Adrian Bingham

‘The monster’? The British popular press and nuclear culture, 1945–early 1960s

British popular newspapers were fascinated by the terrible power of the nuclear bomb, and they devoted countless articles, editorials and cartoons to it. In so doing, they played a significant role in shaping the nuclear culture of the post-war period. Yet scholars have given little sustained attention to this rich seam of material. This article makes a contribution to remedying this major gap by offering an overview of the coverage of nuclear weaponry in the two most popular newspapers in Britain, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror, in the period from 1945 to the early 1960s. Although both papers supported British possession of the bomb, claiming that it was essential for the maintenance of great-power status, their reporting was more complex and critical than the existing scholarship has tended to assume. This article argues that sceptical voices in the press often disrupted official narratives and that journalists emphasized the potential dangers involved in the nuclear arms race. Newspapers frequently highlighted, rather than downplayed, the horrors of the bomb: it was repeatedly portrayed as a ‘monster’ threatening the world.

IGNORING THE FIRST DRAFT OF HISTORY

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.

THE DAILY MIRROR AND THE CREATION OF A COMMERCIAL POPULAR LANGUAGE

It has long been acknowledged that the Mirrors transformation from middle-class to working-class newspaper after 1934 was effected to a large extent through its astute identification of a language which could communicate its journalism to a new market. This language has been explored with particular intensity during the period of the Second World War and the post-war period when the paper rose to both political as well as commercial prominence. However, there has been little interest in the early years of this evolution, merely a generally held assumption that some time between 1934 and 1940, the newspaper developed a brand of journalistic language which embodied a credible appeal to a working-class readership. This paper attempts to redress this imbalance by focusing on the ways that the newspaper dealt with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939; part of the period described by Pugh as the neglected pre-1939 era—a neglect which is all the more surprising because, as he observes, “the Mirror was profoundly influenced by international events around 1935–36, and by 1939 it had become a central element in the tide of opinion that was shortly to envelop the parliamentarians” (Pugh, 1998, p. 424).

AN ORGAN OF UPLIFT

This article examines the role the popular daily press played both in integrating voters into Britains new mass democracy after 1918, and in redefining the nature of political debate. It will start by suggesting that “depoliticisation” is not the most useful model for understanding interwar popular journalism. The article will then look briefly at the ways in which the popular press addressed the people most poorly integrated into British political culture, namely the new female voters and the non-unionised working class. It will highlight the extent to which the popular press emphasised the importance of citizenship and encouraged involvement in the political process. While not seeking to disguise the limitations of this material, it will argue that the popular presss political content was more varied and unpredictable than historians often assume.

NEWSPAPER PROBLEM PAGES AND BRITISH SEXUAL CULTURE SINCE 1918

This article offers an overview of the evolution of the problem page in British popular newspapers since 1918. It argues that newspaper problem columns and related features were regarded by many readers as an important source of advice and guidance on personal and sexual questions. It identifies three different phases in the development of the modern problem page. In the inter-war period, and into the 1940s, problem pages almost invariably provided staunch defences of conventional morality and portrayed sexuality as a dangerous instinct that needed to be restrained and managed. In the 1950s and 1960s, sexuality was increasingly depicted as positive and pleasurable force that needed to be expressed for personal and psychological well-being. Agony aunts became less concerned with defending the institution of marriage and started to offer some more challenging and opinionated material. Since the 1970s, in the context of a more sexualised and permissive culture, problem pages have developed a more hedonistic approach, and have been presented more overtly as entertainment.

INTRODUCTION: Journalism and history: Dialogues

This special issue emerged from a conference in September 2010 to launch the Centre for the Study of Journalism and History (CSJH) at the University of Sheffield. The purpose of the Centre, and the conference, is to encourage interdisciplinary conversations about the relationships between history and the texts of journalism. Interest in historical perspectives on newspapers and periodicals has developed considerably in recent years, demonstrated not least by the range and quality of the submissions to Media History. Journalism history has emerged as one of the most fertile sub-fields of journalism studies, while political and social historians’ increasing preoccupation with language, genre, discourse and identity has ensured a greater focus in their works on the products of journalism. Both of these trends have been reinforced by the rapid digitization of print and visual media archives, which has considerably extended the opportunities for this type of historical research. At the same time, the gradually unfolding crisis of British popular journalism*which in July 2011 forced the dramatic closure of the News of the World, the nation’s most successful newspaper, and led to the establishment of the Leveson enquiry into the ‘culture, practice and ethics of the media’*has produced a welter of commentary on the press and its role in modern society. This is, then, a productive time for considering the ways that journalism has shaped the past and the understanding of the past. Yet it is all too easy for these conversations to be scattered and fragmented; the aim of the centre, through its series of conferences and workshops, is to act as a forum and facilitator for sustained and productive dialogues between historians, scholars of media and journalism studies, and journalists themselves. Historians have too often deployed news media artefacts without properly considering their distinctive stylistic and institutional traits; scholars of the media, meanwhile, have frequently focused too tightly on the texts themselves without due regard for their social and cultural contexts. Journalists have often felt excluded from scholarly debates about their profession. We envisaged this conference as a convivial opportunity to discuss these issues, and we hope to have fostered, in a modest way, a network of interdisciplinary contacts whose energies will, it is hoped, survive long after the day’s proceedings are over. The articles in this special issue have been selected to reflect the range and diversity of research in this expanding field. They encompass a broad chronological span, from Gary Rivett’s exploration of mid-seventeenth-century English newsbooks to Ivor Gaber’s examination of the recent changes to the lobby system. They set up comparisons across space as well as time; John Tulloch and Jane Chapman’s study of The Pioneer in colonial India and Rory Pilossof’s examination of The Farmer in post-independence Zimbabwe complement the British focus of the other pieces. While Gaber, Tulloch and Chapman examine editorial policies and journalistic routines, Rivett, Pilosoff and Bob Nicholson are more concerned with the language of, and the ideas reflected within, different forms of Media History, 2013 Vol. 19, No. 1, 1 2, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2012.752959

‘Putting literature out of reach’? Reading Popular Newspapers in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain

For ordinary Britons in the twentieth century, reading meant, above all, the consumption of newspapers. Surveys found that whereas almost half of adults said they never read books, only a tenth did not regularly see a daily newspaper.1 The newspaper was one of most successful products of the twentieth century, and provided, as Chris Baldick puts it, ‘the most regular and most formative relationship between the majority of the population and the written word’.2 And newspapers were particularly successful in Britain. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, the British read more newspapers per capita than any other people in the world — almost twice as many as Americans in the mid-1950s, and nearly three times as many as the French.3 In no other country have mass market newspapers been as fiercely competitive or achieved quite the same influence and prominence as in Britain. Fleet Street’s uniquely successful brand of popular journalism has provided millions of ordinary readers with one of their main windows onto the world, and has shaped the nation’s political and social life in countless ways.

The British Press and the 1918 Reform Act

This essay provides the first comprehensive study of the British presss reporting of, and discussions about, the electoral reform proposals that became the Representation of the People Act 1918. It shows that, in responding enthusiastically to calls for substantial constitutional change, newspapers from across the ideological spectrum revealed a deep disillusionment with partisan politics and party machines, and imagined a re‐energised democracy that would rise to the complex tasks of post‐war reconstruction. Female voters were to have a significant role in this more inclusive political system, and even long‐standing opponents of womens suffrage chose this moment publicly to alter their position – although by repeatedly framing enfranchisement as an outcome of service to the nation, the language of democratic rights was sometimes blurred. Many newspapers also argued for proportional representation (PR) to create a fairer, less cynical and less strictly‐managed type of politics. These debates marked an important moment in the redefinition of British democracy, and they would have a lasting influence on post‐war political culture. After 1918, the press generally defended this new democracy, even if some commentators expressed anxieties that certain voters lacked the capacity or inclination properly to exercise their political responsibilities. Set against the political turbulence across Europe, and the inevitable disquiet generated by economic dislocation and mass unemployment, it is the resilience of democracy in Britain, rather than its weakness, that is notable. In these difficult times, the press played a crucial role in legitimising and stabilising the parliamentary system and celebrating a more inclusive politics.

‘Gross Interference with the Course of Justice’: The News of the World and the Moors Murder Trial

It was, declared the News of the World’s (NOTW) front page on 17 April 1966, ‘The Murder Trial of the Century’, and, for once, the hyperbolic language was justified. The prosecution of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley for the murder of three children — 12-year-old John Kilbride, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey and 17-year-old Edward Evans — generated huge interest both in Britain and around the world. Over 150 journalists, and 5 authors, attended the trial, all aiming to satisfy the intense public curiosity in the so-called ‘Moors Murders’, and 300 hundred extra policemen were drafted in to ensure the participants in the case safe passage in and out of the courtroom amidst the noisy crowds gathered outside.1 The attention elicited by the case was not hard to explain. The sheer brutality of the murders, the unusual presence of a glamorous young woman in the dock, the widespread suspicion that the accused were a product of the ‘permissive’ mores of modern society and the knowledge that, if guilty, they would narrowly avoid the death penalty, following the suspension of capital punishment the previous year — all of these ingredients heightened the controversy and the outrage surrounding the trial. No one at the time could have predicted, however, the extent to which the case would continue to haunt the public imagination, and be played out in the pages of the popular newspapers, in subsequent decades as two more victims — Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett — were confirmed and the grim search for bodies on the moors continued. A study of the press in 1985 found that the ‘Moors Murderers’ featured more prominently than all other ‘sex criminals’ in custody put together; Ian Brady still had sufficient news value in 2013 to earn several front-page lead stories. 2

Historical child sexual abuse in England and Wales: the role of historians

Abstract This article reflects on methodological and ethical issues that have shaped a collaborative project which aims to chart social, legal and political responses to child sexual abuse in England and Wales across the twentieth century. The etymological problem of searching for child sexual abuse in the historical archive is discussed, given that the term itself is a relatively recent one. Acknowledging that research tools will always be partial, it then focuses on the gaps and silences in the archive, most problematically in relation to the voices and experiences of victims and survivors themselves. Finally it discusses ethical issues relating to the naming or anonymising of those accused and convicted (as well as victims and survivors) in the writing up of research findings. The discussion focuses on two key periods – the 1920s and 1950s – and on education policy, including regulatory procedures for teachers in state and fee-paying schools.