![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
We should remember that one war had already made the Daily Mirror given that it reached its zenith as an illustrated daily newspaper as it emerged from the First World War. However, this did not translate into continuing success as by the 1930s it was in steep decline. Re-launched in the mid-1930s, to appeal specifically to what may be described as the non-political left, the Daily Mirror was able to reinforce its editorial identity as a populist organ of considerable appeal to the working classes of Britain during the Second World War. The letters from the start of the Mirror’s campaign on 25 June 1945 to the final day of the election campaigning on 5 July will be considered as contributing to the maintenance of a carefully considered editorial approach to politics as well as an equally astute consolidation of reader identification at the heart of that editorial project. This article will explore how the emergent editorial strategy of the newspaper was enhanced by drawing popular attention to the plight of the ordinary soldier and the ordinary citizen in the midst of war. Its ground-breaking contributions to shaping both the popular memories of the years preceding the war, as well as expectations of what might emerge as a political settlement after the war, are most clearly articulated in its deployment of readers’ letters.
Notes
1 Woods and Bishop, The Story of the Times.
2 Robson, Marriage or Celibacy?
3 Wahl-Jørgensen, Journalists and the Public.
4 Levy, “How Information Spread among the Gentry, 1550–1640.”
5 Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper; Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper.
6 Schudson, “Why Conversation Is Not the Soul of Democracy,” 305.
7 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
8 Conboy, Journalism: A Critical History, 60–84.
9 Hampton, Visions of the Press; Schudson, Discovering the News.
10 Bingham and Conboy, Tabloid Century, 9.
11 Daily Mirror, Monday, 6 January 1919.
12 Conboy, Press and Popular Culture, 113–33.
13 Wickham Steed, The Press, 246–8.
14 Pugh, “The Daily Mirror and the Revival of Labour 1935–1945,” 426.
15 Cudlipp, Publish and Be Damned! 64.
16 King, quoted in Smith, Paper Voices, 104.
17 Hopkins, The New Look: A Social History of the Forties and Fifties, 23–4.
18 Bingham and Conboy, “The Daily Mirror and the Creation of a Commercial Popular Language.”
19 Smith, Paper Voices, 64.
20 Bromley, “Was It the Mirror Wot Won It?” 114.
21 Richards, The Bloody Circus, 154–5.
22 Williams, Dangerous Estate, 201.
23 Cudlipp, Publish and Be Damned! 78–91; Smith, Paper Voices, 98–9.
24 Hampton, Visions of the Press.
25 Richards, The Bloody Circus, 170–1.
26 Daily Mirror, 4 November 1935.
27 Wahl-Jørgensen, Journalists and the Public.
28 Berridge, “Popular Sunday Newspapers and Mid-Victorian Society”; Conboy, “Residual Radicalism as a Popular Commercial Strategy.”
29 Daily Mirror, 7 February 1936.
30 Daily Mirror, 25 April 1936.
31 Fairlie, “Brilliance Skin Deep,” 14.
32 Bingham and Conboy, “The Daily Mirror and the Creation of a Commercial Popular Language.”
33 Edelman, The “Mirror”, 141–2.
34 Mass Observation File Report 1173, 24-3-42, page 1.
35 Daily Mirror, 1 June 1945.
36 Daily Mirror, 16 June 1945, 2.
37 Daily Mirror, 13 June 1945.
38 Daily Mirror, 27 June 1945.
39 Smith, Paper Voices, 118; Cudlipp, Publish and Be Damned! 230.
40 Daily Mirror, 25 June 1945.
41 Daily Mirror, 25 June 1945, 2.
42 Daily Mirror, 25 June 1945, 7.
43 Daily Mirror, 26 June 1945, 1.
44 Daily Mirror, 26 June 1945, 2.
45 Daily Mirror, 27 June 1945, 2.
46 Daily Mirror, 29 June 1945, 2.
47 Daily Mirror, 2 July 1945, 4–5.
48 Daily Mirror, 3 July 1945, 1.
49 Daily Mirror, 3 July 1945, 7.
50 Daily Mirror, 4 July 1945, 2.
51 Daily Mirror, 4 July 1945, 5.
52 Daily Mirror, 4 July 1945, 8.
53 Daily Mirror, 5 July 1945, 1.
54 Daily Mirror, 5 July 1945, 2.
55 Cudlipp, Publish and Be Damned! 136.
56 Fairlie, “Brilliance Skin Deep,” 11.
57 Taylor, English History, 548–9.
58 Gregory and Hutchins, “Everyday Editorial Practices,” 187–8.
59 Steel, “Radical Narrative.”
60 Hampton, Visions of the Press.
61 Bromley, “Was It the Mirror Wot Won It?” 123.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Martin Conboy
Martin Conboy, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.