IGNORING THE FIRST DRAFT OF HISTORY?

Abstract

Until recent years, historians of twentieth-century Britain have made relatively little use of the popular press as a source. This is partly due to the practical problems of working with newspapers (pre-digitisation); there has also been, however, a widespread perception that popular journalism is predictable, trivial and politically and socially conservative, and therefore not worthy of sustained scholarly attention. These attitudes are starting to change, encouraged by the process of digitisation. Nevertheless, substantial gaps remain in our understanding of the impact of the press. This article is in two sections; the first examines how popular national newspapers have been used in political narratives, and the second explores their place in discussions of social and cultural change. The article argues that not only have entrenched stereotypes prevented historians from properly understanding the nature of popular newspapers, they have also led to them misinterpreting broader developments in British politics, society and culture.

Keywords:

• popular press
• twentieth-century history
• digitisation
• politics
• society
• culture

Notes

1. Franklin Gannon, for example, examining the British press's coverage of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, had little interest in the reporting found in the popular papers owned by the so-called ‘press barons’, Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express and Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail. Assuming these papers were simply mouthpieces for their owners he argued that it ‘would be ludicrous to devote as much space or attention to Lord Beaverbrook's or Lord Rothermere's few unsophisticated and obsessive ideas as to the development of important ideas and attitudes in the columns and offices of the quality newspapers’ (Gannon vii).

2. For more on the practical issues, see Bingham, Digitization.

3. Julian Petley, professor of film and television, argues, for example, that:

‘Most newspapers were, and remained, decidedly right wing, but even when they were not lending their support explicitly to the Conservatives, they radiated an illiberal, authoritarian-populist world view that blatantly appealed to popular prejudices and folk wisdom and was resolutely hostile to progressive opinion of all kinds. Jingoism, xenophobia and an increasingly shrill nationalism were crucial ingredients of this unappetising ideological brew. (Petley 190).

4. See, for example, Tinkler; Mort Cultures of Consumption, esp. Part 1; Reed; Tusan.

5. Examples of some (otherwise excellent) general histories in which newspapers are almost entirely absent include Harris, Ward and Addison. Others, such as Robbins and Morgan, pass over the press in a couple of paragraph. Weight has a sprinkling of quotations from popular newspapers, but there is no sustained consideration of the press, unlike television, cinema and music. Some of the best specialised studies of political culture also fail to consider the role of the press in any detail: Black, for example.

6. Stevenson mentions the press's ‘popular chauvinism’ before the First World War, its war reporting and its inter-war hostility to scroungers. He notes that ‘newspapers were, in the main, less radical commentaries on society than reflections of it’, and that ‘serious discussion’ could be found in ‘journals and outlets’ other than the Mail, Mirror and Express (Stevenson 406). Clarke mentions the role of the press during the First World War, the Empire Free trade campaign and the press's support for Thatcher. Garnett and Weight mention the Empire Free Trade campaign, the Mail's support for the Blackshirts and the Sun's support for the Conservatives (357–61). Benson writes about the conservatism of the press and its attacks on Labour and the Liberals (119).

7. On the press and the franchise question, see Pugh March of the Women, ch. 9. For more on the appeal to female voters after 1918, see Bingham Gender, ch. 4.

8. David Jarvis, for example, has examined the rhetoric of Conservative Party magazines and pamphlets aimed at women in the 1920s: there are striking similarities between the material contained in these publications and in the pages of the Mail, the Express and the Mirror (Jarvis ‘Mrs Maggs’).

9. There has, for example, been work on gender-crossing (McLaren; Vernon; Oram), divorce (Savage), homosexual offences (Higgins, Waters, and Houlbrook), and murders involving women (Bland, Wood, Mort Capital Affairs ch. 3).

10. Deirdre Beddoe argues that:

[i]n the inter-war years only one desirable image was held up to women by all the mainstream media agencies—that of housewife and mother. This single role model was presented to women to follow and all other alternatives were presented as wholly undesirable. Realising this central fact is the key to understanding every other aspect of women's lives in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. (8)

Dale Spender has claimed that ‘the established and male-controlled press worked to censor the demands and activities of women’ (4). Cheryl Law notes that ‘newspapers were full of articles establishing marriage as the pinnacle of fulfilment for women and thereby alternately ridiculing or patronising the single woman’ (205). Sue Bruley agrees that single women were ‘vilified’ as ‘useless members of society’ (62).

11. Garnett and Weight suggest that:

tabloids fed off the general post-war British neurosis …. Popular hatred was still exploited for profit … but fear was now the predominant emotion. Asylum seekers and paedophiles were the most alluring targets at the end of the century, but the crime figures were a reliable stand-by and the decline in confidence in public servants, like teachers and doctors, provided a steady stream of flesh-creeping copy. (360–61)

12. On the portrayal of homosexuality, see, for example, Jeffery-Poulter, Higgins, and Waters. On sex education see Hampshire and Lewis.

13. This is, for example, how the period 1918–1940 is labelled in Martin Pugh's widely used textbook (State and Society ch. 13).

14. For example, Sutherland; Aldgate; Marwick Sixties; Green; Donnelly.

15. Gale Cengage's Newsvault is available at http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product-highlights/general-reference/gale-historical-newspapers/gale-newsvault.aspx

16. On fatherhood, see King; on immigration, see Young; on Monroe, see Yorston; on food and health campaigning, see Whitehead.