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Abstract
This article considers whether there was a national press before and during the Second World War. After considering the terms used by historians to describe the UK national press, and how it is defined, it looks at aspects of the industry that made it appear national and those which did not. The question of just how national the press was between 1939 and 1945 is then addressed, followed by some concluding comments. It argues that the wartime press was characterised by a high degree of uniformity in terms of organisation, co-operation and content, throwing into relief the more diffuse nature of the industry before and after. The idea of the national press downplays the extent to which newspapers varied considerably in readership, geographical reach, political and social significance. It obscures the important role of the provincial press, abstracting mass circulation London daily morning papers, from their place within an evolving network of mass communications.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions were presented at the Newspapers War and Society Conference, Gregynog, the London Media History Seminar, and the project’s Symposium held at St Brides, Fleet Street, London, all in 2014. I am grateful both to the participants in these and to the project team, Siân Nicholas, Mark Wiggam, Caroline Dale and Kris Lovell for their stimulating comments. Adrian Bingham, Mark Hampton and Colin Seymour-Ure kindly read earlier versions of this article. I am very grateful to them and to the peer reviewers for their critical feedback.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 On the assumed link between a national newspaper press and national character, see Mandler, English, 5, 7, 10. See also, Bingham, “Reading Newspapers,” 143.
2 Calder, People’s War, 504–5.
3 Gannon, British Press, vii.
4 Lee, “Structure,” 128.
5 Murdock and Golding, “Structure,” 130.
6 Curran, Douglas, and Whannel, “Political Economy,” 289.
7 Koss, Rise and Fall, 792 and Stevenson, British Society, 113, 404.
8 Jeffrey and McCLelland, “A World,” 28, 31.
9 Catterall, Seymour-Ure, and Smith, Northcliffe’s Legacy, 1.
10 Bingham, Gender, 3. More examples of the deployment of the idea of a national press can be found in: Chapman, Comparative, 8; Williams, Read, 152; Beer, Your Britain, 13; Harrison, Seeking, 56; Love, “Periodical Press,” 1028 and Grey, “‘Agonised Weeping’,”468.
11 The ‘popular’ press is often used as another way of describing a section of the press; usually the London-based mass circulation dailies. See: Political and Economic Planning, Report, 46–7; Curran, Douglas, and Whannel, “Political Economy,” 289; Bingham, Gender, 21; Murdock and Golding, “Structure,” 130; Catterall, Seymour-Ure, and Smith, Northcliffe’s Legacy, 1 and Chapman, Comparative, 8. However, when used, it rarely takes into account the fact that many of the provincial papers were equally as ‘popular’ in terms of circulation, but were not, because of this characteristic, national.
12 Seymour-Ure, British Press, 18–21.
13 Seymour-Ure, “Who Owns,” 267.
14 McKibbin, Classes, 503–4.
15 Seymour-Ure, “Who Owns,” 268, 272.
16 Oxford English Dictionary, National, web version.
17 Hobsbawn, Nations; Anderson, Imagined Communities; Cannadine, Undivided Past, 53–92 and Smith, “The Nation.”
18 The Irish Free State was established in 1921 and six counties in Northern Ireland remained in the UK. In 1949 the Free State withdrew from the Commonwealth and became the independent Republic of Ireland.
19 Hobbs, “When the Periodical Press,” 17.
20 Ibid., 20.
21 Ibid., 16.
22 Ibid., 17; on the networks of the press in the eighteenth century, see Gardner, New Business.
23 Hobbs, “When the Periodical Press,” 21–3. Advertisers, the Provincial Newspaper Society, the Press Association and owners constructed overlapping networks of association and shared content: Hobbs, “When the Periodical Press,” 23–4.
24 Hobbs, “When the Periodical Press,” 24–5.
25 Ibid., 36.
26 It is possible, as the work of Colin Seymour-Ure demonstrates, to deploy other criteria. Those outlined here are put forward as a guide to thinking about this complex issue in the context of this article.
27 National Archives, Kew, London (hereafter NA), Letter from General Post Office to Miss J. J. Nunn, Secretary to the Royal Commission, May 15, 1947 in HO 251/96, ‘Royal Commission on the Press (1947–1949): Evidence and Papers. General Post Office: Cheap Rates of Postage for Newspapers’.
28 Royal Commission, 7. In 1938 the ‘general magazines, trade and technical journals and house magazines totalled 3702’, Gerald, British Press, 21–2. An expansive definition of the ‘products of the newspaper industry’ as including ‘newspapers, magazines, reviews and other periodicals’ is given in Political and Economic Planning, Report, 46.
29 Ibid., 7–8.
30 Newspaper Press Directory … 1918, 2, 79–80; Newspaper Press Directory … 1925, 1, 81–2; Newspaper Press Directory … 1939, 3, 69–70 and Newspaper Press Directory … 1945, 68–71.
31 Williams, Long, 198–9.
32 Lee, Origins and Boyce, Curran, and Wingate, Newspaper History.
33 Jones, Powers; O’Malley, “Labour;” and Hampton, Visions.
34 O’Malley and Soley, Regulating, 7–18.
35 Jones, Powers, 23–4.
36 Kaldor and Silverman, Statistical Analysis, 58.
37 Political and Economic Planning, Report, 3. See also, Wadsworth, Newspaper Circulations and Williams, Read.
38 Kaldor and Silverman, Statistical Analysis, 58.
39 Political and Economic Planning, Report, 44.
40 Evening News, Evening Standard, The Star.
41 News of the World, The Observer, The People, Reynolds News, Sunday Chronicle, Sunday Referee, Sunday Dispatch, Sunday Evening News, Sunday Express, Sunday Graphic, Sunday Mail, Sunday Mercury, Sunday Pictorial, Sunday Sun and Sunday Times.
42 Royal Commission, Appendix III.
43 Hobbs, “When the Periodical Press.”
44 Political and Economic Planning, Report, 50, 67, 108–12 and Taylor, “Reuters,” 679. See also, Silberstein-Loeb, International Distribution.
45 Rothenberg, Newspaper, 219.
46 Newspaper Press Directory … 1918, 78–9, 486–7.
47 Newspaper Press Directory … 1925, 494–5.
48 Newspaper Press Directory … 1939, 313, 321.
49 Newspaper Press Directory … 1945, 69–71.
50 Curran, Douglas, and Whannel, “Political Economy,” 290.
51 Ibid., 292–3, 295.
52 McKibbin, Classes, 505.
53 Hobson and Henry, Hulton, 13–9.
54 Jeffrey and McCLelland, “A World,” 27–52 and Gerald, British Press, 223.
55 McKibbin, Classes, 507–8.
56 Curran, Douglas, and Whannel, “Political Economy,” 291–3. On the targeting of the female market in the nineteenth century magazines, see Beetham, Magazine.
57 Hobson and Henry, Hulton, 10–1.
58 Curran, Douglas, and Whannel, “Political Economy,” 293.
59 Political and Economic Planning, Report, 116–22.
60 Jeffrey and McCLelland, “A World,” 33.
61 Political and Economic Planning, Report, 122–3.
62 Abrams, Home Market, 108–9; Kimble, Newspaper Reading, 6–9 and Hobson and Henry, Hulton, Table 1.
63 Hobson and Henry, Hulton, 8.
64 Dawson, “Party,” 201–2.
65 Gliddon, “Political,” 26, 37.
66 McKibbin, Classes, 505.
67 Camrose, British Newspapers, 158–61.
68 Newspaper Press Directory … 1945, inside cover, 2.
69 NA, ‘Government Advertising. Draft Statement of the Newspaper Society’s Views for Communication to Sir Allan Barlow of the Treasury on December 1st 1939’, INF 1/686 Press Advertising, General Policy.
70 Political and Economic Planning, Report, 44.
71 Pegg, Broadcasting, 7, 12–5. The national reach of the BBC in terms of organisation, policy and content is discussed in Scannell and Cardiff, Social History.
72 In the First World War the government, acting on contemporary belief in the power of the press to influence opinion, mobilised the London and provincial press behind the war effort, in the national interest. For a variety of reasons this mobilisation of a ‘national’ press to aid the war effort was not as developed as it was in the Second World War. The government established controls over domestic and foreign communications, including the press, under a system divided between the Press Bureau (domestic censorship), the service departments and the Foreign Office (Lovelace, Control and Sanders and Taylor, British). The London and provincial press exercised voluntary censorship within a framework of laws and regulations, but resting on a largely effective ‘D’ notice system designed to keep sensitive information out of the press (Lovelace, Control, 107). Effective as this proved in terms of assisting the prosecution of the war, there were limitations. Compared to 1939, the circulations of the London daily and Sunday papers were considerably smaller, given that the most rapid expansion occurred for both in the inter-war years (McEwen, “National Press,” 471, 473 and Williams, Long, 199). Press controls were characterised by problems with lines of authority, departmental rivalries and recurrent re-organisations (e.g. Lovelace, Control, 43–4, 61–2, 66, 74 and Sanders and Taylor, British, 53–4, 63–5, 70, 78). Powerful papers, such as The Times could, and did, evade the regulations with impunity (Koss, Rise and Fall, 683 and Lovelace, Control, 156–8). The Press Bureau struggled, from the outset, to keep control over the provincial press, which often did not submit articles or correspondence from front line soldiers for clearance (Lovelace, Control, 79, 100, 103, 169 and Finn, “Local Heroes,” 520, 522). So, in the First World War, although the national dimensions of the press were assumed by government and proprietors, it was, compared to 1939, not as national in terms of size of circulation and was overseen by a system which was marred by recurrent problems of oversight and organisation.
73 Herd, Fleet Street … 1940, 35.
74 McKibbin, Classes, 503.
75 McLaine, Ministry, 12.
76 St Bride Library, London (hereafter St Bride): ‘Memorandum of Meeting Between the Home Secretary and Other Government Representatives and Members of the NPA Held at the Home Office on Monday Morning, 5th September, 1938’, NPA Files, Box 29, File: War Preparations.
77 St Bride: Letter from Bernard Alton, NPA to Sir Samuel Hoare, 23rd September, 1938; ‘Meeting Between the Secretary of State of Home Affairs and the Committee of Newspaper Proprietors Association etc., Home Office, … 29th March, 1939’, NPA Files, Box 29, File: War Preparations.
78 Curran and Seaton, Power, 54–62; see also, Taylor, “Censorship.”
79 Curran and Seaton, Power, 55 and Newspaper Press Directory … 1945, 51.
80 Thomson, Blue Pencil, 6–7, 25.
81 Newspaper Press Directory … 1945, 51–6.
82 Calder, People’s War, 508.
83 Ibid., 54–5.
84 Political and Economic Planning, Report, 57 and Gerald, British Press, 30.
85 Newspaper Press Directory … 1945, 48, 62.
86 Ibid., 50.
87 Herd, Fleet Street … 1942, 22, 39–41.
88 NA, ‘Confidential … 3rd June 1947’, HO 251/192—‘News Agencies Supplying News Abroad’.
89 Clampin, “The Role,” 51.
90 Bingham, “The British Popular Press” and Clampin, “The Role.”
91 Newspaper Press Directory … 1945, 60–1.
92 NA, ‘Government Advertising. Draft Statement of the Newspaper Society’s Views for Communication to Sir Allan Barlow of the Treasury on December 1st 1939’, INF 1/686 ‘Press Advertising, General Policy’.
93 Royal Commission, 6 and Newspaper Press Directory … 1945, 59.
94 Herd, Fleet Street … 1940, 9; McLaine, Ministry and Thomson, Blue Pencil.
95 Herd, Fleet Street … 1940, 49. A similar combination of complaints about the way censorship occurred in the First World War, for which see Lovelace, “British Press Censorship” and Taylor, British Propaganda.
96 Herd, Fleet Street … 1942, 17–8, 49.
97 Thomson, Blue Pencil, 216. See also Williams, Press, 3–84.
98 Taylor, “Censorship,” 159 and Herd, Fleet Street … 1947, 22–3.
99 Scannell and Cardiff, Social History. See also, O’Malley, “The Response to Television.”
100 Seymour-Ure, “Who Owns.”
101 Beer, Your Britain, 144.
102 Ibid., 146.
103 Tunstall, Media, 60 and Scannell and Cardiff, Social History.
104 Briggs, Birth of Broadcasting, 172–3, 262–3, 303.
105 It would be instructive to know more about how the idea of a national press developed. To do this it would be necessary to go back to at least the 1820s and 1830s when the provincial papers began to organise themselves, and national campaigns around the ‘taxes on knowledge’ developed. It would have to take into account the self-interested, self-promoting claims of the London dailies as they sought wider markets, the ways they persuaded politicians and advertisers of their status and the role of advertising after 1920 in encouraging the idea.
106 Weight, Patriots, 1.
107 Briggs, Birth; Briggs, Golden; Scannell and Cardiff, Social History and Hajkowski, BBC.
108 See Cannadine, Undivided Past, 53–92, for a discussion of the complexity of national identities.
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Tom O’Malley
Tom O’Malley, Professor Emeritus, Media, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK.