even for the establishment that it mocked. Ironically, Macmillan ­himself

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best summed up the response of the establishment to the satire of that era when he opined, in a variation on the ‘safety valve’ theory, that ‘it is a good thing to be laughed over . . . better than to be ignored’ (Hegarty 2015: 61). But were there any limits? The authorities certainly thought that there were, as the editors of Oz magazine would find in 1971. Originally published in Sydney, its Australian founder, Richard Neville, had launched a British version in 1967. Neville was a ‘pioneer of the war on deference’ (Maloney and Grosz, The Monthly, December 2012–January 2013), and the focus of both versions of his magazine, Australian and British, was on alternative youth culture. Oz was characterised by ‘boyish irreverence . . . with a psychedelic groove’ (Fellion and Inglis 2017: 262), contemptuous of what it saw as outdated sexual mores and other lifestyle restrictions. A sexualised parody of the Rupert Bear comic strip for children in the May 1970 issue led to the prosecution, conviction and jailing of the editors for obscenity. Their plight became a cause célèbre, and their conviction was eventually overturned on appeal. Despite a temporary boost in circulation as a result of the trial, Oz did not survive. The last issue appeared in November 1973. While Private Eye has dominated the world of satirical journalism in Britain since the 1960s, the mainstream press has continued to use cartoons as a means of providing readers with wry or sardonic commentary on people and events. They range from the gently whimsical pocket cartoons of Mark Boxer (‘Marc’) and Mel Calman to the grotesque caricatures of Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman. Among the most inventive is the ongoing ‘Nature notes’ series by Peter Brookes in The Times in which well-known politicians are portrayed as fictitious beasts. The most controversial was Scarfe’s cartoon in the Sunday Times on 27 January 2013 depicting Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall using the blood of Palestinians as cement and with agonised Palestinians bricked into the wall. The cartoon was a reference to the barriers that Israel has erected between itself and the Palestinian territories, but critics claimed that it was reminiscent of anti-Semitic propaganda. The fact that the date of publication was Holocaust Memorial Day added to the uproar. The Sunday Times subsequently apologised, saying that it was ‘a very serious mistake’ (Greenslade, The Guardian, 4 February 2013). A 2003 cartoon by Dave Brown in The Independent of a previous Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, eating Palestinian babies, based on Goya’s painting ‘Saturn devouring one of his children’, had similarly caused controversy. On rare occasions, a newspaper would withhold a cartoon rather than risk controversy. For instance, during the Falklands War an editor

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at The Times spiked one by Calman which showed two penguins on a rock in the Falklands, one saying to the other ‘If I get killed, I want a British funeral.’ Calman felt that the cartoon was ‘fair comment on the awful tragedy of the war’ (Calman 1986: 103), and with hindsight he was surely right. The most consistently ferocious of recent British cartoonists has been Steve Bell in The Guardian, and his visual critiques of successive prime ministers have been definitive: Thatcher with wild eyeballs; Major with underpants worn outside his trousers; Blair with big ears and one rogue eyeball (an echo of Thatcher); Cameron with a condom pulled over his head; Johnson as a human bottom, half covered with a mop of blond hair. Bell has said that the cartoon is ‘an offensive medium, out of necessity’ (Irish Times Weekend Review, 21 August 2010, p. 9), and his work and that of some other contemporary cartoonists comes closer to the ‘savage indignation’ of Swift’s writings and the cartoons of Gillray and Hogarth than any previous satirical journalism in Britain or Ireland in the twentieth century, with the possible exception of Will Dyson’s cartoons in the second decade of the century. Not all contemporary cartoonists are, however, left-of-­centre or of a liberal disposition. Popularist, right-wing sentiment­ – ­anti-establishment, inasmuch as the establishment is seen as comprising ‘elites’ contemptuous of the opinions of ‘ordinary’ people­– ­has found expression in, most notably, the cartoons of Stanley McMurtry (‘Mac’) in the Daily Mail over a period of almost fifty years; he retired in 2018. McMurtry has been accused of racism, sexism and homophobia, giving particular offence with a cartoon in 2015 featuring caricatures of African tribes people selling shrunken heads. Moreover, cartoonists in several British newspapers and especially in the tabloid press, responded to IRA violence in Britain during the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s onwards by resurrecting the concept of the simian Irish from the pages of Punch a century earlier, and repackaging it for a modern audience: ‘drawing the Irish as ape-like violent figures that bore a strong resemblance to the bestial “Paddy” of Victorian cartoons’ (Doughty 2018: 446). Unlike in the Victorian era, such anti-Irish stereotypes were extended to embrace the Protestant as well as the Catholic Irish. Raymond Jackson (‘JAK’) published a cartoon in the Evening Standard in 1982 showing a spoof film poster for ‘The ultimate in psychopathic horror: the Irish’ with terrorists on both sides of the Troubles depicted as equally misshapen monsters. In Northern Ireland during the Troubles when violence, death and general mayhem were everyday facts of life, more was at stake in referencing terrorist incidents in a cartoon than in Britain. The ­imperative,

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at least for the mainstream press there, was to avoid heightening sectarian tensions. Ian Knox’s cartoon for the Irish News, the main nationalist newspaper in Northern Ireland, about the car bomb attack by an IRA splinter group in Omagh, county Fermanagh, which killed twenty-nine people and injured over 200 on a Saturday afternoon in August 1998, is a good example of how a cartoonist can convey outrage at an atrocity with tact and good taste. It shows the coffins of those who died that day being carried off in one direction while another coffin marked ‘violent republicanism’ is brought in the opposite direction towards the metaphorical grave that republicans have dug for themselves by their actions. On the question of whether cartoons on such sensitive topics are appropriate, Knox has said: ‘I never shrank from any issue . . . If you’ve got it right, even if it’s horrible, the victims don’t object’ (Larkin 2018). The principal organ of the Irish republican movement, An Phoblacht/Republican News, published a vast number of cartoons by Brian Moore (‘Cormac’) during the Troubles. His was very accomplished work, using humour and irony for propaganda purposes. Dublin’s Irish Times is now the newspaper of choice for Ireland’s professional, business and intellectual classes, but before 1922 it was the organ of southern Irish unionism and until the 1960s it remained closely identified with the Protestant minority in the independent Irish state. Its ‘outsider’ status was brilliantly captured in a cartoon by Charles Kelly in Dublin Opinion in 1930 which portrayed its newsroom as comically anachronistic. The perception of Irish Protestants as a powerful elite made them and their last bastions in Irish society, like the Irish Times, a natural target of satire. The Irish Times, however, did not hesitate to return fire in like manner. There was and still is a strong satirical thread running through its daily ‘Irishman’s Diary’ feature, which first appeared in 1927; among those who have written the ‘Diary’ is Patrick Campbell, also well known for his humorous journalism in London newspapers and magazines. Also, in 1940 Brian O’Nolan­ – ­the novelist Flann O’Brien­ – ­began contributing a regular column under the heading ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ (meaning ‘brimming jug’) and signed ‘Myles na gCopaleen’ in which he ‘assaulted the sacred cows of the Ireland of the 1940s and 1950s’ (O’Brien 2008: 129), sometimes in Irish but more usually in English. It owed its style to the ‘Beachcomber’ pieces in the Daily Express, but its content was often even more absurd than anything written by J. B. Morton. O’Nolan’s column continued until his death in 1966. Among his bugbears was the Irish language revival movement, though he was himself fluent in Irish. Another similar column giving a satirical overview of the week’s

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news, ‘Man Bites Dog’, written by Donal Foley, appeared in the Irish Times between 1971 and 1981. While the Irish Times was thus rich in satirical journalism of the literary variety, editorial cartoons had not been an important element in any Irish daily newspaper since the early 1930s. This changed when Martyn Turner was employed by the Irish Times as its first full-time cartoonist in 1976. Dublin Opinion had ceased publication in 1968, and there was no successor magazine. Turner’s cartoons in the Irish Times filled the vacuum. In the words of Terence Brown, his ‘politically acute ­cartoons . . . add to the newspaper’s reputation for sharply expressed and hard-hitting commentary’ (Brown 2015: 294–5). Like Ernest Forbes of the Freeman’s Journal and Victor Brown of the Irish Press, he is an Englishman and so shares with many other satirical journalists in Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century the detachment of an outsider. Turner’s greatest cartoon to date is that published on the front page of the Irish Times­– ­itself an unusual occurrence­– ­on 17 February 1992 in response to the Irish government’s efforts to prevent a pregnant 14-year-old girl from travelling to England for an abortion. At that time, and indeed up to 2018, there was a constitutional ban on abortion in Ireland. The cartoon linked the young girl’s predicament with internment without trial in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. The depiction of the girl, with her hair in a pigtail and carrying a teddy bear, standing on a map of Ireland surrounded by a razor-wire-topped fence left an indelible mark on public discourse in Ireland on the abortion issue. Sometimes satire does matter; it can do more than make us laugh. Most satirical journalists, however, despair of the efficacy of their craft to change anything. That satire makes nothing happen, to paraphrase Auden’s famous line about poetry, is a recurring theme in what they have written. Richard Ingrams of Private Eye, for instance, recalls: ‘to us in late 1963 it seemed almost incredible that Harold Macmillan should still be prime minister. We had done everything short of assassinating him’ (Ingrams 1971: 15). Mel Calman harboured ‘the illusion that I might . . . have a real job one day, instead of messing about with pencils and bits of paper’ (Calman 1986: 112). Even Martyn Turner has been moved to draw a gloomy self-portrait, ‘battling the forces of darkness’ and repeating the mantra ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ again and again in an effort to convince himself that this proposition is tenable (Figure 28.2) (Irish Times, 15 March 2012, p.  14). Such considerations are, however, beside the point. As Martin Rowson, one of the best contemporary British cartoonists, has written: ‘satire in general and cartoons in particular exist because we need them­ – ­to ­contextualise the greater hideous, often horrific absurdities of reality

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Figure 28.2  Martyn Turner, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’, Irish Times, 15 March 2012, p. 14

into a manageable and therefore controllable format which might then also make us laugh and thus feel better’ (Times Literary Supplement, 27 April 2018, p. 10). In short, satire is a safety valve.

Case Study: The Daily Mirror and the Role of the Visual in the 1945 General Election in Britain James Whitworth More than in any previous election, the British popular press’s coverage of the 1945 general election campaign was one in which the visual played a key role. Nowhere was this more evident than in the pages of the Daily Mirror. When Guy Bartholomew took over as editor in 1935, he began to shift the newspaper’s editorial line from middle class to working class, utilising many elements borrowed from American tabloids such as larger headlines and shorter stories. Crucially, the visual played a central role in this shift by providing both entertainment and news commentary. By 1945 the Mirror was providing a daily supply of comic strips (a whole page) and editorial and pocket cartoons. Such a high number of cartoons was part of a deliberate strategy to target service personnel, along with factory workers many of whom would have been women, with an entertainment-centric package. By doing so, the Mirror utilised a visual lexicon to combine entertainment with a campaigning fervour for social equality.

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The ‘Vote for Him’ campaign in the run-up to the 1945 general election can be seen as the culmination of this move to the visual. Beginning with the publication on 25 June of a letter credited to Mrs C. Gardiner of Essex, stating that she will ‘vote for him’ (her husband), the campaign was mirrored in the cartoons that the paper carried on a daily basis. The Daily Mirror had always been keen to support and exploit visual elements within the paper. Indeed, Bartholomew had once been a cartoonist and had been very impressed by the use of graphic elements within the American tabloid press, such as the New York Post. This would all come together in June 1945 when the paper included a series of strip cartoons which utilised a multimodal approach in which a serviceman reads a letter from home and writes in response to it. In the run-up to polling day, these became a regular feature of the newspaper, spreading across the top of two pages. In an example from 28 June, we see a soldier writing home: ‘Dear Mary’ it begins, setting up a mode of discourse that would have been familiar to many of the paper’s readers in which he begins by assuring his wife/girlfriend that everything is OK, and that they are ‘getting cracking’. The multimodal form here adds a level of poignancy as the visual element shows the soldier on patrol and then in action in Japan in stark contrast to his mundane, if comforting, words. He then goes on to discuss the upcoming election, asking how things are going ‘I haven’t got a vote, but I know the sort of world we hoped for after this war is over­– s­ o vote for me!’ The format this takes seems to be intended to create both a sense of familiarity by using letters from troops to their loved ones, with the element of a strip cartoon familiar to the paper’s readers in the form of the massively popular Jane, and a sense of distance from any political influence by the newspaper itself. Perhaps the most important cartoon of the era was drawn by Philip Zec and published in the Mirror on 7 May 1945, the day after the unconditional surrender of Germany. A battle-scarred solider climbs a hill with the ravages of war behind him and holds out a wreath with the words ‘Victory and Peace in Europe’. As his fatigued and careworn face looks directly out from the drawing, the caption reads ‘Here you are! Don’t lose it again!’ What is perhaps most interesting about this famous cartoon is not the significant impact it had on its initial publication, but rather that on Election Day, almost two months to the day after the paper first ran Zec’s cartoon, the Mirror took the unprecedented step of republishing the same cartoon, this time on the front page, where it occupied around two thirds of the available space. The cartoon acts both as a call to arms to voters and as the climax of the newspaper’s ‘Vote for Him’ campaign. It did not actively attack Churchill which would have been a very dangerous tactic but instead suggests that the reader look back to the aftermath of the last war. It is in the multimodal use of caption plus image that the cartoon’s strength lies. It is not a plea not to lose the peace per se, but rather not to lose it for a second time. The key is the use of the word ‘again’.

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Figure 28.3  Daily Mirror, 5 July 1945 The message is clear the recent war was caused by the incompetence of those charged with securing the peace after the First World War. The cartoon represents a criticism of previous administrations and of the old order of Conservatism, which it implies had created the situation in which Britain had to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives in order to protect herself again. It was therefore the perfect front page at the perfect time. It reinforced the paper’s left-of-centre beliefs and used an image originally intended to mark VE Day to inspire and motivate voters on polling day to vote for a future that would protect the hard-won peace. When the election results were finally declared Bartholomew invited Zec to join him in a champagne celebration, thereby acknowledging his cartoonist’s role both in the success of the paper and in Labour’s election victory.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

NEWSPAPER REPORTS OF THE WESTMINSTER PARLIAMENT Bob Franklin

Introduction

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  his chapter examines changing patterns of newspaper reporting of the proceedings of the Westminster Parliament during the twentieth century. It offers a detailed case study of coverage at a key moment and argues that since the 1990s, newspaper reports from the House fluctuated greatly in number and kind while also exhibiting a growing focus on lobby reporting at the expense of the Gallery tradition since the 1930s. Drawing on contemporary interviews with parliamentary correspondents, combined with content analysis of national newspaper coverage, the chapter highlights the striking decline in press reports across all national newspapers as well as the alleged ‘dumbing down’ of published parliamentary stories. The chapter concludes by exploring the possibilities of digitally native editorial formats such as live blogging, developed at the end of the twentieth century, for enhancing parliamentary coverage. The chapter illustrates the perennially conflictual relationship between politicians and journalists reflecting parliamentarians’ desire for secrecy (or at least discretion) about House proceedings and debates and journalists’ professional ambition to report them in order to inform the public and ensure responsible government (Franklin 1992; Franklin 2004; Negrine 1998): democracy, as Schudson reminds us, demands ‘an unlovable press’ (Schudson 2008: 50–62). Andrew Sparrow similarly argues that the Commons’ reluctance concerning newspaper coverage was ‘not because Members were shy about having their names in the papers, but because they realised that being reported would make them accountable’ (Sparrow 2003: 3). 574

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Parliamentary Reporting; Changing Press Freedoms, Changing Journalistic Traditions. Probably the most striking fact about the history of the press reporting of Parliament is the complete absence of newspaper coverage for approximately the first half of Parliament’s life. The de Montfort Parliament of 1265 predated the first daily newspapers by more than four centuries (Black 2001: 9). This lack of newspaper reporting proved a difficult habit for some parliamentarians to break, as many MPs believed that House proceedings should remain private. Paradoxically, ahead of the arrival of print journalism, accounts of parliamentary debates were increasingly leaked, discussed, written about and circulated­– ­not least by Members of Parliament themselves­– ­who sought the esteem of voters, friends and dignitaries by offering a ‘running commentary on the affairs of the state’ (Sparrow 2003: 8). Beyond the garrulous vanities of Members, other trends favoured the reporting of debates. Across the seventeenth century the belief that the public was entitled to be informed about the proceedings of Parliament enjoyed growing acceptance prompting the House of Commons to publish a daily register of its decisions in Votes and Proceedings in 1680 (Sparrow 2003: 9). The publication of the actual content of speeches and debates, however, remained a breach of parliamentary privilege. Journalistic challenges to parliamentary privacy and privilege came to a head in 1738 when Edward Cave, the editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, published a Member’s speech ahead of its delivery in the House. The House responded by enacting a highly restrictive, comprehensive and censorial resolution outlawing parliamentary reporting. It was another three decades, following a legal battle by radical MP and journalist John Wilkes in 1771, before the 1738 resolution fell into disrepair. The Lords followed the lead of the Commons and journalists no longer had to fear the consequences of reporting Parliament. Change came fast following events in 1771 and by the end of the eighteenth century, parliamentary reporting was beginning to flourish; by 1803, the Speaker ruled that seats in the public gallery should be reserved for reporters and from 1831 the House of Lords provided reporters with a press gallery (Sparrow 2003: 5). In the nineteenth century, specialist magazines and newsletters began to publish extensive extracts from speeches and debates in both Houses of Parliament and in 1803, the radical publisher William Cobbett launched Cobbett’s Parliamentary Debates which sourced materials from other newspapers and magazines, especially The Times. In 1812 the printer and publisher Thomas Curson Hansard took over

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the publication of parliamentary debates, which became known by his name from 1889. In 1909 the Commons assumed responsibility for producing Hansard, rebadging it ‘The Official Report’ and recruited its own journalistic staff of reporters and shorthand writers; a similar incorporation of Canada’s Hansard into the services provided by the Canadian House of Commons took place in 1880 (Ward 1980: 140). The term ‘parliamentary reporting’ is, of course, broad and generic, making it important to identify the distinctive journalistic traditions of parliamentary journalism, the oldest of which is known as the gallery tradition. Journalists used to sit in the press gallery, take extensive shorthand notes of debates which were then reproduced verbatim in the newspaper: the emphasis in gallery reporting was on strictly factual accounts offered in digests of debates, prime minister’s questions and the various House committees (Franklin 1996a: 13). The key journalistic concern here is to provide the public with knowledge and information. During the twentieth century, the gallery tradition has given way to lobby arrangements where political reports are informed less by listening to debates and the various proceedings of the House, than by attendance at the twice daily secretive lobby briefings and the views of members and ministers gathered by journalists in private conversations in the Members’ Lobby, as well as restaurants close to the Palace

Figure 29.1  The House of Commons with the Press Gallery visible on the upper level, 1911

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of Westminster and cited on lobby terms; i.e. without citing journalists’ sources but using an obfuscation such as ‘a government minister said . . .’ (Franklin 2004: 38–53). In these briefing arrangements the prime minister, his or her official spokesperson, as well as senior ministers, become significant sources for journalists’ stories and reports. Lobby correspondents become conduits for the arguments and messages (spin) of governments whose ambition is to inform the public but mostly to persuade the public to its point of view. Sparrow identifies the start date of the prominence of lobby above gallery reporting around 1930 (Sparrow 2003: 4), while the then political editor of The Guardian claimed in 1994 that ‘everything is “lobby-ised” these days’ (Interview with author). The third strand in parliamentary journalism is represented by sketch writers. In stark contrast to the factual, lengthy, verbatim accounts of the gallery reporters, the sketch writers deliver short, pithy, often highly personalised accounts of events­ – ­which are sometimes very personally critical of individuals. The resurgence of the sketch tradition in the twentieth century is typically associated with journalists’ shifting news values which increasingly emphasised the need to entertain as well as to inform readers (Franklin 1997b: 4–6). A leading exponent claimed with tongue only partly planted in cheek, that sketch writers are ‘not interested in straight parliamentary reporting’ so much as ‘cheap jokes, unfair barbs and a slanted version of the day’s events’ (Hoggart 2002: ii). This comment stretches the truth but captures the distinction between the accuracy, formality and verbatim character of the gallery tradition and the more entertaining, critical and sometimes partisan character of the sketch.

Case Study: The Collapse of Newspapers’ Reporting of Parliament The decade between 1985 and 1995 marked a significant watershed in the history of parliamentary reporting (Franklin 1996a; Franklin 2004; Negrine 1998; Straw 1993). For the previous 400 years, a diverse group of radicals, printers, publishers, owners of magazines and journalists risked censorship, legal trials, bankruptcy and imprisonment to report the proceedings and debates of Parliament in pamphlets, radical journals, notebooks, magazines and eventually newspapers, radio and television. It had been a long struggle to win the right to report the proceedings of the British Parliament and establish journalists’ right to a (literal) place in both Houses: since 1831, the press gallery has housed the Fourth Estate. It therefore seems curious that such a hardwon right should be surrendered voluntarily. In the brief period of a decade, the editors and journalists of papers of record announced a Pauline shift in

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their attitude to parliamentary reporting. The reversal was dramatic, rapid and final; gallery reporting ‘collapsed’ rather than simply declined (McKie 1999: 19); distinguished parliamentary journalist Peter Riddell described the change as ‘sharp and universal’ (Riddell 1999: 29). The reversal began with the launch of The Independent in 1986, a broadsheet paper which favoured the lobby and sketch traditions above gallery reporting. In 1991 the decision by Simon Jenkins, the new editor of The Times, to cancel the ‘Parliamentary pages’ was decisive. Quizzed by the Nolan Inquiry into the reasons for this major shift in editorial policy, he claimed that he ‘couldn’t find anyone who read it except MPs’ (cited in Franklin 2004: 188); other newspapers followed The Times’s lead. A political correspondent at The Guardian claimed, ‘the abandonment by The Times of its Parliamentary page was the crucial change; it was the sheet anchor. It was highly symbolic . . . once the standard slides, it becomes a subconscious cue for everyone to follow suit’ (Interview with author). By 1996 the uncontested acceptance of a substantial decline in press reporting of Parliament was exemplified by then BBC Political Editor John Cole’s observation that, ‘if you want to keep a secret, make a speech about it in the House’ (cited in Franklin 1996a: 13). Evidence for a decline in parliamentary reporting emerged initially from studies of the provincial and regional press rather than national newspapers. Seymour Ure, for example, identified that on sampled days parliamentary coverage fell sharply much earlier in the twentieth century (1920s and 1930s) from 7.6 per cent of total editorial in the Yorkshire Post, 8.0 per cent in the Manchester Guardian and 9.8 per cent in The Scotsman in 1924 to 3.8 per cent, 5.2 per cent and 8.0 per cent respectively by 1936: by 1972, these figures had reduced markedly to 2.9 per cent, 4.3 per cent and 4 per cent (Seymour Ure 1977: 113). The content analysis conducted to inform the 1977 Royal Commission on the Press confirmed the spartan coverage of parliamentary debates in regional newspapers (McQuail 1977: 29). A report by Labour politician Jack Straw is typically cited as offering the definitive evidence of newspapers’ declining concern with parliamentary reporting (Negrine 1998: 1); the results of Straw’s inquiry are certainly striking (Straw 1993). Analysis of parliamentary coverage between 1933 and 1988 in two national broadsheets and a tabloid revealed an average 400 to 800 lines in The Times and 300 to 700 lines in The Guardian, which by 1992 had plummeted to less than 100 lines in each paper. Across the same period, the more modest coverage offered by the Daily Mirror remained constant (Straw 1993: 47). As if to underscore Straw’s analysis, the Financial Times announced it was spiking its parliamentary page the day before the report was published (Franklin 1997a: 232). McKie’s subsequent (1999) study of reports in four broadsheet papers sampled longitudinally in 1946, 1966, 1986 and 1996, offered confirmation of

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the trends identified by Straw. The number of lines of parliamentary coverage in The Times for example, crashed from 4,148 in 1946 to a minimalist 290 lines in 1996, notwithstanding a pagination growth from 48 to 228 pages across the same sample period. Other papers offered evidence of a similar retreat from parliamentary coverage: the Daily Telegraph (3,423 to 527), the Financial Times (1,120 to 74), while The Guardian mostly maintained coverage (2,751 to 2,331) but in the context of a growth in pagination from 32 pages in 1946 to 224 in 1996 (McKie 1999: 24). A further study in 1994 which analysed each of the 820 parliamentary reports appearing in sampled copies of The Guardian (362 reports), The Times (346) and the Daily Mirror (112), also confirmed Straw’s findings (Franklin 1996a; Franklin 1996b). The Times, for example, reduced parliamentary reports from 146 in 1990 to 112 in 1992 down to 88 in 1994; a reduction of almost 60 per cent in four years. Parliamentary reports, moreover, were not simply reduced in number but increasingly received short shrift with almost 10 per cent of analysed reports being fewer than 150 words, one quarter were fewer than 250 words, while just over a half (55 per cent) were fewer than 450 words. Some aspects of proceedings­– e ­ specially committees­ – ­were largely ignored, while the House of Lords featured in only 8 per cent of coverage across the five-year study (Franklin 1997a: 235). Nicholas Jones, a BBC political correspondent in 1994, recalled earlier journalistic commitments to parliamentary reporting: I started work on The Times page in 1968. I was one of 12 Parliamentary reporters who used to do turns in the Commons taking shorthand notes; we did ten minutes for each Question Time and 20 minutes for Debates. So I have seen in my career a complete reversal . . . you don’t get that Times . . . record of what was said in Parliament anymore . . . The only exception would be . . . a resignation speech or a budget. It would have to be an extremely prominent occasion before a speech would be reported verbatim. The Guardian did have extensive parliamentary reporting, as did the Telegraph and the Financial Times, but The Times did the most. (Interview with author) Parliamentary reports changed not only in number and frequency but also in kind; five developments in journalistic practice are especially notable. First, a growing preoccupation with reporting scandal and alleged misconduct by Members replaced the traditional focus on policy concerns. When the content of parliamentary reports in The Guardian, The Times and the Daily Mirror across the years 1990 to 1994 was analysed according to forty identified subject foci, ‘scandal and misconduct by members’ was ranked third accounting for almost one in ten reports. Moreover, reports of Members’ misconduct grew from eight reports in 1990, to fourteen in 1992 and forty in

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1994, while across the same period reports focused on the substantive policy areas of education and local government decreased fourfold and sixfold respectively; and across all papers with the broadsheet Guardian (11 per cent of parliamentary stories) showing a stronger editorial concern with scandal and misconduct than The Times (3 per cent) and the tabloid Daily Mirror (10 per cent) (Franklin 1996a: 15; Franklin 1996b: 60). A second trend was the editorial preoccupation with reporting the activities of government ministers and senior spokespersons from the Official Opposition above backbench members from all parties. The prime minister enjoyed the lion’s share of coverage with seventy-seven citations reported in 7 per cent of parliamentary reports, slightly ahead of the Leader of the Official Opposition who enjoyed sixty-four quotation opportunities in 6 per cent of reports. On the next rung of the parliamentary ladder, ministers were quoted in press reports on 248 occasions in 26 per cent of parliamentary reports while Shadow Spokespersons enjoyed a markedly lesser 166 mentions in 18 per cent of reports. By contrast, the Liberal Democrat leader, designated spokespersons and all backbench members enjoyed citations in only a paltry 3 per cent of reports. The third feature of press reports of proceedings reflects the essentially bipartisan character of the Westminster Parliament with the Conservatives achieving editorial prominence in almost three quarters (572) of parliamentary reports while the Labour Party enjoyed such prominence in less than one fifth (138) of reports. Together, the Labour and Conservative Parties assumed the focus of journalistic attention on 710 of the 722 occasions (98 per cent) a political party was prominent in coverage. By contrast, the Liberal Democrats were prominent on only nine (less than 1 per cent) occasions. Press reporting at the time closely articulated parliamentary hierarchies which resulted in the almost complete neglect of the Liberal Democrats and other minority parties. Two qualifications are important here. These editorial preferences do not signal press partisanship as much as journalists’ news values. Governments of whichever political stripe are simply more newsworthy than oppositions since they lead House proceedings, initiate policy and make authoritative and newsworthy announcements. It is also essential to note that these data articulate the prominence of particular parties in press reports but not the direction of that prominence, i.e. whether favourable or unfavourable. A fourth trend reflects the increasingly critical tone evident in journalists’ parliamentary reports. Across the study, 48 per cent of the analysed reports were coded as ‘critical’ while 20 per cent were judged to be ‘laudatory’, with a further 28 per cent classified as ‘neither’, while the remainder (2 per cent) were coded as ‘both’ (Franklin 2004: 190). These data, however, gloss over significant tendencies in journalists’ expressed attitudes across the different newspaper titles. The Guardian and the Mirror, for example, offer an increas-

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ingly critical account of parliamentary affairs, in the case of the latter title with a 350 per cent increase in critical stories between 1990 and 1994, while The Times achieved a remarkably balanced account of parliamentary proceedings with 104 critical reports balanced almost perfectly with 102 laudatory stories. Journalists at The Times, however, seem ever more reluctant to offer favourable comment on Members with the forty-five laudatory comments coded in 1990 reports reducing to nineteen by 1994. Finally, the study revealed that journalists are increasingly mediating politicians’ views for readers with press reports offering parliamentarians few opportunities to ‘speak’ directly to readers via quotations. Nearly half (47 per cent) of the analysed reports carried no comment by politicians while a further 40 per cent allocated only a modest editorial space (less than 10 per cent of text) to Members’ comments. Parliamentary coverage changed radically and dramatically at the turn of

Figure 29.2  St Stephen’s Tavern, Westminster, London, 2008. A popular destination for politicians and journalists (https://www.flickr.com/ photos/55935853@N00/3107119836)

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the 1990s. In tabloid and broadsheet newspapers reporting was markedly curtailed; the gallery tradition of reporting was effectively dead. Moreover, that Parliament is still reported less to nurture a distinctly parliamentary agenda than when a story complies with journalists’ news values was exemplified neatly by the wall-to-wall reporting of the terrorist assault on Parliament, by every national daily newspaper, on 23 March 2017. The front-page lead in the Financial Times, for example, headlined, ‘Terror Attack on Parliament’ while the tabloid Daily Express’s front page announced: ‘Terror Rampage at Westminster’. How did journalists explain these very substantial changes in the prominence and nature of Parliamentary reporting?

‘You Can’t Defy Gravity!’ Journalists’ Accounts of Editorial Change Journalists, broadcasters, parliamentary correspondents and sketch writers offered a variety of explanations for this precipitous decline in coverage of the proceedings of Parliament. Many regretted the reduction in press coverage while others considered it to be inevitable given broader developments in newspaper markets and audiences changing requirements for news; only one of the journalists interviewed believed that a return to the prolific gallery reporting was likely or possible­ – ­only a handful considered it desirable. It was judged to be ‘the end of an era’. Some journalists attributed the collapse of parliamentary reporting to a more general trend towards tabloid news prompted by a decline in public service commitments, the constant relaxation of regulatory controls governing media ownership and content, the monopoly structure of media ownership, the intensely competitive nature of the newspaper market with its insatiable search for readers and advertising revenues, as well as the shifting requirements of readers for news (Negrine 1998: 41; Straw 1993: 45). Murdoch’s name was frequently referenced as central to this context. Anthony Bevins, then political editor of the Observer, argued that the decline of parliamentary reporting represented: a gravitational decline in journalism . . . which I place at the feet of Rupert Murdoch and the standards he has propagated so ­successfully . . . The Times Parliamentary page got crushed . . . on one occasion, I wrote a story of 3–400 words, which was a story worth 3–400 words, but they only used the Intro and it was completely meaningless . . . something like ‘PM fell under bus last

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newspaper reports of westminster parliament 583 night’ . . . so much has died in the pressure for good sexy news stories . . . But you can’t defy gravity. That’s why I used the phrase deliberately. (Interview with author)

Another distinguished political correspondent expressed this shift towards a more tabloid journalistic culture more succinctly, ‘less reporting from the press gallery and more naked women broadly speaking’ (Interview with author). A key component in this shift to a more tabloid style of parliamentary reportage was an editorial emphasis on personalities rather than more general policy-based concerns. As a senior parliamentary correspondent observed, ‘readers these days are much more interested in Cantona rather than the match’ and consequently ‘we try to keep it light, bright and trite’ (Interview with author). Giving evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution a decade later, US Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of the Financial Times, Peter Riddell explained, ‘I work in a highly competitive industry fighting for a circulation . . . we are no longer papers of record’ (19 May 2004).1 A second explanation for reduced newspaper coverage cited parliamentary reporting by other media, but especially the arrival of ‘cameras in the commons’ as a prime cause. The collapse of newspapers’ Westminster reporting coincided with broadcasters’ newly achieved access to televised proceedings from the Lords in 1989 and the Commons in the subsequent year (Franklin 1992: 3–28). Some observers (Straw 1993) mistook this coincidence for causality and argued that the dull print of the parliamentary pages could never compete with the dramatic (sometimes live) pictures now broadcast from the House. ‘Pictures are better than words’ was the assessment of parliamentary correspondent Peter Riddell (Riddell 1998: 13). Wiser counsels prevailed and Alastair Hetherington, the longest serving editor of The Guardian since C. P. Scott, in his Hansard study of the impact of television broadcasting on newspapers’ coverage of Parliament announced it was ‘hard to identify any discernible impact on press reporting of Parliament . . . on the contrary it was “business as usual”’; television seemed to make little impact on newspapers’ parliamentary output (Hetherington and Weaver 1992: 170–7). Moreover, the contagion of declining coverage was seemingly highly infectious with a later Hansard study of the first decade of television reporting from the House also revealing a substantial decline (Coleman 1999); a finding confirmed but regretted by leading broadcasters (Snow 1999). A third journalistic narrative about declining coverage cited Members’ growing preoccupation with news management to promote

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party policy or their own personal ambitions (Franklin 2004: 192; Negrine 1998: 40). A lobby correspondent for the Telegraph claimed ‘most politicians are now publicity crazy. They are all blowing their own trumpets and it is very pathetic because very few of them have anything interesting to say’ (Interview with author). Another political journalist suggested that Members’ ambitions for publicity and media coverage enjoyed a functional synergy with journalists’ own requirements to maximise political news gathering with minimum editorial endeavour. ‘MPs’, the journalist claimed, ‘have suddenly realised they have a captive audience in the Westminster press corps . . . everyday there are three or four press conferences . . .’ which means that combined with material from the morning lobby briefing ‘by lunchtime most subs’ desks and copy tasters have got enough political stuff to fill the papers and now often they will only use the highlights from the chamber’ (Interview with author); in short, there is less need for journalists to attend the actual sitting of the House. At the heart of journalists’ fourth explanation for reduced coverage lies a substantive critique of the House, its Members and proceedings which might be summarised by the phrase, ‘the place is not what it used to be’. In short, the character of the House has changed radically; perhaps even diminished. Journalists believe it is a downgraded, less attractive and less newsworthy institution for a host of reasons. The floor of the House ‘is no longer the central arena of politics’ (Riddell 1999: 29) but one among many which engage journalists’ interest. Journalists suggest the quality of debate has also declined; Members are less talented and assiduous than previously; there are no great personalities left in the House; Members are too disciplined by party whips, too quiescent and career-minded to speak against the party line or take a bold stand against party orthodoxy; governments tend to enjoy substantial majorities which make the outcome of votes predictable, while certain proceedings such as PMQs with planted questions and pre-prepared answers, are debased in both public and journalistic perceptions. In short there is considerably less reason for journalists to attend parliamentary debates; local restaurants or coffee shops in the proximity of Westminster (not to mention Annie’s Bar) might offer more promising sites for picking up tantalising snippets of news. A political journalist at the Sun suggested that some MPs largely ignore proceedings in the House. ‘With the intrusion of television’, he argued, ‘Ministers just go up to College Green or Millbank and say what they are meant to say in the House of Commons. So we felt that journalistically, it was more important to concentrate on what happens in the corridor rather than what happens in the chamber’

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(Interview with author). For these various reasons, Parliament is bypassed. A final reason offered by journalists can be treated briefly since most journalists offered this account as if it articulated a self-evident and universal truth: readers are simply not interested. The then deputy editor of the Telegraph observed, ‘I do think there is an increasingly widely held view that the biggest danger is boring the reader’ (Interview with author). The belief that no one reads parliamentary stories was widespread. Journalism is competitive and demand-led and shortage of space leads to sharp editorial judgements. The argument here goes full circle to the first argument about the ‘dumbing down’ of public taste. In an interview, Bevins offered a colourful comparison between journalists trying to persuade audiences to read parliamentary stories and teachers trying to keep their students’ attention: I think the public’s taste has changed . . . because of television, because of changes in society. Speak to any teacher and they will tell you how much more difficult it is to get the attention of students. How do you get the attention of a student whose attention span is as long as a soap, or a pop song or a video? I used to be a teacher but now teachers tell me there is nothing they can do short of taking their clothes off to get the attention of these children and similarly journalists find it difficult to attract the attention of readers unless they are taking their clothes off or other peoples’ clothes off. But if we are, then in that atmosphere to present them with a page of Parliamentary debate­– ­Christ! Even if only for this last reason, journalists believed reports of parliamentary proceedings will remain spiked for the foreseeable future.

’The First Draft of Journalism’; the Parliamentary Live Blog In the wake of this marked decline in newspapers’ parliamentary coverage at the turn of the 1990s, some journalists heralded the promise of web-based reporting of Parliament with considerable enthusiasm. Online reporting seemingly offered valuable affordances such as immediacy and interactivity, but especially the prospect of an increased plurality in sourcing parliamentary stories and a proliferation of contributions to Westminster news via citizen journalists. McKie concluded his Hansard Society report by declaring web technology ‘a saviour . . . a new champion of Parliamentary coverage, likely in time to transcend all that has gone before it’ (McKie 1999: 19).

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Journalistic celebrations of the ‘saviour’s’ arrival, however, were short-lived; the advantages of digital media more nuanced than journalists anticipated or imagined. Digital technology’s capacity for disintermediation, for example, which enabled the public to connect directly with their MPs, thereby reducing journalists’ traditional agenda setting and gatekeeping roles, rudely stemmed some of the early enthusiasm. The arrival of social media such as Twitter offered journalists similarly nuanced opportunities. On the one hand, Twitter delivered a novel source of political and parliamentary information, gossip and stories and a platform on which to publish journalists’ own thoughts and reports, as well as to develop their personal and professional brand. On the other hand, the anonymity afforded to those commenting on journalists’ news stories, as well as the lack of civility in some comments, prompted a deterioration in the public conversation and, on occasion, ‘hate speech’ and threats of physical and sexual violence. Women MPs have increasingly articulated their concerns about these matters and the reluctance of the Tech companies to take action. In March 2017, the Home Affairs Select Committee Chair Yvette Cooper criticised Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for procrastination in removing comments threatening violence against individually named women MPs.2 A growing concern with fake news (McNair 2018), and issues of transparency concerning how journalists might verify materials sourced from the internet and social media, have further dulled both journalistic and public enthusiasm for readers’ comments amid increasing calls to ‘clean up the fetid swamp’ (Wolfgang 2017). One innovative and digitally native editorial format which has been increasingly adopted by news organisations is the live blog. Initially limited to sports coverage (McEnnis 2015: 967–82), since 2005 live blogs have become a prominent format for reporting breaking news across a wide range of settings, from the aftermath of terrorist attacks (Wilczek and Blangetti, 2017) to the reporting of parliamentary debates (Wells 2011). Live blogs differ from conventional blogs in two significant ways. First, during a live blog journalists are continuously updating stories as events unfold, with facts, comment and analysis from a wide range of relevant sources (politicians’ and journalists’ tweets and other social media sources, hyperlinks connecting to data sets, archival footage of parliamentarians’ earlier speeches), which are relayed in real time to readers, whereas a blog offers simply ‘a written narrative constructed after the event’ (Thurman and Walters 2013: 83). This updating function explains why these early live blogs were initially dubbed ‘minute by minutes’ at The Guardian and ‘became a kind of conversation with

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readers rather than a finished product’ (Sparrow, Interview 16 June 2017). Second, the chronological ordering of live blogs is reversed so that the latest development in the news story is always readily accessible at the top of the blog. Consequently, Thurman and Walters define live blogs as ‘a single blog post on a specific topic to which time stamped content is progressively added for a finite period-anywhere between half an hour and 24 hours’ (Thurman and Walters 2013: 85). In his seminal essay ‘Why I Blog’, American journalist Andrew Sullivan identified the huge potential of blogs and suggested that ‘the interaction it enables between the writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era of journalism’ (Sullivan 2008). Andrew Sparrow who curates The Guardian’s Parliamentary Live Blog, shares Sullivan’s optimism, arguing that live blogging is centrally important to parliamentary reporting. Sparrow paraphrases Ben Bradlee’s memorable phrase to suggest that ‘if journalism is the first draft of history, then live blogging is the first draft of journalism’ (Sparrow, Interview 16 June 2017). Not everyone is persuaded. Journalist John Symes denounces blogs’ rejection of traditional journalistic writing formats, for triggering nothing less than ‘the death of journalism’ (Symes 2011). Research to date is scant, but suggests that live blogs give cause for optimism concerning parliamentary reporting on at least four counts. First, they are well regarded by journalists because they deliver a fulsome account of parliamentary proceedings judged superior to legacy media and driven less by the market constraints which, in the 1990s, consigned the ‘Parliamentary Pages’ to the editorial margins, if not the spike. Second, live blogs are engaging and popular with readers, enable their contribution to the reporting of debates and facilitate readers’ feedback indirectly via web analytics and directly through readers’ comments on journalists’ reports. Third, the live blog’s daily reports of proceedings in real time oblige journalists to pursue and reflect a genuine parliamentary agenda, thereby limiting (mostly) the distractions offered by news values to offer more ‘popular’ coverage. Finally, the live blog creates an ongoing daily archive of journalists’ reports and readers’ comments on parliamentary proceedings and debates (Sparrow, Interview 16 June 2017) which offers a rich lode of parliamentary information for scholars and journalists alike to mine. Journalists like Sparrow and Sullivan claim a number of advantages for live blogs. First, the blog format changes the journalist’s editorial ambition which becomes to establish an open-ended, interactive and continuing conversation with the reader rather than a limited and

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finite (in time and content) article for the audience to read. Second, that conversation takes place in real time although the structure of the blog may generate unusual sensations for the reader who, as they read the blog, have ‘the curious sense of moving backwards in time as [they] move forward in pages’ (Sullivan 2008: 2). Third, blogs can liberate journalists of a liberal disposition from the ‘ideological straitjacket’ of a newspaper’s partisan commitments. Sparrow recalls a colleague at the Mail whose blog was ‘more interesting than his newspaper journalism’ because copy too liberal for the paper could be ‘offloaded into his interesting, quirky and well written blog . . . he described it as “unloading his notebook”’ (Sparrow, Interview 16 June 2017). Fourth, blogging offers liberation from other organisational constraints. At the New Republic, Sullivan often ‘chafed . . . at the endless delays, revisions, office politics, editorial fights and last minute cuts for space that dead-tree publishing entails. Blogging . . . was intoxicatingly free in comparison’ (Sullivan 2008: 5). Fifth, blogs generate reader feedback which can be ‘instant, personal and brutal’ but preferable to writing columns which ‘were essentially monologues published to applause, muffled murmurs, silence or a distant heckle’ (Sullivan 2008: 6). Sixth, journalists incorporate hyperlinks into blogs which connect the reader with vast data sets and allow the blogger much greater editorial depth than print journalism. Seventh, blogs develop a distinctive relationship with the audience which is corrosive of deference. Sullivan notes that ‘when readers of my blog bump into me in person, they invariably address me as Andrew. Print readers don’t do that. It’s Mr. Sullivan to them’ (Sullivan 2008: 10). Finally, journalists learn from readers’ comments. Sparrow argues that although feedback can be negative it ultimately improves his reporting: People challenge you, they correct you on facts . . . but they also challenge your editorial judgement and your value judgments . . . Readers are like aggressive and demanding sub editors; they force you to be sure of your ground and justify your writing which I think is a good thing. I think being subject to this kind of scrutiny has improved my journalism. (Sparrow, Interview 16 June 2017) Live blogs moreover are popular with readers nationally and locally. Most major news organisations including The Guardian, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, FT.com and Al Jazeera host live blogs; The Guardian hosts 146 live blogs each month. Live blogs are also increasingly an ingredient in the local media diet of political and parliamentary news; the Manchester Evening News runs a daily live blog while the BBC hosts live blogs as part of local news provision

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in Birmingham, Derby and London (Thurman and Newman 2014: 655–6). Live blogs’ popularity with audiences is evidenced not only by their increasing provision but by the comparison of numbers of readers of an identified sample of reports across editorial formats, which showed that Guardian.co.uk Live Blogs enjoyed ‘median unique visitor numbers 233 per cent higher than conventional articles and 219 per cent higher than picture galleries on the same subject’ (Thurman and Newman 2014: 657). Consideration of ‘time spent reading’ as a further indicator of audience engagement, illustrated that average live blog visit times of six minutes and average engagement times of 12–24 minutes (across twenty-four hours), compared very favourably with visits to newspaper websites as a whole which in 2012 averaged 3.75 minutes for a visit to a US newspaper site (Thurman and Newman 2014: 658). A final measure of readers’ engagement with live blogs is the number of comments posted. Table 29.1 offers a list of live blog topics and the number of comments they attracted on Andrew Sparrow’s Guardian parliamentary live blog between 11 and 26 July 2017. Table 29.1 shows: an average of 5,071 comments across the last twelve live blogs ahead of summer recess 2017; a sharp decline in comments on Readers’ Edition blogs each Friday; that topic selection for the blog loyally reflects the parliamentary agenda but when the sample of live blogs is widened to include June 2017, it seems that the number of readers’ comments may reflect trending news topics for the day. Subjects which attracted the highest number of comments across Table 29.1  Number of comments posted on The Guardian parliamentary live blog, July 2017 Date

Topic

Comments posted

26 July 25 July 24 July 21 July 20 July 19 July 18 July 17 July 14 July 13 July 12 July 11 July

Gore and Chlorinated Chicken Trump Slams EU Fox EU Free Trade Deal Readers’ Edition Barnier: UK May Fail to get Trade Deal with EU May Warns ‘No Such Thing as Unsackable Minister’ May Given Green Light to Sack Disloyal Cabinet Ministers Greening Raids her own Budget Readers’ Edition Scottish and Welsh Governments May Orders Inquiry into Abuse of Parliamentary Candidates Davis Rejects claims Government has Softened Stand on Brexit

5,247 4,968 5,924 1,734 9,890 4,603 5,734 4,922   835 5,378 4,775 6,843

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June/July, for example, included the post-election cabinet reshuffle 21,763 (11 June); the Grenfell Cladding Test 12,027 (23 June); Tim Farron’s Resignation 10,677 (13 June) and Queen’s Speech 8,277 (28 June). The live blogs’ archive3 lists forty-two pages of blogs beginning on 24 May 2010 (367 comments) to 26 July 2017 (5,247 comments). Table 29.1 therefore offers data concerning not only the popularity of blogs for readers, but illustrates the extensive and expansive nature of the archive of multiplatform materials, involving contributions by journalists, politicians and readers, about parliamentary proceedings and debates at Westminster.

Newspaper Reporting of Parliament; Concluding Remarks Three summary points about newspaper reporting of Parliament are noteworthy. First, the history of newspaper reports, especially since the mid-twentieth century, reveals striking variations in the quantity and character of parliamentary reporting as well as journalists’ and editors’ appraisals of the editorial value of this particular journalistic beat. The demise of the gallery tradition which Sparrow dates from the late 1930s and the consequent flourishing of lobby journalism and sketch writing, was followed by the near total abandonment of the ‘Parliamentary pages’ in the newspapers of record, as well as the tabloids during the 1990s. The factors shaping this decision were complex, but the rapid decline in parliamentary reporting remains curious in the context of journalists’ energetic efforts to win access to Westminster across the preceding centuries. It also seems paradoxical that print journalists should be questioning the editorial value of parliamentary reporting at the same time their broadcast journalism colleagues finally won their protracted battle with parliamentarians to gain access to the Commons to engage in precisely that same editorial activity (Franklin 1992: 3–26). Second, it is important to acknowledge the significant role of technological developments for the unravelling history of press reporting of Parliament, without subscribing to any crude determinism. The arrival in the twentieth century firstly of radio reporting from Westminster (1978) and a decade later the commencement of television broadcasting from the Houses of Lords and Commons (1989 and 1990), provided competitor access to this important source of news which the printed press had previously enjoyed in monopoly. At the very close of the twentieth century and opening decades of the twentyfirst, the development and wide availability of web 2.0 technologies has been similarly significant in facilitating newspapers’ development

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of the innovative, digitally native, editorial format of the live blog and a changed relationship between journalists and readers characterised by immediacy and interactivity. The live blog delivers access to parliamentary debates on a ‘drive in basis’ which is free, instantaneous, accessed readily via mobile devices (tablets and telephony), with content on multiple platforms offering integrated hyperlinks to data sets as well as politicians’, journalists’ and readers’ tweets, making these blogs highly interactive. The innovation of the parliamentary live blog is that it hosts a debate (among readers, journalists, politicians and anyone who cares to log on) about (parliamentary) debates. Finally, journalists’ reporting of Parliament has typically been conducted in the context of politicians’ opposition; at times this been restrictive, forceful, even brutal, involving censorship, fines, harassment and the imprisonment of publishers, editors and journalists. At bottom, the conflict has been about the democratic consequences of reporting Parliament. This chapter began by stressing the democratic significance which journalists attribute to the coverage of Westminster by rehearsing Sparrow’s assertion that MPs’ initial reluctance to admit journalists into the House was their realisation that ‘being reported would make them accountable’ (Sparrow 2003: 3). Since the new millennium, the emergence of live blogging, with its ‘minute by minute’ updates, universal and free access, engagement with more plural sources of parliamentary news and opinion, together with the rise of the citizen journalist as readers become active participants in the production of news, have greatly enhanced the scrutiny of government and parliamentarians and the democratic potential of this innovative editorial format for parliamentary reporting. Significantly, democratic decision-making requires, perhaps even demands, this scrutiny. Schudson’s ‘unlovable press’ remains an essential ingredient in democratic governance although its character, roles and practices may shift radically.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank the following journalists for agreeing to be interviewed about newspapers’ parliamentary coverage: Anthony Bevins, Kim Fletcher, Simon Heffer, Simon Hoggart, Nicholas Jones, Trevor Kavanagh, Brian McArthur, Chris Moncrieff, Robin Oakley, Matthew Parris, Peter Riddell and Michael White. I am especially grateful to Andrew Sparrow for his willingness and enthusiasm to discuss the emergence of live blogs for reporting parliamentary and political news.

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Notes 1. Available at (last accessed 6 March 2020). 2. Available at (last accessed 6 March 2020). 3. Available at (last accessed 6 March 2020).

Chapter Thirty

EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING: THE UNDER-REPORTED LIFE OF THE WORKING CLASS Andrew Calcutt and Mark Beachill Introduction: Parliament Predominant

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  he relative success of the British parliamentary system has proved to be a crucial influence on extra-parliamentary reporting. Throughout the twentieth century, in as much as the majority population saw itself acknowledged, if not fully represented, in the parliamentary process, so many readers were often ill-disposed towards extra-parliamentary activity and took little interest in the coverage thereof. Meanwhile the recurring prospect of their own marginalisation prompted various responses on the part of particular publications aligned to different kinds of extra-parliamentary activity­ – ­from the interwar communist press and its efforts to embed itself in the life of the working class, to the implicit elitism of the underground press in the 1960s and 1970s, which all but reserved itself for an educated minority of hippies or ‘heads’. At the same time, mass-circulation newspapers have tended to treat extra-parliamentary activity as marginal, sometimes in a concerted attempt to prevent it becoming mainstream. To say that in this intent the mass media were largely successful, is also to say that extra-parliamentary journalism has struggled but often failed to come out from under the shadow of its senior partner­ – ­the parliamentary system and the primacy which professional journalism has afforded it. However, this does not mean that parliamentary democracy and its presentation in the mainstream press have provided the majority population with sufficient representation of its sociopolitical situation. Rather, it suggests that extra-parliamentary reporting has typically failed to capture the experience of the working class. Moreover, such 593

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reporting has been unwilling (sometimes) or unable (frequently) to remedy the extent to which working-class experience remained largely unrepresented in the parliamentary system and concomitant press coverage. Not that this failure was in any way pre-determined. The power struggle between classes was often in the balance. If there had been different outcomes in that struggle, no doubt the journalism which ensued would have been of a different order also.

World War and Class War In the early years of the twentieth century, social relations were determined in the political reaction to three, epoch-making occurrences­ – ­domestic class conflict (particularly intense in 1911–12), the First World War (1914–18), and the Russian Revolution (1917). In that extra-parliamentary reporting failed to present the full significance of such events to a sufficient readership, by default it added weight to Britain’s parliamentary system and the journalism associated with it. In the decades leading up to the First World War, the most militant workers in Britain took a keen interest in syndicalism­ – ­the movement for workers’ control where power is vested not in the state but in workers’ unions and, ultimately, a general union of all workers. This outlook was inherently hostile to parliament, which was seen as a pseudo-democratic front for the authoritarian bourgeois state. In the UK it found its clearest expression in The Miners’ Next Step (1912), a pamphlet prompted by disputes in the South Wales coalfield in which the syndicalist reorganisation of the miners’ union was seen as the essential precondition for political advance. The pamphlet was the culmination of discussion and debate among militant shop stewards. Hence The Miners’ Next Step was partly a report on recent developments, but it was also subtitled a suggested scheme for the re-organisation of the [South Wales Miners’] Federation. This combination­ – ­part report, part programme­ – ­is rooted in the pamphleteering tradition of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791) and Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto of 1848 (the latter begins with a vivid account of the onset of capitalist industrialisation). In their magisterial account of ‘the Fed’, Hywel Francis and David Smith note that the authors of The Miners’ Next Step (MNS 1912) were spurning conventional Labour parliamentary politics and ‘lauding the syndicalist virtues of direct industrial action’ (Francis and Smith 1980: 10). Such action was to begin with the rejection of union leaders who had become MPs and ‘gentlemen’, enjoying ‘considerable social

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­ restige’ derived from power which really belongs to rank and file p union members (MNS 1912: 8). Moreover, ‘the condition of things in South Wales’ had reached the point where ‘this difference of interest, this antagonism’ could not be remedied by ‘new leaders’­ – ­who would only follow the same parliamentary route (MNS 1912: 9). Instead of ‘the order and system’ which consigns members to the status of ‘“the men” or “the mob”’, the union must be rebuilt on the basis that the rank and file are ‘independent thinkers’ (MNS 1912: 14). Francis and Smith take this as ‘the clearest sign that the “advanced” thinkers in the coalfield clearly tied together the restructuring of their union with that reshaping of society they so desired’ (Francis and Smith 1980: 14). In London, meanwhile, the ‘strikes explosion of 1911–12’ put paid to ‘the false image of “union of all”’, which Stanley Harrison describes as ‘the basic success of the Victorian middle class’ (Harrison 1974: 159). That the Liberal press, such as the Manchester Guardian, afforded ‘a fairly high degree of public access to its columns’, along with the ‘paralysing tutelage’ in which the official labour movement ‘stood to the Liberal Party’, may have accounted for the failure to create a daily workers’ paper. Yet on 25 January 1911, ‘British slowness’ in this respect was set to change (Harrison 1974: 173). When Fleet Street compositors [typesetters] demanded a 48-hour week, they were locked out by their employers; and they, in turn, produced a strike sheet which soon developed into the Daily Herald. Trades’ Union Congress (TUC) support was withheld. The official labour movement, which looked towards parliamentary socialism, was planning a more moderate paper, the Daily Citizen, whereas the Herald gave prominence to the syndicalist sentiment that ‘Labour politics had failed the workers and that its leading figures were “all the same”’ (Harrison 1974: 174). Headed ‘The War That Really Matters’, industrial news took top priority while parliament was derided as ‘The House of Pretence’ (Harrison 1974: 175). The Herald reported the sinking of the RMS Titanic (1912) not only in terms of the loss of life, but specifically the loss of steerage-class passengers. In 1913 its support for the Irish workers’ union led by James Connolly and James Larkin again put it at odds with the official labour movement in Britain. As a daily paper, however, the Herald itself was ‘an almost immediate casualty of the outbreak of war’ in August 1914. According to Harrison, it was ‘swamped by flag-waving hysteria’, having failed to hold its own against the combination of war news and militarist feeling fomented in the Daily Express and Daily Mail. These papers represented a ‘new total communication medium’ matching the unprecedented development of ‘war on a total scale’ (Harrison 1974:

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180). Overnight, strike action could no longer be described as the only war that really mattered, and the Herald was outstripped not only by the popular press but also by the strength of pro-war sentiment across the political spectrum. The outbreak of war between imperialist nations and mobilisation for war had put the question of state power at the top of the agenda. Neither syndicalism nor its most prominent British publication was able to offer a sufficient answer. Indeed, there was no comprehensive response until 1917, when Lenin wrote The State and Revolution. Meanwhile in Britain and across Europe, the Left failed to convince working-class people to separate their independent interests from those of the nation state. A weekly version of the Herald carried ‘ceaseless denunciations’ of the war from Clydeside’s John Maclean (Harrison 1974: 185). Yet only a tiny minority was brave enough to support the Herald in its pacifist stance. The paper came to prominence once more in the period immediately following the cessation of hostilities, achieving audited circulation figures of 329, 869 (Harrison 1974: 187). By this time, however, the impact of the Russian Revolution had outstripped the influence of syndicalism; the possibility of proletarian dictatorship proved more commanding than the prospect of a general union. The Bolshevik slogan of October 1917, ‘all power to the soviets’, was a direct repudiation of parliamentarism. Thus, the Bolshevik-led revolution affirmed the supremacy of extra-parliamentary activity. Yet even

Figure 30.1  John MacLean, a schoolteacher and revolutionary socialist from Clydeside, who regularly denounced Britain’s involvement in the First World War in the Herald, 1919

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as the Left in Britain reoriented itself towards the Bolshevik exemplar (not without varying degrees of criticism), further divisions emerged as to journalism’s capacity to report on extra-parliamentary activity in the interests of the working class. Declarations of unity often masked underlying tensions.

Communism versus Journalism As the founding congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain (July 1920) collectively ‘repudiated the reformist view of socialism via parliament but supported parliamentary activity’ (Macfarlane 1966: 56), so there was consensus around the Leninist principle that journalism should be used to advance the class struggle, but not if taken on its own terms. Fledgling communist organisations readily adopted such principles but found them harder to implement. For members of the Bolshevik-led Communist International, communist journalism should ‘inoculate’ the working class against the professional practices of the bourgeois press’ (Pimlott 2013: 82). This meant deploying ‘party members who can write’ but not opening the door to professional journalists ‘who are also party members’ (Fogarasi [1921] 1983: 152). Since professional journalism had served the bourgeoisie as a form of class domination, the entire profession was seen as suspect. Pimlott suggests that extra-parliamentary reporting suffered considerably as a result of this blinkered approach (Pimlott 2013). Discarding the fact-finding capacity of professional reporters in order to follow the diktats of Moscow now seems absurd. However, this is to underestimate the significance of perhaps the primary fact of the period, namely, that the working class had revolutionised Russia in its own name. Similarly, rendering daily events in accordance with directions issued by the Soviet leadership, now seems nothing short of textbook propaganda, in sharp contrast to fact-based journalism. Again, this is to overlook the significance of working-class revolution as the overriding fact from which the Communist International derived its authority. Indeed, in advanced capitalist countries the categorical divide between journalism and propaganda arose at this time partly in the attempt to separate day-to-day facts from the epoch-making fact of Bolshevik revolution. Thus in 1925 the general manager of the Associated Press formulated a professional ‘creed’: ‘the journalist who deals in facts diligently developed and intelligently presented exalts his profession’ (Schudson 2008: 45). Whereas facts-in-isolation came to be the definition of journalism, facts in relation to revolution could now be dismissed as propaganda.

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In its various manifestations­ – ­Workers’ Weekly, Sunday Worker, Daily Worker, Workers’ Life­ – ­the interwar, communist-inspired press consistently prioritised class struggle rather than parliamentary process but equally consistently, it was dogged by the question as formulated by Lewis Young in his account of the Daily Worker: ‘internal party bulletin or paper of the working class movement?’ (Young 2016). Successive attempts were made to bring the aims of the party into close proximity with the life of the working class. Workers’ Weekly was launched in February 1923 and in its first year it received 2,500 letters and reports from local activists. Launch editor Rajani Palme Dutt built the circulation up to 51,000 within eight weeks, peaking at 80,000 in 1926, in the aftermath of the General Strike (Macfarlane 1966: 178). At the launch of the Daily Worker on 1 January 1930, its first editor William Rust noted that the CPGB ‘now had at its disposal a daily weapon for the advance of its agitation and propaganda’ (Rust and Eagle 2010: 39). Yet critics within the party complained that the paper was sometimes unaware of extra-parliamentary action such as industrial disputes; it needed stronger links with workers (Young 2016: 125). This was to be achieved through ‘worker correspondents’, hundreds of them, ‘immersed in the struggle’, writing and reporting from ‘the factories, pits and offices . . . allowing the Communist Party of Great Britain to argue that through its paper it spoke with the voice of British workers’ (Young 2016: 128). In Pimlott’s analysis, the problem of communism versus journalism was writ large in the marginalisation of G. Allen Hutt, a CPGB stalwart and an award-winning newspaper designer and production journalist whose professionalism ‘enabled the Daily Worker to meet the schedules of newspaper production and distribution’ (Pimlott 2013: 81). Although highly regarded elsewhere, Hutt was passed over by the CPGB leadership ‘for both of that newspaper’s top posts . . . on more than one occasion’ (ibid.). Pimlott seems to suggest that a dialectic of journalism and communism, as envisaged by Hutt but thwarted by CPGB leaders, might have made far more of an impression on the British working class. Here the inference is that communist priorities were to blame for the limited development of left-wing journalism; a doctrinaire party leadership was so much the communist that it could not but obstruct the journalist. Perhaps it was not communism per se which stunted the growth of extra-parliamentary reporting. Instead, failure to engage the majority of the working class in an account of its own struggles, may have been derived from the degeneration of communism along Stalinist lines.

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This would suggest that the problem for left-wing journalism in Britain was not too much communism, but too little. Writing in Left Review in 1935, Montagu Slater had complained that ‘descriptive reporting is something which the tabloid press has almost replaced by wisecracks, which the revolutionary press has no room for’ (Laing 1980: 142). Looking back at the formation of Mass Observation­ – ­a concerted attempt to record everyday life among the masses, Laing discerns ‘the desire for a literary equivalent of the documentary film’ (Laing 1980: 144). Reporting on the everyday struggles of the working class, writers linked to Mass Observation such as John Sommerfield aimed to combine ‘detailed peculiarity . . . with a synthetic and generalised perspective which goes beyond the facts and discovers the truth’, thereby, in the words of Storm Jameson, revealing ‘relations between things’­ – ­or the extent of their ‘co-ordination’, as Mass Observation more modestly described it (Laing 1980: 158).

Observing the Mass, Pressing for Change Rather than the CPGB, it was the spirit of Mass Observation which influenced popular print publications during the Second World War (1939–45). Combining photographs with captions (the latter, however extensive, were always subordinate to the former), the magazine Picture Post enacted ‘the conviction that the lives of ordinary people could be shown . . . to be . . . of worth . . . Such individuals were to be photographed as if they might have been subjects for Rembrandt’ (Kee 1989: 9). Within six months of its debut in October 1938, Picture Post was selling a million and a half copies, with an ‘average calculated readership of five per copy’ (Kee 1989: 10). The Daily Mirror is thought to have reached ‘eleven million ­readers in 1945, although printed copies averaged 2,400,000 daily’ (Smith 1975: 62). Smith notes that ‘an astonishing proportion of the paper . . . was given to readers’ letters and stories derived from readers’ own experiences’ (Smith 1975: 63). Here was the realisation of the communist project to recruit thousands of worker-correspondents engaged in the reporting of extra-parliamentary activity; except it had been realised in pursuit of class consensus and the anti-fascist war effort, rather than the conduct of class war.

New Society versus the Underground The Mirror may have reflected the nation in time of war and its immediate aftermath, but Smith notes that it was not well-equipped to

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address subsequent extra-parliamentary developments such as (relative) prosperity and its effects on youth. In the 1960s, various new publications attempted this role, of which almost all were notably distant from the working class. The pilot issue of New Society (Volume 0, No. 0) was published on 20 August 1962. The introductory statement by editor Timothy Raison declares that ‘the aim of NEW SOCIETY [caps in the original] is to cover the whole field of society and the social sciences’. Before New Society, Raison had been a scholarship boy at the Dragon School and Eton College. After Christ Church, Oxford, he worked briefly on Picture Post, where his father was managing editor, and for five years at New Scientist. Having stepped down as New Society editor in 1968, he became a Conservative MP and a senior minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government. Thus Raison’s later career path was in line with Britain’s shift to the Right after 1979 but its earlier phase, as reflected in New Society, was the epitome of political consensus in pursuit of a classless society. Embellished with line drawings and spot colour (such were the technological limitations of the time), the pages of Raison’s weekly magazine were sober, scientific and rational. Progress, they seemed to say, will be brought about by a meritocratic bureaucracy; such progress will be sustained as long as the bureaucracy is nourished by its intellectual wing­– ­the social sciences. The front cover for ‘the social science weekly’ of 28 March 1963 is a case in point. The cover story is ‘Adolescent Values’, the first part of a ‘new series’ by E. M. Eppel. The accompanying illustration by John Plant, foregrounds a truculent teenager sitting with fists clenched in an easy chair, while in the background a man in a suit looks on with concern. Is he a psychiatrist, a magistrate, social worker or head teacher? He is undoubtedly a professional, backed up by a bureaucracy, whose job it is to find out what ails this youth, and guide him towards reconciliation with society and himself. For New Society, sustaining cross-class integration seems to have been the priority, and its primary agents were the burgeoning professionals of publicly funded bureaucracy. The working class, meanwhile, was seen as sitting there waiting to be acted upon. Four years later, a new publication was launched in explicit opposition to such bureaucratic certainties. Was it entitled International Times, or IT, or it? Whatever the masthead said, there was always an accompanying image of a silent film actress­ – ­but why was Theda Bara depicted instead of the original ‘It Girl’, Clara Bow? The mistake, which, wilfully uncorrected, remained part of the paper’s page

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f­ urniture, was the foremost indication of the fortnightly title’s deliberate disorganisation, as further expounded in the editor’s letter for the launch issue (14–27 October 1966): Just as I was nearing the end of that last paragraph, a typical IT anti-office event took place: the man who owned the typewriter I was using came in. I had to move off quickly and find another office with another typewriter . . . Forget all that crap I wrote above. IT is just for fun . . . Remember that. Forget it! It’s quarter past eleven. (McGrath 1966) IT’s anarchic combination of culture and extra-parliamentary politics was evident from the outset. The first issue contained the poem ‘Make or Break’, written by Adrian Mitchell for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s anti-Vietnam War stage show, US, which opened in London only hours after Tom McGrath finished typing his editor’s letter. In addition to the politics of public life, IT also anticipated the idea of the personal as political with the declaration that ‘change begins with you’ (Fountain 1988: 31). In its early issues it was recognisably a newspaper, with campaigning front pages featuring, for example, a Christmas message to the Queen (12–25 December 1966), the call to ‘arrest the home secretary’ (30 January­ – ­12 February 1967), and the ‘injustice’ of Aberfan (14–27 November 1966), a reference to the mining disaster in which a whole slag heap rolled down a South Wales hillside and crashed into the primary school below, killing 144 people­ – ­most of them children. As the 1960s wore on and the drugs kicked in, the paper’s front pages became more like album covers. Moreover, in IT’s self-declared role as ‘the orgone of the disestablished’, the inside pages were refocused away from the mainstream agenda. IT was increasingly concerned with the counter-culture’s capacity to defend itself against respectable opinion and authoritarian state attacks. In 1971 author and barrister John Mortimer defended Richard Neville, Jim Anderson and Felix Dennis, the three editors of Oz magazine, after the sexually provocative School Kids’ Issue (produced and guest-edited by pupils) was indicted under the Obscene Publications Act (1959). Oz had been launched in January 1967 by Neville, a recent arrival from Australia, who remembered the early issues as ‘an uncomfortable hybrid of satire, Sunday journalism and pirated underground titbits’ (Fountain 1988: 45). At the Old Bailey, the trio was convicted but their convictions were quashed on appeal. Years afterwards, Mortimer described Oz as ‘a load of rubbish . . . we were defending a principle . ..that you shouldn’t have any censorship’ (Mortimer 2017). Yet among the counter-culturati of the time, the magazine was highly

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regarded not least for its innovative, psychedelic design. Meanwhile in the eyes of mainstream media, founder-editor Richard Neville and his partner Louise Ferrier were ‘the archetypal underground beautiful couple’, who sailed ‘through the submarine defences of the class system’ (Fountain 1988: 41). Fountain notes that the most consistent advertiser in the underground press was Magnaphall, offering what he describes as ‘larger and more reliable erections for those male members . . . wilting under the strain of the sexual competitiveness of the era’ (Fountain 1988: 59). Yet in representing heterosexual promiscuity as the antidote to bureaucracy, on the cusp of the 1970s both IT and Oz were out of step with the latest incarnation of radicalism, as set out in the founding conference of the UK women’s movement in Oxford. ‘While some people prepared for the Oxford conference’, observes Fountain, ‘Oz ended 1969 with an image of Louise Ferrier, looking every inch the beautiful woman of the male hippy dream’ (Fountain 1988: 105).

Counter to the Working Class If in the early 1970s the counterculture was sub-dividing between pornographic and pro-feminist factions, it remained uniformly distant from the working class. The very term ‘underground press’ implied a cultural space as far removed from the council estate as from parliament or the boardroom. Retrospectively, journalist and radio host Robert Elms opined that ‘the post-68 generation basically despised the material aspirations of the working class’ (Mort 1996: 41). At the time, such hostile sentiments were not normally expressed outright; rather they were articulated with preferences which tended to exclude working-class people. Thus there were hopes of a ‘new order’ created ‘incidentally, as the result of everybody eating much more brown rice, listening to the Grateful Dead, smoking hash rather than drinking beer’ (Hutchinson 1992: 124). Similarly, IT and Oz journalist Richard Trench hoped that ‘everybody would work less, everybody would become middle class like us, everybody would read poetry like us’ (Green 1989: 129). If the counter-culture ‘possessed a superior way of life and a superior insight into the nature of the universe’ (Eisen 1979: 163), whenever the ‘new generation’ addressed the rest of the population, its ‘task’ was ‘to be the teacher of their fellow men and women’ (Reich 1971: 246). While luminaries such as IT co-founder John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins admitted that they ‘gave up politics’ after Labour prime minister Harold Wilson ‘dumped disarmament as soon as he was elected’ (Green 1989: 125), commentators and sociologists

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from the previous generation criticised the counter-culture for ‘two extremes of elitism­– ­one in which it saw itself as the chosen generation of future leaders . . . and the other, an aimless, directionless protest against the system, as an embittered last stand of the children’s world’ (Feuer 1969: 389). In the 1960s it was plausible for extra-parliamentary reporting to think of the working class as having been contained within a system of broadly consensual bureaucracy. Such was the level of social consensus it was even possible not to think of it at all, as the underground press preferred to do. During the 1970s and especially in the 1980s, however, class conflict made its way back onto the national agenda, and the class question came into its own during the Miners’ Strike of 1984–5.

Misreporting the Miners The strike was initiated by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government which sought to shut down the union-backed consensus of the post-Second World War period by restating the manager’s right to manage. The government had built up coal stocks and drawn up policing strategies before it provoked the strike by listing five collieries for closure in March 1984, just as demand for winter coal was waning. The Barnsley Chronicle was the local newspaper which covered the geographical area at the centre of the dispute. In 1984 the biggest story of the decade landed on its doorstep. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was headquartered in Barnsley; so too was the National Coal Board (NCB). The town was also home turf to militant trade unionists across the South Yorkshire coalfield. The Chronicle, a weekly with a circulation at the start of the strike of around 33,000 (2 March 1984), served the mining town (population 75,000) and the numerous pit villages nestled around it. Most, if not all, its readers would know people involved in the miners’ dispute and thousands would be directly affected. The newspaper’s treatment of the story highlights the limits of traditional journalism. The Chronicle tended to cover the strike and its politics through the reporting of official statements and sources. It replicated what Hallin, in reference to coverage of the Vietnam War, described as an ‘over-reliance on official sources’ (1986: 72). Thus the media, while formally independent, readily create a version of events in which unofficial views are normally inadmissible. The creed of journalistic objectivity may be upheld in a routine sense; meanwhile the journalist does little to challenge, question or counter official pronouncements. In this instance, the views of the police, local councillors

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and other moral entrepreneurs may have resonated with the opinions of many of the Chronicle’s readers, further curtailing already limited horizons. In the Chronicle, oft-cited authorities included not just the government, the police and employers but also Labour voices such as the Barnsley MP, Roy Mason, and members of Barnsley Council and the now-defunct South Yorkshire County Council. Further statements issued from various levels in the hierarchy of the NUM were also prominent. The Chronicle’s reporting of the strike was in formal terms strictly non-partisan. The paper did not seem to have much of an editorial line; what little there was did not appear to determine how the strike was reported. Pronouncements by Labour groups and the NUM which were marginalised, ignored or reviled in the national press, were reported accurately in the Chronicle. The vitriol against miners and especially against Arthur Scargill, their firebrand leader, was notably absent. Yet the coverage remained limited in scope. For example, in a story headlined ‘Miners not pressing for vote’ (13 April 1984), the Chronicle reported the Yorkshire miners’ crucial decision to oppose a national strike ballot, using only one source described as a ‘senior NUM official in Barnsley’. No clear reason was given for the union delegates’ decision, no direct quotes were used and no opinion from miners solicited. In another example, ‘Pickets fell foul of law’ (18 May 1984), the Chronicle reported that Terry Patchett, MP for Barnsley East, was to take up specific complaints of police harassment and raise them with the home secretary. The MP was quoted, but the miners themselves did not feature. The overwhelming presence of official viewpoints is in stark contrast to the near-invisibility of front-line participants. They barely made an appearance and their views did not seem to merit quotation. Deference to dry official pronouncements­ – ­albeit from all sides­ – ­came at the expense of personalisation and investigation. Those on strike were absent both as real people and as actors in historic events. Consequently, there was little sense of what the miners were going through, still less an understanding of what they were seeking to achieve. Those outside officialdom were sometimes acknowledged as representatives of quasi-humanitarian support mechanisms such as soup kitchens. Again, such reports were mainly factual and relied on snippets rather than extensive quotation. Seldom were the voices and stories of those involved, further developed. Two notable exceptions from a year of such coverage were ‘Police in riot gear did this, say miners’ (17 August 1984), and ‘Battling Brampton:

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A Special Report’ (3 August 1984). These were powerful stories which allowed miners to speak in their own voices, giving a sense of how they felt and how they understood what had happened­– ­but they are all the more remarkable for being so rare. When police stations were attacked or where pickets were beaten by roving squads of police, participants or eyewitnesses were seldom referred to directly. Where some details emerged, they were predominantly seen through the narrow confines of court reports arising from the subsequent prosecutions of miners. Yet reporting what a miner might say before the court, brings a very particular character to the belated reporting of the events in question. The organising principle of the Chronicle’s coverage seems to have been the idea of civic pride. Some of the coverage of the dispute was focused on civic-minded efforts to give aid to miners and their families. Meanwhile a stream of unrelated stories about scoutmasters, debating teams, etc. continued to appear throughout the year-long dispute. With hindsight, the juxtaposition of local journalism staples alongside this epoch-making conflict, makes it seem as if the town existed in two time periods at once. It is notable that the only strike-related campaign which the Chronicle lent its name to was a crime-watch scheme prompted by a combination of near-destitute miners and police preoccupied with their paramilitary role in repressing the dispute (28 September 1984). The Chronicle was founded in 1858 and it remains privately owned. Its circulation in the last few years has been approximately 23,000­ – ­below the 30,000 of the 1980s but seemingly sustainable. Within the past decade the paper has featured in discussions sponsored by the Rowntree Trust on how to maintain the local press when so many titles are closing down (Levy and Picard 2017: 41). The Barnsley Chronicle may manage to survive but in the historic moment of 1984–5 the paper’s civic pride approach was both too narrow, in that it attempted to take no political stance, and too broad, in that it failed to bring alive the specific struggles of the miners. Thus the newspaper serving the locality in which the miners’ union was headquartered proved unable to capture the extra-parliamentary activity of the miners themselves. Meanwhile, a key factor in the defeat of the labour movement in Britain was its parochialism­ – ­its reliance on local tradition and reluctance to engage in open political debate. Accordingly, the NUM leadership that refused to organise a nationwide strike ballot, thereby conceded what might have been a democratic mandate for national strike action. At the height of its confrontation with the Conservative govern-

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ment, organised labour in Britain was barely connected to Irish Republicanism and its simultaneous struggle against the British state. After their own pitched battles with paramilitary police, while disillusioned with local MPs and contemptuous of Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, even the most militant miners knew little of An Phoblacht/ Republican News (AP/RN). Yet by dint of its connection to the Provisional IRA and its political wing, Sinn Féin, whose elected members still refuse to take their parliamentary seats or swear allegiance to the Crown, this paper has been an exemplar of extra-parliamentary reporting in the disputed territory of the United Kingdom.

Irish War Reporting With prominent republican Danny Morrison as its inaugural editor, AP/RN was formed in 1979 from Sinn Féin’s two pre-existing papers, An Phoblacht and Republican News, hitherto operating in the twentysix counties of the South and the six counties of the North of Ireland, respectively. According to Sinn Féin, AP/RN sales peaked at 60,000 in May 1981, after the death of hunger-striker Bobby Sands following his election as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, stabilising at approximately 15,000 a week (Baker 2005: 379). Until the mid-1990s its ‘war news’ coverage was the core of the paper but as the various parties moved towards the Good Friday Agreement and a ceasefire on the part of the IRA, AP/RN came to be known primarily as an important channel for the dissemination of Sinn Féin’s political position. Weekly publication dropped to monthly, and, as of the end of 2017, the print run ceased altogether; AP/RN is now an online title only (An Phoblacht 2017). In Britain, while the war was on, young Irish men in pubs and clubs frequently purchased copies of AP/RN, although they often left them behind when ‘time’ was called. Meanwhile, an older readership gravitated towards the Irish Post, launched in February 1970 by Brendan Mac Lua and designed to serve Irish people in Britain who were ‘craving a publication they could call their own’ (Breatnach 2010). According to Baker, AP/RN has offered Sinn Féin ‘a way in which to publicise its politics and counter-act government propaganda, especially at a time when republicans were excluded from mainstream news’ (2005: 379), e.g. during the broadcasting ban introduced by the British government in 1988. Atton found in AP/RN ‘much in common with the economic and cultural characteristics of the alternative media’, including ‘ramshackle, squatted premises, extremely limited resources . . . “underground” printing, hole-and-corner publishing, on occasion

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producing single page emergency editions “on the run”’ (Atton 2002: 117). On the other hand, as well as tabloid influences, the design of AP/ RN seems to have drawn more from the presentational style of Irish Catholic literature (prayer books and hymnals, etc.), rather than the psychedelia reflected in IT or Oz. The defeat of the miners in March 1985 signalled that the Thatcherled Conservative government was set to break the power of the unions, thereby reducing the British working class to a weightlessness not seen since the nineteenth century. The case study of the Barnsley Chronicle suggests that the local press by no means rose to the occasion. Would the radical press fare better? The performance of this sector is reflected in the development of two left-wing magazines, Marxism Today and Living Marxism/LM.

Declining Class Launched in 1957 in an attempt to stem the ebbing tide of intellectuals leaving the CPGB after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, Marxism Today had continued as ‘the stereotype of a Marxist journal’ (Pimlott 2006: 799) until its second editor, Martin Jacques, first transformed it into a news-stand magazine in the style of the New Statesman, before re-making it again in its ‘third and largest format’ which ‘revealed influences from consumer, women’s and style magazines including The Face’ (Pimlott 2006: 791). Jacques commissioned articles from a wide range of contributors (none was paid), inside and notably outside the Communist Party. The magazine made extensive use of open debating formats such as the round table. For example, in the context of Liverpool MP David Alton’s repeated attempts to curtail access to abortion, in January 1988 Marxism Today featured the edited transcript of a round-table discussion which included the views of consultant obstetrician Wendy Savage along with those of New Right MP Teresa Gorman and veteran Labour feminist and left-winger, Jo Richardson MP. Jacques ensured that the magazine, which in October 1981 became available in newsagents nationwide, also benefited from a marketing strategy that played off ‘the contradiction between public expectations of a Marxist Journal and Marxism Today’s editorial content and writing style’ (Pimlott 2006: 786). Alongside its changing format, Marxism Today developed a new stance towards the working class. No longer the singular subject of history, as in the Marxian adaptation of Hegel, workers and their labour movement were put on a par with various ‘new social movements’ comprising a ‘broad democratic alliance’ (Pimlott 2006: 789). When in

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an article entitled ‘The Forward March of Labour Halted’ (Hobsbawm 1978: 279–86) historian Eric Hobsbawm anticipated the writing on the wall for the official labour movement, Marxism Today was the wall on which he wrote it. In his Thatcherism thesis, premiered in Marxism Today (Hall 1979: 14–20), Cultural Studies’ leading theorist Stuart Hall went further: sections of the working class had signed up for Margaret Thatcher’s brand of authoritarian populism, putting themselves at odds with the progressive demands of new social movements. In 1988 Marxism Today published New Times, a combination of manifesto and analysis compiled by Hall and Jacques, in which working class pre-eminence was consigned to the previous era of Fordism­– ­and thus to the dustbin of history, while today’s new times were said to be distinctively post-Fordist, i.e. not to be determined by the proletariat playing the historically decisive role. What remained to distinguish Marxism Today’s extra-parliamentary reporting from that of the mainstream press? Pimlott notes approvingly that there were ‘no discrepancies between the denotation and connotation of words used in Marxism Today articles and those used in the leading, centre-left broadsheet, The Guardian, which was engaged in covering similar subject matter . . . reprinting, with four other broadsheets, forty-three Marxism Today articles and drawing extensively on scores more as sources for news stories’ (Pimlott 2006: 799). This confirms the existence of ‘a continuum’ between mainstream and alternative media, as suggested by Harcup (2005) and Atton (2002), ‘with people, ideas and practices moving along . . . in both directions’ (Harcup 2005: 370). Harcup warns of alternative media being exploited for research and development purposes, as record industry majors regularly utilise independent record companies. Having seemingly served such a purpose, Marxism Today ceased publication in 1991.

Vacuous Elites Living Marxism was launched in 1988 by the Revolutionary Communist Party. Editor Mick Hume recognised the formal innovations of Marxism Today. Bringing in outside columnists such as Frank Cottrell Boyce, he sought to emulate Marxism Today’s success in terms of public profile, without capitulating politically, especially in regard to the putative role of the working class. Emerging from a Trotskyist tradition, Living Marxism regarded the fall of the Berlin Wall, collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War as ‘history unfreezing’­– ­a re-awakening of threats and opportunities which had been largely contained since the Second World War.

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In the early 1990s, Living Marxism exposed the political vacuum at the heart of British society, suggesting that Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party lacked the momentum to oust even an exhausted Conservative administration. Contrary to fashionable opinion, this suggestion was based on a series of original investigations which revealed workingclass people so far removed from politics that they were unlikely to muster much enthusiasm for parliamentary elections. Accordingly, in the run-up to the May 1992 general election which returned John Major to Downing Street, a report from the constituency of Swindon was headlined ‘No Contest’ (Living Marxism, April 1992). The seat was shown to be as marginal as the people of the town were apolitical: ‘the mood is cynical but passive, with no sense of connection either with the existing system or with any alternative way of running society. Whoever wins the 1992 election . . . the celebrations are likely to be muted’ (Calcutt 1992). In the May issue, written to coincide with the general election, Hume’s editorial was entitled ‘Is This It?’ (Hume 1992: 4–5). Amongst the ‘negative politics’ from all the ‘grey men’, he noted ‘not one inspiring idea’. From the mid-1990s onwards, Living Marxism issued a challenge to the ‘culture of low expectations’, indicting Western elites as its authors. An article by Frank Furedi, who was for this magazine as intellectually pre-eminent as Stuart Hall had been for Marxism Today, was introduced as follows: ‘All the fuss about “dumbing down” appears to assume that people are becoming more stupid. On the contrary, says Frank Furedi, it is society’s elites that have lowered their standards and embraced the banal’ (Furedi 1999). During the fashion for rebranding which occurred in the second half of the 1990s­ – ­the Labour Party becoming New Labour, the UK rebranding itself as Creative Britain­ – ­Living Marxism took the opportunity to rebrand as LM, further distancing itself from the anachronistic Left. With the emergence under New Labour of what Nolan described, in the American context, as ‘the therapeutic state’ (Nolan 1998), LM sought to critique the elite for projecting its own existential crisis onto international affairs; the magazine also challenged what Hume and Furedi identified as a cult of victimhood. Thus in the September 1999 issue, Hume referred to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo as ‘the first therapeutic war’, noting that ‘the primary motive’ was ‘to create a consensus of values and a purposeful sense of community within the political elites of Western societies themselves’ (Hume 1999). By that time he and LM were already embroiled in a libel suit brought by Independent Television News (ITN). In its relaunch issue (February 1997), LM had challenged what Entman (1993: 51–8) might

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have categorised as ITN’s ‘framing’ of footage from the Trnopolje camp in Bosnia. When the case finally came to London’s High Court at the end of February 2000, after expert witnesses for the defence had been excluded, according to Hume’s account of Nick Higham’s BBC News report that evening, the summing up proceeded as follows: ‘Mr Justice Morland told the jury that LM’s facts might have been right, but, he asked, did that matter?’ (Hume and Tait 2000). ITN won the case. Facing damages and legal costs, LM closed down; and in the Daily Telegraph ITN’s editor-in-chief Richard Tait declared that ‘ITN has struck a blow for free speech’ (Tait 2000: 21). In line with Lenin’s earlier configuration of the potential relationship between communism and journalism, LM showed that a glossy magazine format need not prohibit revolutionary content. What mattered to Lenin was the dynamic underlying the content, and its orientation towards the working class. Accordingly, Hume’s magazine began in the attempt to capture current affairs in the interests of the international working class. Yet Living Marxism was not deeply rooted in that class; neither was LM’s intermittent connection to the intelligentsia sufficient to save it from forcible closure. Since LM’s demise a new generation of magazines has emerged which depict political, cultural and social issues as if from the vantage point of a young executive en route between global destinations. Subtitled ‘a briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design’, Tyler Brûlé’s Monocle, launched in March 2007, is the most explicit example of extra-parliamentary reporting addressed to free-floating readers who have been described as the ‘anywheres’ of a new globalism (Goodhart 2017). Journalism couched in such terms is anything but intimate with the ‘somewheres’ of this new world order, i.e. the working-class people in no position to board the next plane carrying copies of a postglossy magazine. In 2016 and again in 2017 the surprising results at successive polls (the UK EU Referendum and the US presidential ­election) underlined the unpredictability of a world where what passes for reporting remains so far removed from the life of the extra-­ parliamentary majority. Perhaps the recurring weakness of extra-parliamentary reporting will finally be overcome by recent developments in hyper-local newspaper publishing, such as the highly regarded Hackney Citizen, founded by Keith Magnum in 2008. After ten years’ innovation and self-­ sacrifice on Magnum’s part, however, it remains uncertain whether his brand of local reporting will make sufficient inroads into the boroughwide populus which it seeks to serve.

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Outside the walls of Westminster, the World Wide Web may yet allow a new generation to lay claim to their own locality by establishing themselves as its primary reporters. Time will tell.

Chapter Thirty-One

SCIENCE AND THE PRESS Robert Bud

Introduction

A

t the dawn of the twentieth century, The Scotsman newspaper predicted in an article titled ‘The Poetry of the Twentieth Century’ that the new era would be characterised by science (The Scotsman, 21 January 1901, p. 10). Even if news of its achievements, unlike news of politics or even the performing arts, remained outside the core of the content of the general press in the United Kingdom, throughout the century, science had significant meaning in the public sphere. Beyond knowledge, it denoted the qualities of modern civilisation. Recent research has discarded the concept of ‘popularisation’ as diluted expert knowledge, and the presentation of science in the public sphere is now seen as its own rich and distinctive cultural activity (Bensaude-Vincent 2001; Cooter and Pumphrey 1994). Although studies of science in the public sphere have, until recently, concentrated most on the nineteenth-century context, the twentieth century has been explored through a conjuncture of interests from different fields (see Gregory and Miller 1998). Arne Schirrmacher, a leading interpreter of the German press, has focused attention to what he calls, following Foucault, the ‘dispositif’ or net of science communications institutions that have defined the conditions of this science communication’ (Schirrmacher 2013). This points to the material but also cultural infrastructure that has underpinned talk about science in the public sphere (Nieto-Galan 2016). Newspaper talk about science can be understood as one part of its construction in the public sphere.

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Science, the Press and Ambivalence in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century Historians’ neglect of science and the media in the twentieth century began to be addressed from the end of the 1970s by doctoral dissertations, several of which became important books (LaFollette 1979; LaFollette 1990; Lewenstein 1987; Broks 1988; Broks 1996). Based on a study of eight popular magazines, Broks showed that there was considerable interest in science in the press at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tone of treatment of new technological developments became, however, much darker in the years after the Boer War. He argues that even in the reputedly balmy Edwardian days there was

Figure 31.1  ‘Nikola Tesla holding in his hands balls of flame’, by Warwick Goble. Illustration from the article by Chauncy Montgomery M’Govern, ‘The New Wizard of the West: An interview with Tesla’, Pearson’s Magazine, May 1899

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growing concern about pollution, health and unemployment. Broks’s selection of magazines, including Pearson’s Magazine and Tit-bits, published ‘worries over food additives and preservatives, concern about air pollution from smog and petrol fumes’, and articles on technology bringing new health hazards and unemployment. (Broks 1993: 134). At the start of the twentieth century, there were of course longstanding science magazines, pre-eminently Nature, which had been founded in 1869, for the specialist (Baldwin 2015). Such journals in general will not be the subject of this chapter. Alongside these, however, were such highbrow general magazines as The Athenaeum, which published frequent articles about science, as has been shown by Peter Bowler (2009). He and Anna Mayer discuss other more specialised magazines such as Discovery and Conquest established in the wake of a First World War debate about the place of science in British culture (Mayer 2000). New audiences of self-educators who had benefitted from the 1902 Education Act, which established a national system of secondary education, and from technical training in the First World War, created a huge market for both news about science and information about the world. The First World War magnified concerns about the impact of science. Poison gas introduced on the Western front in April 1915 was closely associated with chemistry and its ‘product champion’, Fritz Haber, was a world-famous scientist (Girard 2002: 205; see also Girard 2008). Girard points out that visual representations were even more common than verbal representations. She explores the use of cartoons, photographs and artists’ renditions and the effects of censorship. In some treatments, the entire burden was the evil of the Germans who had introduced this uncivilised means of warfare, but this approach proved unsustainable when the British followed suit. A second treatment was that the British had fallen behind the Germans and had to keep up even in the devilish techniques of gas warfare so that they could also compete in the commercial conflict that would follow the war. In the post-war years, reflection on science came to be intimately connected with talk about ‘modern civilisation’. Debates in such institutions as the Baldock Wesley Guild were reported in the local press. In an article titled ‘Hedon: Wesley Guild Debate’, a reporter quoted the comment, ‘In the Great War all the knowledge and scientific discoveries were brought into operation for destruction of human life and causing suffering that, would have made a savage blush with shame’ (Hull Daily Mail, 1 March 1927, p. 5). In contrast to such anxieties, during the 1920s there was remarkable public interest in the abstruse science of relativity theory. The ­process

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by which Einstein became a celebrity and the theory of relativity became a staple even of the popular press has attracted recent scholarly attention. Katy Price has pointed to the dominance of ‘Comments about mathematical difficulty and scientific rejection of common sense’ but also the fascination with the eccentric figure of Einstein himself and the subversion of tradition in newspapers ranging from the Daily Mail to The Times (Price 2012: 16–41). In part, the intense press treatment of Einstein’s work can be explained too by the interest of publishers in the direction of culture. To explain this, Michael H. Whitworth has argued that some of the ‘most significant generalist British journals of the period’, including both the Nation and the Athenaeum were owned by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, and placed a value on the treatment of science which went beyond a ‘narrowly analytic mode of accounting’ (Whitworth 2002: 39). Thanks to recent work, particularly of Bowler (2009), we have learned much about the popular enthusiast press. Popular science magazines enthused generations of young people with uncomplicated accounts of triumph. The columns of popular science during the interwar years were thickly populated by the articles of ‘Professor’ Low, whose title was self-awarded. An enthusiast for gadgets he wrote prolifically and enthusiastically, if not expertly. Bowler suggests, however, that distinctly scientific issues were also dealt with by many professional scientists willing and able to write for the press, if only for the more serious newspapers. His thesis is that ‘a significant proportion of Britain’s scientists tried their hand at non-specialist writing, and some of them made a regular habit of it’ (Bowler 2009: 3). The enthusiasm of leading scientists to promote their press visibility was indicated by the distinguished physicist W. H. Bragg. In the wake of the First World War he pushed the first history of science courses to be offered at University College London, intended as grounding for future science journalists as an option in the new University of London Diploma in Journalism (Wolf 1931; Smeaton 1997). The active lobby for science in early twentieth-century Britain was represented most vocally by the British Science Guild and, more enduringly, by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose annual meetings were themselves documented extensively in the press before the Second World War. Certainly the press, often drawing on freelance contributors increasingly covered science. Peter Chalmers Mitchell, a zoologist who was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London supplemented his income there by writing in The Times for many years. Specialist science journalism emerged in Britain between the wars, though more slowly than across the Atlantic. The

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former Cambridge physics student J. G. Crowther published columns in the Manchester Guardian during the 1920s (Hughes 2007). Early in the following decade, Peter Ritchie Calder (publishing under the name Ritchie Calder), a journalist hitherto specialising in sport at the trade-union Daily Herald, persuaded his paper that he should focus on science (Calder 1934). Specialist journalists were, however, but a small minority of those who wrote on science. Richard Jennings, the editorial writer for the Daily Mirror newspaper, then directed towards a middle-class female readership, published sometimes under the by-line ‘WM’, reminiscent of William Morris. In articles with titles such as ‘Destructive Science’, he would repeatedly charge scientists with the wish to destroy the world (Daily Mirror, 9 September 1922, p. 7). The newspaper discourses of weapons, technology and relativity theory converged on a fascination with the prospect of atomic bombs. Farmelo shows this very clearly in the case of Winston Churchill (Farmelo 2013). Particularly from the work of German (See Schirrmacher et al. 2013) and American (Burnham 1987; LaFollette 1990) scholars we can situate the British experience in an international context. In Germany, there was a well-established and surprisingly stable serious popular press covering science, including such magazines as Umschau (1897–1986).

Figure 31.2  H. G. Wells with a copy of the Daily Mirror, c. 1918

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However, any parallels between Germany and Britain became increasingly tenuous after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Marcel LaFollette looked at the treatment of science by general magazines between 1910 and 1955. After peaking in the mid-1920s treatment fell back to a norm until the Second World War, after which it grew continuously. She identified the stereotypes of magician, rational expert, creator, destroyer and, most recently, hero as science was incorporated within the discourse of the press. Sharon Dunwoody in her report on science journalism in the United States has pointed to the changing willingness of professional scientists to talk about their work in public, the growth of the specialist science reporter, and dominant relationship of press norms of a ‘story’ in the accounts of science (Dunwoody 2008).

Applied Science With the availability now of digitised newspapers, the way science was perceived and used can be followed by exploring usage of the term ‘applied science’ in the British press. Today slightly old-fashioned and decreasingly used, in the early part of this century it was widely taken to be as real as ‘technology’ is taken today. Its natural home was the discussion of science amongst the public, and examination of its use in the press enables us to see how newspapers used science to talk about modernity itself. During the early twentieth century, the dominant contexts of use were in discussing the topics of engineering education, the relations between institutions, the relations between countries, industry and the relationships between past and present. In a study of leading newspapers (Manchester Guardian, Observer, Times, Yorkshire Post, Scotsman, Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Church Times, Spectator), 937 uses of the term were found for the period 1900–14. Despite the difference in politics, there are patterns that transcend titles. Here was an era of anxiety about keeping up with, and competing with, Germany and the United States. Take the example of July 1908: twenty-three articles using the phrase have been identified. Seven reports (7 and 8 July) appeared in The Times, Daily Mail, Scotsman and Manchester Guardian of the king’s visit to Leeds University and his speech acclaiming the virtues of the university’s tenacious adherence to applied science (for example ‘The King and Queen: stately ceremonies at Leeds’, Manchester Guardian, 8 July 1908, p. 7). The civic universities such as Leeds, founded around the country in the first decade of the century, were expressly discussed in terms of the education they could give in applied science. It served to link the long

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culture of science to the practicality of current technical knowledge, and to contemporary German interests. The level of interest taken in contemporary German developments may be considered remarkable, though it must be understood both in terms of newly vigourous competition, both commercial and naval, and long-standing respect (Geppert and Gerwerth 2008). The press printed, in extenso, speeches of the War Minister R. B. Haldane (the uncle of the geneticist J. B. S. Haldane), on the importance of applied science which drew on his close knowledge of German practice. Thus, particularly across the North, the press gave wide coverage to Haldane’s 1913 opening of the new buildings of the famous ‘Department of Applied Science’ at Sheffield University. The Manchester Guardian headline was ‘Education advance essential to industrial supremacy. Lord Haldane and Sheffield’s enterprise’ (Manchester Guardian, 27 October 1913, p. 6).

Applied Science and Modern Civilisation Even before the First World War, however, the usage was no mere technical term for a pedagogical category. It was from time to time used to express a quality of modern life. Advertisements played with the connotation. One promotion on behalf of the ‘Brunsviga’ calculator, under the title ‘German Admiralty News’, told the reader both that it was the product of applied science and that 20,000 had been purchased by the German navy (Manchester Guardian, 3 October 1911, p. 7). Under the title ‘Business by Machinery’, a Manchester Guardian article about a business exhibition in the new Olympia exhibition centre in 1909 described ‘a remarkable combination of hustle and applied science’ (Manchester Guardian, 25 October 1909, p. 14). It described the new dictaphones, machines which could address 3,000 letters an hour and others which folded circulars at the rate of 7,000 an hour. In a 1908 lecture in Edinburgh, reported at length in The Scotsman under the title ‘Edinburgh Photographic Society’, the speaker talked of touring Normandy’s cathedrals, reflecting that past energies were now invested in applied science and mechanics. ‘They lived in the era of the camera and the motor car’, but such modern gifts could be used to bring the modern tourist in touch with earlier simplicity (The Scotsman, 6 February 1908, p.  6). Of course, such usages with their combination of awe, trust and fear, did not only reflect an era, they also helped to construct a concept. Education continued to be a dominant context within which science was discussed during the years 1915–39, for which 1,657 articles have been found from the same papers as the pre-war corpus. Increasingly,

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however, the invocation of ‘applied science’ was used to talk about the potential of industry, and the need to make radically new things. So, for instance, in 1917 the Chairman of Tootal Broadhurst was reported in an article entitled ‘Research in the Cotton Industry’ as promising £10,000 a year for the next five years to be spent on industrial research (The Scotsman, 29 August 1917, p. 7). Some would be purely scientific, some would be ‘applied science’. Meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science were widely covered. Speeches by presidents such as Lord Rutherford received wide press attention. Thus, a report from the 1923 meeting, under the title ‘Structure of matter’ included his scepticism about the possibility of extracting energy from the atom but also adulation of the advance of wireless as showing the ideal collaboration of pure and applied science (The Times, 13 September 1923, p. 16). There was a gloomier side. Reflecting on the meeting the following year under the title ‘Science at Toronto’, a Times editorial commented that the ‘gifts of science’ were ‘double-edged’ as it weighed poison gas against ‘gorgeous dyes’ and fine chemicals (The Times, 14 August 1924, p. 11). The editorial was not sure whether applied science was truly an advantage. Nonetheless, the tone of the press’s coverage during the 1920s connected applied science with necessary progress. During the 1930s one sees increasing worries about ‘modern civilisation’, linking science to threats to the British culture. The terror of unemployment caused by new applications of science to develop machines that put people out of work and fear of the weapons made by science were widely discussed. H. G. Wells’s fantasy, The Shape of Things to Come, involving the destruction of civilisation in a war characterised by poison gas bombing was made into a memorable movie and was also serialised in the Sunday Express in twelve lengthy parts (Wells 1933). In 1936 even the chemist-writer C. P. Snow argued in the Spectator that our prime need for applied science was the ‘abandonment of scientific efforts towards destruction’ (Snow 1936: 24). In August 1938 the well-known radio philosopher, Professor Joad, complained in the Observer, under the headline ‘Powers fit for the gods’, of ‘godlike abilities used for destruction. Applied science leading to slaughter on the roads, weapons and lapse of entertainment to a mechanical level’ (Observer, 14 August 1938, p. 12). In what was still a religious age, the reflections of churchmen on applied science were widely circulated (See Bowler 2010). Britain did not see the fierce controversies experienced in the United States over the conflict of evolution with biblical accounts. Rather controversy centred on values. Famously, the Bishop of Ripon called for a science holiday in a sermon given during the British Association meeting in 1927

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(Mayer 2000; Pursell 1974). In an article entitled ‘Bishop of Ripon on the Science Holiday’, published the next day in London’s Evening Standard, he made clear that his concern was with ‘applied science’ outstripping human development (Evening Standard, 6 September 1927, p. 2). The Yorkshire Post in a 1935 editorial on ‘Happiness and Invention’ quoted the Archbishop of York who had complained, ‘There are still those who talk as if yet more applied science, not a humane way of living, were the ideal to be followed’ (Yorkshire Post, 25 June 1935, p.  10). A few months earlier, the widely known Dean Inge of St Paul’s Cathedral had argued in the Spectator that new machinery made possible by applied science only worsened the scourge of unemployment (Inge 1934: 11). One exception to this pessimistic view came from the maverick mathematician, the Bishop of Birmingham, Ernest Barnes. He described miracles as ‘mental states’ and his plaudits for the achievements of science were widely reported (e.g. ‘Dr Barnes and Miracles’, Yorkshire Post, 15 October 1934, p. 4). The media were criticised too for not sufficiently expressing widespread positive feelings about science. A writer complained in the Daily Mirror that the BBC did not build on the way ‘applied science’ gripped the public mind, and urged the presentation of, for instance, aviation ‘more graphically’ and ‘educationally’ (Shaw 1934). Talking about applied science could also serve as an alternative to more rank flag-flying, as the Manchester Guardian explained in an article about the launch of the glamorous new Queen Mary ocean liner equipped with the latest gadgets and materials (‘No. 534’, Manchester Guardian, 26 September 1934, p.  8). Expectations of science’s service to the nation were, above all, to be seen in the treatment of the major interwar research programme, the conversion of coal to oil. This alchemical transformation of a traditional British resource into modern ‘liquid gold’ was praised as: a means of rescuing regions dependent on the coal industry from unemployment and decline; petrol and diesel power looked to remorselessly take over transport; a means of providing an indigenous fuel in the case of war; and a means of reducing air pollution and as a mark of progress. In 1933 the papers reported how in the budget debate the chancellor had justified the taxing of fuel produced from petroleum not of oil produced from coal, using the argument he was supporting British applied science (e.g. ‘Mr Chamberlain’s reply: encouraging use of British resources’, The Scotsman, 20 June 1933, p. 10). The Sheffield Independent reported in 1935 after the opening of the plant in Billingham in County Durham, ‘The doxology was sung at Seaham Harbour Parish Church last night in thanksgiving for the new industry which has come to the town through the ­opening up there of

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a coal oil distillation plant’ (‘New Industry’, Sheffield Independent, 7 January 1935, p. 7). Underlying such controversy was cultural change driven by new patterns of life and work. In 1937, under the title, ‘Specialised training the key to success’, the Daily Mail reflected on the ‘Huge diversity of jobs that did not exist a few years ago. Not just applied science itself but all the new roles emerging’ (Daily Mail, 16 September 1937, p. 17). These could be seen in the opportunities advertised, such as the annual competition for the Blair Fellowships in ‘applied science and technology’ offered by the London County Council. Women could look forward to a new future, liberated from past constraints. In 1932 the author Vera Brittan reflected on the future of her daughter then aged two (now Baroness Shirley Williams). Writing in the Daily Mail under the headline ‘Let your daughter invent her own career’, Brittan reflected that the ‘Best prospects of professional success exist today in the  newer fields such as industrial research, welfare work and the various branches of applied science’ (Brittan 1932: 15). The previous year the journalist Storm Jameson, also writing in the Daily Mail, had scorned those hankering after the days of ‘quiet, few and slow trains, inconvenient houses and splendid isolation’ (Jameson 1931: 8). She instead encouraged them to ‘Make modern applied science lighten your work and enrich your leisure.’ So, whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century the term ‘applied science’ was applied predominantly to education, its ambit was much wider by the break of the Second World War. No wonder in 1939 Mass Observation reflected on the confused but visible image of science at the outbreak of war (Hinton 2013: 14).

Nuclear Apotheosis: Celebration and Risk Speak Concerns about a threatening modernity brought on by science were exacerbated at the end of the Second World War. The American Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb was reported at the end of the war as a peculiarly scientific achievement. In recent years, historians have discussed the careful construction in the media of ‘the bomb’ as the work of physicists, through the official ‘Smyth Report’ released in 1945, to obscure the more secret and far larger engineering dimensions (Gordin 2007; Schwartz 2008; Kaiser 2015). The Manhattan Project’s British sequel, the press coverage of development of British nuclear weapons and of civilian nuclear power has been reflected upon by Christoph Laucht, who examined the response to the nuclear age of the illustrated magazine Picture Post (Laucht 2012). He concentrates on the treatment of ‘nuclear weapons’, ‘peace and protest’, ‘com-

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memorations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’ and ‘civilian applications of nuclear energy’. While the treatment of nuclear weapons had been foreshadowed by pre-war foreboding of the consequences of gas warfare, the scale of treatment was quite unprecedented. Whereas ‘before The War’ there had been only two specialist journalists, now most newspapers had a dedicated correspondent. The Daily Mail appointed the pre-war war correspondent John Langdon-Davies as their ‘science correspondent’. Jonathan Hogg has reviewed ‘British nuclear culture’, paying extensive attention to the press (Hogg 2016). He points to ‘The Atomic Age Column’ published in the Daily Mail and the role of the press as a place for testing new ethical concerns and existential priorities. Adrian Bingham has studied the response of the popular press­– ­the Daily Express, a broadly conservative paper, and the Daily Mirror, which was more left-wing (Bingham 2012c). He shows how these newspapers, while generally supportive of Britain having its own nuclear capability, were consistently nervous even in the 1950s and early 1960s, and the term ‘Nukespeak’ would be far too simplistic to capture their approach (Chilton 1982). The post-war years certainly enabled the interpretation of a large number of science ‘breakthroughs’ by the increasing cadre of specialist reporters. Massimiano Bucchi has interpreted the role of the science reporter within a continuum of roles of communication about science which, beyond informing the public, includes discourse within specialties and between specialties, and in pedagogy (Bucchi 1998). As the reporting of science increased, so did reflection upon it. For the years following the Second World War we have a rich commentary at various points particularly in the United States during the subsequent half century (see Krieghbaum 1968). From a later standpoint, historians can draw, for Britain, on a unique resource underpinning the study of science and the press. During the early 1990s Martin Bauer and a team at the Science Museum, supported by the Wellcome Trust, identified and analysed 6,000 articles dealing with science from the years 1946 to 1990 (Bauer et al. 1995). As in the earlier period, much of the news which involved science was not isolated within a science and technology section, but under ‘crime news for genetic finger printing, consumer information for food engineering, political debates, economic and business reporting on various technologies, and cultural pages, for example on AIDS’. The team showed how, driven by interest first in nuclear technology and then in space, the representation of science in the press grew from 1946 to a peak in 1962 (see also Bauer et al. 2006; Bauer 2012). Thereafter there was a plunge both in the quantity of science talked about and in the ­valuation

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of science. After 1982, however, there was a revival in interest, led first by information technology and then by biomedicine, though it was only in the 1990s that the coverage of thirty years earlier was reached. Their rich variety of findings from a study of detailed coding of each article also demonstrate a growing interest in medicine, or what the Bauer team call ‘medicalisation’ (Bauer 1998). Dividing coverage between physical science, biomedical science and social sciences, the team found that at the beginning of their period in 1946, by far the most coverage was given to physical sciences. There was, however, a steep convergence from the mid-1950s, as physical science declined as a proportion and coverage of the other two, particularly biomedicine, increased, so that by the mid-1980s there was a rough equality in treatment of each of the categories. The team also looked at the valuation of science, concern about risk and emphasis on controversy. A fluctuating wave was observed. In general, the early post-war years saw positive coverage, not concerned particularly either with risk or controversy. Then, early in the 1960s, optimism decreased, while risk awareness and anxieties increased radically. New anxieties all emerged at the same time, including about: radioactive strontium90 released by atomic tests and entering the food chain; and thence the bones of young children led to the end of atmospheric testing; the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring on the perils to birdlife caused by DDT; worries about allergenic penicillin from farms contaminating cow’s milk; debate over the addition of fluoride to drinking water; drug-­testing on unsuspecting patients; the possibilities of genetic engineering; and the commitment to reaching the moon by means of a huge investment in space technology (Bud 2007). The issue that would tax the British press the furthest was the catastrophe associated with the drug Thalidomide which affected foetuses and caused malformation in newborn babies. The Sunday Times carried out a prolonged investigation into the liability of the Distillers Company which licensed the drug in the United Kingdom and campaigned in the 1970s for better compensation for its victims (Sunday Times Insight Team 1979). This was only the first of a number of health concerns expressed through the press. In 1973, for instance, pertussis vaccine was blamed for neurological problems in young children (Blume et al. 2017). By studying the coverage in the Daily Telegraph, Bauer and Gregory (2008) also observed a continuing decline in public trust in science during the 1970s. Bauer and Gregory explored what they perceive as a shift from traditional journalism to corporate communication in the rendition of science. They argue that in Britain in the immediate post-war era scientists controlled the public sphere, while the 1960s was the era

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of science journalism. In response to criticism, scientists, they argue, came to see the press as a ‘potentially powerful ally’ to combat criticism (Bauer and Gregory 2008: 40).

Medialisation Peter Weingart has suggested that from the later years of the twentieth century science was ‘medialised’ (Weingart 2005; Weingart 2011). He suggests that talk about science at the end of the century reflected the adaptation of science to the ‘public of mass (media) democracies’. Weingart coined the word, but built on the work of many others. Mike Schäfer (2009) has interpreted this in three dimensions. There has been firstly an increased quantity of coverage. A second dimension is ‘pluralisation’, as more perspectives were brought to science stories. Not only was information provided, but coverage became more diversified or egalitarian, and voices other than those of scientists have been allowed in. Thirdly, he argues the medialisation thesis suggests that science has been treated as controversial. Bauer has suggested that the dynamics of the press which ‘thrives on controversy’ inherently favours opposition (Bauer 2015: 281). A story about technoscience needs the same news values as all other news, as Anders Hansen summarised in 1994, ‘Science becomes newsworthy when it becomes part of wider social and political problems, or when it is linked to major accidents and disasters’ (Hansen 1994: 115). Press coverage of biotechnology, nanotechnology and climate change has been studied carefully. The explosion of public anxiety over genetically modified organisms in the 1990s across Europe followed earlier anxieties about nuclear power. Guy Cook et al. (2006) have looked in more detail at the language used in British newspapers when discussing genetically modified food. They show how readers were subtly guided to link treatment of this issue with others which might have seemed quite different, relating to the trustworthiness of various authorities, whether it be Prime Minister Tony Blair or industry. The nanotechnology controversy was set off in April 2003 when Prince Charles expressed anxieties, widely (if inaccurately) reported in terms of ‘grey goo’. Anderson et al. (2005) have analysed the framing of the controversy and the coverage widely expressed in terms of ‘science fiction and popular culture’ appearing for instance in ‘reviews of books, TV, films and radio’. They found also other frames such as ‘scientific discovery’ and ‘business story’. The authors reflect on the need to explore ‘how (and why) journalists draw upon fictional images’ and the consequences of the integration of fact and fiction. As the twentieth century

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drew to an end, the issue of anthropogenic climate change emerged as a major ‘science’ issue. The number of articles in the British press was approaching and would soon surpass a thousand a year (Boykoff and Rajan 2007: 208). The press engagement has been most thoroughly studied by Boykoff and his colleagues (e.g. Boykoff 2011). This work suggests that press coverage began in 1988. They explored the consequences of such journalistic norms as ‘personalization, dramatization and novelty’, which worked against an accurate representation of the scientific debate.

Conclusion Sheila Jasanoff and colleagues have developed the idea of sociotechnical imaginaries from her earlier work on biotechnology and nuclear power (Jasanoff and Kim 2015). Such a concept defined as ‘collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfilment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects’ helps us understand how the press can continue to recreate conceptions of science in the public sphere (Jasanoff and Kim 2009: 120). Far from science being defined purely therefore in terms of knowledge, the press throughout the twentieth century treated it as constitutive of society. Time and time again, it has been treated as distinctively disruptive of culture, for good and for ill. Throughout the twentieth century, newspapers have discussed both the contents and the meaning of science. It has represented both knowledge and a quality of modern civilisation. Science was associated with looking forward, not back, and a sense of change in civilisation. At the end of the twentieth century coverage of science also seemed to many actors, distinctive in quantity, tone and criticism. Though there were continuities with earlier concerns about physics and nuclear energy at the end of the Second World War and indeed with science during the interwar years, in the post-war years, in an era of overwhelming threats of nuclear destruction, as well as new possibilities, the discussion of science seemed especially intense. We can benefit from a key legacy of the entire twentieth century: the experience of repeated discussion in the public sphere about the apparent upturning of traditional civilisation through science. This article draws upon work supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant number AH/I027177/1.

Chapter Thirty-Two

THE METROPOLITAN PRESS: CONNECTIONS AND COMPETITION BETWEEN BRITAIN AND IRELAND Mark O’Brien

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  he relationships between the constituent nations of Great Britain and Ireland have complex histories. One key element of these relationships has been the long-standing connections between the press cultures of both islands which often manifested itself in the ease with which journalists migrated between capital cities and secured employment in their new homeland. The intricate web of connections within the press industry linking Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales at the turn of the nineteenth century was, unsurprisingly, a by-product of the political union of the four countries that was buttressed by the rise of the Irish Parliamentary Party as a potent political force from the 1880s onwards and the development of its associated press presence in Ireland and Britain. A very large number of the Irish Party’s MPs were, at various times, editors and journalists and this created a network of relationships, the influence of which criss-crossed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Among the most prominent were Edmund Dwyer Gray, proprietor of the Dublin Freeman’s Journal and the Belfast Morning News, William Martin Murphy, proprietor of the Dublin Irish Independent, Charles Diamond, who established the London Catholic Herald, and T. P. O’Connor, who was a leading advocate of the new journalism (Larkin 2013: 127–9). But individuals also travelled in the other direction. In 1873 the Scottish entrepreneur John Arnott purchased the Dublin Irish Times and, although no formal link existed between the two titles, in the early half of the twentieth century the editor of the Irish Times automatically served as the Irish correspondent of The Times of London. An added cross-channel connection in this regard was that the Irish Times’s most celebrated editor, R. M. Smyllie, was born in Scotland and migrated to 626

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Ireland when his printer father purchased a local newspaper, The Sligo Times (Oram 1983: 136–7). Such connections, stemming primarily from the growth of the nineteenth-century political press, continued but were transformed in the decades that followed. While Benedict Anderson’s notion of the nation as an ‘imagined community’ of newspaper readers stems from his work on the rise of print capitalism in the nineteenth century, it is equally relevant when looking at the twentieth century which was, more than any other, the newspaper century­ – ­a period in which newspapers became central to the daily life of an ever-growing mass population of readers. Throughout  the twentieth century rising literacy rates, the extension of the franchise to females, and the adoption of new technology such as the Linotype and rotary printing presses, vastly improved transport and distribution systems, and the rise of popular or ‘new journalism’ placed newspapers at the heart of public life as never before. Key to this position were the affordances of the ‘new journalism’­– ­that is to say the characteristics of the medium (the popular press), and the consumers (the everexpanding number of literate citizens). As key social and political groups emerged into the literate age, specific newspapers emerged to cater for the ever-growing demand for readable material that reflected the lived realities of readers. These titles reflected and shaped the political and cultural life of their readers over the course of the twentieth century. By purchasing and reading a specific newspaper each citizen was engaging, however subtly, in a political act by interacting with texts that constituted a forum for political debate and newspapers would, notwithstanding the impact of radio and television on how journalism was practised and how the public consumed news, hold that central position in public life from the late 1890s to the 1990s­– ­that is, until the advent of the internet. While newspapers helped to set the agenda and tone of political and cultural discourse, there existed often opaque connections between the various locales and the newspaper markets that operated on and between both islands. This chapter examines the metropolitan press in Britain and Ireland between 1900 and 2011 through that lens. For obvious reasons, it does not seek to replicate the historical works on individual titles or historical surveys of the press that have been published over the decades. Nor does it seek to synopsise the autobiographies or biographies of influential proprietors, editors or journalists. Instead, it seeks to illuminate the relationships and interdependencies between the different newspaper markets and illustrate how, as the twentieth century unfolded, the daily press developed amid the constant flow of people, knowledge, conventions, ideas and technology between those markets.

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The Popular Turn It is beyond doubt that the interconnectedness of the British and Irish press, which stemmed from the era of newspapers as the voice of political interests, influenced the trajectory that the press took as the new century dawned. The push for Irish Home Rule in the 1880s had resulted in the development of a stark, frank tone of address among journalists keen to point out the deficiencies of the British administration in Ireland and along with this new tone of address towards officialdom, came the tactic of exposing the private lives of officials in an attempt to embarrass the government. While most closely associated with the journalism of W. T. Stead, it has been argued that the investigative aspect of the new journalism appeared first in Dublin. While Stead’s 1885 exposé of London childhood prostitution in the Pall Mall Gazette is often heralded as the first instance of scandal revelation that typified the investigative approach of the new journalism, Margot Gayle Backus has pointed out that William O’Brien’s 1884 United Ireland exposé of the Dublin Castle sex scandal, which involved impropriety among senior government officials, predates Stead’s series. She also notes that the failed libel suits that arose from the series would have been closely monitored by editors and journalists in London. Indeed, as a former MP O’Brien would have been well known in London journalistic circles. The timing of the failed libel suits, argues Bachus, ‘strongly implies a connection between . . . O’Brien’s right to publish and the new mode of investigative scandal that Stead launched the following year’. Prior to O’Brien’s series, Stead’s actions, she concludes, ‘would have been unthinkable’ (Backus 2013: 62–3). Another Irish advocate of the new journalism was O’Brien’s fellow Irish Party MP, T. P. O’Connor, who as editor of the London Star declared his intention to ‘do away with the hackneyed style of obsolete journalism’ in favour of condensed news and comment. Its radicalism lay not only in its layout but in its declared intention to adjudicate government policies from the standpoint of ‘the lot of the masses of the people’ (Conboy 2002: 98). The marrying of the editorial tenets of the new journalism with the production of a daily newspaper aimed at a mass audience was, however, carried to its greatest heights not by O’Connor but by an Irish-born entrepreneur, Alfred Harmsworth. Having contributed to George Newnes’s Tit-Bits and witnessed the huge demand for readable material­ – ­as opposed to the long screeds of parliamentary debates published by newspapers such as The Times and the Daily Telegraph­– ­Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) established his own publication, Answers to Correspondents, in 1888,

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Figure 32.1  T. P. O’Connor, politician and editor of the Star (1887), the Weekly Sun (1891), the Sun (1893) and T. P.’s Weekly (1902), 1917

before producing a daily newspaper aimed at the newly emerging lower-middle class. It was in May 1896 that Harmsworth’s Daily Mail first appeared. What distinguished the Mail from O’Connor’s Star was its use of popular appeal as a commercial imperative rather than as a platform for radical campaigning. Looking very similar to the established broadsheets, what differentiated it were its price and its editorial philosophy, both of which were encapsulated in the ‘ear space’ on each side of its masthead. On the left ‘ear’ it proclaimed itself ‘a penny newspaper for a halfpenny’; on the opposite side it proclaimed itself ‘the busy man’s daily journal’. With a specific focus on its readability and relatability to readers, the Mail’s content offered condensed and well-presented news from parliament and the courts as well as a magazine page with a dedicated women’s column which soon expanded to one page. Serials, interviews, features and competitions completed the editorial mix. As observed by Adrian Addison (2017: 38), the title’s success rested on the fact that it was a newspaper produced for a mass readership which had not been catered for before, and despite being dismissed by Lord Salisbury, the prime minister, as a newspaper ‘run by office boys for office boys’, the Daily Mail heralded the arrival of the new journalism for the expanding lower-middle class. Its circula-

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tion in its first year was 222,000 but exceeded over a million copies per day during the Boer War and the First World War­– ­conflicts that caused an outbreak of pro-war jingoism at the Mail and the shelling by a German battleship of Harmsworth’s house on the south-east English coast (Addison 2017: 65). The Mail’s success prompted Harmsworth to establish the Daily Mirror in 1903. Launched as a newspaper written exclusively by and for women, when this strategy did not work it became a picture paper before being sold to Harmsworth’s brother, Harold, who sold the title in the 1930s when the novelty of printing photographs had spread to all newspapers. In the mid-1930s it was refocused as a working-class newspaper with vivid and dramatic presentation of news, a vigorous and easily understood writing style, and a greater emphasis on sport, film and popular entertainment. As the

Figure 32.2  Daily Express, 24 April 1900

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premier newspaper of the working class, daily circulation would exceed 5 million in the 1960s (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 14–15). The Daily Mail’s success prompted the emergence of many competitors. One such was the Daily Express which was established in 1900 by Arthur Pearson, who like Harmsworth, had begun his career at Tit-Bits. Its first edition declared it would ‘not be the organ of any political party [and would] not provide a parade-ground for marshalling the fads of any individual’ (Conboy 2002: 108). But with circulation hovering at the lower than expected level of 500,000 copies a day, a controlling interest in the title was gradually amassed by Canadian entrepreneur, Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook). Aitken added its famous ‘red crusader’ emblem in 1933 as well as brighter design and an optimistic aspirational tone that appealed to readers looking to improve their lot. By the late 1930s it was, as Addison (2017: 118) put it, ‘faster, cleaner, crisper and sharper than the Mail’. In 1939 the Express sold 2.5 million copies a day compared to the Mail’s 1.5 million (Addison 2017: 119). Success continued until the death of Aitken in 1964 after which the title began to lose its edge. In an attempt to stem its declining circulation, it turned tabloid in 1977 but at this stage the Daily Mail was resurgent under David English. Also seeking the working-class readership was the Daily Herald which began as a strike sheet in 1911 and was relaunched as a daily in 1919 with later backing from the Trades Union Congress. Its mission­ – ­to provide an alternative view of the world for its unionised working-class readers­– ­did not endear itself to advertisers. A change in ownership­– ­on the understanding that the title would remain committed to the TUC’s line on political and industrial news­– ­in 1930 saw the title reorient its news values towards human-interest stories and features and attain a circulation of over 2 million a day in 1937. Acquired by the Mirror Group in 1961, it was relaunched as the Sun in 1964 and was purchased and reinvented by Rupert Murdoch in 1969 (Chippindale and Horrie 1990: 7–8). Besides the popular press, London was also home to longer established and more high-end titles such as The Times and the Daily Telegraph. While The Times, established in 1785, has been described as ‘an integral and important part of the political structure of Great Britain . . . its whole emphasis has been on important public affairs treated with an eye to the best interests of Britain’ (Nevins 1959: 413– 14). The Daily Telegraph, established in 1855, was a more readable version of The Times, providing not only coverage of sport and politics, but also of high-profile court cases. After a price cut from two pence to one penny in 1930 its sales soared making it the upmarket leader (Tunstall 1996: 16). Both titles targeted and were consumed by educated and

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affluent readerships and covered politics, foreign affairs and economic news in far greater detail than the popular press. They also conferred an unquestioned legitimacy on institutions such as Parliament, the courts and the monarchy. Outside the London-dominated metropolitan press stood the Manchester Guardian. Established to further the cause of parliamentary reform in the aftermath of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, it was editor and then proprietor C. P. Scott who determined that the title’s independence could only be secured if normal commercial practice could be supplanted by an altruistic form of proprietorship that advanced the title as a public service. Initially this meant a company structure that restricted ownership of shares to family members with no dividends ever being paid and with any profits being reinvested in the company (Ellis 2014: 139). The establishment of the Scott Trust in 1936 followed and, in 1992, the Trust articulated its purpose as being to ‘secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity: as a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to its liberal tradition; as a profit-seeking enterprise managed in an efficient and cost-effective manner’ (Ellis 2014: 157). A name change to The Guardian occurred in 1959 and a move to London five years later reflected the growing importance of national and international affairs in the paper, but also confirmed the necessity of being close to important sites of news, such as Parliament, for it to be taken seriously as a national title (Taylor 1993: 63). The principal metropolitan areas of Wales and Scotland also had their own, nationally oriented titles. In Cardiff, the Western Mail, describing itself as ‘the national newspaper of Wales’, was established in 1869 as a conservative daily title. During the numerous industrial disputes of the twentieth century it was viewed warily by mine workers, but since devolution in the late 1990s the paper has put an emphasis on the Welsh language and Welsh rugby as well as local services such as health and education (Davies et al. 2008: 616). For its part, Edinburgh was home to The Scotsman. Established in 1817 as a liberal weekly title, The Scotsman aimed to combat the ‘unblushing subservience’ of competing newspapers to the Edinburgh establishment by advocating an editorial policy of ‘impartiality, firmness and independence’ (The Scotsman, 25 Jan. 1817). Following the abolition of stamp duty in 1855 it became a daily title and in 1928 it became the first newspaper in Britain to send pictures by telegraph from Europe (The Scotsman, 25 January 2007). It later adopted the motto ‘Scotland’s national newspaper’ and, in 1968, with ‘a series of exceptionally prescient editorials . . . kicked off the home-rule campaign’ that resulted in a government

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commission that recommended directly elected Scottish and Welsh assemblies (Reid 2006: 9). However, the unsuccessful result in the 1979 referendum on devolution ended the ‘golden age’ at The Scotsman as many of its top staff, demoralised by the defeat, left for pastures new (Reid 2006: 22). Scotland’s other metropolitan centre, Glasgow, was home to The Glasgow Herald, which, on its first day of publication in 1783 carried news of the Treaties of Versailles that ended the conflict between Britain and its now former colonies in America. Having begun as a weekly title it became a daily newspaper in 1858 and as Reid (2006: xiv) put it, established Glasgow ‘as Scotland’s media capital, a role it maintains to this day despite the siting of the new Scottish Parliament in the capital city, Edinburgh’. In the 1980s, it was The Herald (as it became in 1992) that led the renewed campaign for devolution as the title shifted ‘sharply to the left’­– ­a move that was well received since, as remembered by one journalist ‘in Scotland, Thatcherism was detested and the Tories were in freefall’ (Reid 2006: 36–7).

The Two Irelands In Ireland the metropolitan press was, in the early part of the twentieth century, characterised by the polarising views adopted by specific titles in relation to Ireland’s changed constitutional relationship with Britain­ – ­a process that afforded the articulation of multiple political viewpoints, albeit strictly one political viewpoint per newspaper. Indeed, the Anglo-Irish War, partition, the Treaty of 1921 and the Irish Civil War all combined to create a polarised political system that was very much mirrored in the newspapers produced in the major urban centres of Dublin, Belfast and Cork. In the aftermath of the independence conflict two long-standing titles, the Freeman’s Journal and the Daily Express, that had provided a sense of political identity for supporters of constitutional nationalism and Dublin unionism respectively, ceased publication. These political positions had lost too much ground to the militant independence movement and the travails of publishing for ever diminishing returns­ – ­politically and financially­ – ­proved too much. The Daily Express ceased publication in 1921 while the Freeman’s Journal followed three years later. In the 1920s, newly partitioned, the two parts of Ireland­– ­Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State­ – ­embarked on distinct processes of nation building in which the metropolitan press in both jurisdictions played a key role in guiding those nation building projects. In Belfast the readerships of the main newspapers, the nationalist Irish News, the Unionist News-Letter and the liberal-Unionist Belfast Telegraph, were

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sharply demarcated along religious lines, which for many also came to indicate a political demarcation along Unionist and nationalist lines. In 1970 a full 93 per cent of the Irish News’s readership was Catholic, 87 per cent of the News-Letter’s readership was Protestant, while the readership of the Belfast Telegraph was divided 68 per cent Protestant and 32 per cent Catholic. Circulation of outside titles was also limited: only 5 per cent of the northern population read a Dublin newspaper while 32 per cent read a British title (Rose 1971: 343–45). At the other end of the island, in the city of Cork, was published the Cork Examiner. Providing a successful blend of national news with a strong regional emphasis, the title provided a political voice to those in the largest metropolitan region outside of Dublin and often spoke ‘with an independence born of not being of the capital’ (Trench 1987: 26). In Dublin, for the vast bulk of the twentieth century, the metropolitan press consisted of three titles­ – ­all of which offered readers a distinct political prism through which to interpret political developments as the state found its feet as a newly independent entity. What might be termed the unfinished business of the Irish bid for independence­ – ­partition, continued membership of the British Empire, the British king being head of state­– ­provided the backdrop to political and journalistic life in the nascent state. Politics, in the early decades of the state, were informed by a continuation of the civil war dispute over the terms of the separation from Britain. This was mirrored by the political positioning of the metropolitan titles­– ­thus giving rise to the maxim of knowing how your neighbours voted by knowing what daily newspaper they read. While this close alignment between political parties and metropolitan titles gave people a sense of political identity and political participation, it may also have contributed to the longevity of civil war grievances that were still being aired decades later. It also negated the presence of females; until the advent of the ‘Women First’ page in the Irish Times in 1968, all three national daily titles regarded female journalism as consisting of nothing other than cooking, cleaning and shopping tips. Owned by former Irish Party MP, William Martin Murphy, the Irish Independent was the Irish title most influenced by Harmsworth’s Daily Mail. Indeed, Harmsworth even advised Murphy on the reinvented Irish Independent as the successful formula of a low price, condensed news, serials, interviews, features and competitions was implemented on the revitalised title. But Murphy ultimately stole a march on Harmsworth when, in November 1909, the Irish Independent published audited circulation figures­ – ­four years before the Daily Mail adopted the practice (Kenny 2012: 60). Conscious, however, that he

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was operating in a socially and culturally different market, Murphy adopted the elements of the new journalism that seemed safe­– ­display advertising, condensed reportage, illustrations and serials­ – ­but studiously rejected any element­ – ­gossip, scandal, crime reportage and investigative journalism­ – ­that might cause controversy or condemnation. In so doing, Murphy was mindful of the morality campaigns that had erupted, on both islands, in the wake of the new journalism. Thus, the Irish Independent reflected Murphy’s world view­– ­‘intensely Catholic, nationalist and conservative’ (Yeates 2014: 14). Politically, the Independent, having supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, backed­ – ­though was never formally associated with­ – ­the pro-Treaty party that formed the Free State’s government from 1922 to 1932. The title represented the world view of those who had pragmatically accepted the partial independence of Ireland and provided a voice to those who viewed the Anglo-Irish Treaty as the freedom to achieve greater freedom. In stark contrast stood the Irish Press, established in 1931 to articulate the political views of the defeated anti-Treaty side of the civil war, which, in the guise of Éamon de Valera and Fianna Fáil, took power in 1932. The role played by the Irish Press in bringing the party to power

Figure 32.3  Contemporary satirical cartoon of William Martin Murphy by Ernest Kavanagh titled ‘The Demon of Death’, published 6 September 1913 in the Irish Worker

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cannot be easily measured but it played a key role in countering the negative and relentless criticism in other titles of de Valera’s rejection of the Treaty in 1921. It also gave those of the anti-Treaty persuasion something to affiliate to, with many viewing the establishment of the title as an extension of their cause. As the voice of the political party that would, more than any other, hold power in Ireland over the course of the twentieth century, the Irish Press articulated that organisation’s views on Irish unity, the need to revive the Irish language, the primacy of rural living, anti-urbanism, and economic self-sufficiency and established these tenets as the dominant orthodoxies of Irish political life to which all other parties and newspapers had to react. It was also the first newspaper to put a keen emphasis on coverage of the native Irish sports of the Gaelic Athletic Association­– ­a move imitated in due course by all other titles. Unlike its competitors, the Irish Press put news on its front page from day one (O’Brien 2001). The third title, the Irish Times, was the oldest of the three metropolitan titles. Established in 1859 as a pro-Union organ its circulation in the early decades of the Free State did not have the same reach as the other two titles. While those titles sold widely in urban and rural areas, the Irish Times, as the voice of the southern Unionist minority, was mostly confined to Dublin and other urban centres, particularly Cork, with its low circulation offset by guaranteed advertising by the Protestant mercantile class in Dublin. As the voice of that minority the title took its responsibility seriously and sought to highlight and possibly mitigate any legislation that it viewed as impinging on the civil rights of the southern Unionist, Protestant community. Wary of the new state being influenced by those who might seek to overly ‘Gaelicise’ national identity or those who might seek to ensure that the majority faith took precedence in all legislative matters, in the 1920s it editorialised against the introduction of compulsory Irish in national schools, the prohibition of divorce and the Censorship of Publications Act 1929. In the early decades of the Free State, the title supported the pro-Treaty faction of Irish politics simply because supporting the alternative­ – ­Éamon de Valera­ – ­was unthinkable. This support for the pro-Treaty side, now styled Fine Gael, lasted until 1949 when that party announced the inauguration of a republic and the withdrawal of the Free State from the British Commonwealth (O’Brien 2008: 133–6).

Keener Competition Despite Irish independence, the long-standing connection between the British and Irish metropolitan press was, in the mid-twentieth

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c­ entury, characterised by large numbers of journalists criss-crossing the Dublin–London newspaper nexus. Among those who migrated east were Patrick Campbell (Daily Express), Alan Bestic (Daily Telegraph), Tony Gray (Daily Mirror), Brian Inglis (Spectator), Desmond Fisher (Catholic Herald), John Horgan (Catholic Herald), Muriel Bowen (Daily Express and later the Evening Standard), Patricia Smyllie (Daily Express and later the Daily Mirror), Deirdre McSharry (Daily Express and later the Sun), Mary Kenny (Evening Standard), and Mary Holland (the Observer). Among those who travelled west were Honor Tracy­ – ­who is, perhaps most remembered for a celebrated libel case against her own employer, the Sunday Times­– ­and Michael Viney, who arrived in Dublin from London’s Fleet Street to cast a cold and impartial eye on Irish society for the Irish Times throughout the 1960s (O’Brien 2017: 150–3). While this interconnectedness was helped by two islands’ common travel area, the flow of daily newspapers (as opposed to journalists) that had been impeded by Irish government duties in 1933 was reinvigorated in the wake of the 1966 Anglo-Irish Agreement which abolished those duties. In 1949 average daily sales of imported daily newspapers stood at 17,210 (Irish Parliamentary Debates, vol. 121, 31 May 1950); this, in the context of average daily sales in 1953 of 437,411 for indigenous titles, was a drop in the ocean (Irish Parliamentary Debates, vol. 137, 19 March 1953). Nonetheless, by 1955 the Irish newspaper industry was expressing concern that it was ‘in a state of great danger because of the terrific fight going on by British newspapers to capture Irish circulation’ (Irish Times, 19 November 1955). Indeed, throughout the 1960s the value of imported daily titles rose from £114,000 in 1964 to £409,000 in 1969 and it was estimated that between 1963 and 1969 the share of the overall newspaper market held by Irish newspapers declined from 88 per cent to 82 per cent (Irish Times, 7 January 1971). The spectre of cultural imperialism was again rearing its head, prompted in part by a fear that a new generation of London media moguls was seeking to enter the Irish daily newspaper market. By 1976 concerns were being expressed by Irish publishers that ‘British newspapers were being dumped on to the Irish market at a lower price purely to boost circulation figures for ABC audit purposes, which in turn, would help them sell more advertising’ (Irish Times, 9 November 1976). Such developments were watched closely in Dublin. When Roy Thomson (who had purchased the Sunday Times in 1959 and would acquire The Times in 1967) visited Dublin in 1962, the vice-chairman of the Irish Times, Tom McDowell felt compelled to visit govern-

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ment buildings to reassure the Taoiseach (prime minister) that ‘the acquisition of the Irish Times is not contemplated by Mr Thomson’ (Irish National Archives, D/T / 1987E/62). In 1969 the visit of Rupert Murdoch prompted a civil servant to observe that Murdoch’s first newspaper acquisition­ – ­the News of the World­ – ­was characterised by an emphasis on ‘sex, crimes and other sins’. No doubt referring to Murdoch’s recent purchase and reinvention of the Sun, the civil servant described him as ‘a most unusual animal in Fleet Street. He seems to be interfering at all levels in the newspapers.’ The civil servant also took exception to the Sun’s take on the Northern Ireland Troubles. The paper’s journalists, he surmised, needed ‘a little education on Irish affairs as their leader, a couple of days ago, said that Ulster must solve its own problems with the aid of the British Government’. ‘We must’, he tartly concluded, ‘point out to them that there is such a place as Dublin’ (Irish National Archives, 2011/39/359). The civil servant’s concerns about Murdoch’s emphasis on ‘sex, crimes and other sins’ were well founded as by the 1960s the metropolitan press in Britain ‘had significantly redrawn the boundaries between public and private and its content had become much more overtly sexualised’ (Bingham and Conboy 2015: 139). This process had been intensified by Murdoch’s reinvention of the Sun. From the early 1970s that title ‘expanded the amount of sexual content and increased the emphasis placed upon sexual pleasure, steadily moving away from what it regarded as an anachronistic attachment to educating the public. Titillating features became more brazen, with topless pin-ups, raunchy serials, and evermore intrusive and speculative celebrity journalism’. By the late 1970s this editorial formula had triumphed commercially and ‘the process of the sexualisation of the popular press was largely complete, and the journalism of subsequent decades was essentially variations on wellestablished themes’ (Bingham 2009: 266–7). Over at the Daily Mail, the appointment of David English as editor heralded the transformation of the paper from a dull and dated broadsheet to a bright and breezy ‘compact’ in May 1971. Targeting the post-war middle class so beloved of advertisers, the Mail was determined to avoid the term ‘tabloid’ so as to distinguish it from the downmarket, sensationalised and sexualised titles such as the Sun (Addison 2017: 154–5). English’s editorial philosophy­– ­hard work, self-reliance, traditional values, and the primacy of marriage and family life­ – ­struck a chord in a Britain that would lean to the right under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership and would reach its zenith­ – ­on the issue of membership of the European Union­– ­under English’s successor, Paul Dacre. This revitalisation of the London newspaper industry driven by

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a new generation of proprietors was mirrored somewhat in Dublin. In early 1973 rumours abounded that Independent Newspapers was set to undergo a change in ownership and among those named as a prospective buyer was Rupert Murdoch. The prospect of Ireland’s second largest newspaper company passing into Murdoch’s ownership prompted a government minister to declare that ‘a situation in which ownership or control of Irish newspapers passed into non-Irish hands would be unacceptable’ to the government (Irish Times, 24 February 1973). Ultimately, it was local entrepreneur Tony O’Reilly who led the takeover. In an interview, O’Reilly stated that his takeover was ‘primarily commercial’ and that his ambition was for the company to ‘continue its aggressive commercial standards and for reasonable commercial expansion, whether in Ireland or indeed abroad’ (Irish Times, 19 March 1973). Part of that expansion involved acquiring a partial and then full shareholding in the London Independent which was later sold to the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev for a nominal sum. In contrast to the commercial imperative, the Irish Times reconstituted itself as a trust in 1974. The trust was tasked with ensuring that the title was published as ‘an independent newspaper primarily concerned with serious issues . . . free from any form of personal or of party political, commercial, religious or other sectional control’ (O’Brien 2008: 204–6). In contrast to the moribund Irish Press which would never escape its shadow identity as a party-political newspaper and the Irish Independent which was essentially remodelled on David English’s Daily Mail (Breen 2012), the Irish Times broke most of the stories­ – ­police misconduct, planning corruption, and clerical scandals­ – ­that shook Irish society from the late 1970s onwards.

The Technological Turn Alongside the new proprietors, from the early 1980s onwards there were rapid changes in how newspapers were produced. The ‘hot metal’ process that had been at the heart of newspaper production for almost a century was first slowly and then rapidly replaced by ever-evolving computerised processes that obliterated the need for a large printing staff­ – ­a new production process exemplified by Eddie Shah’s launch of the ill-fated Today as Britain’s first all-colour newspaper in 1986. The technological turn played out differently in the various locales: in Dublin, industrial strife ensured the non-publication of some titles for a sustained period of time; in London the overnight relocation of newspaper production from Fleet Street to Wapping was bitterly resisted amid mass redundancies, but uninterrupted production continued.

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In Dublin it was the earliest adopter of new technology that suffered most. In 1984 the Irish Press Group announced plans to introduce direct input technology but, after much industrial trouble, publication of the company’s titles was suspended in May 1985 with the daily title ceasing publication for twelve weeks. The effect this had on readership and advertising revenue is incalculable and was the nearest to an Irish Wapping in terms of industrial bitterness surrounding the introduction of new technology. The group’s competitors, Independent Newspapers and the Irish Times, observed and learned from the travails of the Press Group and the bitterness engendered by Murdoch’s flight to Wapping. Both companies enacted, as one editor put it, ‘a long and tedious but strife free process’ of technological modernisation (O’Brien 2001: 194). The computerisation of the industry also enabled greater competition. Just as the Irish Press relaunched itself as a serious tabloid in 1988, Independent Newspapers and Express Newspapers jointly launched, also in tabloid format, an Irish edition of the Daily Star­. The differences between the two titles could not have been starker. While the Press Group had enlisted newspaper design guru Larry Lamb to help conceptualise the Irish Press as a tabloid with serious content, the project was hampered by a lack of resources, most notably an inability to incorporate colour printing. In contrast, the Irish Daily Star was bright, breezy, had colour, and carried a lower cover price. As the Star (as it became known) added ever more Irish content, its sales increased while those of the Irish Press declined. Following the collapse of the Press Group in May 1995 there was a concerted effort by all Irish and British dailies to soak up some of the floating readership. For the British dailies this took the form of Irish, or hybrid, editions that generally consisted of six to eight pages of Irish news (politics at the front, sport at the back) that were wrapped around the rest of the newspaper which had already been produced for the British market. One sample of these papers in 1996 indicated that eleven of the Irish Mirror’s thirty-six pages had been produced in Ireland while the figure for the Irish Sun was seven out of thirty-six pages (Horgan 2001: 137). Sold at a lower price than indigenous titles the hybrids were hugely successful in attracting readers, even if at times the headlines in the different editions revealed sensitive localisation. For example, when in 1988 the SAS shot and killed three IRA members in Gibraltar, the headline in the British edition of the Star was ‘SAS rub out IRA rats’, whereas the Irish edition’s headline was ‘SAS shoot dead three IRA men’ (Irish Times, 3 September 1988). Similarly, on the eve of the introduction of the euro, the British edition of the Sun was headlined ‘Dawn of a new error’ while the Irish edition was headlined ‘Dawn of a new era’ (the

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Sun and the Irish Sun, 2 January 2002). By far the most successful hybrid was the Irish Sun; its daily circulation, buoyed by its keen sports coverage, increased from 30,000 in 1990 to 103,000 in 1999 (Horgan 2001: 191). In August 2013 it announced the decision to drop the ‘page 3’ feature­ – ­a year and a half before the feature was dropped from the Sun. In recent years, ever more Irish content has been included in the multitude of localised editions­ – ­with the Irish Daily Mail leading the charge­ – ­and the claim of ‘dumping a surplus print run with an Irish headline attached’ no longer holds sway­– ­even less so among those who now have a world of digital information at their fingertips. As the twentieth century ended, the behaviour of several daily newspapers came under the spotlight and, while no ownership structure is without its critics, it is instructive that, on each island, it was a newspaper run by a trust that exposed questionable conduct within other, powerful, media outlets. In Britain, it was The Guardian that revealed the ‘phone-hacking’ scandal that resulted in the establishment of the Levenson Inquiry into the crisis of ethics in the British press. In Ireland, it was the Irish Times that revealed the financial row between Independent Newspapers and the Irish government that resulted in the Irish Independent publishing a front-page editorial on the eve of polling day in the 1997 general election that called on the electorate to vote for a change of government (O’Brien 2012: 179). It is also interesting to note that it was these two titles that led the charge in relation to online activity. In 1994 the Irish Times was the first newspaper in Britain and Ireland to establish an online presence. As internet access became more widespread, visitors to the site increased from 396,000 in October 1997 to 1,185,000 in March 2007 (Irish Times, 10 February 1998 and 24 November 1998). With this figure being divided almost equally between Irish and overseas visitors, the days of the metropolitan press being solely for those within reach of a physical distribution system were at an end. In a similar vein, The Guardian launched its website in 1999, with unique visitor numbers reaching 4.5 million people in 2001 and hitting 40.9 million monthly unique users in May 2013 (Ellis 2014: 182). With sales of print editions declining year-on-year, how to make this wider, global, readership pay for content has proven to be an existential challenge for all newspapers. Many attempts at various forms of paywall systems have proven only modestly successful at attracting subscriptions from a generation that has grown up being most familiar with the notion of ‘free content’. But, aside from this, newspapers cannot survive on subscriptions alone and the online world has allowed entrepreneurs to target the low- and highvalue advertising­– ­from classified adverts and death notices to recruit-

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ment and property advertising­ – ­that had always been the financial mainstay of newspapers. While hindsight is a dangerous thing, could it be that newspapers should have led their online presence through an advertising first and editorial content second strategy? Should they have first secured their advertising base in the new online world before investing in putting editorial content online? While such an approach may have been anathema to most journalists, since the 1990s newspapers have been scrambling to again secure the advertising streams that they lost in the hurry to put news online. In 2006 the Irish Times spent €50m in purchasing Ireland’s leading online property website, myhome.ie; the following year it purchased 30 per cent of entertainment.ie, the country’s premier social activities website. In a similar vein The Guardian simply would not have survived the online revolution without the ‘significant financial shock absorber’ of its very substantial and diverse investment portfolio (Ellis 2014: 145–87). It is, however, the Daily Mail’s online version­– ­MailOnline­– ­that is the world’s most visited English newspaper, with some 15 million unique visitors per month (Addison 2017: 361) but is it is clear that, in the online world, just as it was in the print world, newspapers cannot survive on selling news alone. As the twentieth-first century unfolds, the dilemma of how to create revenue to pay for news generation and how to resolve the issue of social media giants soaking up advertising revenue attracted to their sites by their millions of users redistributing expensive news content created elsewhere has taken on an ever greater urgency.

Chapter Thirty-Three

THE PROVINCIAL PRESS Rachel Matthews

Introduction Behind this pursuit for urgently needed profits lies the concern for the long-term prosperity of the papers and the fear that by selling over-hard, increasing our charges too readily and investing too little in the quality of the product we may be storing up for ourselves an even greater problem for as little as five years ahead. (Monthly management report for Western Mail and Echo Ltd, June 1971, file 49.)1

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  his prescient comment from the heart of provincial news production in the 1970s goes to the core of the development of this sector of the newspaper industry in what might be termed a ‘long’ twentieth century. This era, from around 1880 to 2008, is dominated by the rise and fall of the evening regional newspaper in particular as a profit-making product. It has two key themes; firstly, the unrelenting move to corporatised, centralised ownership, which was established in the first half of this period. It is this which facilitated and dictated the pattern and impact of the second theme, the shift to computerised production, which dominates the latter part. The former gained traction more than 100 years ago and shaped the management, content and, to a degree, the normative expectations of what these titles should be. This structure, in turn, enabled a managerial approach to the introduction of new technology, seen as a way to cut costs and disempower the print unions. Most recently this corporate model has shaped the response to the decline of newspaper advertising profits as one of the imminent death of the regional newspaper in a post-digital era. 643

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By the time the 1971 report was written, like the majority of newspapers in the UK, Cardiff’s two daily titles, the Western Mail and the South Wales Echo had essentially been amalgamated. Along with a number of weekly titles, the dailies were in one publishing centre owned by Canadian newspaper magnate Roy Thomson. Thomson famously claimed to own newspapers only for their profit-making potential (Williams 2010: 188). The form of ownership which he epitomised was established as the norm during the latter half of the twentieth century and represented a race to ownership by various companies for whom newspapers were just one way of many of making money. It was predicated on the regional newspaper as a highly profitable product, yielding income from advertising within a defined circulation area and meant that titles best operated in monopolistic circulation areas, which came to dominate as the century progressed. Ultimately, it is this industrial organisation which decoupled the link between editorial quality and profit as presaged by the report above. Arguably it is this move which has left the industry incapable of responding to the decline in advertising revenues caused by the shift to digital. While Rupert Murdoch’s battle for Wapping in 1986 epitomises, in the popular imagination, the move to the computerised production, this revolution came first to the provincial newspaper industry. Here the corporate owners placed an unsentimental emphasis on profitability, in contrast to the metropolitan titles which were more often a ‘rich man’s hobby’ (Littleton 1992: 9). As such, its adoption at a local level set a pattern for the wholesale shift away from hot metal for the industry and can be seen as a pivotal moment for the future of the newspaper. As printers were made redundant, the control of the production process could have shifted to editorial workers­– ­and in particular journalists who, in theory, could have stepped in to claim control of the production process. This in turn, could have contributed to their efforts to resist the subsequent shift to managerialism which defined editorial as one cost among all others to be controlled, and so effectively undermined any protection afforded to news workers who might have claimed a higher social purpose. Nearly fifty years on and the failure to capture the promise of the ‘initial key stroke’ (NUJ 1977: 33) is all too obvious in the strippedout newsrooms of provincial titles across the country as those corporate owners seek to maximise what revenue is left by minimising inputs like staff. In turn, it is this backdrop which has prompted contemporary concerns around the ‘democratic deficit’ which has been created by the inability of these reduced titles to perform the normative ‘watchdog’ role because of a lack of resources. As such, the ‘greater problem’ foreseen in the 1970s Western Mail has well and truly come home to roost.

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Local Newspapers are Profitable, and the Evening Newspaper is the Most Profitable of All In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the impact of New Journalism on the provincial press was such that once-staid, politicised titles increasingly focused on engaging a local audience. Thus, in the early twentieth century, the newspaper men (and it was overwhelmingly men), aimed local content at a local audience and circulation areas shrank. Provincial newspapers have always been in some way dependent on advertising revenue for their profitability but with the abolition of Stamp Duty in 1855, the path was cleared for the mass circulation newspaper. The economics of newspaper production­– ­with its high first-copy costs­– ­meant mass circulation was something to be sought; additionally, a high circulation provided a better platform to sell to advertisers. Profitability was also linked to the amount charged for advertising in relation to circulation and distribution costs. This meant the best way to make money from a given area was to hold a monopoly over both newspaper sales and advertising markets. It is this which led to the battles for dominance which characterised the industry. Between 1914 and 1976 circulations for regional newspapers grew, though the number of titles fell as newspapers sought dominance within their market. For instance, in 1937 there were twenty-eight provincial morning titles, seventy-nine evening and 1,348 weeklies; by 1975 these numbers had fallen to 17, 78 and 1,079 respectively. At the same time circulations rose from 1.6 million for the morning titles, 4.4 million for the evening and 8.6 million for the weeklies in 1937 to 1.96 million, 6.3 million and 12.3 million in 1975 (Murdock and Golding 1978: 132). When newspaper war failed, truces were called and areas shared out, for the benefit of owners. It was the increasing value of this market which changed the nature of ownership of these titles; in the early twentieth century the ‘combines’ were dominated by families like the Berry brothers­ – ­to become Lords Camrose and Kemsley­ – ­or the Harmsworths –  Lords Rothermere and Northcliffe and Sir Leicester Harmsworth. But in post-war Britain these titles came increasingly to be owned by huge conglomerates with a variety of holdings. The exception to this process was Ireland, where religious affiliation continued to influence the newspaper market until the 1970s (Horgan 2001). In 1961 advertising spend in the regional newspaper totalled £80m in the UK; just fourteen years later that had more than tripled to £282m. Among those to see the opportunity in these figures was Reed International, which acquired IPC (International Publishing Company) in 1970. For

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the year 1975 to 1976 it was listed as the biggest newspaper company in the country in terms of turnover and made £294m from newspaper and periodical publishing in that year; but that was dwarfed by its total turnover of £1,063.6m­ – ­drawn in from a variety of sources as diverse as building materials to decorating products and lumber (Royal Commission on the Press 1977: 21). Chain ownership was not a new phenomenon for the regional news industry. Early provincial newspaper pioneers had been involved in multiple titles and in the nineteenth century groups had built up considerable holdings. Despite this, the first Royal Commission on the Press of 1947 cites the end of 1921 as a ‘convenient starting point for a history of the chains’ (1947: 57). At this time, the forty-one provincial morning papers, eighty evening and seven Sunday titles were largely concentrated in the hands of the Harmsworth brothers, Sir Edward Hulton and Westminster Press (ibid.). Harold Herd (1952) suggests that increasing competition from the metropolitan press, taking advantage of improved methods of distribution, was a motivator for the centralisation of the morning paper. At the same time though the potential for making money from the evening paper was significant and, therefore, the jostling for mastery of this market in the first third of the twentieth century was considerable. It is this period which gives rise to the four principal newspaper groups: Kemsley Newspapers, Northcliffe Newspapers, Provincial Newspapers and Westminster Press, whose legacy continues to reverberate through the industry today. The reasons for consolidation are both various and disputed. The Royal Commission of 1947 found that many of the casualties of the ensuing battle had been loss-making and it is clear from the archives of the Western Mail Ltd that establishing a successful newspaper was far from easy. The company had been formed in 1896 to take over the established business of Daniel Owen and Co. Ltd, which included four newspapers, including the Western Mail and the Evening Express; the company also produced publications including the Cardiff Tide Table and Almanack and the Cardiff Directory. Accounts held by the National Library of Wales demonstrate that the company struggled to make substantial profits until after the end of the First World War. In 1905 (net profit £7,664 19s 8d) the Russo-Japanese War was cited as causing increased expenditure (Western Mail Ltd. Head Office Private Ledger, file 14). In 1911 (net profit £8,964 12s 8d) continued rail strikes put the cost of distribution up. In 1914, net profit fell back by more than £2,000 to £10,191 4s 2d because of ‘decreased advertising revenue and abnormal expenditure caused by the war’ (ibid.). A year later and no

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fewer than 135 employees had joined the armed forces to fight in the First World War; this rose to 176 the next year and 201 by 1917. The accounts for the Western Mail Ltd demonstrate that it was then that the company began to accrue substantial profits, rising from £19,188 11s 5d in 1918 to £38,685 13s 3d in 1919 (ibid.). The largest cost to newspapers at this time was not so much equipment­ – ­contract printers could take on production­ – ­but the cost involved in establishing a viable circulation to attract advertisers (Royal Commission on the Press 1947: 85) but, such were, and continue to be, the vagaries of the advertising market­ – ­which tends to mirror the general health of the economy­ – ­that Herd suggests the cost savings offered by the ‘combines’ saved more papers than they closed through competition (1952: 272). However, personality and rivalry certainly played a part in consolidation. In the 1920s the Berry brothers grew from having a family association with the Cardiff titles to being one of the biggest provincial newspaper owners in the UK with Allied Newspapers. It was this which piqued Lord Rothermere who sought to challenge their supremacy with the attested intention of starting a chain of new evening papers in the main provincial cities in 1928. The ensuing rush for titles was typical of the era. In order to close off the Cardiff market, the Berry brothers also took over the holdings of David Duncan and Sons, who published the rival South Wales Echo and South Wales Daily News.2 The next year Allied Newspapers increased its holdings considerably, along with Westminster Press with the acquisition of the Bradford and District Newspaper Company and the foundation of titles in Oxford, including the extant Oxford Mail (Royal Commission on the Press, 1947: 57–61). Rothermere set up newspapers in Bristol and Newcastle and bought seven more and their associated weeklies. The Berrys responded by buying even more titles­– ­including those to rival Northcliffe in Bristol and Derby. By the end of 1929, out of 149 newspapers, the Berrys controlled twenty-five provincial dailies and Sundays, with their associate Lord Iliffe holding one more; Lord Rothermere had fourteen and a substantial interest in three other titles; the Westminster Press had thirteen daily and Sunday titles and an interest in a fourteenth. The impact of this race for supremacy on the commercial practice of the newspaper industry was significant. Lord Rothermere in particular set the template for modern marketing and selling practices and it was his emphasis on circulation as a value measure for advertisers which led to the foundation of the Audit Bureau of Circulation. He also mastered the art of what would now be called brand awareness, using his newspapers to promote his other titles. By September 1930 Rothermere

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claimed a daily circulation of 166,169 for the Newcastle Evening World­ – ­double the projected sale. Rothermere also mounted publicity stunts on a grand scale, for instance, drawing on pilot Amy Johnson to promote the Bristol Evening World and offering a £100 prize diamond to publicise his Newcastle paper but this march for dominance was not without opposition. The Conservative Cumberland Evening News in Carlisle sought a takeover by the Liberal Northern Echo rather than be subject to a hostile takeover by Rothermere. In Bristol, ruinous circulation war between Rothermere and Allied Newspapers led to a truce and the closure of two titles. Such was the disquiet of the people of Bristol that they founded their own title, the Bristol Evening Post in 1932 with £40,000 in public subscriptions. The biggest casualties from the early days of consolidation was the drop in the number of independent daily titles. The morning daily was disadvantaged on two counts; firstly, its content cost more to produce because these titles took a wider view of the world, provided by an extensive network of correspondents. Secondly, they faced competition from the metropolitan dailies; titles in the south-east, where the metropolitan press was strongest, were most vulnerable. Conversely, the further from London, the stronger the regional press, so that in Scotland each of the four major cities developed strong regional news industries and a layer of titles serving the country as a whole also developed (Hutchinson 2008: 61). Both Northern and southern Ireland similarly had ‘local national’ titles. The same was not true of Wales where a largely English-owned newspaper market kept titles regional in focus and limited their agenda-setting capacity (Thomas 2006: 5). Financially, most daily mornings had an associated evening which tended to pull in more profit. In Scotland the morning paper, the Aberdeen Daily Journal, was supported by the Evening Express, which sold five times its 15,000 circulation (Harper 1997: 35). In East Anglia, the Norfolk News Company ran both the ‘class’ morning paper, the Eastern Daily Press, and its companion, the Eastern Evening News. These were two very different papers, aimed at two very different audiences, as evidenced by the rather remarkable archive of correspondence relating to the titles held by the Norfolk Record Office. The archive contains a comprehensive collection of letters sent by Archibald Cozens-Hardy, the editor of the Eastern Daily Press, manager and company secretary for the Norfolk News Company, for more than thirty-five years, as well as from his successor Tom Copeman, who also edited the evening paper, as well as later letters from Stanley Bagshaw, editor of the Eastern Evening News and then editor-in-chief of both titles.

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The archives offer a glimpse into the prodigious task of ­organising a morning daily in the 1930s. In addition to editing the paper, CozensHardy hired and fired, managed contributions from agencies, monitored the arrival time of copy via the railway system, intervened in advertising matters and oversaw capital investment in new machinery. On a day-to-day basis, his attention to the detail of editorial coverage was second to none. The Eastern Daily Press had a network of international correspondents in places such as Paris and India and also local correspondents in towns like Swaffham. The rebuke to those who missed a story was swift: An important tragedy occurs within 6 miles of Swaffham on Saturday afternoon. The ‘Daily press’ comes out on a Monday morning without a line about it. The inquest on this important tragedy is held on Monday. Not a work [sic] about it is sent up by our Swaffham Correspondent for publication on the Tuesday evening. The question arises whether we ought not to take steps to find a correspondent in Swaffham who has sufficient time at his disposal to cover the reporting work promptly. (Letter from Archibald Cozens-Hardy to Reginald Smith, 29 June 1929: BR39/3)3 These files clearly demonstrate the ‘class’ audience the EDP sought. London agencies were employed to cover society weddings, matters of county interest­ – ­like investment in roads­ – ­were given editorial priority. In contrast, the archival material relating to the Eastern Evening News emphasises a lighter content and also a direct link between title and reader. Entertainment was to the fore, both in terms of listings for the cinema and theatre but also for radio broadcasts. In March 1930 the paper agreed to include a Mickey Mouse cartoon for the first time (BR39/5); a competition winner was significant enough to be included on a bill,4 but astrological adverts were not considered to be suitable. The plethora of orders to agencies across the country for cartoons, puzzles and specialist features on anything as diverse as knitting to driving demonstrate the need to fill additional feature pages added in the early 1950s. Ideally features would prompt reader interaction and a detailed log of the numbers who responded for the instructions on how to make a quilted hot water bottle cover were archived (BR39/55). The company had also launched a special Eastern Football News title which ran during the sporting season. Particularly obvious at this time is the newspaper’s relationship with its locality and audience. Books were only to be reviewed if they were of a ‘parish pump nature’, ­sensitivity

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was displayed to the reporting of tragedies should any relative be reading. The strength of this relationship is obvious in a letter from a house-bound, elderly couple who wrote to the Eastern Evening News in February 1954. ‘We have not received a visitor­ – ­not even a parcel or card at Christmas . . . you can tell how lonely it is for us two never to be able to go out.’ The response from fellow readers was donations of money and offers of friendship. ‘I would like to make them feel less lonely’, one simply wrote (BR39/56).5 Editor Tom Copeman was also commercially astute. For instance, adverts concerning motorbikes ran on the same day as ‘motorcycling notes’ (BR39/4). When he ran a story condemning smoking as a ‘dirty and selfish habit’ next to an advert for Craven A cigarettes (Figure 33.1), the response from advertising manager L. B. Lister was unambiguous. ‘As Tobacco Advertising is one

Figure 33.1  Cutting from the Eastern Evening News sent to editor Tom Copeman demonstrating the juxtaposition of an anti-smoking story with an advert for cigarettes (Norfolk Records Office BR39.24)

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Table 33.1  Average daily newspaper sales 1952 (Norfolk News Company Ltd archive) Week ending

5 January 2 February 1 March 5 April

3 May

7 June

Eastern Daily Press Eastern Evening   News Eastern Football   News Total weekly sale Week ending Eastern Daily Press Eastern Evening   News Eastern Football   News Total weekly sale

49,424 55,810

49,653 55,854

49,857 56,997

49,904 49,911(1) 49,933(2) 57,122(3) 57,938 54,113(4)

56,460

55,135

55,378

55,074(5) 54,838

69,249 5.7 50,020 59,383

69,513 2.8 50,149 62,312

69,240 6.9 50,350 60,498

69,470 4.10 50,439 59,379

69,337 1.11 50,691(7) 60,402

No figure(6) 69,107 6.12 50,816(8) 50,816

No figure

No figure

62,271

60,543

59,553

59,039

69,157

69,264

69,235

69,438

69,674(9) 58,809

1. 52 copies special sale – average 9 a day 2. 426 down Whit Monday 3. 5,000 down owing to snow 4. 29,000 down Whit Monday 5. Also 5,000 down owing to snow 6. Outside of football season 7. 65 copies a day – court report 8. 480 special sale fire 9. Includes 182 special sales in Yarmouth

of the mainstays of all newspapers, such articles as this might cause serious trouble and possibly cause advertisers to stop using our papers. The heading is certainly rather ill conceived.’ (Letter from L. B. Lister to Tom Copeman, 21 March 1930: BR39/24.)

Maximising profits­– ­Managerialism and New Technology Circulation figures for 1952 show the varying success of the titles published by the Norfolk News Company­– ­and give an insight into the factors which affected sales. Notes added to the figures demonstrate how bank holidays or bad weather hit sales, or how the story of fire could add nearly 500 copies to the total sale (see table 33.1). In addition to the three daily titles, the company also published a suite of weekly titles including the Norfolk News and the Norwich Mercury Series, which covered eight titles in surrounding towns. Particularly successful was the Eastern Football News­ – ­a specialist product published during the football season. The weekly titles also collectively amassed a sale of around 69,000 a week. The evening title consistently outsold the morning title by around 6,000 copies a day. Though steady, these

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circulations were in the middle rank of those achieved by daily titles (see table 33.2). But such was the status of the Eastern Daily Press that it was able to command a healthy price for advertising­ – ­which would have contributed to its overall profitability. By 1960, a provincial morning gained around 41 per cent of revenue from sales, and 58 per cent from advertising; the provincial evening made 37 per cent and 62 per cent respectively­– ­with a higher proportion of space, 49 per cent, given over to advertising, compared with 35 per cent for the mornings (Royal Commission 1962: 23). Newsprint rationing, introduced during the Second World War, had remained in place until 1956, which had the effect of prolonging the abnormal wartime trading conditions and the life of some ailing titles. Examining the economics of the newspaper industry, the Royal Commission of 1962 concluded that the organisation of the national newspaper in particular was also inefficient and expensive, largely due to the demands of the print unions. Industrial relations were seen as more productive in the regional newspaper, but still the industry had been brought to a halt by industrial action in the summer of 1959. It is against this backdrop that Roy Thomson, who had bought The Scotsman in 1953, bought the Kemsley newspapers, including the Aberdeen Press and Journal and the Cardiff titles. In 1962 he also bought the Belfast Telegraph, which, with a circulation of 200,000, was the bestselling title in Ireland (Horgan 2001). The Scottish papers had been basically loss-making since the mid-1950s­ – ­with revenues failing to keep up with rising costs (Harper 1997: 63). The Pratt Report into the finances of the company in 1959 revealed that profits had fallen from £160,000 in 1956 to £80,000 in 1957 and then to £28,000 in 1958­– ­despite circulations of 89,000 for the Press and Journal and 85,000 for its sister Evening Express (Harper 1997: 74). The answer was a detailed investigation of costs­ which were compared with those of other newspapers held in the same ownership. This was to augur the pattern of financial control exercised by Thomson over his titles. Each city was organised into a ‘publishing centre’­– ­the unit of production for all titles in that locality­ – ­which was given budget targets. Accounting was aggregated for all titles within that unit and costs controlled under set headings, ­including editorial, advertising, production. Each centre was then required to make a contribution to the central ‘London’ costs as well as cover their own. The reports for the Western Mail and Echo Ltd demonstrate how this form of accounting enabled costs to be balanced across the business, so if one title underperformed, another would be expected to take up the slack. Similarly, managers were expected to account for

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Table 33.2  The relationship between newspaper circulations and advertising rate per column inch, 1961 (Royal Commission on the Press 1962: 198) Title

Advertising rate per single column inch per thousand of circulation (in pence)

Advertising rate per column inch* (Nov.–Dec. 1961) £ s. d.

1.49

28 8 11

500 118 102 67

1.9 5.08 4.71 3.76

400 2 10 0 200 100

60

4.20

110

287 252 120

3.55 3.33 4.00

450 3 10 0 200

114

3.42

1 12 6

60 56

3.20 3.75

16 0 17 6

20

4.20

70

14 11

7.29 7.64

86 70

Circulation (July–Dec. 1961) in thousands

National morning titles Daily Mirror (largest 4,562   circulating national morning) Provincial morning titles Daily Record (Glasgow) The Yorkshire Post (Leeds) Western Mail (Cardiff) The Western Morning News   (Plymouth) Eastern Daily Press (Norwich) Provincial evening titles The Birmingham Mail Evening Chronicle (Newcastle) Lancashire Evening Post   (Preston) Evening Gazette   (Middlesbrough) Evening Echo (Bournemouth) The Yorkshire Evening Press   (York) Dorset Evening Echo   (Weymouth) Scarborough Evening News Nuneaton Evening Tribune

* There is some variation in the width of the column inch. The widest was 2 1/8, used by the Eastern Daily Press. The Yorkshire Post and Scarborough Evening News used a column width of 2 inches. The smallest was 1 3/4 by the Western Mail and the Evening Gazette.

any under­ – ­or over­ – ­performance. In Cardiff, this largely meant the evening title subsidising the morning title, which was not in profit until 1970, a move accomplished by savings made by the closure of the publicity department and a consistent under staffing of the editorial department. Though profitable, the South Wales Echo was also expected to make ‘savings’. In December 1966 these were set at £5,660. Significantly, this managerialism also resulted in a reclassification of the purpose of the newspaper into one expressed in financial terms alone. In October 1966, 116 children and 28 adults died when a colliery spoil tip buried a village school. The report for November 1966 com-

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Table 33.3  Costs for the Western Mail and Echo Ltd, January 1966 (National Library of Wales archive Managing Director’s month reports, file 44) Western Mail

South Wales Echo

Revenue: Net advertisement Newspaper Other Total

50,612 28,904(2) 201 79,717

Expenditure: Newsprint Editorial(4) Production(5) Advertisement(6) Distribution/publicity Administration

17,402 18,244 16,859 4,628 9,126 8,423

20,268 13,072 19,902 4,886 8,244 8,530

Total Trading profit before HO charges HO charges and depreciation Final balance

74,682 5,035 8,153 3,118 in the red

74,902 48,940 7,833 41,107

Circulation Gross print Despatch Returns Average net sale

114,709 110,598 8,848 101,750

74,274(1) 45,394 4,174(3) 123,842

169,519 164,647 14,047 150,600

1. Run-of-paper adverts down due to snow. 2. All-time record month for local display advertising. But property and jobs down. 3. Includes revenue from a new ‘cross the ball’ competition, which made a profit of £3,330 in January. There were a total of 45,154 entries. Prizes ranged from £600 to £100. Entrants place a stake to enter. 4. Staff from the weekly title, the Port Talbot Guardian to move into Western Mail and Echo office in Port Talbot. 5. Seeking union approval for a Stereo Department Incentive scheme. 6. Centralising the tele-ad departments from the weekly titles, the Glamorgan Gazette, Bridgend, Neath Guardian and the Port Talbot Guardian.

mented that the ‘Aberfan disaster imposed a considerable strain on the resources of both papers . . . It appears that some of the increase in casual sale has been converted to permanent orders.’ It is difficult to understate the impact of the eventual computerisation of newspaper production, not just because it had the effect of making the printer redundant from the production of the newspaper, but rather because it paved the way for the wholesale managerialism of newspaper production expressed above and effectively decoupled the relationship between editorial quality and circulation. Rather than

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heralding a period of autonomy for the journalist­ – ­to whom power over production passed­ – ­the introduction of new technology instead facilitated a de-unionisation of the provincial newspaper business and the cementing of a corporate culture which ultimately left it unable to resist the cost-cutting which has emasculated it in the past fifty years. The Royal Commission of 1962 had noted the potential of new technology, in the form of photocomposition, to drive efficiency in newspaper production but the urgency to cut costs grew between 1960 and 1970 with the escalating price of raw material and wages. Because companies had already largely established themselves as monopolistic owners of titles within one area, further savings had to be found from within those units. In the early 1970s newspapers began in earnest to introduce electronic methods into the newspaper composing process. An investment of £1m saw the Reading Evening Post launched as the first fully electronic title in the country in 1966.6 By 1977 half of all regional newspapers had replaced typesetters and compositors with photocomposition. Instead of type set in hot lead, computers produced columns of type on paper which were then cut and pasted into full pages. The next step was to produce full pages on computer screens­– ­which represented savings of up to £100,000 a year on labour costs for a regional title with a 100,000-daily circulation. It was to be expected that the print unions would oppose the introduction of the technology which would effectively displace their jobs. And though well paid, the job was also highly skilled and carried out in trying working conditions. Harry Reid, former editor of The Herald in Scotland, described the print shop as a ‘nether world of mayhem, dirt, din and confusion’ for the journalist who was called out of the newsroom (2006: 112). There was a complete lack of natural light. The printers were all grey-faced men wearing grey overalls. The hot metal itself was grey, and it was cast in huge grey Linotype machines. So the caseroom was a sort of demented, clattering pit of a place, a work that was monochromatic . . . And, as your page was being ‘made up’ on the stone, you’d realise that your writing, your page, was utterly dependent on the dexterity and skill of this man, the upmakers, working against the clock to get the page away on time. Julie Davidson, Aberdeen Press and Journal (quoted in Reid 2006: 112) In Nottingham in 1973 a bid to introduce optical character recognition technology met with strike action and the production of an alternative strike paper. This was not the only dispute in which NUJ members stood with print workers and indeed, Reid suggests that in Scotland the

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NUJ were as likely to stop newspaper production as print workers. The Messenger dispute in Warrington ten years later was equally acrimonious when Eddie Shah attempted to produce his series of free newspapers with non-unionised labour. He was able to take advantage of new anti-union legislation introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government. This meant that by the mid-1980s agreements were being made between unions and employers and in Aberdeen when thirty-eight voluntary redundancies were offered in the 1980s, seventy-six applications were received. At the Glasgow Herald some former printworkers retrained as journalists (Reid 2006: 119). Editorial workers had largely been encouraged to embrace the changes. The Institute of Journalists, which represented editors and managers of newspapers, had a cartoon character, Fred the Precocious Caveman, to advocate for the changes. The NUJ also negotiated agreements in individual workplaces, while also monitoring the not wholly positive impact of technology. In theory, journalists had a greater role in newspaper production, but also greater responsibility as the roles of proofreader, typesetter and stone subs were all incorporated into theirs. In some instances though, minimal or no extra pay was awarded for the additional responsibility (Franklin and Murphy 1991: 14). New forms of competition were also evident in the regions via localised television and radio companies­ – ­some of whom attracted investment from those with interests in newspapers. New technology was also visible elsewhere. Ceefax, delivered by the BBC, and the Independent Broadcast Association’s Oracle and the General Post Office’s Prestel were all seen as versions of an ‘electronic newspaper’ by the Institute of Journalists, and the Birmingham Post and Mail and Eastern Counties Newspapers were among those companies which dipped their toes into these early ventures. A major form of competition to the traditional regional newspaper came from the free newspaper, which entrepreneurs such as Eddie Shah had demonstrated to have significant commercial potential. The significance of the free newspaper comes not from its lack of cover price­– ­as previously demonstrated, most papers make most money from advertising­– ­but from the way in which it decoupled the link between circulation and editorial quality. Shah employed just seven journalists out of seventy total employees to produce his five Messenger titles; this was typical of a rebalanced newspaper organisation where editorial was less important than advertising because a reader no longer had to choose to buy the newspaper. Instead a circulation was guaranteed for an advertiser and any editorial had to be interesting, but not so interesting as to detract from the advertising. To this end cheaper, often inexperienced jour-

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nalists were employed who were a lot less likely to be members of the union (Franklin and Murphy 1991: 79–80). In 1999, the free newspaper was launched in a daily format for the first time with the advent of the Metro series. This disruption in the relationship between editorial quality and sales completed the shift to managerialism in the regional news industry, argues D. H. Simpson (1981), and this process underwrote the progress of the provincial newspaper in the closing years of the twentieth century. These continued cuts had the benefit of maintaining the actual number of titles so that the number of around 1,280 regional titles was largely unchanged between 1995 and 2005, although during the same period circulations fell dramatically, for instance from 212,739 to 158,130 for the Wolverhampton Express and Star and from 201,476 to 93,339 for the Birmingham Mail. The peak of regional circulations had come in 1989 when almost 48 million local newspapers were sold each week. By 2004 this figure had fallen to 41 million (Matthews 2017a: 194). The drop in circulations did not though immediately dent profits, but this did not prevent owners using technology to cut costs by rationalising the resources given to newspaper production. This resulted in increased centralisation and what Franklin has termed ‘homogenisation’ of titles which, produced by central teams, in remote locations, became ‘local in name only’ (2006: xxi). These papers were also increasingly bigger­– ­to take more adverts­– ­resulting in the same number of staff working to fill more pages so that work in a newsroom was compared with working in a ‘sweatshop’ (Davies: 2008). Thomas notes that for the regional press in Wales 80 per cent of profits were drawn from advertising in the pre-recession era (2006: 2). In 2004 the Western Mail and Echo group made near £20m­– ­with a profit margin of 35 per cent. Despite this, owners Trinity Mirror proposed further job cuts, in addition to the 23 per cent reduction in staff between 1999 and 2004 (Thomas 2006: 13). By turning editorial work into a routinised, bureaucratic process, rather than one rested on individual flair­ – ­and expense accounts­– ­a stratum of experienced journalists was lost to the industry because they favoured redundancy over the changes to their work practices. This in turn diluted the transmission of the newsroom ideology of social benefit, which underpinned work in regional newspapers (Delano 2000: 265).

Conclusion There is no doubt that 2008 marked a watershed for the British regional newspaper industry; the impact of the recession prompted by

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the banking crisis and shift of advertising revenues to digital platforms was to have a profound impact on the business model which has been described here. Additionally, the impact of digital technology was heralded as a change which ‘radically altered virtually every aspect of news gathering, writing and reporting’ (Franklin 2012: 1). Such was the depth of crisis caused to newspaper finances by these twin drivers that one editor described it as a ‘double whammy’ (interview carried out by the author). The overriding analysis of the reaction of the corporate owners to this has been economic; in this reading, the impact on profits means the provincial newspaper industry is in terminal decline, so the continuing, and often brutal, cost-cutting strategies are justified. There is, though, an alternative account which repositions the decline of the corporate newspaper industry, not as a victim of digital change, but as a logical conclusion of decades of centralisation and commercialisation. This has stripped the regional press of quality and so when the need comes to sell newspapers to readers once more, they are unable to do so. Additionally, while the corporate model of regional newspaper ­ownership in Britain may be the dominant story of the provincial newspaper in the twentieth century, it is not the only one. This landscape of almost unremitting centralisation is punctuated by the Second World War, which marked a wholly anomalous period for the industry, characterised by co-operation as titles sought to take full advantage of the levels of demand for copies and advertising space­ – ­both of which outstripped supply. As such, despite the austerity and travails of conflict, the Second World War in particular, was highly profitable for newspapers.7 Additionally, within this dominant discourse is an alternative story, characterised by resistance to acquisition and protest at corporate ownership. The reaction of Bristol and Cumbria to the ­newspaper barons has been documented above. More recently, in 1972 the West Highland Free Press was founded in Skye as a radical alternative to news ownership and it continues today as the only cooperatively owned newspaper in the UK. Alongside this is the perhaps less radical, but no less significant, independent ownership of mostly weekly titles; in 2014 there were more than seventy-five newspaper owners with three or fewer titles (Newspaper Society Intelligence Unit, January 2014). The key legacy of the corporate model of ownership within regional newspapers is, then, one of ideology where the conception of regional and local journalism as a public service has been subsumed to one of profit. It was this battle which essentially underwrote the three Royal Commissions of 1947, 1962 and 1977, expressed most clearly in post-

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war Britain where political opposition between the ‘millionaire’ owners and the unionised worker was clearly visible in the terms of the debate. It was at the point of the introduction of new technology that the ideological battle was lost; the failure of editorial workers to seize its potential means the promise of reinvigorated purpose of public service was a ‘rainbow that came and went’ (Curran 2003: 101). It is this, I argue, which has left the provincial newspaper incapable of articulating its significance as it seeks a sustainable future in the twenty-first century (see Matthews 2017c).

Notes 1. Western Mail & Echo Ltd Records 1869–1980. GB 0210 WESCHO Files 44–56. Managing Director’s monthly reports. The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. 2. The Daily News was closed immediately; the Evening Express lasted until 1930. 3. Norfolk News Company/Eastern Daily Press Correspondence Files 1793– 1957. BR39 Correspondence of A. Cozens-Hardy (editor of the Eastern Daily Press, 1897–1973). Norfolk Record Office, Norwich. 4. A bill is a poster produced to advertise the content in that day’s paper. 5. This is relevant to the provincial newspaper, which still lays claim to a relationship of community service (see Jackson 1971; Matthews 2017b). 6. It was also the first to go fully digital in December 2014. 7. A detailed discussion of the provincial newspaper in the Second World War is outside the scope of this chapter. I have written of it in some detail in Matthews 2017a.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS Martin Conboy

T

  his volume has drawn together a wide range of insights into the press over a period of just over a hundred years; a long twentieth century. It is generally acknowledged that if we had been looking for convenient dates to begin the discussion then the launch of Harmsworth’s Daily Mail in 1896 could well be taken as the starting point of this modern era. However, the launch of the Daily Express in 1900, eventually to rise to prominence as the bestselling mid-century daily newspaper in the UK, is perhaps an even better indication of the dawn of a new era in its clear motivation to extend the experiment in mass daily newspaper production begun by the Daily Mail. This convenient starting point for our discussions may have been driven by the editorial requirement to section volumes along the lines of the centuries but beyond this what we witness throughout the volume is the fluidity with which themes, technologies, anxieties about the influence of the press which emerged in the nineteenth century, and even earlier, permeate the twentieth and even encroach upon this present century. Bringing the volume to a close as near to the present day as possible in a historical account has allowed us to take a considered look at how the contemporary press is coping with a fresh configuration of opportunities and threats. The long twentieth century saw both the rise of a mass, commercial press and the most significant challenges to the dominance of the medium ever witnessed. This mass circulation press, it has often been observed, brought little of great originality and in many respects was a combination of longer gestations in the commercial exploitation of the press. What it did achieve was the optimal deployment of a range of technologies of production and distribution matched to more 660

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s­ ophisticated identification of audience and the incorporation of the powerful force of advertising. The book is rooted in five substantive chapters that deal with the economics of the press, production, distribution, readership, identities of readership and legal frameworks within and against which the press has operated. Throughout the century these have all been volatile contexts for newspapers, magazines and other periodical productions. This base has allowed the more fine-grained assessments of the following chapters to be based within those overarching and defining operating conditions. The editors are proud to have been able to provide a volume within the overall conception of the series that does much to reinforce the view that press history and within it the history of journalism, deserve their own specialist appreciation and that this distinguishes the approach of the book from other more broadly conceived approaches that look at media in general or the press as part of a less differentiated media world. Against any simplistic sense of determinism, the approach of the book has been to root technological development within the political and economic contexts that have driven all media developments from the Middle Ages to the present. The competition from various forms of broadcast media enhanced the commercial viability of the press against much prognostication until the most recent challenge of digital innovation and the rise of more de-centred forms of social mediation as conduits for news and the building of communities. For example, the race to extend circulation among both national and provincial newspapers was a direct response to the perceived threat of the radio transmission of news and the peak of daily newspaper circulations in the 1960s coincided with the initial heyday of television, including the advent of commercial television in the 1950s. The press was also at the forefront of techno-political battles over the introduction of computer technologies most notably at Wapping in the 1980s and from that point onwards the introduction of technological innovation has been used as a cost-cutting tool rather than as primarily a means of improving the quality of journalism itself. The century also witnessed the rise of the pictorial and more broadly the visual as key components of popular news media. Much of the development of the press in the twentieth century was a development of the graphic design of the press to make it more attractive to a casual reader with the improved incorporation of advertising, pictures, headlines and astute deployment of white space. Across many of the chapters, the role of journalists as key ­contributors

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to democratic accountability has been addressed in the routines of daily reporting, the advocacy of alternative approaches to the political and social worlds, the clear presentation of rigorously checked facts and the construction of national, ethnic, regional, linguistic communities. The volume makes a case that the contribution of the press has been distinct although it crosses over into various interrelating areas of influence, be they technological, political or more broadly cultural. It has thus contributed to the dual imperatives that press history needs a specific focus even as we require more detailed analysis of its interrelations with wider social and political trends. Its structure, concentrating on dominant print cultures and regional and transnational dimensions, has provided an important set of reassessments of the impact of the press in contemporary Britain and Ireland. Although the press in Britain and Ireland has been historically and commercially skewed towards London, this volume has provided evidence of the vitality and innovation flowing through other parts of the four nations. Writing the history of the press in the twentieth century is, in many ways, reasserting the value of its contribution to social and political life in the UK and Ireland. At the same time it is implicitly requiring us to consider the potential loss of such an engine of public opinion. Beyond these shores, the place of British and Irish print culture can be located in the burgeoning literature on global print cultures which both reinforce the importance of the anglophone press as well as contributing to perspectives that relativise that importance. Authors have combined to provide a more comprehensive review than has ever been compiled before in one volume of the activities of the press and the challenges it has faced. They have achieved that in a series of research-led, interdisciplinary explorations that highlight the importance of press history to political, cultural and commercial life in Britain and Ireland. The combination of micro and macro approaches, synchronic and diachronic perspectives has facilitated a synthetic view of developments across the different national contexts as well as interactions between the metropolitan and regional energies of the press. The authors who have engaged in this research represent both the established, world-leading names in the field as well as emerging scholars who will take over the mantle as this area of historical exploration and ensure that it continues to flourish. The contents of the book vindicate the overall decision of the series to incorporate the daily press with the weekly and monthly periodical press, including magazines, to demonstrate the contribution that this periodical culture has made to British and Irish culture; reporting and reflecting on current events as well as pushing for social and political

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change and beyond all else establishing spaces within their publications for the creation of communities of taste, opinion, political orientation and lifestyle. The book ranges from the mass to the niche with the latter category amply illustrating its ability to identify and provide a space for minority views, radical opinion and political positioning around regional, linguistic and ethnic challenges. This has meant that the press has provided both a mass appeal as well as appeals to those excluded by commercial and political pushes towards uniformity. The volume also contributes to challenging any assumption that the press, be it daily newspaper or monthly magazine, has been restricted to merely reporting on the status quo. Much has been contributed within all productions of the press to actively engage with and contest social and political norms. The place of advocacy journalism is thus central to these discussions often despite the overwhelming commercial thrust of the press over this century. The century has witnessed the reshaping of the press, even in its online forms, from a mere provider of information to a disseminator of lifestyle, commentary and political opinion. The flow in this case has been from the style and substance of the magazine to that of the newspaper, changing the latter to a product more familiar to the former. The impact of digital technologies into the twenty-first century has been intriguing and sometimes contradictory. On the one hand, the press has been in the front line of the challenges posed by digital media especially in terms of the professional shifts in the identification of journalists and the fragmentation of both the audiences and the communities that informed those audiences. Such challenges threaten the viability of the press and even journalism more broadly to survive. Conversely, one of the underlying advantages for the authors of the various chapters has been the increased availability of digital archives that enable researchers to do their work remotely, and particularly in accessing historical archives that would have previously been inaccessible and opening up new methods of doing historical research on the press. How these digital technologies ultimately reshape the press environment is a story that future historians will have to tell; if the past is any guide, though, it is likely that there will be twists and turns beyond our current imaginings.

KEY PRESS AND PERIODICAL EVENTS TIMELINE, 1900–2018

1900–1909 1900 (24 April) The Daily Express is launched by Sir Arthur Pearson 1901 (1 January) Alfred Harmsworth experiments with the tabloid format as guest editor of the World, for one day only Launch of the first black-owned, black-focused publication, The Pan African, by Trinidadian lawyer and activist Henry Sylvester Williams 1902 R. D. Blumenfeld becomes editor of the Daily Express Launch of Times Literary Supplement (TLS), edited by Bruce Richmond; in 1905 a promising ‘Miss A. V. Stephen’ (later Virginia Woolf ) writes her first review in what would become a nearly fortyyear relationship with the paper 1903 (2 November) The Daily Mirror is launched as a tabloid-sized newspaper aimed at women

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1904 (26 January 1904) The Daily Mirror is relaunched as an illustrated paper aimed at both men and women 1905 Launch of the Irish Independent Launch of the Sunday Independent­– ­the first Irish Sunday paper 1907 National Union of Journalists founded 1909 Parliament assumes formal responsibility for the publication of Hansard (Verbatim record of Parliamentary debates and proceedings) and renames it ‘The Official Report’

1910–1919 1911 Woman’s Weekly launched by Amalgamated Press. This was the first of a series of new weekly ‘service’ magazines for the mass market 1912 (15 April) Launch of Daily Herald as left-wing newspaper, with combative cartoons by Will Dyson (for example, 24 May 1913 a full page image of Reginald McKenna, Home Secretary, force-feeding an imprisoned suffragette on hunger strike) (16 April) First international news stories printed following the sinking of the Titanic the day before (15 April) in the North Atlantic Launch of the African Times and Orient Review, Britain’s first political publication for people of colour. Publishers are Egyptian-born Duse Mohammed Ali and Sierra Leonean journalist and businessman John Eldred Taylor News agencies and newspapers agree to a voluntary system of censorship­– ­the D-Notice system­– ­to safeguard national security

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1913 Launch of New Statesman Central News beats its great rival the Press Association with news of the death of Scott of the Antarctic 1914 John Eldred Taylor founds the African Telegraph newspaper (11 March) First half-tone photograph in The Times Sir George Paish, editor of the Statist, privately warns the Chancellor that the City is on the verge of collapse after the outbreak of war (8 August 1914) Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), Britain instituted censorship of news and images deemed to be militarily useful to the enemy 1915 Sunday Pictorial launched by Harmsworth Scottish Sunday Post launched out of Dundee 1916 Launch of Urania, a privately-circulated magazine promoting ideas about gender fluidity and women’s same-sex love Vogue launches British edition by Condé Nast with a mixture of couture fashion and feature writing (March) Ernest Brooks (1876–1957) appointed as official British war photographer on Western Front Canadian businessman Lord Beaverbrook buys the Daily Express 1918 Sunday Express launched by Beaverbrook Sunday Mercury in the West Midlands, which claims to be the oldest regional Sunday paper, founded 1919 Edmund Gosse begins Sunday Times ‘The World of Books’ column, which he writes until his death in 1928 War poet Siegfried Sassoon becomes books editor of the Daily Herald

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Home and Country, the magazine of the National Federation of Women’ Institute is launched Relativity Theory in Britain. Public enthusiasm for new thinking about space and time made Einstein a celebrity amid widespread press coverage

1920–1929 1920s The ‘Heyday’ of the ‘Little’ literary magazines with several important launches including T. S. Eliot’s Criterion (1922–39), John Middleton Murry’s Adelphi (1923–55), Lady Rhondda’s Time and Tide (1920– 79) and James Sullivan Starkey’s The Dublin Magazine (1923 –58) 1921 Daily Mail launches a campaign against ‘squandermania’ urging cuts in public spending after wartime excesses Daily Express (Dublin) ceases publication 1922 Reuters, Press Association, Exchange Telegraph and Central News, negotiate a contract with the BBC that restricts its use of news Hearst Company launches British version of Good Housekeeping BBC radio established­ – ­offering rival source of information to newspapers (14 August) Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe) dies 1924 The Freeman’s Journal (Dublin) ceases publication Allied Newspapers formed by the Berry brothers and Lord Iliffe (25 October) The Daily Mail publishes the forged ‘Zinoviev letter’ four days before the general election (November) The Sportsman, first published in 1865, ceases publication after a takeover by Sporting Life, its turf news rival of more than fifty years

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1926 Arnold Bennett begins his ‘Books and Persons’ column for the Evening Standard, which he writes until his death in 1931 1927 London Press Exchange produces circulation and advertising data on newspapers British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established on non-­ commercial basis, explicitly in contrast with US model 1928 Lord Rothermere announces plan to create a chain of evening newspapers 1929 (March) Trevor Wignall’s ‘Daily Sportlight’ column launched in Daily Express (1 July) C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian since 1872, retires (July) Lord Beaverbrook uses the Express as a platform to launch a ‘party of Empire Crusaders’, supported by Lord Rothermere Censorship of Publications Act, Irish Free State

1930–1939 1930 (February) Beaverbrook forms the United Empire Party to run candidates in the elections (March 1930) The socialist Daily Herald is relaunched as a more commercially appealing paper 1931 Audit Bureau of Circulations established Daily Herald calls demands by international bankers for cuts in public spending to save the pound, leading to the fall of the Labour government, ‘the bankers’ ramp’

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Launch of the Irish Press (17 March) Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin gives his ‘Power without Responsibility’ public address, describing the papers of Beaverbrook and Rothermere as ‘engines of propaganda’ (July) Manchester-based weekly Athletic News, launched in 1875 and specialising in football and cricket, ceases publication after almost 3,000 editions­ – ­a victim of the comprehensive take-up of sport by the national and regional press 1932 Y Cymro launched in its modern form as a national Welsh language newspaper Woman’s Own launched by Newnes. The service weekly was known as the ‘family favourite’ and enjoyed peak circulation figures of 3.1 million in the late 1950s Launch of F. R. Leavis’s Scrutiny, which becomes a byword for waspish highbrow criticism (closed 1953) 1933 The Daily Herald becomes the first daily newspaper to sell 2 million copies in a day The Keys, a quarterly journal and official organ of the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP) begins publishing. Its mission in part is to improve race relations in the UK (7 August) The Daily Express, under Arthur Christiansen, is significantly redesigned. This includes bolder headlines, bigger images and a more fluid design 1934 Irish Times begins a regular weekly books page (15 January) The Daily Mail publishes a front-page article titled ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’, commending Hitler’s and Mussolini’s domestic agendas 1934–5 A new editorial template and orientation is developed for the Daily Mirror. Steered by Harry Guy Bartholomew as new editorial director, this was supported by Rothermere’s nephew Cecil King and aided

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by new staff appointments, including Basil Nicholson, Hugh Cudlipp and William Connor 1935 Activist Marcus Garvey brings his Jamaican magazine The Black Man to London when he comes to live in the city Odhams (Watford) Ltd high-speed colour photogravure printing plant was developed, supporting launch of publications such as the rotogravure version of the cinema fan magazine Picturegoer (first launched in February 1914 in letterpress), and Woman on 1 June 1937 Financial Times launches its first stock market index 1936 Richard Naylor provides first regular 12-column sun-sign horoscopes­ –S ­ unday Express Creation of the Scott Trust (The Guardian) The Press Association breaks the news of the death of King George V, describing its exclusive as ‘unofficial’ 1937 The Press Association buys Central News in a deal involving rival the Exchange Telegraph news agency Woman, launched by Odhams as a competitor to Woman’s Own. The magazine reached peak circulation figures in 1959 of 2.6 million. The titles later became ‘sister brands’ following the amalgamation of publishing houses under IPC Mass Observation established 1938 Political and Economic Planning publish ‘Report on the British Press’ Geoffrey Crowther appointed editor of The Economist (1 October) Picture Post launched 1939–45 Mass Observation write reports on newspaper readership in wartime

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1940–1949

Labour and Industrial Correspondents’ Group founded Launch of The Bell, edited by writer Seán Ó Faoláin and which, until its demise in 1954 would be the leading critical review of mid-century Irish letters Launch of Horizon, edited by Cyril Connolly (closed 1950) 1940–1 Edward R. Murrow broadcasts the London Blitz to American audiences 1941 Reuters news agency is safeguarded by the creation of a trust involving the Press Association and newspapers. The shares held are said to be ‘in the nature of a trust rather than an investment’ (March) Wartime newsprint restrictions see Daily Express and Daily Herald, among others, carry sport on the back page of their four-page editions where it eventually becomes a permanent feature 1943 Allied Newspapers becomes Kemsley Newspapers 1945 Financial News and Financial Times merge (11 May) The Daily Mirror adopts the slogan ‘FORWARD WITH THE PEOPLE’ 1946 BBC TV restarts after Second World War 1947 The Press Association charters a fleet of aircraft to distribute prints of pictures of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip Royal Commission on the Press­ – ­into the ownership of the press. Reported in 1949

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1949 Gordon Newton appointed editor of the Financial Times The Daily Mirror overtakes the Daily Express as the bestselling newspaper in Britain The Sunday Press was launched to reinforce the position of political party Fianna Fáil in opposition to the Fine Gael supporting Sunday Independent

1950–1959 1950 (June) News of the World reaches an all-time high circulation of 8.4 million 1951 The Weekly Gleaner is first published. The offshoot of the century-old conservative Jamaican daily, The Gleaner, it addresses Britain’s large Jamaican community at first and later readers from throughout the Caribbean 1952 The left-wing Caribbean News is published by Communist Party member Billy Strachan. Staff included journalist and activist Claudia Jones Cyril Connolly becomes Sunday Times chief book reviewer Hugh Cudlipp is made editorial director of the Daily Mirror 1953 General Council of the Press (later the Press Council) formed Launch of Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender and Irving Kristol (closed 1991) 1954 Television Act establishes Independent TV funded by advertising

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1955 Independent Television (ITV) established in Britain, allowing commercial television 1956 Abolition of the ‘14 Day Rule’ restricting parliamentary coverage 1957 Circulation of national daily newspapers peaks The Sunday Review launched as the first Irish tabloid Sunday Which? magazine launches with a strong personal finance element 1958 H. M. Treasury appoints its first chief press officer Trinidadian-born journalist and activist Claudia Jones launches the West Indian Gazette, the country’s first commercial black newspaper 1959 Race (renamed Race & Class in 1974), a journal of the Institute of Race Relations, is first published

1960–1969 1960 (January) Diana Dors’s autobiography, Swinging Doors, is presented in serial form in the News of the World, for which the paper paid £36,000 (October) Merger of Daily Mail and News Chronicle sees sport become a permanent back-page feature on the Mail Honey launched by Fleetway Publishing for ‘Teens and Twenties’, the first general lifestyle magazine for teenage women The News of the World is called ‘a disgrace to British journalism’ by the Press Council for its serialisation of Diana Dors’s memoirs

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1961 Man and Society. Journal associated with the Homosexual Law Reform Society Royal Commission on the Press­– ­into the economics of the press Private Eye launched The Sunday Telegraph launched 1962 (4 February) Sunday Times Colour Section (Sunday Times magazine) launched Daily Herald acquired by the Mirror Group Launch of International Publishing Corporation (IPC) consolidates the pattern of mergers and acquisitions of Fleetway, Newnes and Odhams publishers and forms largest publishing conglomerate 1963 Sunday Pictorial retitled Sunday Mirror The Sunday Times investigative team, ‘Insight’, begins 1964 Sunday Pictorial retitled Sunday Mirror Author Anthony Burgess begins 30-year book reviewing career for the Observer (9 June) The Daily Mirror tops circulation at 5 million daily copies (6 September) Observer colour supplement launched (9 August) Sunday Times produced the first Sunday colour magazine Launch of Arena Three, the magazine of the Minorities Research Group, the first British lesbian organisation. (15 September) The Daily Herald is relaunched as the Sun by the International Publishing Corporation (IPC) 1965 Jackie, the longest-running teenage weekly, is launched by D. C. Thompson The Reading Post becomes the first newspaper to be produced electronically The Exchange Telegraph, the main agency rival to the Press Association,

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closes its general home news and parliamentary services, prompting claims that the media is being deprived of an alternative source of news (March) Nova magazine launched as an intelligent, colourful, poporiented woman’s magazine with high-visual design values 1967 The Daily Mirror peaks at the daily circulation of 5.25 million daily sales The Times appoints its first economics editor, Peter Jay 1968 Rupert Murdoch buys the Sunday paper News of the World 1969 Euromoney launched The Times launches its Saturday Review, which becomes home to its regular books pages (October) Daily Telegraph relaunches with sport a permanent backpage feature (17 November) The Sun relaunched as tabloid newspaper under ownership of Rupert Murdoch

1970–1979 Early 1970s Thalidomide campaign. A campaign by the Sunday Times forced the drug’s UK distributor Distillers to greatly increase its compensation of the people affected by the drug Thalidomide. Here it seemed the press was on the public’s side against industrial science 1970 (November) The Page 3 girl becomes a regular feature of the Sun

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1971 Daily Sketch closed David English becomes editor of the Daily Mail The West Indian World, the first British-based black newspaper sold nationally on the news-stands, is founded by St Vincent-born publisher and editor, Aubrey Baynes 1972 Launch of Gay News, the first professional gay periodical in the UK, published fortnightly National Magazine Company launches a British edition of Cosmopolitan. It rapidly becomes a bestseller, challenging existing titles and formats. In the same year a women’s collective produced the first edition of Spare Rib, an alternative magazine that promoted the women’s liberation movement 1973 Nottingham Evening Post workers stage industrial action over plans to introduce new technology at the title First Papurau Bro (Welsh language local newspaper) launched, Y Dinesydd, Cardiff Independent Newspaper (Dublin) acquired by Tony O’Reilly 1974 The Irish Times becomes a Trust TLS reviews cease to be anonymous Royal Commission on the Press­ – ­into factors affecting the independence and standards of the press 1976 Nottingham Evening Post is Britain’s first newspaper to start direct input by journalists 1978 Radio Broadcasting of the proceedings of Parliament

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The Sun takes over from the Daily Mirror as Britain’s bestselling daily newspaper, with sales exceeding 4 million daily copies (2 November) The Daily Star is launched by Express Newspapers as a competitor to the Sun and the Daily Mirror 1979 The UK’s first black glossy lifestyle magazine, Root, is launched by photographer Neil Kenlock Launch of London Review of Books, edited by Karl Miller News Corporation established, an important moment in media convergence First international edition of the Financial Times published in Frankfurt The Sun supports the Conservative Party in the general election

1980–1989 Early 1980s Upturn begins in coverage of science in newspapers led first by information technology and then by biomedicine, as science portrayed as basis of new industrial revolution 1980 Larry Lamb, editor of the Sun, is knighted by Margaret Thatcher 1981 Kelvin MacKenzie becomes editor of the Sun Publisher Arif Ali launches the Caribbean Times after leaving the West Indian World The lifestyle magazine, Black Beauty & Hair is launched (25 April) An Phoblacht carries full page image of Bobby Sands­ – ­republican prisoner in the Maze prison, Belfast, hunger striker and recently elected MP­ – ­using enlarged smaller half-tone photo, emphasising the ‘street poster’ impact of this publication. Sands died on 5 May, alongside other hunger strikers of 1980–1 1981–2 Rupert Murdoch acquires The Times and the Sunday Times

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1982 The Voice newspaper is launched by former accountant Val McCalla. It is designed to serve a new audience­– ­Black British residents David English, editor of the Daily Mail, is knighted by Margaret Thatcher The Sun launches the Bizarre gossip column. S4C (Welsh language TV channel) launched Censorship and official obstruction mean agency and newspaper reports from the Falklands are seriously delayed­– ­amid claims that it was faster to report from the Crimean War (2 May) Mail on Sunday, first photocomposed national newspaper in Britain launched (4 May) The Sun publishes a front page which says ‘GOTCHA. Our lads sink gunboat and hole cruiser’ in response to the sinking of an Argentinian ship during the Falklands War, which killed 368 men 1983 Launch of the short-lived Black Beat International, the first blackowned glossy music magazine Industrial dispute at Eddie Shah’s Warrington-based Messenger group over new technology (July) Turf daily the Sporting Chronicle closes. Founded by Edward Hulton senior, the paper traced its beginnings back to 1871 1984 (May) News of the World transitions into tabloid Reuters has become a hugely valuable financial information service and the shares are sold, proving to be a very good investment Robert Maxwell buys Mirror Group Newspapers Arif Ali launches the African Times Arts Council funding of literary magazines reaches a peak with £307,120 being spent on dozens of titles in England, Scotland and Wales with the London Review of Books (£40,000) and the London Magazine (£37,300) the largest beneficiaries. Public funding of literary magazines falls of sharply after this date (for example it is just over £100,000 a decade later in 1994)

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1984–5 Miners’ Strike: swansong of the labour correspondent 1985 Launch of Chic magazine, the UK’s first black women’s glossy magazine 1986 Large-scale industrial dispute at Wapping in London over the introduction of new technology at the Murdoch-owned titles Launch of The Independent newspaper with literary author Sebastian Faulks as books editor ‘Big Bang’ boosts role of City as global financial centre by opening it up to foreign banks (4 March) Today tabloid computer photoset newspaper launched, offset printed, first full-colour national newspaper (March) Back-page sport is introduced to The Times (April) Racing Post published 1987 The Pink Paper – widely distributed UK free newspaper covering gay and lesbian issues The Sun generates more complaints to the British Press Council than any other British newspaper Brunswick Financial PR agency founded Wendy Henry becomes editor of News of the World, followed by Eve Pollard of the Sunday Mirror, making them the first female editors of a modern national newspaper 1988 Launch of the Daily Star (Irish) (12 February) The Guardian major redesign of masthead and layout by David Hillman, followed by further well-publicised redesigns such as: 12 September 2005 Berliner format; 15 January 2018 relaunch in tabloid format (June) The Buff, the Saturday evening sports edition of the Bolton Evening News closes. As the Football Field it had been one of the earliest of its type, launched in 1884

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1989 Experiment in Televising Proceedings of the Lords World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners-Lee (19 April) Under the headline ‘THE TRUTH’, the Sun wrongly accuses Liverpool supporters of being solely responsible for the deaths at the Hillsborough football tragedy, resulting in readers in Liverpool and surrounding areas boycotting the paper

1990–1999 1990 Televising the proceedings of the Houses of Commons and Lords begins (March) Daily Telegraph is first national daily to produce a standalone Monday sports supplement. A Saturday version is launched in 1998, and a daily produced in May 2001 (4 March) Sunday Sport produced ‘Bollocks to the Press Council’ headline (June) Calcutt Report published, leads to creation of the Press Complaints Commission in 1991 1991 The Times ceases publication of its ‘Parliamentary Pages’ Pride Magazine a monthly glossy, celebrating women of colour, and aiming to be ‘the face of Black Britain’ was successfully introduced into the British magazine and news-stands Universal Web Standards (http, html, URL, etc.) agreed to, start of ‘World Wide Web’ 1992 British Library begins digitising Burney collection Paul Dacre becomes editor of the Daily Mail Financial press savages Chancellor as Britain crashes out of the ERM, concludes that governments cannot buck global markets McCalla launches the country’s first black broadsheet, the short-lived Weekly Journal (11 April) The Sun front page, ‘It’s the Sun Wot Won It’

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(23 August) The Sun publishes bugged phone calls between Princess Diana and friend James Gilbey, the ‘Squidgy tapes’ 1993 The Financial Times halts publication of its parliamentary page (January) A bugged phone call of intimate conversation between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles is published in the Sun and the Mirror, as well as in Sunday tabloids 1994 Irish Times Ltd launched new media division and ‘first online newspaper in Ireland and the UK’ (O’Brien 2008: 249) Launch of web browsers Mosaic and Netscape, making ‘the web’ accessible to more users Launch of the ‘Electronic Telegraph’ The monthly glossy Diva was added to the women’s magazine market, which under the ownership of the Twin Media Group explores lesbian and bi-sexual issues and icons and in 2013 launched the Everyday Lesbophobia campaign Online book store Amazon launches, and after rapid expansion begins a review facility in 1996 1995 Launch of guardian.co.uk and ‘Go2’ online supplement Publication of The Trumpet newspaper, a monthly community newspaper for Africans in the UK. The paper later begins publishing weekly Hereford Times launches a ‘beta’ website­– ­the first local paper to do so Thomson sells newspapers to Trinity Mirror The Press Association fends off a threat from rival agency UK News, set up by two of its own subscribers Collapse of The Irish Press Group 1996 Launch of the New Nation newspaper Digital cameras transform news agency picture services. Photographers no longer need to worry about lengthy processing of negatives and send digital pictures via mobile phones

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1997 (31 August) Princess Diana dies in a car accident in Paris, after being chased by paparazzi photographers (6 September) Princess Diana’s brother Earl Spencer accuses the press in his funeral oration, describing his sister as ‘the most hunted person of the modern age’ Shuttering of ‘Shift-Control’, increased news content on guardian.co.uk 1998 (May) Closure of the Sporting Life, first published in 1859. Along with the Sportsman and Sporting Chronicle it had set the editorial template for the specialist British racing press 1999 The Press Association develops Ananova­– ­a digital news service with a computer-simulated newsreader­ – ­and sells it to Orange the following year for £95 million Guardian.co.uk hits 1 million visitors Metro launched­– ­first free daily regional newspaper

2000–2010 2000 Nigerian-born journalists Chinedu Onyejelem and Abel Ugba launch Ireland’s multicultural newspaper Metro Éireann 2000–5 NEWSPLAN 2000 project: The British Library, with national libraries in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland improve their newspaper microfilm archives, a necessary precursor to digitisation 2001 (May) The Times launches pull-out daily sports section Entrepreneur Mike Abiola launches The African Voice in the UK

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Publication of Ireland’s Heritage magazine, targeting middle-class Africans in Dublin First Live blog published in The Guardian 2002 Launch of Parliamentlive.tv (August) The Times launches stand-alone ‘The Game’ devoted entirely to soccer 2004 British Library partnership with Gale Cengage and JISC to digitise 2 million pages of nineteenth-century newspapers from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales 2005 Daily Mail and General Trust tries­ – ­and fails­ – ­to sell its regional newspapers Global circulation of Economist reaches 1 million City Slickers’ columnists James Hipwell and Anil Bhoyrul of the Daily Mirror convicted of insider dealing (September) The Guardian launches 12-page sports section 2006 Launch of Xclusive, a lifestyle magazine aimed at Ireland’s African community (July) Sportsman betting paper launched, but runs only until October Guardian.co.uk goes ‘digital first’ with some news content 2008 (July) Final edition of Ireland’s Saturday Night, one of only a handful of Saturday night sports specials to have survived into the twentyfirst century 2009 Treasury Select Committee investigates­ – ­and exonerates­ – ­financial journalists’ coverage of the global financial crisis

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2010–2020 2010 (24 May) First day of The Guardian parliamentary live blog archive. Available at (last accessed 9 March 2020) National Library of Ireland launches its newspaper digitisation project (26 October) i newspaper launches 2011 News of the World closes in the wake of the Milly Dowler phone-­ hacking scandal 2013 National Library of Wales makes digitised newspapers (pre-1910) fully available online UK extends deposit rights to include British websites, allowing BL to develop web content archive 2016 (26 March) Last print edition of Independent; the paper moves wholly online 2018 Trinity Mirror buys the UK publishing assets of Northern & Shell, including the Daily Express and the Daily Star; forms Reach plc (November) Paul Dacre steps down as the editor of the Daily Mail

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INDEX

italicised page numbers denote illustrations ABC trial (1978), 120–3 Abel, Stephen ‘Stig’, 187 Aberdare Times, 318, 320–1, 325 Aberdeen Daily Journal, 648 Aberdeen Press and Journal, 652 Aberfan disaster (1966), 270, 601, 654 Abiola, Mike, 407 Abrams, Mark, 19, 309 Acheson, Dean, 565 Adams, Gerry, 128, 168–70, 428 Adams, William, 9 Addison, Adrian, 629 Adenekan, Shola, 408 Adeshiyan, Richard, 406 Admanson, Leonard, 102 Adorno, Theodor, 11 advertising revenue, 17, 22–3, 32–3, 34, 45, 54–6, 78, 196, 229, 302, 308–9, 411, 512, 582, 640 and new media, 80, 459, 466, 644 and TV, 39, 86, 89, 278 advocacy journalism, 663 Africa and the World, 401 African Sentinel (International African Service Bureau), 401 African Sentinel (Jackson), 398–9, 399 African Telegraph, 398 African Times, 405 African Times and Orient Review, 397–8 African Voice, 407 AfricansMagazine.com, 409 Afro-Caribbean Post, 404 agony aunts, 13, 475, 521, 526, 547

Aimsir Óg, 348 Aitken, Max see Beaverbrook, Lord Alba, 356, 361, 369 Ali, Arif, 404, 405, 407 Ali, Duce Mohamed, 397 All Sports Weekly, 282 Allen, Roland, 294 Allied Newspapers, 647–8 Allsop, Kenneth, 181–3, 182 Altham, Keith, 462 Alton, David, 607 Alton, Roger, 553 Am Bráighe (Cape Breton), 366 Ambit, 185 Amis, Martin, 178 Amnesty International, 552 Amundsen, Roald, 247 An Bárd, 360–1 An Barr Buadh, 345 An Branar, 333, 345 An Cabairneach, 373 An Claidheamh Soluis / Fáinne an Lae, 333, 337–8, 341, 345, 346 An Crann, 333, 345 An Deó-Gréine (later An Gáidheal), 361 An Gáidheal, 358, 361, 368 An Lóchrann, 333, 345 An Plobacht (later An Phoblacht / Republican News), 43, 277–8, 569, 606 An Sgeulaiche, 361 An Solus Iúil (Nova Scotia), 364 An Stoc, 333, 345

743

744

index

An tÉireannach, 334, 343 An Timire, 348 An tUltach, 334, 348 Anderson, Benedict, 315, 339 Anderson, Jim, 601 Anderson, Lindsay, 455, 456 Anderson, W. G., 377 Anderton, James, 25–6 Angell, Norman, 159, 236 Anglia, 424 Anglo-American exchanges, 155–71 Anny-Nzekwue, Peter, 409 Anois, 346, 347 Answers, 7, 77 Answers to Correspondents, 628 Archer, Jeffrey, 107–8 Ardill, Susan, 499 Arena Three, 489, 490, 500 Armitstead, Clare, 185 Armstrong, Louis, 462 Arnárach, 346, 347 Arnott, John, 626 Artemis, 496 The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, 484 The Artist (New York), 485 Arvidsson, Alf, 461 Ashdown, Paddy, 218 Ashford, Pam, 101 Asian Times, 23 Aspire, 408 Asquith, Herbert, 473 Astor, David, 551–2 Astor, John Jacob, 41, 45, 166 Astor, Lady Nancy, 146 Astor, Waldorf, 166 Atherton, Mike, 292 Athletic News, 282, 285 Atlantic Monthly, 159 Attitude, 499, 500 Atton, Chris, 606–7 Aubrey, Crispin, 120–2 Auden, W. H., 177, 570 Audit Bureau of Circulation, 8, 81, 412, 536, 647 Auto Trader, 217 Backus, Margot Gayle, 628 Bagehot, Walter, 208 Bagshaw, Stanley, 648 Baird, George, 380 Baird, Robert H. H., 380, 381, 382, 382, 383 Bairnsfather, Bruce, 420, 423

Baker, Fiona, 312 Baker, Steven, 606 Balcon, Sir Michael, 456 Baldwin, Oliver, 454 Baldwin, Stanley, 14, 201, 233, 305, 531 Balfour, Arthur, 557 Balfour, Patrick, 3–4, 22 Ball, Joseph, 236 Balsom, Denis, 16, 315, 317–18, 321, 322 Bananas, 185 Banba, 345 Baner ac Amserau Cymru (later Y Faner), 31 Bangs, Lester, 464 Bara, Theda, 600 Bardot, Brigitte, 526 Barnes, Ernest, 620 Barnsley Chronicle, 603–5, 607 Barrington, John, 487 Barrington-Ward, Robert, 233 Bartholomew, Harry Guy, 13, 521, 571–3 Basie, Count, 462 Basnett, David, 512 Bauer, Martin, 622–3, 624 Baxter, Beverley, 287 Baynes, Aubrey, 404 Beanland, V. A. S., 293 Beano, 12 Beard, Mary, 556 Béasli, Piaras, 346 The Beaumont Bulletin (later Beaumont Magazine), 494 Beaverbrook, Lord (Max Aitkin), 14, 15, 41, 42, 45, 166, 179, 197, 201, 230, 235, 273, 520, 528, 530, 531, 539, 562, 631 Beer, Patricia, 185 Beer, Rachel, 7 Beers, Laura, 508–9 Beith, Mary, 545 Belfast Evening Telegraph, 377, 380, 382 Belfast Morning News, 380, 626 Belfast News Letter (later News Letter), 37, 377–8, 379, 380, 381, 381, 382, 383, 385, 386–9, 390–1, 392, 473, 474 Belfast press, 377–95 pre 1921, 380–2 partition and 1930s, 382–5 Second World War, 386–9 post War, 389–92 and ‘Troubles’, 391–5 Belfast Telegraph, 37, 71–2, 73, 77, 276,

­

index

378, 379, 379, 381, 383, 385, 386–9, 390, 391–2, 633, 634, 652 Belfast Telegraph Group, 49 Belfast Weekly Telegraph, 275 Belgrano sinking (1982), 24, 263, 525 Bell, 175, 178 Bell, Emily, 68–9, 215 Bell, Steve, 430, 431, 568 Belloc, Hilaire, 563 Belmonte, Laura, 424 Benn, Tony, 513, 533 Bennett, Arnold, 177, 179, 183 Bennett, Bridget, 175 Bennett, James Gordon, 156 Benson, Tim, 429, 430 Beo.ie, 335, 347, 348 Bernhard, Nancy, 423 Bernstein, Carl, 236 Berry Brothers, 41, 234, 553, 645, 647; see also Camrose, Lord; Kemsley, Lord Berry, John, 120–2 Bessie, Simon, 12 Bestic, Alan, 637 Bevan, Nye, 307 Bevin, Ernest, 197, 425, 508 Bevins, Anthony, 582–3, 585 Beyond the Binary, 494 Beyond the Fringe, 565–6 Bhaldraithe, Tomás de, 352 Bingham, Adrian, 84, 269, 316, 329, 452, 520, 525, 532 Birch, Ian, 464 Bird, Larry, 169 Birmingham Evening Mail, 23 Birmingham Gazette, 273, 294 Birmingham Mail, 657 Birrell, Augustine, 416, 417 Biswell, Andrew, 177 Black Beat International, 407 Black Beauty & Hair, 408 Black Briton, 406 Black, Conrad, 48, 555 Black Hair, 408 The Black Man, 400 black press, 300, 396–413, 493 and African / Caribbean independence, 396–402 and black British-born citizens, 405–8, 410–12 in Ireland, 408–10 and UK immigrant voices, 402–5 Blackburn Times, 282 Blackout, 494

745

Blackwood’s Magazine, 175 Blair, Tony, 199, 515, 533, 568, 624 Blast, 494 Blatchford, Robert, 506 BliainIris, 348 Blumenfeld, Ralph David, 157, 158 Blunden, Edmund, 506 Blunkett, David, 125 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 419 Bonham-Carter, Victor, 185 Booker, Christopher, 566 Booth, Arthur, 559, 560 Boston Globe, 163 Bough, Frank, 549 Bourdieu, Pierre, 228 Bourke, Joanna, 132–3 Bow, Clara, 600 Bowen, Muriel, 637 Bowler, Peter J., 614–5 Bowrin, George, 403 Boxer, Mark (‘Marc’), 567 Boyce, Frank Cottrell, 608 Boyce, George, 229 Boykoff, Maxwell T., 625 Boyle, Raymond, 285–6 Boyntinck, Paul, 177 Boy’s Own, 494 Bracken, Brendan, 207 Bradford, Bishop of, 256 Bradford Telegraph and Argus, 256 Brady, Ian, 549 Bragg, W. H., 615 Brailsford, H. N., 506 Braine, John, 181–2 Brake, Laurel, 175, 484 Brando, Marlon, 522 Brandt, Bill, 276 Breac, 348 Brennan, Matt, 461 Brewster, Gordon, 561 Brezhnev, Leonid, 425 Briggs, Asa, 69 Briggs, W. G., 271 Bright, Martin, 125 Bristol 24/7 online, 79 Bristol Evening News, 99 Bristol Evening Post, 648 Bristol Evening World, 648 British Association for the Advancement of Science, 615, 619 British Empire Exhibition (1924), 275 British Official Wireless (BOW) service, 441, 445 British Science Guild, 615

746

index

British-Irish press connections, 626–42 Brittain, Mark, 331 Brittan, Samuel, 202, 208 Brittan, Vera, 621 Brodie, Malcolm, 378, 379, 383 Broks, Peter, 613–14 Brooke, Heather, 245 Brookes, Peter, 567 Brosnan, Pierce, 170 Brown, Dave, 567 Brown, Gordon, 515 Brown, Terence, 177 Brown, Tina, 163 Brown, Victor (‘Bee’), 561, 570 Browne, Vincent, 164 Brownjohn, Alan, 185 Brûlé, Tyler, 610 Bucchi, Massimiano, 622 Buchan, Charles, 294–5 Buff (Leicester Mercury), 290 Bulger, James, 113 The Bulletin (Australia), 562 Bulletin (Glasgow), 291 Burgess, Anthony, 177, 546 Burke, Peter, 69 Burnley Express, 282, 283, 283 Burroughs, William, 183 Burton, Peter, 488 Burton, Pomeroy, 65 Bush, Charles G., 558 Business and Finance (Ireland), 46 Butler-Sloss, Dame Elizabeth, 113 Byrnes, James, 425 Bystander, 269, 269, 275–6, 420 Caerphilly Observer, 79 Caimbeul, Aonghas Pádraig (Angus Peter Campbell), 372 Calcutt Report (1990), 239 Calcutt, Sir David, 111–12 Calder, Peter Ritchie, 616 Caledonian Mercury online, 79 Callaghan, James, 23, 204 Calman, Mel, 567, 568, 570 Cambria Daily Leader, 286, 288, 294 Cameron, David, 128, 568 Cameron, James, 565 campaign, 221 Campaign for Press Freedom (1980), 512 Campbell, Alistair, 515 Campbell, Duncan, 120–2, 121 Campbell, John Francis, 359 Campbell, Naomi, 114, 115

Campbell, Patrick, 569, 637 Campbell, T. J., 377 Campbell, Theo, 410 Campbell, Topher, 493–4 Campbell, W. Joseph, 158 Camrose, Lord, 41, 42, 45, 379, 553, 645 Cape Breton’s Magazine (Nova Scotia), 366 Capital Gay, 498–9 Capote, Truman, 164, 175 Caradoc (North Wales Weekly News columnist), 322 Carey, John, 177 Caribbean News, 403 Caribbean Times, 23, 403, 405 Carmichael, Alexander, 374 Carmichael, Ella, 374 Carolin, Louise, 493 Carpenter, Edward, 484, 486 Carroll, Lewis, 563, 565 Carson, Edward, 383 Carson, Liam, 352 Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring, 623 Carswell, John, 366 cartoons, 266–7, 414–33, 557–68, 571–3 and Cold War, 424–5, 432 Cold War to Vietnam, 425–7 and First World War, 417–21 football as political satire, 417–19 and internet, 430–1 Irish, 415–17, 430, 431 ‘Mohammed’ cartoons, 432 and Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’, 427–9 and Second World War, 421–3, 432 Cash, Bill, 111 Casket (Antigonish, Nova Scotia), 365 Cathcart, Rex, 383 Catholic Bulletin, 275 Catholic Herald, 626 Catton, James, 282 Cave, Edward, 575 CB Fry’s Magazine, 294 Céitinn, Seathrún, 351 Ceannt, Áine, 345 celebrity journalism, 27, 528–30 celebrity magazines, 27 The Celtic Review, 374 censorship, 97, 120, 129, 255–6, 262–3, 271–6, 272, 273–4, 275–6, 381, 386, 389, 393, 421, 446–7, 496, 577, 591, 601, 614, 636; see also D-Notice system

­ Chalaby, Jean, 10, 158, 160, 232 Chamberlain, Joseph, 10, 11, 15 Chamberlain, Neville, 236, 562 The Chameleon, 484, 500 Chapbook, 373 Chaplin, Charlie, 454, 553 Chapman, Jane, 472 Charles, Prince, 29, 530, 624 Charlesworth, Chris, 463, 464, 465 Chartier, Roger, 92–3 CHE Bulletin, 490 Chesterton, G. K., 563 Chic, 407 Childers, Erskine, 117, 259 Chipp, David, 256, 263 Chippendale, Peter, 523 Christiansen, Arthur, 13, 197, 287, 521 Christie, John, 548 Church Times, 617 Churchill, Winston, 15, 385, 423, 553, 616 Citrine, Walter, 197 City Limits, 495 The Clarion, 505–6 Clark, Leonard, 185 Clarke, Otto, 207 Cleaver, Martin, 261 Clifford, Max, 24 Clifton, Peter, 258 Clinton, Hilary, 169, 429 Clinton, President, 170 Closer, 27 Clyde, Irene (Thomas Baty), 485 Cobain, Ian, 117, 118, 122 Cobbett, William, 575 Cobbett’s Parliamentary Debates, 575 Cockburn, Claud, 233 Coghlan, Monica, 107 Cole, G. D. H., 506, 508 Cole, John, 197, 198, 578 Cole, Margaret, 508 Coleman, Roy, 451, 463, 464, 465 Collini, Stefan, 181 Collins, Patrick, 288 Collins, Tom, 559, 560 Colmans, 44 colour magazines, 17, 19, 27, 271, 540, 547, 552, 555 Colures, 408 Come Together, 491, 500 Comhar, 334, 335, 348, 349 Comhar Taighde, 348 Comic Cuts, 7

index

747

communism, 597–9, 607–10 Conboy, Martin, 272, 316, 475, 520, 525, 532 Connolly, Cyril, 178 Connor, William (‘Cassandra’), 13, 15, 521 Conquest, 614 Constantine, Learie, 400, 400 consumer society, 194, 268–70 Cook, Guy, 624 Cook, Matt, 484 Cook, Peter, 566 Cooke, Alistair, 161, 165, 454, 459 Cooke, Gillian, 311, 312 Coon, Caroline, 464, 465 Cooper, Yvette, 586 Copeman, Tom, 648, 650 Corbyn, Jeremy, 240, 515, 516 Corelli, Marie, 172 Coren, Alan, 561 Cork Examiner, 341, 634 Corks Crew, 497 The Cornishman, 144, 145, 150–1, 151–2 The Cornishman and Cornish Telegraph, 139 Coulson, Andy, 28 counter-cultural magazines, 17, 487, 600–3 County Down Spectator, 71 Cousins, Margaret, 469, 474 Cowdray, Lord, 44 Cozens-Hardy, Archibald, 648, 649 Craobh Rua, 345 Creem (USA), 464 Criterion, 175 Croly, Herbert, 162 crossword: first in British newspaper (1924), 546 Crowther, J. Geoffrey, 209, 616 Crozier, W. P., 242, 243 Crúisgean, 369 Cudlipp, Hugh, 13, 18, 19, 521, 531, 545 Cumberland Evening News, 648 Cummings, Michael, 267, 562 Curran, James, 468, 482, 512 Curtis, Perry, 557 Cushnie, Carl, 408 Cyphers, 174 D-Notice system, 119, 120, 122, 255 Dacre, Paul, 638 Daily Citizen, 506, 595 Daily Despatch, 119

748

index

Daily Express, 5, 10, 13, 15, 16, 18, 36, 43, 74, 85, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 99, 157, 163, 166, 196, 197, 199, 201, 273, 280–1, 286–8, 294, 296, 319, 515, 516, 520, 521, 522, 524, 528–9, 531, 532, 546, 562–3, 569, 582, 595, 617, 622, 630, 631, 660 Daily Express (Dublin), 7, 473–4, 633; see also Dublin Daily Express Daily Graphic, 268, 268 Daily Herald, 12, 18, 33, 42, 47, 51, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 166, 178, 201, 237, 276, 344, 506, 511, 521, 523, 532, 557, 558, 595–6, 616, 631 Daily Illustrated Mirror, 9 Daily Mail, 1, 5, 6, 7, 7–75, 8, 10, 13, 18, 21, 27, 29, 31, 36, 40, 41, 42, 43, 65, 66, 67, 74, 75–7, 78, 79, 117, 157, 172–3, 178, 179, 181–3, 190, 191, 192, 195, 199, 200, 201, 203, 269, 286, 287, 288, 293, 319, 418, 425, 507, 511, 512, 515, 516, 518–20, 521, 524, 525, 528, 531, 532, 539, 557, 558, 563, 565, 568, 595, 615, 617, 621, 622, 629–30, 631, 634, 638, 660 blogs, 588 circulation, 87 online presence, 536, 642 readership, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94 Daily Mail and General Trust, 40, 53 Daily Mirror, 5, 8–9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 27, 41, 42, 45, 65, 74, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 99, 114–15, 178, 179, 190, 191, 196, 263, 266, 268–9, 273, 274, 276, 288, 319, 470–1, 507, 509, 520–3, 523, 524, 526, 530, 531, 532, 533, 545, 557, 564, 571–3, 599, 616, 616, 620, 622, 630–1 cartoons, 419, 420 and parliamentary reporting, 579, 580 Daily News, 12 Daily News (New York), 163 Daily Record, 6, 36, 540 Daily Sketch, 94, 100, 178, 542 Daily Sport, 49 Daily Star, 21, 107–8, 523 Daily Star (Ireland), 46 Daily Telegraph, 15, 17, 41, 48, 53, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 166, 178, 196, 219, 238, 241, 245, 451, 539, 553, 623, 628, 631 online presence, 79, 214 and parliamentary reporting, 579, 584, 585

The Daily Timesaver, 66–7, 70, 80 Daily Worker, 12, 42, 46, 598 Dalton, Hugh, 202 d’Arch Smith, Timothy, 484 Darmon, Keren, 481 Darnton, Roger, 84 Davies, John, 321 Davies, Nick, 245 Davies, Sarah, 424 Davis, William, 196, 561 Davis-Poynter, R. G., 185 Davison, Emily Wilding, 277, 472 Dawbawn, Bob, 462 Dawson, Geoffrey, 15, 233 Day, Simon, 328 De Valera, Éamon, 340, 342, 635, 636 Dean, James, 458 Deedes, William, 566 Defence of the Realm Act (1914), 273 Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, 119, 255 Delafield, E. M., 302 Delap, Breandan, 335–6, 337, 339, 345, 347 Dennis, Felix, 601 Derry Journal, 340, 384 Deslandes, Paul, 488 Devlin, Bernadette, 430 Devlin, Joe, 381 Devon and Exeter Gazette, 139 Diamond, Charles, 626 Diana, Princess, 26, 29, 166, 215, 239, 330, 331, 529–30, 547, 554 DiCenzo, Maria, 470 Dickinson, R. W., 453 digital technologies, 21–3, 52–3, 72, 79–81, 639–42, 663 digital turn, 211–12, 219, 221, 226, 241 archiving of, 222–5 and The Guardian, 211–22, 225–6 Dillon, E. J., 160 Disc, 462 Discovery, 614 Diva, 300, 499–500 diversifying revenues, 45–6, 53–4 Dix, Dorothy, 521, 526 Dizley, Diz, 462 Dobb, Maurice, 506 Dodd, Philip, 458, 459 Dolan, Frank (pseud for Breandán Mhic Lua), 336 Dorfman, Ariel, 425 Dors, Diana, 529, 549 Dosse, Philip, 487

­

index

Douglas, Michael, 114 Douglas, Tony, 404 Douglas-Home, Sir Alec, 566 Drabble, Margaret, 185 Driberg, Tom (‘William Hickey’), 13 Drum, 408 Dubbins, Tony, 514 Dublin Daily Express, 473–4 Dublin Opinion, 427, 430, 556–7, 559–61, 570 Dubois, Shirley, 411 Duffy, Carol Ann, 177 Duguid, Charles, 190, 231 Dunaway, Faye, 312 Dunn, Ian, 495, 496 Dunwoody, Sharon, 617 Durbin, Evan, 508 Dutt, Rajani Palme, 598 Dyson, Will, 557, 558, 568 Eady, Mr Justice, 115–16, 116–17 Eastern Daily Press, 648–9, 651, 652 Eastern Evening News, 648, 649–50, 650, 651 Eastern Football News, 649, 651 economics of publishing, 31–5, 661 The Economist, 7, 17, 163, 190, 192, 206, 208–9, 214, 235 Edinburgh Women’s Liberation Newsletter, 496 Edward VIII, King, 255–6 Edwards, Ernest, 296 Egan, Orla, 497 Einstein, Albert, 615 Einzig, Paul, 207 Eisenstein, Sergei, 454 Eliot, T. S., 175 Elizabeth, Princess, 252, 545 Ellen, Mark, 463 Elliot, Larry, 205 Elliott, Philip, 233, 234 Ellis, Havelock, 506 Elms, Robert, 602 Empire, 458 Empire News (formerly Sunday Chronicle), 543, 553 Empire press system, 434–50 Empire Press Union, 436, 445–7 Empire Windrush arrival (1948), 402 Encounter, 185 Engel, Matthew, 521, 522 English, David, 532, 631, 638, 639 The English Woman’s Journal, 298 The Englishwoman, 470

749

Enley, Frank, 455–6 entertainment press, 451–67, 539 Eppel, E. P., 600 Ericsson, Peter, 455 Erskine of Mar, Ruairidh, 356, 358, 358–61, 369, 370 Erskine, Stuart Richard see Erskine of Mar Erskine, William MacNaughton, 358 Esquire, 499 ethnic minority readerships see black press Euromoney, 193 Evans, B. J., 289–90, 293, 295–6 Evans, Gareth, 322–3 Evans, Gwynfor, 318, 327–8, 328 Evans, Harold, 162–3, 166–7, 237, 238, 554 Evans, Nigel, 331 Evening Advertiser (Swindon), 289 Evening Chronicle (Newcastle), 418 Evening Citizen (Glasgow), 291 Evening Express (Aberdeen), 648, 652 Evening Express (Cardiff), 646 Evening Express Green Final (Aberdeen), 289 Evening Herald (Ireland), 476, 561 Evening News (Glasgow), 291 Evening News (London), 41, 50, 418, 557, 558 Evening Standard, 50, 102, 177, 179, 253, 430, 562, 564–5, 568, 620 Evening Star, 562 Evening Sun, 344 Evening Times, 286 Evening Times (Glasgow), 23, 291, 564 Ewing, Keith, 123 Express Newspapers Group, 48, 52 Fabulous!, 462 The Face, 607 fake news, 116, 249, 256, 258, 535, 586 Falk, Bernard, 231 Falkenberg, Vidar, 214 Falklands War (1982), 24, 261, 261–3, 525, 533 Faludi, Susan, 479–80 Farage, Nigel, 516 Farren, Mick, 464 Fashion, 484 Faulks, Sebastian, 178 Al-Fayed, Mohammed, 561 Fear na Ceilidh (Nova Scotia), 365 Fearon, Percy (‘Poy’), 557, 558, 562, 563

750

index

Feasta, 334, 348 feminism and feminist press, 300, 468–82, 527–8, 602 Ireland, 470, 471, 473–9, 481–2 and LGBTQ press, 486–7, 490, 492–4, 496–7, 501 Feminist Media Histories, 469 Ferguson, Kenneth, 364 Ferrier, Louise, 602 FF Newsletter, 43 FHM, 27 Fieldhouse, Sir John, 262 Films & Filming, 487 Financial News, 190, 191, 200, 207 financial press, 189–210 and economic correspondents, 199–203 and global financial crisis, 194, 204–6 and labour correspondents, 196–9 and personal finance, 194–6 Financial Times, 42, 190, 191, 192, 195, 197, 198, 204, 206, 207–8, 239, 578, 579, 582, 583 Fisher, Desmond, 637 Fisher, Joseph R., 395n Fisher, Mark, 459 Fisher, Sir Warren, 201 Fitzpatrick, Thomas, 415, 430 Fletcher, Ian Christopher, 472 Flintshire Observer, 318, 324, 325–7 Flitcroft, Garry, 113 Flynn, Errol, 529, 544 Flynn, Ray, 168 Flynn, Roddy, 389 Foinse, 335, 346, 347 Foley, Donal, 570 Foot, Paul, 566 Football Echo, 291 Football Final (Newcastle), 290 Football Pink (Swindon), 289 Forbes, Ernest (‘Shemus’), 275, 557, 558, 561, 570 Foreman, Denis, 455 Forster, E. M., 177, 178 Forster, Jackie, 489 Forte, Charles, 194 Fortnightly Review, 7 Fortune, 161 Foster, Angela, 406, 409–10 Fountain, Nigel, 602 Fourth Estate: press as, 3, 236–7, 239, 245, 437, 505, 577 Fox, Samantha, 24, 527 Francis, Hywel, 594–5

Franco, General, 98 Franklin, Bob, 131, 657 free newspapers, 3, 22–3, 28, 39, 53, 458, 499, 656–7 Free Press (Aberdeen), 248 Freeman, Gillian, 185 Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), 7, 270, 341, 342, 344, 558, 561, 570, 626, 633 Freewoman, 159, 174, 470 Friedman, Milton, 202 Frith, Simon, 464, 465 Fry, C. B., 294, 295 Furedi, Frank, 609 Fyfe, Hamilton, 9, 519 G-Scene, 495 Gadhra, Nollaig Ó, 336 Gaelic Journal, 338, 341 Gaelic League, 333, 340, 343–4, 345 Gaelic media online publications, 335, 347–8 radio, 334, 347 TV, 347 Gaelic press, 356–76 and churches and clergy, 358, 366–8 in English-language press, 340–3, 371–3 in Nova Scotia diaspora, 356–7, 361–6 see also Gairm; Guth Na Bliadhna Gaelsceal, 335, 347 Gairm, 358, 368–71, 374 Gaitskill, Hugh, 508, 510 Gamble, Fred, 77 Garbo, Greta, 529 Gardiner, A. G., 159 Garrity, Joan, 20, 165 Garrod, H. W., 178 Garvey, Amy Ashwood, 410 Garvey, Marcus, 397, 398, 400–1 Garvin, James Louis, 550–1, 551 Gay Community News, 497 Gay Left, 492 Gay Liberation Front, 490–2 Gay Life, 495 Gay Marxist, 492 Gay News (later New Gay News), 491, 496, 500 Gay Scotland, 495–6 Gay Star, 498 Gay Times, 498, 499, 500 Gayzette, 496 Gearty, Conor, 123 GEMS News, 494 General Election (1945), 571–2

­

index

Gentleman’s Magazine, 575 George, Caudley, 404 Gifford, Grace, 558 Giggs, Ryan, 116 Gilbey, James, 530 Giles, Carl, 562, 563 Gilkison, Archie, 564 Gillray, James, 419, 422, 430, 432, 557, 568 Ging, Debbie, 480 Gingell, Basil, 98 Glad Rag, 491 Gladstone, William, 250 The Glasgow Herald (later The Herald), 36, 564, 633, 655, 656 Gléas, 43 The Gleaner, 402, 411, 412 Gloedon, Wilhelm von, 484 Godbolt, Jim, 460 Goebbels, Joseph, 422, 562, 564 Goldman, Vivien, 464 Gombrich, Ernst, 415 Good Housekeeping (UK), 150, 174, 302, 303–4, 307 Goodman, Geoffrey, 512 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 426 Gordon, Giles, 185 Gordon, John, 546 Gore-Booth, Eva, 485 Gorer, Geoffrey, 544 Gorman, Paul, 462 Gough-Yates, Anna, 310 Gould, Francis Curruthers, 557 Gould, Philip, 514, 515 GQ, 174 Graft, 491 Graham, Bill, 164 Grant, Bernie, 513 Graves, Robert, 506 Gray, Edward Dwyer, 626 Gray, Tony, 637 Green, Martin, 176 Green ’Un (Sheffield), 290, 291 Greene, Graham, 175 Greenslade, Roy, 239 Greenwald, Glenn, 127 Greer, Germaine, 313 Gregory, Jane, 623 Grierson, John, 176 Grieve, Mary, 308 Grigson, Geoffrey, 178 Grizelda (Private Eye cartoonist), 559 Gross, John, 230 Grossberg, Lawrence, 466

751

Grun, Jonathan, 258–9 The Guardian (formerly Manchester Guardian), 17, 18, 29, 42, 79, 93, 95, 121, 177, 178, 181, 185, 197, 199, 211–14, 217–19, 222, 225–6, 228, 239, 263, 278, 430, 530, 568, 608, 632, 641 online presence, 29, 641, 642 Guardian.co.uk (orig. Guardian Unlimited), 213, 214, 215–19, 221–2, 589 Guardian Labs, 54 Guardian Online, 79, 213, 225–6 New Media Lab, 213, 214–15, 219 RecruitNet, 218 Shift-Control webzine, 216, 219–21 parliamentary live blog, 586–7, 588, 589–90 and parliamentary reporting, 577, 578–80 and Snowden revelations, 120, 127–9, 228, 245 Guardian Weekly, 217 Gupta, Kat, 472 Guth na Bliadhna, 358–60, 370, 372, 374 Guth na nGaedheal, 334, 343 Haber, Fritz, 614 Hackney Citizen, 610 Haigh, John, 548 Hain, Peter, 331 Hajkowski, Thomas, 317 Haldane, R. B., 118, 618 Hale, Baroness, 115 Haley, William, 179 Hall, Radclyffe, 306, 307 Hall, Stuart, 452, 457, 511, 608, 609 Hallin, Daniel C., 603 Hamilton, Denis, 553 Hampton, Mark, 228, 229, 230 Hanna, Vincent, 218 Hansard, Thomas Curson, 575–6 Hansen, Anders, 624 Harcup, Tony, 608 Hardie, Keir, 320–1, 506 Harlow, Jean, 529 Harmsworth, Alfred, Lord Northcliffe, 1–2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 36, 40–1, 42, 44, 65, 66–8, 72, 75–7, 80, 117, 172, 230, 257, 268–9, 517, 518–19, 520, 525, 530, 539, 550, 628–9, 629, 634, 645, 646, 647

752

index

Harmsworth, Harold, Lord Rothermere see Rothermere, Lord Harmsworth, Sir Leicester, 645 Harper, Keith, 199 Harper’s Bazaar (UK), 159 Harper’s (USA), 163 Harris, June, 462, 608 Harrison, Stanley, 595 Harron, Mary, 464 Harry, Prince, 253–4 Haselden, William Kerridge, 266, 419, 420, 557, 558 Hay, George Campbell, 373 Hayes, Chris, 462 Hazlitt, William, 173 Healey, Dennis, 203 Hearne, Dana, 471 Hearst, William Randolph, 158 Heat, 27 Heath, Edward, 566 Hebdige, Dick, 513 Heckler, Margaret, 168 Hein, John, 496 Hello!, 27, 114 Henderson, Angus, 361 Henderson, Deric, 259–61 Henderson, James, Jnr, 380, 381, 383 Henshaw, Laurie, 461 Herald, 6, 15, 506 The Herald (formerly The Glasgow Herald) see The Glasgow Herald (later The Herald) Hercules, Felix, 398 Herd, Harold, 646, 647 Heritage (Dublin), 409 Hermes, Joke, 300–1 Heron, E. T., 453 Heseltine, Michael, 151 Hess, Stephen, 163 Hetherington, Alastair, 583 Heusaff, Anna, 352 Hewart, Sir Gordon, 118–19 Heywood, Jeremy, 128 Higham, Nick, 610 Him Exclusive, 498 Him International, 498 Him Monthly, 498 Hindley, Myra, 549 Hinds, Donald, 410, 411 Hislop, Ian, 566 Hitchcock, Alfred, 454 Hitchens, Christopher, 163, 166 Hitler, Adolf, 422, 507, 532, 562, 563, 617

HIV/AIDS, 25–6, 497–9, 622 Hobbs, Jack, 295–6 Hobsbawm, Eric, 608 Hoby, Alan, 287 Hoffman, Lord, 110 Hogarth, William, 430, 432, 557, 568 Hogg, Jonathan, 622 Hoggart, Richard, 185, 511, 542 Holborow, Jonathan, 124 Holland, Mary, 637 Hollingsworth, Roy, 463, 464 Holmes, Lucy Ann, 528 Home Chat, 7, 304, 305 Home and Country, 302, 306, 307 Home Notes, 7 Home and Politics, 302, 305 Honey, 301, 309–13 Hopkins, John ‘Hoppy’, 602 Horgan, John, 389, 637 Horizon, 178 Horkheimer, Max, 11–12 Horrie, Chris, 523 Horsfall, Allan, 489 Hot News, 460 Hot Press, 164 Houlbrook, Matt, 452 Houston, Bob, 462 Houston, Penelope, 455, 456, 457, 458, 459 Howarth, Mary, 8 Howe, Darcus, 407 Huggins, Mike, 284 Hughes, Billy, 562 Hughes, Clewyn, 328 Hughes, Spike, 460, 461 Hughes, Ted, 185 Hull Daily Mail, 140, 614 Hulton, Sir Edward, 285, 646 Hume, Mick, 608, 609, 610 Hunt, Karen, 305 Hurd, Douglas, 123 Hutchinson, Bob, 261, 262, 263 Hutt, G. Allen, 598 Hutton, Jack, 461–2, 463 Huxley, Aldous, 506 hybrid editions, 640 Hyde, Douglas, 339, 352 Hylton, Carl, 407 i newspaper, 3, 28 Identity, 496, 497 Iliffe, 44 Iliffe, Lord, 12, 647

­

index

Illingworth, Leslie, 424–5, 563–4 Illustrated, 17 Illustrated London News, 157 Impact, 495 imperial press system, 434–50; see also Reuters In Touch, 496 The Independent, 3, 21, 26, 48, 49, 51, 178, 544, 567, 578, 639 Independent News and Media (INM) group, Ireland, 46, 48, 51 Independent Newspapers (Ireland), 46, 639, 640, 641 Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), 239 Independent on Sunday, 204, 543, 544 Inge, Dean, 620 Ingham, Bernard, 24, 197 Inglis, Brian, 637 Ingrams, Richard, 566, 570 Inis Fáil, 333, 334, 343, 344 Inniu, 334, 343, 346 Institute of Journalists (IOJ), 233, 234, 235, 296, 656 International African Opinion, 401–2 International Gay News, 491 International Publishing Corporation (IPC), 18–19, 45, 309, 523, 645 International Times (IT, it), 464, 487, 600–1, 602, 607 Inverness Courier, 372 Investors Chronicle, 195 Ireland’s Own, 347 Ireland’s Saturday Night (formerly Ulster Saturday Night), Belfast, 291–2 Iris an Fháinne, 334, 343 Iris Fianna Fáil, 43 Irish America, 167, 168–9, 170 Irish Catholic, 78 Irish Citizen, 471, 474 Irish Daily Independent, 78, 342 Irish Daily Mail, 641 Irish Daily Star, 640 Irish Daily Telegraph (Belfast), 7 Irish Democrat, 347 Irish Emigrant, 52 Irish Examiner, 476 Irish Independent (Dublin), 7, 37, 43, 74, 275, 319, 340, 341, 476, 626, 634–5, 639, 641 Irish Mirror, 640 Irish National Press (Liverpool), 344 Irish News (Belfast), 7, 37, 379, 380, 381,

753

382–5, 386–9, 390, 392, 393, 394, 569, 633–4 Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 377 Irish Post (London), 168, 347, 606 Irish press, 5, 7, 36–8, 49, 274–5, 276, 278, 633–6, 639, 640–2 cartoons, 415–17, 430, 431, 557–61, 568–70 and feminism, 470, 471, 473–9, 481–2 Gaelic media, 333–9, 344–55 and Irish-born black citizens, 408–10 LGBTQ press, 496–8 satire, 569–70 Sunday press, 540–1 see also Belfast Press Irish Press, 37, 43, 49, 51, 168, 275, 347, 476, 477, 561, 570, 635–6, 639, 640 Irish Press/Sceála Éireann, 341, 342 Irish Press Group, 21, 640 Irish Statesman, 163–4 Irish Sun, 640, 641 Irish Times (Dublin), 7, 37, 43, 174, 177, 179, 181, 186, 248, 274, 278–9, 334, 340, 341, 343, 347, 349–50, 427, 430, 569, 570, 571, 626, 634, 636, 637–8, 639, 640, 641 online presence, 52, 79, 641, 642 The Irish Voice, 167, 168, 169, 170 Irish Weekly Independent, 78, 415 Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL), 469, 473–6 Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM), 474, 476–9, 481 Irish Worker, 78, 266, 635 Irish World, 415 Irish-American journalism, 159–61, 163–4, 167–71 Irish-British press connections, 626–42 The Irishman, 167–8 Irishwomen’s Union (IU), 474 Irisleabhar Ceilteach (Toronto), 365–6 Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge/Gaelic Journal, 345, 350–1 Irving, Clive, 554 Isis, 119, 120 IT, 17 IT (formerly International Times), 464, 487, 600–1, 602, 607 Ives, Chester, 65 Ives, George, 484 Jackie, 310, 492 Jackson, Edgar, 459, 460–1, 461

754

index

Jackson, Raymond (‘JAK’), 430, 568 Jackson, T. H., 398 Jacques, Martin, 607, 608 James, C. L. R., 399, 401 James, Nick, 459 Jameson, Storm, 306–7, 599 Jasanoff, Sheila, 625 Jay, Douglas, 508 Jay, Peter, 185, 202–3, 204 Jazz Forum, 461 Jeffrey, 498 Jenkins, Simon, 129, 578 Jennings, Nicola, 559, 560 Jennings, Richard, 616 Jeremy, 488, 491 Jessop, Gilbert, 293, 294 Joad, C. E. M., 619 John, Augustine, 402 John, Elton, 28, 111 Johnson, Amy, 648 Johnson, Boris, 241, 516, 568 Johnson, Lyndon, 425 Johnson, Paul, 129 Jones, Alan, 254 Jones, Aled, 321, 331 Jones, Allan, 465 Jones, Claudia Vera Cumberbatch, 403, 410–12 Jones, Geraint, 328 Jones, Max, 461 Jones, Nicholas, 579 Jones, Owen, 241 Jones, Roderick, 439, 440, 440, 442, 443, 444 Jordan (Katie Price), 527 journalistic professional identity, 227–46, 661–2 nineteenth-century legacy, 229–32 professional organization see Institute of Journalism; National Union of Journalists reporting distinguished from commentating, 230–2 and self-regulation, 238–9 values, 236–8; see also Fourth Estate Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 454 Joy, Francis, 380 Joyce, James, 174, 270 ‘Joyce, James’ (IRA informant), 260 Joyce, Patrick, 505 Junor, John, 547

Katz, Ian, 214–15, 219, 221 Kavanagh, Ernest, 266, 635 Kay, Jilly Boyce, 472 Kearney, Vincent, 394 Keating, Geoffrey, 350 Keegan, William, 202 Keeler, Christine, 548–9 Keene, Martin, 253 Keller, Ulrich, 273 Kelly, Charles E., 559, 560, 569 Kelly, Katherine, 472 Kemsley, Lord, 12, 41, 44, 553, 645 Kemsley Newspapers, 41, 553, 646, 652 Kenealy, Alexander, 65 Kenlock, Neil, 407 Kennedy, Edward, 168 Kennedy, John F., 540 Kenner, Hugh, 176 Kenny, Mary, 637 Kenyatta, Jomo, 401 Kermode, Frank, 178, 185 Kerrang!, 465 Kerrigan, Páraic, 497 Keynes, John Maynard, 209 The Keys, 399–400, 402 King, Cecil, 18, 19, 45, 521, 522, 531 King, Mervyn, 204 Kinn, Maurice, 462 Kinnock, Neil, 514, 533, 606, 609 Kinsley, Michael, 163 Kipling, Rudyard, 172, 173, 177 Kirkup, James, 491 Knox, Ian, 569 Knox, John, Book of Common Order, 366 Koestler, Arthur, 552 Koss, Stephen, 505 Krokodil (USSR), 424 Lá, 335, 347 Lá/Lá Nua, 346 La Fronde, 8 La Nación (Costa Rica), 400 La Prensa (Panama), 400 labour correspondents, 196–9 Labour Leader, 506 Labour movement and the press, 502–16 Labour Party emergence, 505–10 New Labour, 42, 134, 237, 514–15, 533, 609 New Left critique, 510–13 Labour Prophet, 506 Labour Women, 305 Ladies Home Journal, 159 ‘lads’ mags’, 27

­

index

Lafollette, Marcel, 617 Lamb, Kathryn, 559 Lamb, Larry, 20, 24, 523, 525, 526, 527 Lambert, Gavin, 455 Lambert, Richard, 192 Lamont, Donald, 367–8, 371 Lamont, Norman, 204 Lancashire Daily Post, 283 Lancaster, Osbert, 562–3 Langdon-Davies, John, 622 Lansbury, George, 506 Laski, Harold, 161 Laucht, Christoph, 621 Lawson, Dominic, 555 Layton, Walter, 208 Le Queux, William, 117 The Leader, 344 Leapman, Michael, 555 Leavis, Q. D., 176 Lebedev, Alexander, 639 Ledbrooke, Archie, 281 ‘Ledled Cymru’ (Y Faner commentator), 329 Ledward, James, 495 Lee, Alan, 316 Lee, Jennie, 306 Lee, Kolton, 412 Leech, John, 414 Leeds Mercury, 505 Leeds Other Paper, 495 Left Review, 599 legal regulation of the press, 106–30, 661 and defamation, 107–10 and official secrecy, 97, 117–23 and privacy, 110–17; see also Leveson Inquiry; phone-hacking scandal and terrorism legislation, 126–9 Lejeune, C. A., 551 Lemass, Sean, 380, 390 Lemon, Denis, 491 Lenin, Vladimir I., 596 The Lepracaun, 415–16, 416, 430 Leslie, Frank, 157 Leveson Inquiry (2012), 28, 117, 239, 530, 536 Levin, Bernard, 565 Levy, Moses, 539 Lewinsky, Monica, 27 Lewis, Saunders, 322, 323–4 Lewis, Wyndham, 506 LGBTQ press, 483–501 commercial magazines, 487–8, 498–500

755

and feminist press, 486–7, 490, 492–4, 496–7, 501 and homosexual law reform, 489–92 Ireland, 496–8 Scotland, 495–6 libel law and suits, 28, 107–10, 111, 398, 491, 609, 628, 637 Life, 161 Life and Work (Church of Scotland) Gaelic supplement, 358, 367–8 lifestyle journalism, 187, 271, 300, 310, 406, 407, 409, 483–4, 488, 499, 535, 543, 663 Lilley, Roy, 393 Lilliput, 276 LINC, 497 Lincolnshire Chronicle & Leader, 141 Lincolnshire Echo, 141, 148–50, 151 Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Globe, 141, 142 Lindsay, Martin, 292 Lindsay, Mr Justice, 114 Line-up, 498 Lines Review, 373 Lippmann, Walter, 159, 162 Lisle, Tim de, 53 Lister, L. B., 650 Literary Digest, 161 literary and review journalism, 172–88 British and Irish newspapers, 177–81 Daily Mail, 179, 181–3 New Statesman, 183–5, 186 reviewer gender, 185–6 Liverpool Daily Post, 296, 331, 332 Liverpool Echo, 296 Living Marxism (later LM), 607, 608–10 Livingstone, Ken, 513, 533 Livingstone, Sonia, 214 Lloyd George, David, 199–200, 531 Lloyd George, Megan, 307 Lloyd, John, 197 Lloyds List, 189 Lloyd’s Weekly News, 7, 67, 87, 539, 542 Loaded, 27 Lockland, Freda Bruce, 456 London Daily News, 42, 50 London Evening Standard, 241, 263 London Magazine, 185 London Opinion, 559 London Review of Books, 175, 178, 185, 186 London’s Outrage, 464 Longford Leader, 71 Loud & Quiet, 466

756

index

Lovell, John, 249 Low, David, 422–3, 562, 563, 565 Loyalist News, 278 Luce, Henry, 161 Lunch, 490 Lusardi, Linda, 527 Lyon, Alex, 110 Lyttleton, Humphrey, 462 Mac Amhlaigh, Dónall, 334, 336, 337, 341, 342, 343, 347 Mac Aonghusa, Prionsias, 342 Mac Cóil, Liam, 352 Mac Dubhghaill, Uinsionn, 352 Mac Grianna, Seosamh, 341, 342 Mac Lua, Brendan, 168, 606 Mac Meanman, Seághan Bán, 342 Mac Néill, Eoin, 338, 346 Mac Siomóin, @Tomás, 352 Mac-Talla (Sydney, Nova Scotia), 356–7, 361, 362, 364, 365 MacAdam, Donald M., 363, 365 Macadam, John, 287, 288, 291, 293 McAllister, Patrick, 380 Macaulay, Rose, 302, 303–4 McCabe, Colin, 458 McCalla, Val, 405, 407, 412 McCarthy, Albert, 461 MacCarthy, Desmond, 183 McCarthy, Joseph, 162 McCarthy, Tim, 384 MacCormick, John, 361 MacDonald, Finlay J., 368–9, 370, 373 MacDonald, Henry, 372 MacDonald, Ramsay, 201 McDowell, Tom, 637 MacEachen, Frances, 366 Macfarlane, Julia, 241 MacFarlane, Malcolm, 360 McGrath, Tom, 601 McGuiness, Gerry, 46 McIlvanney, Hugh, 288 McIntyre, Angela, 404–5 McKay, George, 460 MacKenzie, Kelvin, 22, 24, 263, 514, 524 McKibbin, Ross, 284 McKie, David, 578–9, 585 MacKinnon, Jonathan G., 356–7, 362, 365 Mackworth, Margaret see Rhondda, Lady Maclean, Donald, 546 MacLean, John, 596, 596 MacLean, Malcolm, 369

MacLean, Sorley, 373 MacLeod, C. I. N., 365 Macleod, Iain N., 360 MacLeod, John N., 372 MacLeod, Norman, 366 McLoughlin, Hugh, 46 McLuhan, Marshall, 339 Macmillan, Harold, 565, 566–7, 570 McMurtry, Stanley (‘Mac’), 568 McNair, Brian, 352 MacNeice, Louis, 178 MacNeil, James H., 363–4, 365 MacNeill, Eoin, 352 Macnie, Isa (‘Mac’), 559 MacRury, John, 371 McSharry, Deidre, 637 Mag Shamráin, Antain, 352 Magill, 164 Magnum, 610 Mahmoud, Mazeer, 549 Mahood, Ken, 426 Mail on Sunday, 89, 108, 124, 125, 288, 540, 547–8 MailOnline, 536, 642 Major, John, 431, 533, 568, 609 Makonnen, Ras T., 401, 402 Male Classics, 487 Male Model Monthly, 487 Malet, Lucas, 172 Man Alive, 487 Man and Society, 489, 500 Man to Man, 498 Man-ifque, 487 Manchanda, A., 412 Manchester Evening News, 23, 289, 451, 588 Manchester Guardian (later The Guardian), 6, 36, 97, 100, 117, 228, 233, 242–5, 473, 509, 562, 595, 616, 617, 618, 620, 632; see also The Guardian Mancroft, Lord, 110 Mancunian Gay, 495 Mandela, Nelson, 552 Mandelson, Peter, 514, 515 Manley, Norman, 411 Mann, William, 174 Mansfield, Katherine, 506 Mantel, Hilary, 178 Margaret, Princess, 544, 546 Markievicz, Constance, 558 Marks, Harry, 190, 207 Marlowe, Thomas, 75–7 Mars-Jones, Mr Justice, 122

­ Marson, Una, 399 Martin, Henry, 255–6, 257–8, 259 Martin, Kingsley, 162 Marxism Today, 513, 607–8, 609 Mason, Roy, 604 Mason, Tony, 282 Mass Observation, 11, 14, 88, 94, 99, 101–2, 240, 276, 599, 621 Massingham, H. W., 507, 552 Matheson, Donald, 327 Mattelart, Armand, 425 Matthews, Lord, 48 Matthews, Rachel, 131, 153–4, 378 Mauldin, Bill, 423 Maxwell, Robert, 42, 48 May, Derwent, 174, 185 Mayer, Anna, 614 Meek, David, 289 Mellor, David, 239 Melly, George, 462 Melody Maker, 451, 452, 459–66 Men Only, 12, 484–5, 486 Mendes, Kaitlynn, 472, 481 Mercier, Vivian, 561 Mergenthaler, Ottmar, 71 Merkel, Angela, 429 Merrill, William, 67 Messenger dispute (Warrington), 656 Messenger, Melinda, 527 Metro, 3, 28, 53 Metro Éireann, 408–9 Metro Herald, 53 Metro series, 657 M’Govern, Chauncy Montgomery, 613 Mhac an tSaoi, Máire, 341, 342, 343 Midgely, Harry, 385 Military Mail, 118 Miller, Ann, 522 Miller, Karl, 178, 185 Miller, William, 119 Milner, Alfred, 233 miners’ strike (1984–5), 21, 24, 198–9, 533, 603–6 Mirabelle, 309 Miranda, David, 127–9 Mirror Group, 18, 42, 45, 547, 631 Mitchell, Adrian, 601 Mitchell, Julian, 185 Mitchell, Peter Chalmers, 615 Model Housekeeping, 272 The Modern Man, 484 Moholy-Nagy, Lázló, 454 Mojo, 465 Molles, Thomas, 383

index

757

Moloney, Barry, 348 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 425 Moncrieff, Chris, 256 Mond, Asaf, 418 Money Week, 195 Money Which?, 194–5 MoneyFacts, 195 Moneywise, 195 Monk, Thelonius, 462 Monocle, 610 Monroe, Marilyn, 458, 526 Montgomery, Field Marshall, 553 Monthly Film Bulletin, 453, 458 Montserrat, Nicholas, 553 Moody, Harold, 399 Moore, Brian (‘Cormac’), 569 Moore, Charles, 555 Morgan, Matthew, 157 Morning, 65 Morning Post, 6, 178, 189, 190 Morning Star, 42 Morrison, Danny, 606 Morrison, Herbert, 387, 508 Mort, Frank, 452 Mortimer, John, 601 Mortimer, Raymond, 183 Morton, Andrew, 26, 554 Morton, J. B., 563, 569 Moseley, Oswald, 507 Moses, Mr Justice, 125 Mosgladh (Nova Scotia), 363, 364 Mosley, Max, 115, 116 Mother and Maid, 272 Muggeridge, Malcolm, 561 Muldoon, Michael, 383 Munster GCN@, 497 Murchison, Thomas, 368, 369, 372 Murdoch, Deborah, 311 Murdoch, Rupert, 2, 16–17, 19, 20–1, 35, 45, 48, 73, 166, 237, 511, 515, 523, 525, 531, 554, 582–3, 631, 638, 639, 644 Murphy, Martin, 340 Murphy, Patrick, 293 Murphy, William Martin, 77–8, 626, 634–5, 635 Murrow, Edward R., 162 Mussolini, Benito, 422, 507, 532, 562 Naidheachd a’ Chlachain (now An Rubha Gaelic Folklife Magazine), 366 The Nation, 163 Nation, 507

758

index

National Union of Journalists (NUJ), 126, 233–4, 235, 238, 267, 296, 389, 656 Nationalist and Leinster Times, 476 Nature, 614 Navasky, Victor, 163 Naylor, Richard, 546 Negro World, 400, 400 Neil, Andrew, 554 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 567 Neville, Richard, 567, 601, 602 New Ireland Review, 344 New Journalism, 156, 158–61, 190, 519, 557, 626–9, 635, 645 New Life, 23 New Musical Express (NME), 462, 464, 465 New Nation, 405, 406, 409–10 New Observer (later Sunday Times), 553 The New Republic, 159, 162, 163, 588 New Scientist, 600 New Society, 599–600 New Statesman, 17, 43, 121, 163, 164, 177, 178, 183–5, 185, 186, 425–6, 455, 607 New Statesman & Nation, 162 new technology, 48–9 New Verse, 178 New York Herald, 156–7 New York Journal, 158 New York Post, 572 New York Times, 158, 163, 245, 424, 588 New York World (World), 66–7 New Yorker, 163, 423 Newcastle Evening World, 648 Newcastle Weekly Journal, 9? Newnes, George, 159, 628 News, 12 news agencies, 247–64, 436 Associated Press (USA), 165, 439, 442 Central News, 247, 248, 251–2, 257 Exchange Telegraph, 98, 257 Havas (France), 439, 442, 443 Press Association, 247–9, 250–1, 252–6, 257–63, 442–3 UK News, 257 United Press International (USA), 165 Wolff (Germany), 439, 442 see also Reuters News Chronicle, 12, 15, 18, 42, 47, 55, 93, 94, 100, 178, 511 News Corporation, 29, 35, 35–6, 51 news distribution, 2, 22, 31, 35–6, 49, 55,

56, 69, 73–4, 87, 206, 443, 458, 520, 627, 641, 646, 670 news editing, 75–8 News International, 35, 42, 48, 51 News Line, 42 news production, 18, 64–73, 661 computerisation, 21–3, 72, 79–81, 639–42 Linotype machine, 21, 39, 71, 627 optical character recognition, 655 phototypesetting, 71, 655 rotary press, 39, 71 News on Sunday, 26, 41, 49, 543 News of the World, 2, 7, 16, 17, 21, 28, 41, 42, 45, 74, 87, 88, 89, 107–8, 115–16, 166, 176, 190, 518, 523, 529, 530, 539, 542, 543, 544, 545, 548–50, 554, 555, 564, 638 News Letter (Belfast), 633, 634 The Newsletter, 400, 400 newspaper circulation, 5–6, 12, 17–18, 58–63, 86–8, 389 newspaper competition, 2, 16, 22, 32, 34, 38, 44, 48, 49, 50–1, 73, 239–41, 582 newspaper ownership, 31, 58–63 concentration, 40–2, 46–8 conglomeration, 18, 29, 44–5, 166, 309, 310, 645 consolidation, 1–2, 12, 17, 22, 48, 138, 645–8 Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, 35, 234, 448 newsprint rationing, 34, 142, 179, 191, 381, 386, 400, 421, 543, 652 Newton, Bob, 254 Newton, Gordon, 208 NGF News, 496 Ní Chiaráin, Póilín, 352 Ní Chinnéide, Mairéad, 349, 352 Ní Chinnéide, Maire, 350–1 Ní Dhonnchadha, Aisling, 352 Ní Fhoghlú, Siobhán, 352 Ní Ghuairim, Sorcha, 341 Nic Eoin, Máirín, 352 Nic Pháidín, Caoilfhionn, 352 Nicholas, Sían, 165 Nicholls, Lord, 114–15, 124–5 Nicholson, Basil, 13, 521 Nicholson, Patrick J., 365 Nielson, Sigrid, 496 NIGRA News, 497 Nilson, Kenneth, 365 Nine, 408 19, 310

­

index

Nósmag, 335, 347, 348 No.1, 300 Noble, Sir William, 257 Noir, 408 Norfolk News, 651 Norman, Helena, 304 Norman, Montagu, 201 North 7, 369 North American Review, 67 North Wales Chronicle, 71 North Wales Weekly News, 318, 320, 321–2, 327, 328, 331 North West Times, 49 Northcliffe, Lord see Harmsworth, Alfred Northcliffe Newspapers, 646 Northern Chronicle (Inverness), 371 Northern Daily Telegraph, 282–3 Northern Echo, 6, 648 Northern Gay, 498 The Northern Journal (Leeds), 407 Northern Whig, 37, 395nn Nottingham Guardian, 248 Nova, 277 Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, 458 Nursing Mirror, 174 Nusight, 164 Nuts, 27 Ó Beacháin, Breandán, 342 Ó Bearra, Ruaidhri, 347 Ó Cadhain, Máirtín, 341, 342, 343, 350 Ó Canainn, Aodh, 352 Ó Ceileachair, Donncha, 342 Ó Cléirigh, Micheál, 349, 350 Ó Conaire, Pádraic, 341, 341 Ó Criomhthain, Tomás, 342 Ó Cuív, Shan, 342 Ó Dálaigh, Cearbhall, 342 Ó Direáin, Máirtín, 341, 342 Ó Flaithearta, Liam, 342 Ó Gairbhí, Seán Tadhg, 352 Ó Gaora, Colm, 343 Ó Glaisne, Risteard, 342, 343 Ó hEithir, Breandán, 341, 342, 343, 352 Ó hUid, Tarlach, 342 Ó hUiginn, Micheál D., 352 Ó Laoghaire, Peader, 341 Ó Liatháin, Annraoi, 342 Ó Liatháin, Conchubhair, 352 Ó Muirí, Pól, 343, 349, 350, 352 Ó Muirthile, Liam, 341, 343, 349, 349–50, 352 Ó Neachtain, Eoghan, 342 Ó Nualláin, Ciarán, 334, 341, 342, 346

759

Ó Riordáin, Seán, 341, 343, 350 Ó Siochfhrada (‘An Seabhac’), Padraig, 342 Ó Súilleabháin, Muiris, 342 Oban Times, 372 Oborne, Peter, 237 O’Brien, Mark, 319, 338 O’Brien, William, 628 Observer, 7, 11, 17, 34, 41, 45, 166, 173–4, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 186, 217, 539, 544, 550–3, 551, 553, 582, 617, 619 O’Connor, Fionnuala, 292 O’Connor, T. P., 160, 626, 628, 629 O’Dowd, Niall, 167–71 O’Faolain, Sean, 175 O’Farrell, John, 557 Officer, David, 382 official secrecy, 97, 117–23 O’Gadhra, Nollaig, 342, 352 Ogonek (USSR), 424 O’Grianna, Seamus, 342 O’Growney, Eoghan, 342, 346 Ok, 27 OK!, 114 O’Kelly, Seán T., 559 Okutubo,Femi, 406 Olday, John, 422–3, 432 Oldfield, Mike, 465 Oliver, Craig, 128 O’Neill, Terrence, 380, 390 O’Neill, Tip, 168 online newspapers, 3, 30, 279 subscriptions see paywalls O’Nolan, Brian (Flann O’Brien), 341, 343, 569 Onyejelem, Chinedu, 408, 409 Optical Magic Lantern and Photographic Enlarger (later Cinematographic Journal, then Kine Weekly), 453 Orage, A. R., 505 O’Reilly, Tony, 46, 51, 639 Orr, Bob, 496 Orwell, George, 182, 509, 510, 552 Osborne, George, 241 Osborne, John, Look Back in Anger, 174 O’Sullivan, Kenneth, 402–3 Out, 497 Outlook, 344 Outwrite, 475, 476, 494 Owen, David John, 326 Oxford Mail, 647 Oz, 17, 567, 601–2, 607

760

index

Padmore, George, 400, 401 ‘Page 3 girl’, 24, 27, 523, 526–8 Paish, Sir George, 199 Paisley, Ian, 391 Pall Mall Gazette, 158, 273, 557, 628 The Pan African, 396–7 Pan-Africa, 402 Pankhurst family, 469 Paolitto, Julia, 176 Parker Bowles, Camilla, 530 Parkinson, Hargreaves, 207 parliamentary reporting, 26, 574–92 decline of, 577–85 gallery reporting, 576, 590 live blogging, 574, 585–90, 591 lobby journalism, 576–7, 590 radio and TV competition, 583, 590 sketch writing, 577 and social media, 586 Parsons, Ian, 185 Partridge, Bernard, 416 Pascall, Alex, 405 Patchett, Terry, 604 Paterson, Bill, 197 Paul, William, 506 paywalls, 53, 81, 279, 641 Pearse, Pádraic, 341, 344, 345 Pearse, Patrick, 351, 352 Pearson, Arthur, 5, 7, 10, 157, 631 Pearson, Gabriel, 457 Pearson’s Magazine, 613, 614 Pearson’s Weekly, 7 The Peasant, 344 Peck, Air Vice-Marshall, 97 Pedersen, Sarah, 472 People, 113, 176, 287, 529, 542, 544–5, 547 People’s Friend, 304, 305 The People’s Journal (Dundee), 371 periodicals, 6, 7–8, 17, 23 Petrovic, Rada, 220 Petticoat, 310 Philby, Kim, 546 Philip, Prince, 252, 545 Phillips, Trevor, 412 Phoenix, Eamon 379 phone-hacking scandal, 28, 228, 239, 245, 530, 550, 641 photography and illustration, 8, 265–79, 542, 661 commercial artists and editorial teams, 272 and consumer society, 268–70 and Easter Rising, 274–5

fashion photography, 271–2 and First World War, 273–4 mixed media, 270 and national identities, 272–6 printing developments, 265–6, 267–8, 270–1 and Second World War, 276 Pianim, Elkin, 406 Piatt, Donn S., 343 Picture Post, 12, 17, 102, 276, 599, 600, 621 Picturegoer, 453 Pimlott, Herbert, 598, 608 Pink, 289 Pink Paper, 499, 500, 501 Pitt, David Thomas, 411 Pitt, Willam, 419 Plant, John, 600 Play Guy, 498 Poetry Scotland, 373 Polanski, Roman, 458 political press, 42–3, 160, 511, 627 politics, 10–11, 14–16, 42–3, 663 Pope, Steve, 412 popular press, 2, 5–11, 660–1, 663; see also New Journalism Porter, Peter, 185 Portland, Duke of (alias Thomas Druce), 252 Post (New York), 163 Power, Lisa, 499 power of the press, 11–16, 515; see also press barons Press & Journal (Aberdeen), 372 press barons, 10, 14, 42, 44, 68, 166, 201, 229, 236, 506, 531 Press Complaints Council, 112, 239 Press Council, 26, 110–12, 238–9, 525, 544, 546–7, 550 Preston, Peter, 198 Price, Katy, 615 Pride, 408 Pride Magazine, 300 Prince, Virginia, 494 Pritchett, V. S., 183, 185 privacy and the press, 29, 110–17, 239, 575; see also Leveson Inquiry; phone-hacking scandal Private Eye, 17, 430, 561, 565–6, 567, 570 Profumo affair, 547, 549, 566 Profumo, John, 549 Proops, Marjorie, 526 Provincial Newspapers, 646

­

index

provincial press, 6, 12, 43–4, 46, 104, 442, 643–59 and managerialism, 652–4, 657 and new technology, 654–6 and working class, 131–54 Pulitzer, Joseph W., 65, 67, 517 Punch, 124, 161, 414, 416, 417–18, 423, 425, 426, 426, 427, 430, 557, 561–2, 563, 568 Purnell, Alan, 498 Purnell, Alice, 494 Putnis, Peter, 440, 441 Q, 465 Q International, 498 Queen Elizabeth II, 430 Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, 253 Queen Mary liner, 620 Quennell, Peter, 178, 181 Quillinan, Frances, 477 Quim, 493, 494 The Quorum, 484, 498, 500 Race & Class (formerly Race), 407 radio broadcasting, 16, 17, 334, 337, 583, 590, 661 Radio Times, 13, 23 Rae, Norman, 548 Rafter, Kevin, 164, 319 Raison, Timothy, 600 Raphael, Adam, 108 Ratner, Gerald, 254 Ray, 174 Rayner, Clare, 526, 547 Read, Donald, 439, 440 Reader’s Digest (UK), 12 readership and readers, 83–105, 661 circulation, 86–8 context, 83–6 evidence from 1938–45, 96–103 readership demographics, 88–94 subjects of interest, 94–104 Reading Evening Post, 655 Reagan, Ronald, 168, 209, 426, 427 Record (Free Church of Scotland), Gaelic supplement, 367 Record (Free Prebyterian Church), Gaelic supplement, 367 Record Mirror, 462, 463 Red Herring, 496 Redwood, Sydney, 384 Reed International, 19, 42, 45, 645–6 Rees, R. D., 319 Rees-Mogg, William, 202

761

regional press see provincial press Reid, Harry, 655 Reinhart, Django, 462 Reisz, Karel, 455 Renwick, Len, 404 Report on the British Press (1938), 11, 178 Republican News, 606 Reuter, Baron Herbert de, 248, 439 Reuters news agency, 165, 247, 249, 251, 257, 437–45, 447–9 Review of Reviews, 161 The Revolutionary and Radical Feminist Newsletter, 493 Reynold’s Weekly News, 539 Reynolds News, 7, 43, 176 Reynolds News and Sunday Citizen, 43 Reynolds, Simon, 465 Reynolds’s News 87 Rhode, Eric, 457 Rhondda, Lady, 302, 304 Rhythm, 460 Rice, Grantland, 286 Richardson, Jo, 607 Richardson, Mary, 268 Richler, Martha (‘Marf’), 559 Riddell, Lord, 42 Riddell, Peter, 578, 583 Ripon, Bishop of, 619–20 Robbins, Edmund, 251, 255 Robbins, Oliver, 129 Roberts, Eilys, 194 Roberts, J. H., 320 Robertson, Geoffrey, 121 Robeson, Paul, 411 Robinson, Lucy, 491 Rolfe, Frederick, 484 Rolleston, T. W, 339, 340 Rolling Stone, 164, 464 Rolston, Bill, 392 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 423 Root, 407 Roper, Esther, 485 Rose, Henry, 287 Rosenstock, Gabriel, 352 Rotha, Paul, 454, 455 Rothermere, Lord, 12, 14, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 200, 200, 234, 507, 530, 531, 532, 630, 645, 646, 647, 648 Routledge, Paul, 198 Rowland, Tiny, 45, 552–3 Rowlandson, Thomas, 419, 557 Rowson, Martin, 570–1 Rowson, Simon, 454 Roxy, 309

762

index

Royal Commission on the Press (1947), 34, 40, 46, 55, 238, 646, 658 Royal Commission on the Press (1962), 18, 34, 39, 40, 47, 51, 55, 238, 652, 655, 658 Royal Commission on the Press (1977), 35, 45, 47, 55, 239, 512, 658 Ruddock, George, 403, 412, 413 Rusbridger, Alan, 128–9, 221 Rushton, Willie, 566 Russell, Bertrand, 506 Russell, William Howard, 160, 262 Rust, William, 598 Rutherford, Lord, 619 Ryan, Desmond, 344 Ryan, Mary, 471 Ryan, William Patrick, 334, 343–4 St Andrews Lesbian-Feminist Newsletter, 496 St James Gazette, 10 Samuel, Martin, 288 Sanders, Bernie, 516 Sandilands, Jo, 312 Sands, Bobby, 606 Sansom, Peter, 185, 531 Sappho, 300, 489, 496 ‘Sarah’s Law’, 550 Sarler, Carol, 311 Sassoon, Siegfried, 178 satirical journalism, 556–73; see also cartoons Saunders, William, 251, 257 Savage, Jon, 464 Savage, Wendy, 607 Savile, Jimmy, 465 Savill, Richard, 262–3 Sayer, Jack, 391 Scarfe, Gerald, 567 Scargill, Arthur, 24, 198, 513, 604 Scéala Éireann/ Irish Press, 342, 342–3; see also Irish Press Scene Out, 495 Schäfer, Mike, 624 Schirrmacher, Arne, 612 Schudson, Michael, 164, 574, 591 Schultz, George, 426, 427 Schwartz, Roberta Freund, 460 science reporting, 612–25 and applied science, 617–21 and climate change, 624–5 and medialisation, 624 and medicalisation, 623 and nuclear power and weapons,

621–2 specialist reporters, 615–16, 622 Scotland on Sunday, 49, 540, 544 ScotsGay, 496 The Scotsman, 6, 36, 45, 248, 248, 319, 578, 612, 617, 618, 620, 632–3, 652 Gaelic page, 372–3 Scott, C. P., 159, 242–4, 243, 632 Scott, Derek B., 460 Scott, Captain Robert, 247, 252 Scott, Ronnie, 462 Scottish Arts and Letters, 373 Scottish Daily Express, 267 Scottish Gaelic Studies, 374 Scottish press, 5, 6, 540 Scottish Radio Holdings, 44 Scottish Review of Books, 373 Scottish Studies, 374 The Scum cartoon leaflet, 50 Sedgwick, Ellery, 159 Select, 465 Sellar, W. C., 562 Sequence, 455 Sergeant, Sir Patrick, 192, 193, 195 Settle, Alison, 303 Seymour-Ure, Colin, 578 The Shaft Newsletter, 494 Shah, Eddie, 21, 48, 72–3, 639, 656 Shapcott, John, 177 Sharon, Ariel, 567 Shayler, David, 124–5 Shearman, Hugh, 378, 379 Sheffield Daily Independent, 140 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 132, 133, 135–7 Sheffield Independent, 620 Sheffield marches for free speech (1914), 135–7 Sheffield Morning Telegraph, 147, 150 Sheffield Telegraph, 143–4 Shelley, Irene, 408 Shepard, E. H., 425 Shields Daily News, 144 Shocking Pink, 475, 492–3, 494 Short, Clare, 24–5, 528 Shovlin, Frank, 177 Sight & Sound, 452, 453–9 Silber, Mr Justice, 124 Silberstein-Loeb, Jonathan, 440 Simmonds, Posy, 559 Simpson, D. H., 657 Simpson, Mark, 394 Simpson, Wallace, 255–6 Sinclair, Donald, 360

­

index

Skeffington, Hanna Sheehy, 469, 473 Skinner, Dennis, 256 Skolimowski, Jerzy, 458 Sky TV, 27, 167, 525 Slater, Montagu, 599 The Sligo Times, 627 Slough Observer, 181 Smash Hits, 465 SMG News (later SHRG News, then Gay Scotland), 495–6 Smith, Alan, 462 Smith, Anthony, 511 Smith, Chris, 26 Smith, David, 594–5 Smith, John, 256–7, 515 Smith, Margaret, 242, 244 Smith, Wareham, 8 Smyllie, Patricia, 637 Smyllie, Robert M., 179–80, 340, 626 Snicker, Jonathan, 317 Snoddy, Raymond, 239 Snow, C. P., 185, 619 Snowdon, Edward, 120, 128 Snowdon, Philip, 201 social media, 28, 30, 52, 80, 516, 586 Socialist Worker, 42 Somerfield, Stafford, 549 Sommerfield, John, 599 Sounds, 463, 465 South Wales Daily News, 647 South Wales Daily Post, 286 South Wales Echo (Cardiff), 23, 290, 644, 647, 653 Southern Star, 71 Spare Rib, 174, 277, 313, 475, 492, 496, 499 Sparrow, Andrew, 574, 587–8, 589, 590, 591 Spartacus (formerly The International Males Advertiser), 488 Spectator, 7, 178, 617, 619, 620 Spectrum, 489 Spender, Humphrey (‘Lensman’), 276 Spender, Stephen, 176 Sporting Chronicle, 285 Sporting Life, 285, 286 Sporting Pink (Middlesbrough), 290 sporting press, 27, 32, 94, 100, 213, 270, 280–97, 402, 527, 546, 586, 636, 641 daily, 280–1, 286–8 and gambling, 284–5 player-journalists, 292–6 Saturday evening specials, 288–92

763

Sporting Record, 287 Sporting Times, 285 Sports Echo (formerly Football Echo) (Cardiff), 290 Sports Illustrated, 161 Sports Mail (Portsmouth), 291 Sports Pink (Southampton), 291 Sportsman, 285 Square Peg, 493, 494 Squire, J. C., 183 Sradag, 369 Sruth, 369 Stalin, Josef, 423 Stallworthy, Jon, 185 Stamford, John, 488 Stamfordham, Lord, 255 Standard, 6, 10, 286 Staniforth, Joseph Moorwood, 564 Stanley, Henry Morton, 156–7, 157 Star, 18, 285 The Star, 295 Star, 524, 527, 528, 628, 629, 640 Star of Gwent, 71 Stead, W. T., 158, 160, 161, 169, 557, 628 Steadman, Ralph, 567 Stebbing, Edward, 102 Steed, Wickham, 11 Steen, James, 124 Steven, Stewart, 108 Stevenson, Michael, 216 Stewart, Andrew, 379 Stewart, Annie, 412 Steyn, Lord, 115 Stiles, Richard, 424 Stokes, Niall, 164 Stopes, Marie, 542 Stornoway Gazette, 371–2 Strachan, Billy, 403 Strand Magazine, 159 Straw, Jack, 125, 578–9 Strube, Sidney, 423 Stubbs, David, 465 The Studio, 484 The Suffragette, 299, 313 Sullivan, Andrew, 587–8 Sullivan, David, 550 Sullivan, Peter, 270 Sun, 3, 16, 18–21, 22, 23–6, 27, 28, 42, 43, 45, 51, 87, 92, 117, 165, 166, 199, 203, 237, 239, 263, 426, 511, 514, 515, 516, 523, 524–5, 527–8, 529–30, 532–3, 534, 534, 536, 540, 543, 554, 584, 631, 638, 640, 641 Sun on Sunday, 540, 555

764

index

Sunday Business Post, 49, 541 Sunday Chronicle, 282, 542, 546, 553 Sunday Citizen (formerly Reynold’s News), 43, 47, 543 Sunday Correspondent, 42, 49, 543–4 Sunday Daily Mail, 539 Sunday Daily Telegraph, 539 Sunday Dispatch, 18, 85, 543, 553 Sunday Express, 235, 287, 539, 540, 542, 546–7, 555, 619 Sunday Graphic, 542, 543, 553 Sunday Herald, 540 Sunday Independent (Ireland), 46, 476, 477, 478, 540, 541, 561 Sunday Mail (Glasgow), 540 Sunday Mercury (west Midlands), 540 Sunday Mirror, 542, 545, 547 Sunday People, 89 Sunday Pictorial, 13, 14, 539, 542, 545–6, 547 Sunday Post (Dundee), 540 Sunday press, 7, 38, 47, 58–62, 284, 538–56 popular press, 519, 529, 544–50 quality press, 550–5 see also individual titles Sunday Press (Ireland), 46, 540–1 Sunday Referee, 287 Sunday Review (Ireland), 541 Sunday Special, 344 Sunday Sport, 26, 550 Sunday Sun (Newcastle), 540 Sunday Telegraph, 17, 166, 552, 555 Sunday Times, 7, 17, 21, 26, 27, 41, 71, 80, 162, 163, 166, 175, 176, 178, 180, 181, 185, 203, 270, 288, 525, 531, 539, 544, 552, 553–5, 567, 637 Insight Team, 236, 623 Sunday Times Colour Magazine, 554 Sunday Times Magazine, 277 Sunday Tribune, 541 Sunday Worker, 598 Sunday World (Ireland), 46, 338, 541 Sunderland Echo, 143, 143 Susann, Jacqueline, 20 Swift, Jonathan, 145, 557, 568 Swing Music, 460 Sydney Post-Record (Sydney, Cape Breton), 365 Symes, John, 587 tabloid press, 1, 12, 16–21, 23–9, 28, 65, 517–37 and celebrity journalism, 528–30

and politics, 524–5, 530–3 and sense of community, 533–5 and sex, 525–8 and working class, 520–3 see also ‘page 3 girl’ tabloidisation, 26–7, 535, 539 Tait, Richard, 610 Talese, Gay, 164 Tarr, John Charles, 267 Tartan Skirt, 494 Tatchell, Peter, 513 Tawney, R. H., 507 taxation and the press, 5, 33, 249 Taylor, John Eldred, 397, 398 Taylor, Samuel Coleridge (composer), 397 Teachdaire nan Gáidheal (Cape Breton), 363–4, 365 Temple, Ann, 526 Tenniel, John, 430, 557 Tesla, Nikola, 613 Tett, Gillian, 205 Thalidomide scandal, 236, 554, 623 That Was The Week That Was (TW3), 565 Thatcher, Dennis, 566 Thatcher, Margaret, 21, 23–4, 72, 146, 149, 204, 209, 260, 313, 426, 427, 429, 430, 511–12, 531, 533, 548, 555, 568 The Face, 465 The Link, 484 The Pink (Evening Chronicle, Newcastle), 290 The Pink (Evening Telegraph, Coventry), 290 Thomas, Ceinwen, 329 Thomas, Elizabeth, 185 Thomas, Iorwerth, 328 Thomas, James, 510, 657 Thomasson, Franklin, 40 Thompson, Alexander M., 506 Thompson, Bill, 216–17, 219, 220 Thompson, E. P., 504 Thompson, Hunter S., 164, 464 Thompson, Paul, 119 Thomson, Derick S., 358, 368–71, 370, 371 Thomson, James, 360 Thomson Organisation, 33, 44, 45 Thomson, Roy, 45, 166, 554, 637–8, 644, 652 Thorpe, D. R., 566 Thurman, Neil, 587

­

index

Time, 161 Time Out, 120, 465, 495 Time and Tide, 302 The Times, 6, 11, 15, 17, 18, 21, 33, 41, 43, 49, 51, 53, 71, 72, 80, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 158, 162, 163, 166, 174, 178–9, 191–2, 202, 233, 235, 237, 241, 252, 255, 268, 269, 292, 319, 418, 430, 435, 472, 473, 515, 525, 531, 539, 554, 565, 567, 568, 615, 617, 619, 626, 628, 631, 637 and parliamentary reporting, 575, 578–80, 581–3 Times Higher Education Supplement, 163 Times Literary Supplement (TLS), 174, 175, 181, 186, 187 Times (Richmond, Virginia), 66 TIMM: The International Male Magazine, 488 Tit-Bits, 7, 159, 614, 628, 631 Titanic sinking (1912), 252, 270, 665 Titley, Alan, 343, 352 Tóibín, Colm, 164 Tocher, 374 Today, 21, 48, 73, 639 Todmorden News, 283 Tomalin, Claire, 185 Tone, Wolf, 277 The Torch, 344 Total Film, 458 Townsend, Peter, 544 Toynbee, Arnold J., 209 Tracy, Honor, 637 Trafalgar House, 45 Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 374 transatlantic connections see AngloAmerican exchanges Transvestia (USA), 494 Treglown, Jeremy, 175 Trelford, Donald, 108, 552, 553 Trench, Richard, 602 Tribune, 12 Trinity Holdings, 49 Trouble and Strife, 496 ‘Troubles’, Northern Ireland, 91–5, 258–61, 277–8, 427–9, 568–9, 606–7 Truman, President, 424, 425 Trump, Donald, 516 The Trumpet, 406–7 Tuairisc, 347 Tuairisc.ie, 335–6, 345, 348

765

Tuchman, Barbara, 64 Tucker, David, 399 Tunstall, Jeremy, 234 Turner, Edgar, 281 Turner, Martyn, 427, 428, 429, 570–1, 571 TV, 16, 17, 19–20, 29, 661 Irish, 347 and parliamentary reporting, 583, 590 reality, 27 satirical, 565 Welsh language, 331 TV Times, 23 Twr yr Eryr (Y Faner commentator), 329 Tynan, Kenneth, 173–4, 175, 177, 552 Ugba, Abel, 408 UK Zambians, 406 Umschau (Germany), 616 United Newspapers, 44, 45 Untold, 408 Update (later upstart), 498 Urania, 485–7, 500 Urmston and Flixton Telegraph, 231 Urqhart, Diane, 470 U.S. News & World Report, 163 USA Today, 278 Valentine, 309 Valera, Éamon de, 43, 259, 560 Valleé, Marc, 126 Vanity Fair, 163 Vincent, J. E., 319 Viney, Michael, 637 Visions in Black, 408 Vogue (UK), 163, 271, 302, 303 The Voice, 23, 405–6, 412–13 The Voice of Scotland, 373 Votes for Women, 470, 471 Vox, 465 Wade, Rebekah, 550 Wadsworth, Alfred, 242, 244 Wagnleitner, Reinhold, 425 Walden, Brian, 110 Wales on Sunday, 49, 544 Walker, J. C., 564 Wall Street Journal, 192, 588 Wallace-Johnson, I. T. A., 401 Wallas, Graham, 159 Walpole, Robert, 419 Walter, John, 41 Walters, Ann, 587

766

index

Wapping dispute (1986–7), 21, 35, 50, 531, 639, 644, 661 Wapping technological revolution, 21, 22, 26, 35, 49, 73, 543, 554, 640, 661 War Commentary for Anarchism, 422–3 Ward, Margaret, 470 Warrington Messenger, 72 Washington Post, 163 Waterhouse, Keith, 181 Watson, William J., 374 Watts, Michael, 463 Waugh, Evelyn, 563 Scoop, 11, 50, 566 Webb, Duncan, 544 Webb, Sidney, 508 Weekly Freeman, 341 The Weekly Gleaner, 402–3 Weekly Illustrated, 12 Weekly Journal, 406 Weekly (later Sunday) Dispatch, 41, 176, 231 Weingart, Peter, 624 Weisz, Victor (‘Vicky’), 564–5 Welch, Chris, 462 Wells, H. G., 616, 619 Welsh Mirror, 74 Welsh press, 5, 7, 315–32, 643, 648 and devolution referendum (1997), 330–2 and election of Gwynfor Evans (1966), 327–9 and EU referendum (2016), 332 and General Election (1900), 319–21 and national fragmentation, 316–18 and Penyberth ‘bombing school’ arson attack (1936), 324–7 and Plaid Cymru foundation (1925), 321–4 West Africa, 406 West Highland Free Press, 372, 658 West Indian Gazette (later And AfroAsian Caribbean News), 403, 410–12 West Indian World, 404–5, 407 West, Rebecca, 183 Western Daily Mercury, 289 Western Evening Herald, 148, 152, 289 Western Mail (Cardiff), 7, 332, 564, 632, 643, 644, 656 Western Mail Ltd, 646–7, 652–4 Western Morning News, 145–6, 251 Westindian Digest, 404 Westminster Gazette, 6, 12

Westminster Press, 44, 257, 584, 646, 647 Which?, 194, 196 Whitaker, T. K., 352 White, Cynthia, 308 Whitehouse, Mary, 491 Whyte, William H., 182 Wickers & Bullers, 494 Wiener, Joel, 156 Wignall, Trevor, 280, 281, 286–8, 294, 296 Wilde, Oscar, 484 Wilkes, John, 575 Wilkinson, Ellen, 508 Williams, Frances, 201 Williams, Gwyn, 316 Williams, Henry Sylvester, 397–8 Williams, Kevin, 70, 134, 138, 520 Williams, Raymond, 510, 511, 513, 542 Williams, Richard, 290, 463, 465 Williams, Baroness Shirley, 621 Willis, Mr Justice, 122 Wilmer, Val, 465 Wilmers, Mary-Kay, 185 Wilson, Angus, 185 Wilson, Charles, 70, 73 Wilson, David, 457 Wilson, Freddie, 293 Wilson, Harold, 51, 425, 522, 531, 565, 602 Wilson, Paul, 290–1 Wilson, Peter, 287, 288 Wincott, Harold, 195 The Wire, 465 Wired, 221 Wireless Bulletin (USA), 424 Wolfe, Tom, 164, 464 Wolverhampton Express and Star, 657 Woman, 12, 271, 300, 302, 308, 313 Woman Engineer, 174, 302 Woman and Home, 302, 306 Woman Rebel, 159 Woman Teacher, 302 Woman’s Illustrated, 12, 302 Woman’s Journal, 302, 306–7 Woman’s Life, 272, 475 The Woman’s Magazine, 308 Woman’s Way, 475 Woman’s Weekly, 302 Woman’s World, 7, 300 The Women’s Magazine and Girl’s Own Paper, 308 women’s magazines, 23, 271–2, 298–314, 475

­ and leisure reading, 300 and political engagement, 301–8 teenage market, 308–13 Women’s News, 302 Women’s Own, 23, 146, 302 Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), 469, 473 Women’s Space, 497 Women’s Weekly, 23 Wood, Alice, 304 Woodward, Bob, 236 Wooldridge, Ian, 288 Woolf, Leonard, 176, 506 Woolf, Lord, 113–14 Woolf, Martin, 205 Woolf, Virginia, 178, 183, 506 Worker’s Life, 598 Worker’s Weekly, 598 working class and the press, 131–54, 520–3, 593–611; see also Labour movement World (USA), 517, 519 Worsthorne, Peregrine, 555 Wright, Lawrence, 459, 460

index

767

Wyndham Lewis, D. B., 563 ‘X. Q.’ (Irish News columnist), 385 Xclusive, 409 Y Cymro, 318, 318, 330–1 Y Faner (formerly Baner ac Amserau Cymru), 31, 321, 323, 324, 327–30 Yeatman, R. J., 562 York, Archbishop of, 620 Yorke, Peter, 342 Yorkshire Evening Post, 139, 140–1, 144–5 Yorkshire Post, 6, 177, 255, 578, 617, 620 Young, Lewis, 598 Zec, Philip, 564, 572–3, 573 Zelizer, Barbie, 274 Zeta-Jones, Catherine, 114 Zimmern, Alfred, 316, 317, 321 Zinoviev, Grigory, 507 Zipper, 498 Zoo, 27