Winston Churchill in the British Media: National and Regional Perspectives During the Second World War 9783030482510, 9783030482527

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: Introduction
Methodology
Choice of Particular Areas and Newspapers
Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Newspapers in Historical Research
The British Press: Power and Control in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Chapter Breakdown
References
Manuscript Collections
Book and Journal Articles
Websites
Chapter 2: Northern Ireland
Newspapers in Northern Ireland
Censorship in Northern Ireland
Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty
Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940
Conscription for Northern Ireland
The End of the Second World War and the General Election
Conclusion
References
Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals
Manuscript Collections
Book and Journal Articles
Website
Chapter 3: Scotland
Newspapers in Scotland
Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty
Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940
Churchill’s Choices of the Secretary of State for Scotland
Rudolf Hess in Scotland
Churchill’s Visit to Edinburgh in October 1942
The End of the Second World War and the General Election
Conclusion
References
Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals
Manuscript Collections
Book and Journal Articles
Websites
Chapter 4: Wales
Newspapers in Wales
Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty
Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940
Churchill’s Visit to Wales in April 1941
The Secretary of State for Wales and the Welsh Day
The Biggest Industrial Stoppage in Wales in March 1944
The Death of David Lloyd George
The End of the Second World War and the General Election
Conclusion
References
Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals
Book and Journal Articles
Chapter 5: Birmingham
Newspapers in Birmingham
Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty
Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940
Prime Ministers’ Visits to Birmingham
The Death of Neville Chamberlain
The End of the Second World War and the General Election
Conclusion
References
Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals
Manuscript Collections
Book and Journal Articles
Websites
Chapter 6: North England
Newspapers in Manchester and Leeds
Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty
Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940
Churchill’s Visits to Manchester in April 1941 and Leeds in May 1942
Manchester, 26 April 1941
Leeds, 16 May 1942
The Beveridge Report and Its Reactions
The End of the Second World War and the General Election
Conclusion
References
Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals
Book and Journal Articles
Websites
Chapter 7: Conclusion
References
Appendices
Appendix 1: Newspapers in Northern Ireland
Appendix 2: Newspapers in Scotland
Appendix 3: Newspapers in Wales
Appendix 4: Newspapers in Birmingham
Appendix 5: Newspapers in Manchester
Appendix 6: Newspapers in Leeds
Appendix 7: Press Chains
Appendix 8: Circulation Figures Cited on Royal Commission on Press Report, HO 251, National Archives
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE MEDIA

Winston Churchill in the British Media National and Regional Perspectives during the Second World War

Hanako Ishikawa

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media Series Editors Bill Bell Cardiff University Cardiff, UK Chandrika Kaul University of St Andrews Fife, UK Alexander S. Wilkinson University College Dublin Dublin, Ireland

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media publishes original, high quality research into the cultures of communication from the middle ages to the present day. The series explores the variety of subjects and disciplinary approaches that characterize this vibrant field of enquiry. The series will help shape current interpretations not only of the media, in all its forms, but also of the powerful relationship between the media and politics, society, and the economy. Advisory Board Professor Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, Cambridge) Professor Nicholas Cull (University of Southern California) Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley (Macquarie University) Professor Monica Juneja (Heidelberg University) Professor Tom O’Malley (Aberystwyth University) More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14578

Hanako Ishikawa

Winston Churchill in the British Media National and Regional Perspectives during the Second World War

Hanako Ishikawa Independent Scholar New York, NY, USA

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media ISBN 978-3-030-48251-0    ISBN 978-3-030-48252-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: John Frost Newspapers / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book was mainly written between 2014 and 2017, when two referenda, the Scottish independence referendum in September 2014 and the Brexit referendum in June 2016, took place in the United Kingdom (UK). While the former decided against independence, the latter determined the UK’s secession from the European Union (EU), leading to years of political turmoil and increased feelings of isolation and divisiveness among the people. In the 2010s, people in the Western world struggled to discern their identities due to a massive influx of refugees and immigrants from the Middle East and the widening of divides between urban and rural, or rich and poor, areas. The result of the Brexit referendum showcased ever more diversified British identities and renewed the call for a second Scottish independence referendum, Scotland having overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU. The results of these referenda shed light on the many differences that still exist between the nations that make up the UK. Britain is now experiencing unprecedented phenomena: Traditional Labour strongholds in Northern England turned to the Conservatives in the 2019 general election, which may indicate the demise of traditional class-based voting behaviour in England; Northern Ireland elected more Nationalist than Unionist Members of Parliament, which may suggest changes in demography and the relative decline in the importance of religion and sense of affiliation towards Britain among the Unionists. The Brexit referendum and the 2019 general election were the products of democracy. In both cases, the voters’ diverse identities, which they believed to be at risk, influenced their voting decisions. v

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How people identify themselves is never static or singular. It is fluid, like a water stream; one identity may stand out more strongly than others at times, while another may play a more important role at other times. That is the difficulty in understanding what voters really want to hear, which has caused failures of political parties in election campaigns throughout history. The traditional party loyalty derived from voters’ identities, based on where they are from, what class they belong to, and what religion they believe in, has been mediated by their predominant concerns at any given time. This book shows that the not-so-monolithic UK as it exists today is not a new phenomenon. Before modern identity politics emerged in the 1960s, national and regional identities had always existed in the UK.  In each territory, city, and town, diverse identities coexisted, with each person possessing multiple identities. Identity politics mattered during, and even before, the Second World War. Even when national unity was propagated throughout the UK in wartime, people voiced their opinions loudly and used their voting power to change national policies. This book shows, through the lens of local newspapers, how diverse regional identities mattered in ordinary people’s lives. As part of my research, the staff in the Newspaper Room at the British Library assisted me greatly in retrieving a large number of printed newspapers and microfilms. I would like to thank this institution for archiving and keeping such important materials in good condition. Without their continuous effort to preserve these newspapers, this research could not have been completed. I would also like to thank my supervisors at King’s College London, Dr Michael Kandiah and Dr Andrew Blick, who gave me invaluable advice. I would also like to thank my brother, who supported me through three years of challenging doctorate research. New York, NY, USA 12 January 2020

Hanako Ishikawa

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Northern Ireland 27 3 Scotland 57 4 Wales 97 5 Birmingham127 6 North England157 7 Conclusion195 Appendices207 Index219

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About the Author

Hanako  Ishikawa  is a historian of Winston Churchill, interested in how he was used in propaganda in Britain and other countries during the Second World War. She is studying changes and continuities in the portrayals of Churchill in Asian countries, aiming to broaden the understanding of how the nature of his leadership was perceived outside the Western world.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Winston Spencer Churchill (1874–1965) is regarded as having embodied a particular kind of Britishness during the Second World War through qualities such as defiance and fortitude in leading the struggle against the Axis powers. Since then he has become a major political and cultural icon in both the United Kingdom (UK) and abroad.1 This positive image was largely created and consolidated after the war. However, contemporary accounts of Churchill were much more complicated and nuanced in the UK. One dimension of these complex responses to Churchill involved the diverse identities2 which existed in different territories of the UK.  The book will explore how Churchill was portrayed in the UK press during the war, comparing his depictions in Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and provincial English newspapers. By using a variety of newspapers in the four territories, it will examine local opinions about Churchill at the time he was the wartime prime minister. It will analyse how Churchill was received and depicted by newspapers in the UK and why differences in these depictions emerged in each area. The book aims to contribute to the study of public opinion in the war and of Churchill’s reputation, as well as to the study of the notion of Britishness, focusing on local perspectives.

© The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7_1

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Methodology The book uses wartime newspapers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and provincial England. Primary sources that have thus far been utilized to explore public opinion during the Second World War vary: the Gallup Polls, the Mass Observation reports, and reports by the Ministry of Information are among these sources. The British government took public opinion very seriously and believed it important to the conduct of the war. In March 1940, the Home Intelligence department of the Ministry of Information was established in order to learn more about public opinion.3 It drew information from the Gallup Polls, Mass-Observation, the Wartime Social Survey, and other sources that included interviews with local people by regional information officers and BBC listener search surveys.4 While these sources reflect interesting and diverse opinions and identities, they do not provide simultaneous, UK-wide data on specific policies and persons.5 Regional and local newspapers, as part of their function of regularly informing the public of national,6 regional, and local news, reported on a wide range of topics at the same time as all these topics were hotly discussed. Since many towns, cities, regions, and nations in the UK had their own newspapers during the war, using them as a primary source allows for the examination of various opinions, as well as a comparative approach among geographic territories. The Home Intelligence department also admitted that the press had a considerable influence on public opinion and civilian morale. In addition to the Gallup Polls, Mass Observation, and the Wartime Social Surveys, the Home Intelligence reports often referenced the British press and noted people’s criticisms of newspapers.7 Newspapers have had roles in educating people as well as in representing them.8 They also functioned as monitors of authority and preventers of corruption.9 Moreover, the press played a part in moulding communities and shared identities, as Benedict Anderson stated in Imagined Communities that newspapers ‘provided the technical means for “re-­ presenting” the kind of imagined community that is the nation’.10 It allowed thousands or millions of readers to consume the same newspaper simultaneously and through this habitual reading engendered the creation of an ‘imagined community’.11 Bingham and Conboy analysed the role of British newspapers in moulding an ‘imagined community’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in three ways: glorification of British

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achievements abroad; analyses of the other, whether in Europe or in other continents, as contrasted with British citizens; and emphases on the threat of foreigners settling in Britain.12 Also, Williams stated that national newspapers helped mould national identities, and at the same time regional and local identities were enriched by regional and local newspapers.13 For instance, Temple argued that by reporting sports, local newspapers ‘forge a sense of local and regional identity by distinguishing local papers from neighbouring publications, and the use of voluntary contributors for much of the sports content also helped to strengthen local newspapers’ ties with their communities’.14 Many cities in the UK had their unique press culture, and regional and local newspapers have provided regionally and locally specific news as well as reports on UK politics. In each chapter, various titles are chosen based on their political stance and religious affiliation (if they had one). Choice of Particular Areas and Newspapers In order to find diverse identities and opinions towards Churchill in different parts of the UK, the book looks at newspapers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and three cities in England: Birmingham in the Midlands, Manchester in Lancashire, and Leeds in Yorkshire. In the chapter on Northern Ireland, newspapers which were Unionist, Nationalist, fervently Protestant, Methodist, and Presbyterian are studied to show different opinions derived from diverse identities. Newspapers in Belfast, its capital city, and those in Londonderry, the second largest city in Northern Ireland, were mainly used; however, as the number of Nationalist newspapers was limited, some Nationalist newspapers outside the two cities were also used in the second chapter. In the chapter on Scotland, newspapers in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee were used. Newspaper culture prospered in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and each city had a number of newspapers representing diverse positions. In addition to the two cities, Dundee was selected as it was Churchill’s former constituency (1908–22); he had unhappy memories of the city, as he lost his seat in the 1922 general election and was criticized severely by some Dundee newspapers. In the chapter on Wales, newspapers in Cardiff, Swansea, Pontypridd, and Aberystwyth were chosen as the primary source materials. I do not read the Welsh language, thus newspapers used in the fourth chapter are limited to those written in English. Three cities, Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, were selected from England. First, Birmingham, a city in the West

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Midlands, was selected as it had close relations with Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940), Churchill’s political opponent and predecessor. It was the second largest city in England and had newspapers oriented to each of the three major political parties, allowing the fifth chapter to showcase different depictions of Churchill in contrast to Chamberlain. Manchester and Leeds were selected for the sixth chapter because they had locally owned newspapers of national readership, the Manchester Guardian and the Yorkshire Post. Also, both cities have known of their strong regional identities, Lancashire and Yorkshire identities. In each territory, newspapers were selected through the following steps. First, all newspapers in the selected cities, which were indicated on the Newspaper Press Directory 1945, were considered. Sports newspapers and newspapers of particular occupational groups, for example, agriculture and farming news, were excluded from the list. After these selections, all of the remaining newspapers were read at the Newspaper Room at the British Library and those mentioning Churchill in the selected events in the book were used as primary sources. When several newspapers within the same city had the same publisher and proprietor and their contents about Churchill were mostly the same, just one of these papers was used for the book. Each paper’s history and background are explained in the following chapters as well as in the appendices. Although UK ‘national’ newspapers also had a wide readership in each territory selected in this study, as the book is concerned with locally oriented opinions apart from London-centric views of Churchill and the UK, they were excluded from primary sources. Within sub-UK national, regional, and local newspapers, the book uses morning daily, evening daily, tri-weekly, Sunday, weekly, and monthly newspapers; each type of newspaper had a different readership and different information to deliver. Dailies provided readers with the latest information available, while weeklies and monthlies provided a more detailed analysis of events, as well as the thoughts and opinions of editors. Within these selected newspapers, the book deals only with political content: news reporting, editorials, and letters columns mentioning Churchill. Though relevant to identity at war, content about people’s lives such as ‘how-tos’, entertainment, and women’s pages are beyond the scope of this book. News articles not only report on politics and social issues but also show the general attitude of each paper towards the topic from their interpretation, choice of words, and tone. Editorials are usually written by the most senior staff and show newspapers’ stances on

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particular topics and in turn the perspectives to which their readerships were exposed.15 They provide an illustrative and sometimes explicit portrayal of people and issues. Letters sent to editors can provide readers with a place for discussion and (assuming they are written by real members of the public) provide newspaper staff with feedback from readers and ideas for future content.16 Although editors selected what they believed to be appropriate for their papers, and sometimes their choice is fastidious, the letters columns can offer some possible insight into what was popularly discussed in each community at a particular time.17 Letters to newspapers can be viewed with suspicion by historians as they may have been completely fabricated by editors. Bingham stated that it ‘is impossible to tell whether letters have been edited, altered, or even invented, nor can it be assumed that the balance of opinion on the letters page accurately reflects the balance of all letters received’, but they can show what editors wanted to see in the letters columns.18 Whether they were contrived or not, these letters had a meaning, at the very least providing an indication of the intention of editors. Newspaper content can be selective and unbalanced; however, such bias can reveal how diverse opinions were at the time when ‘national’ unity was placed at a premium and heavily promoted. Rather than lamenting how unreliable and arbitrary newspaper contents were, this book values such unreliableness as a mirror to reflect diverse identities and perspectives.19  dvantages and Disadvantages of Using Newspapers A in Historical Research As Bingham repeatedly stated, historians have not paid much attention to newspapers as a historical source until recently, and when they have used newspapers they have only referred to quality papers like The Times, ignoring the popular press as trivial and unsophisticated.20 However, recent digitization projects have made it easier for historians to access historical newspapers as well as improve prospects for historical research using digitized newspapers.21 This research would not have been possible before digitization, as it allowed historians to search and access a number of newspapers across the UK.22 Advantages of using newspapers for historians vary. John Tosh claimed that the press is ‘the most important published primary source for the historian’. He pointed out the three advantages of using newspapers for historians:

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First, they record the political and social views that made most impact at the time. […] Second, newspapers provide a day-to-day record of events. During the nineteenth century, this function began to be filled much more fully, particularly when the development of the electric telegraph in the 1850s enabled journalists in distant postings to file their copy home as soon as it was written. […] Lastly, newspapers from time to time present the results of more thorough enquiries into issues that lie beyond the scope of routine news reporting.23

Using newspapers allows historians to understand various perceptions about an event at the time it happened and to gain detailed and extended data surrounding an event in sequence. There are, however, disadvantages. Newspapers reflect intentions of various groups and are influenced by the ideology and ambition of newspaper people. In reading each title, research into who made the paper enables a deeper understanding of the newspaper content. In addition, newspapers also reflect the relationship between those who produced them and politicians. How one politician was portrayed in each newspaper differed dramatically, even when reporting their role in the same event. The difference often derived from the political affiliation of each paper but sometimes from the close personal relationship between newspaper editors, proprietors, and politicians. It is important to excavate such background information in order to grasp the context of each newspaper. Nevertheless, looking at such issues from a different angle, newspapers can provide historians with insight into the thoughts and agendas of newspaper people as well as politicians who had an influence on some newspapers. Vella explained the importance of the production side of the newspapers: But newspapers do much more: they document the way in which reporters and editors thought about their own society and the world around them, how they organized and presented information, filtered out or neglected other potential news reports, created influential categories of thought and established, enforced or eroded conventional social hierarchies and assumptions.24

The selectiveness and prejudice of newspapers can be taken as a disadvantage; however, Vella argued that it allows historians to identify the ideologies and thought of a particular institution and of the people who made newspapers.

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Also, newspapers were first of all aimed to be read by the public, and to this end, they have to satisfy readers’ appetite for what they want to know. As Lord Francis-Williams (1903–1970), the editor of the Daily Herald between 1936 and 1940, who was a member of the Morale Committee of the Ministry of Information as well as the controller of press and censorship from 1941,25 commented: Newspapers exist to be read. […] newspapers are by their nature made at least as much by those who read them as by those who edit and write them. They are as good or as bad as their publics allow, for the greatest newspaper in the world has no future if it cannot get and hold a public.26

Newspapers exist to be read. Nevertheless, at the same time newspapers were fundamentally a big business, whose aim was to make a profit for their owners. As Hart argued, newspapers were a vehicle ‘for informing, guiding, and entertaining’ as well as ‘for making money’.27 It is important to note that a newspaper was a profitable business. While it was aimed, primarily, to be read by a particular audience, it had to make a profit from its publication. Newspaper people had to maintain a balance between responding to the expectations of their readership and making huge profits from publication.28 Moreover, the use of newspapers as a source necessitates knowledge about the intended audience in addition to that about who made them. The circulation figures and political affiliations of each newspaper can indicate its intended and expected readership. The traditional quality paper was intended to be read by the educated middle and upper-middle classes while popular newspapers—the tabloid press—which began to circulate widely in the late nineteenth century were aimed more at the lower-­middle and the working classes. The tabloid press usually had higher circulation figures than the quality press though it was not popular among advertisers who sought wealthier customers for their advertisements. As this book uses over sixty newspaper titles from across the UK, it is not possible to detail the editorial policies of each of them or to provide an in-depth study of each of the editors and proprietors. Additionally, while there is considerable information about the national press, information relating to regional and local titles used in this book is very limited. I made best efforts to explain each newspaper’s background and circulation, drawing in particular on the Newspaper Press Directory, the reports by the Royal Commission on Press in 1947, as well as on secondary sources.29

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Nevertheless, as Vella stated, a shrewd reading into the newspaper contents would ‘discern the kind of institutional framework that generated them’.30 Via the examination of contents, each newspaper’s stance towards policies is analysed in later chapters. It is also difficult to determine where each newspaper was read and who consumed it, as circulation figures do not show how they were distributed across the UK, and often even the circulation data is unavailable for regional and local newspapers. From the difference between quality and tabloid newspapers, the intended audience can be vaguely guessed, but to what extent and where each newspaper was influential cannot fully be discerned. The biggest disadvantage in using regional and local newspapers with a smaller scale of operation as a historical source is the lack of background information. Nevertheless, even with this drawback, regional newspapers can provide valuable insight into the life and identities of people outside London, as well as into their thoughts about and relations to London politics. The British Press: Power and Control in the First Half of the Twentieth Century Understanding the background environment in which the British press operated is crucial in assessing and using newspapers as primary source material. At the onset of the twentieth century, the regional/local press was widely read and was influential throughout Britain.31 Its prosperity, however, was not sustained for long. As Williams pointed out, the British press experienced ‘convergence, control and centralization’ in the interwar years. A concentration of ownership, expansion of the national press into regional/local dimensions, as well as the National Government’s strategy to promote a sense of ‘a single nation’ led to the decline of the regional newspapers in the 1930s.32 From the late nineteenth century, the concentration of newspaper ownership proceeded dramatically, and by the end of the First World War, many British newspapers were owned by a few wealthy men, who were popularly called ‘press barons’. Some giant press chains owned many papers nationally and locally, whereas some papers were owned by local enterprises.33 After the death of Lord Northcliffe (1865–1922), Lords Rothermere (1868–1940), Beaverbrook (1879–1964), Camrose (1879–1954), and Kemsley (1883–1968) became the dominant figures in the publishing world and controlled multiple papers, and in 1937, three men, Kemsley, Beaverbrook, and Camrose, owned 59 per cent of national

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Sunday papers.34 Newspapers under the same owner tended to have common correspondents and thus articles, and to have limited space for local news and analyses of events originally written by editors of each paper, as compared with independent newspapers. Under the leadership of these press barons, national newspapers expanded their reach to regional and local levels. Lord Northcliffe launched the Daily Mail in 1896 as ‘The Busy Man’s Daily Journal’,35 which, according to Temple, ‘changed British journalism for ever’.36 The Daily Mail had shorter articles which could be read quickly as well as articles that were illustrated.37 Following the success of the Daily Mail in the early 1900s, the Daily Express was founded by Arthur Pearson, and the Daily Mirror was launched by Lord Northcliffe. With the technological development and the rise of a mass reading public, the tabloid newspapers achieved larger circulation and established themselves as ‘a medium of mass communication’.38 While not appealing to advertisers due to their less wealthy readership, these newspapers helped ordinary people, male or female, to be better informed and to participate in the discussion of political and current affairs. In order to increase circulation, they presented ‘the nation—its politics, culture and identity—at the forefront’ which had the effect of depriving regional and local newspapers of readers.39 Following the precedent of Northcliffe, who created a local edition of the Daily Mail and printed the northern edition in Manchester from 1902,40 eight national newspapers created regional production centres in Manchester, Glasgow, and Leeds in the interwar years.41 The decline of the regional press was also accelerated by the rise in production costs. Curran, Douglas, and Whannel argued that the British press countered this vast rise in costs by increasing advertising revenue which allowed the leading national papers to spend more money on editorial, staff salaries, terms for distributors, and promotion. In order to compete with wealthy newspapers with much advertising revenue, weaker papers were forced to spend more money for these purposes, which led to the closing down of many titles. Curran et al. claimed that the rise in national advertising fostered nationwide distribution of national papers, and as a consequence undercut the regional press.42 The interwar years saw a significant decline in the regional press except in Scotland: the regional morning newspapers fell in number from 41 in 1921 to 28 in 1937; the number of regional evening newspapers fell from 89 to 79 in the same period.43 Propaganda by the government also played an important role in promoting an all-inclusive UK ‘national’ sense in the interwar years. By the

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advent of the age of mass communication, the government sought a new way of managing the newspapers. Williams argued that ‘direct censorship was a feature of mass communication in the 1920s and 1930s’, and in the interwar years three policies were established: ‘draconian legislation to restrict the flow of information; a political news cartel and the commercialisation of information’.44 As well as these direct means of censorship, Williams pointed out that the press was cooperative in self-censoring its newspaper contents. It was managed by the lobby system, which only a limited number of journalists was allowed to join, so resulting in a sort of cartel.45 In addition, ‘the press officers, official spokespersons, public relations advisors, and information officers’ were appointed in many ministries and provided their version of information to the press.46 Furthermore, the National Government between 1931 and 1937 helped to centralize the production of newspapers and tried ‘to use the media to promote a sense of national unity and patriotism’, and ‘to play on such sentiments by finding forms of representation that supported this common-sense notion of belonging to a single nation’.47 The propagation by the National Government of the concept of ‘a single nation’ also undermined the regional and local newspapers, except in Scotland where regional newspapers remained popular and influential. Under such circumstances, the relationship between press proprietors and politicians became the determining factor in the policy of newspapers. Notably, Conservative premiers Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) and Neville Chamberlain were adroit in their manipulation of the press. Williams pointed out that the Conservative Party under Baldwin pioneered ‘many of the techniques of modern political propaganda and campaigning’.48 And in the late 1930s, the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain successfully built ties with many proprietors, such as Lord Astor (1886–1971), the owner of The Times, and Lord Kemsley, owner of the Sunday Times, the Daily Sketch, and provincial papers. It is said that except for Lord Camrose, owner of the Daily Telegraph, who had a close friendship with Churchill, most proprietors were supportive of Chamberlain. Also, Chamberlain’s friends, Lord Halifax (1881–1959) and Sir Samuel Hoare (1880–1959), were close to Geoffrey Dawson (1874–1944), editor of The Times, and Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express, the Sunday Express, and the Evening Standard.49 Chamberlain’s appeasement policy had received support from most newspapers with the notable exceptions of the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer in Leeds, the Daily Mirror in London, and a few provincial newspapers. While Churchill drew attention

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to the dangers of Nazi Germany in the mid to late 1930s, Chamberlain-­ supporting proprietors and their papers labelled Churchill a warmonger and a spent political force. Chamberlainites controlled the newspapers efficiently by ‘the Lobby system’. According to the historian Richard Cockett, who examined the control of the press under Chamberlain’s premiership in Twilight of Truth, George Steward, the Press Officer of 10 Downing Street and an admirer of Chamberlain, held briefings where journalists could gain primary information, and by restricting access to the briefings he brought them onside. They made journalists believe that they were ‘honorary members of a political system […] as allies, legmen and buddies’. Cockett argued that the relationship between the Chamberlainite machine and journalists was ‘too cosy and comfortable’.50 In this way, Chamberlain succeeded in manipulating most newspapers into favouring his policy and undermining his political opponents by inciting the press to attack them.51 When his policy of appeasement was seen to have failed following the collapse and annexation of Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Munich Agreement, some papers owned by Lord Astor switched sides and began to support Churchill as a possible successor to Chamberlain as prime minister.52 During the Second World War, British newspapers came under some restrictions from the government. There was wartime censorship of the press in order to enhance civilian morale, as well as to prevent the distribution of information that might potentially be useful to the enemy. The Ministry of Information and censorship departments in each ministry took part in controlling the media, but in many cases, they did not work together harmoniously and efficiently.53 Censorship was imposed on the press as well as news agencies, which were the source of information for newspapers.54 Despite those censorship measures, the British press could express opinions relatively freely. As Linton Andrews, the editor of the Yorkshire Post during the war, noted, it was voluntary in nature and newspaper people and politicians cooperated for the common cause. Looking back across the years I think the true answer is that among the dire anxieties of war a devotion to the common cause brought most of us much closer together in spirit. National leaders and editors shared a sentiment not very different from the comradeship of men serving in the same regiment of the battlefield.55

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Unlike the press in totalitarian regimes, British politicians and civil servants believed that limiting the freedom of the press too prescriptively could harm the British war cause as the guardian of democracy and freedom, fighting against totalitarianism.56 Just before the war, the Emergency Powers Act 1939 was enacted and under the act defence regulations were issued during the war.57 Just after the outbreak of war, the Defence Regulation 2C was invoked which limited civil liberties during the extraordinary period of war. It allowed the government to prohibit any publication that was deemed unfavourable to the government. Then, in the summer of 1940, the Defence Regulation 2D was issued without consulting members of parliament. It gave the Home Secretary a power to prohibit any material that could have a negative effect on the British war effort. On January 1941, two communist papers, the Daily Worker and the Week, were banned under Regulation 2D by Herbert Morrison (1888–1965), the Home Secretary, who was a Labour MP, and it had a significant impact on the publishing world.58 After the suspension of these two periodicals, Regulation 2D was not applied to any further newspapers, although Churchill in 1941 demanded prohibition of the Mirror and the Sunday Pictorial—as both were critical of his selection of ministers in the cabinet and policy mistakes—to Morrison and Brendan Bracken (1901–1958), the Minister of Information. They both refused, arguing that freedom of opinion was an important principle that Britain had to preserve when fighting against a totalitarian Germany.59 There was also indirect control over the press from the government through various measures. The government influenced newspaper content by distributing guidelines and by playing two key roles: first, as an important and authoritative information source, and second, as a major advertiser and thus a significant source of revenue. Shortly after the war broke out, many editors in the UK received a small booklet outlining what they should and should not write. ‘The Defence Notices’ were revised and distributed several times during the war and editors felt pressure from the government.60 Government control was also exerted through its being the primary source of information, a role it used in practice to limit the freedom of the press. During the war, information about the conflict came first from the government,61 and the news agencies, the source of information for newspapers, were also under government censorship. During the war, censors resided in the offices of Reuters and the Press Association in London, and before they sent information to the press the censor checked all news

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stories.62 Despite the censorship, Reuters tried to distribute accurate accounts of overseas events to British people but avoided sending news favourable to the Axis powers.63 Though Reuters claimed that it was independent when questioned by the foreign press, it certainly complied with government press restrictions. Consequently, before newspapers in the UK received news from the agencies, the information had already been censored and formed by officials. In addition to these regulations and governmental interference, the Ministry of Information was established on 4 September 1939, based at the Senate House building of the University of London, and henceforth it was responsible for censoring publications in the UK. The purpose of censorship was supposed to avoid giving military information to Germany and to sustain civilian morale.64 The censorship by the Ministry was voluntary, and when in doubt editors sent copy to the Censorship Division. According to Andrews, the censorship was time consuming and inconsistent. As a result, it often caused irritations and a sense of unfairness among newspaper people.65 The Ministry of Information had twelve regional offices in Great Britain and one in Northern Ireland, which corresponded with each Defence Region: Northern Region (Newcastle), North Eastern Region (Leeds), North Midland Region (Nottingham), Eastern Region (Cambridge), London Region, Southern Region (Reading), South Western Region (Bristol), Wales (Cardiff), Midland Region (Birmingham), North Western Region (Manchester), Scotland (Edinburgh), South Eastern Region (Tunbridge Wells), and Northern Ireland (Belfast).66 Each regional organization consisted of a Regional Information Officer, Deputy Regional Information Officer, Press Officer, Meeting Officer, and Film Officer, and minor staffs.67 Of all regional information officers, eight were ‘either ex-­ journalists or persons having long connection with the Press’.68 In the early period of the Second World War, the Ministry of Information’s headquarters in London was responsible for all censorship. Although regional information officers sometimes consulted with the regional press over censorship, they did not have the authority to stop or authorize the release of news. The work relating to the press at the regional organizations was explained as follows: Press work. In each Region this is in charge of a professional journalist. He maintains close liaison with the Regional Press and supplies Editors with feature articles and official information, confidential and otherwise. He also

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notifies them of impending visit of Royalty, Ministers, Government spokesmen, etc. and, generally, does a good deal in various ways to assist the Regional Press to maintain their service. […] In Return, the Regional Press have been found to be willing to assist Ministry by giving prominence to information on Government instructions which it is especially necessary that people of the locality should have.69

From the early stage of the Second World War, the Ministry noted the infringements of the Defence Notices by local newspapers: A number of cases have recently been brought to my notice of infringements of the Defence Notices regarding the publication of names of regiment units, etc., by local newspapers in the Provincial Areas, which are not served by the Press Association […] there appears to be no one in their vicinity to whom they can apply for advice as to what they may publish and what they may not. And in that connection it should be noted that the local newspapers all over the United Kingdom are far too numerous to make it practicable to supply them all with copies of the Defence Notices. I would therefore request your views as to whether the Regional Area Information Officers […] could not be made responsible for a general supervision of the local press in their area.70

On 10 January 1940, J. L. Palmer, the Regional Information Officer for the South Western Region, suggested that censors at regional organizations should reduce the burden on the regional press and expand the coverage of censorship: I feel strongly that […] establishment of censors at a few provincial centres, is inevitable. […] Voluntary press censorship, and issue of regular Defence Notices, has been, in the provinces, a pronounced success, but unfortunately centralisation in London is having the unexpected effect of making editors close down upon far too much war-time news. […] Censorship centralised in London, as can be proved by examination of the record of the Censorship Bureau, is now seldom used by the press of this region, except by the more enterprising newspapers with London representatives.71

Responding to these suggestions, a regional censorship was discussed by the Ministry and censors were posted to Southern, Wales, Midland, North Western, Scotland, and Northern Ireland regions.72 The functions of regional censors were listed as:

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1. To give advice to the Press within their regions on matters concerning Press Censorship. No authority to pass or stop matter officially. 2. To scrutinise local press with a view to seeing that Censorship requirements are being observed. Discretion to take up minor infringements with papers direct, but in general reporting infringements with notes as to treatment required. 3. To represent Press Censorship in their region at local enquiries or in approaching other Government Departments (only if so instructed from here). 4. To report to the Director General on any general matters in connection with Press Censorship where individual arrangements or alternations are called for.73 In the rest of the regional organizations, press officers took the role of censors and they were all trained at least once at the London Headquarters.74 Finally, the British press experienced a further limitation imposed by government: paper rationing. As the war went on, it became increasingly difficult to secure paper for newsprint, since the German navy attacked many shipping vessels coming from Canada, and the traditional source for paper—Scandinavia—was no longer accessible. The consumption of newsprint was reduced several times.75 The reduction in newspaper supply led to the downsizing of newspapers as well as the reduction of advertisement columns.76 In 1938, advertising revenue accounted for 60 per cent of the total, but this fell to one half in 1943. As corporate advertising revenue dried up, it was replaced by the British government, which became the primary advertiser. From March 1940 to June 1945, 34 governmental institutions spent more than £9,500,000 in total on advertising.77 The British government intervened in the newspaper world, officially and unofficially, in both peace and war. Even under many restrictions, the press remained an important part of civilian life and the British government believed that newspapers were vitally important for informing people about the war and changes in their lives. The Wartime Social Survey on newspaper readership, conducted in July 1943 and researched British civilians’ reading habits of four types of newspapers, shows that newspapers were a part of everyday lives of British people.78 With such a vast social influence, the government requested the British press to cooperate in the war against Germany. Bearing in mind the environment surrounding British newspapers, the following chapters analyse regional and local newspapers in order to compare portrayals of Churchill in different areas

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during the Second World War. Through these analyses, it will demonstrate the potential of provincial newspapers in offering historians access to diverse voices from the past.

Chapter Breakdown The second chapter will analyse newspapers in Northern Ireland. The province had a special position in the UK, and newspaper articles were significantly influenced by religious beliefs. It will consider what symbolisms were used in the depictions of Churchill, how Unionist and Nationalist papers differed, how they used Churchill to justify their positions, and what Churchill meant to Northern Irish people. The third chapter will study Scottish newspapers’ portrayal of Churchill. Unlike provincial newspapers in England, Scottish newspapers still prospered after the Great War in parallel with national newspapers,79 and in Edinburgh and Glasgow many titles representing various affiliations provided unique opinions about Churchill and national politics, as well as local news. Through newspapers’ depictions of Churchill in several selected events, it will consider what kind of Scottishness the Scottish press tried to emphasize in the time of war; how Scottish national identities were reflected in the portrayal of Churchill; and what future of Scotland within the UK the Scottish press sought through the wartime events. The fourth chapter will look at Welsh newspapers. Public opinion towards Churchill was said to be sour due to his involvement as Home Secretary in the 1910 Tonypandy riots. The chapter will consider whether such bad feeling against Churchill in Wales was reflected in the Welsh press; how the perception of Churchill in Wales changed in wartime; and how Welsh newspapers compared Churchill and David Lloyd George (1863–1945), the Welsh hero, in their wartime leadership. The fifth chapter will analyse the Birmingham newspapers. Birmingham was the second city in England and a Unionist stronghold where the Chamberlain family gained huge popularity between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914), the important Liberal Unionist, was much respected by Birmingham people for his achievements as mayor of Birmingham in 1873–76, and his two sons also played important roles in  local and national politics: Austin Chamberlain (1863–1937) was the prominent Foreign Secretary in the 1920s, and Neville Chamberlain became prime minister. The chapter will analyse how the presence of Neville Chamberlain and the Chamberlains’

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tradition influenced the portrayal of Churchill in Birmingham; how relations between political parties and newspapers in Birmingham were reflected in newspaper content; whether the Birmingham press thought that the death of Neville Chamberlain and the end of the Chamberlains’ tradition caused the Labour Party’s landslide victory in Birmingham in the 1945 general election; and whether there were any common features found in Birmingham newspapers. The sixth chapter will examine newspapers in Manchester and Leeds. Both cities had a long press culture and had locally owned newspapers with national readership, the Manchester Guardian and the Yorkshire Post. The Manchester Guardian, which is now considered to be a national newspaper, rooted in the region at the time of the Second World War. Analyses on the Manchester press shows a clear contrast between locally owned newspapers and those owned by a national chain. Leeds had newspapers which supported the three major political parties, therefore, analyses on the Leeds press reveals how a political affiliation makes a difference in the line taken. The chapter will consider how the Manchester and Leeds newspapers described Churchill and his policies, particularly his attitude towards social improvement after the war; and how Lancashire and Yorkshire identities were reflected in the portrayal of Churchill.

Notes 1. In this book, I use ‘Britain’ and ‘the United Kingdom’ synonymously. ‘Britishness’ is also meant to apply to a condition characteristic of the whole UK, rather than Great Britain alone. 2. In this book, I try to assess ‘identities’, that is, a self-awareness, feeling, sentiment, which derives from an attachment to a territory and to its history. Each person can have multiple identities and from time to time the composition of identities changes, depending on their own circumstances and social and political situations. 3. Paul Addison, Home Intelligence Reports on Opinion and Morale 1940–1944 (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1979), 2. 4. Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang, Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain’s Finest Hour May to September 1940 (London: The Bodley Head, 2010), xiv. 5. Particularly, the Gallup Polls by the British Institute of Public Opinion took a sample from Great Britain only. It ignored Northern Ireland completely and did not provide a regional breakdown, making comparative research among four territories impossible. See Mark Roodhouse, ‘“Fish-

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and-Chips Intelligence”: Henry Durant and the British Institute of Public Opinion, 1936–63’, Twentieth Century British History 24, no. 2 (June 2013): 234–7. 6. In this book, I use the term ‘national’ and ‘nation’ to apply to the sub-­ nations of the UK: England, Scotland, and Wales. Northern Ireland is more complicated to define and might better be regarded as a territory. 7. For instance, the report on 31 May 1940 explained that civilian morale was high because of ‘relatively optimistic press reports’ and quoted some headlines of newspapers. See Addison, Listening to Britain, 58. 8. Mark Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 106–08. 9. Ibid., 111. 10. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2006), 24–25. 11. Ibid., 35. 12. Adrian Bingham and Martin Conboy, Tabloid Century. The Popular Press in Britain 1896 to the Present (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015), 199–200. 13. Kevin Williams, Read All About It! (London: Routledge, 2009), 7–8. 14. Mark Temple, The British Press (New York: Open University Press, 2006), 96. 15. Denise Bates, Historical Research Using British Newspapers (Barnsley: Pen & Sword History, 2016), 25. 16. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, ‘Letters to the Editor in Local and Regional Newspapers: Giving Voice to the Readers,’ in Local Journalism and Local Media, ed. B. Franklin (London: Routledge, 1998), 221–22. 17. Ibid., 229. 18. Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918–1978 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 9. 19. While the opinion pages of ‘national’ quality papers tend to conform to elite opinions, the local or regional newspaper ‘offers more of a space for “ordinary people” to voice their concerns’. See Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, ‘Op-­ed page’ in Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism, ed. Bob Franklin (London: Routledge, 2008), 75. 20. Adrian Bingham, ‘Ignoring the First Draft of History?,’ Media History 18, no. 3–4 (September 2012), 311. 21. Ibid., 320. 22. There is, however, a downside: historians could lose opportunities to encounter unexpected findings when reading digitized newspapers instead of physical papers. Through searching by keyword and by timeframe, historians tend to focus on reading what they planned only and, in the end, find only what they expected. When reading a physical copy of newspaper, historians can find out more, as they tend to read articles that they did not

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think would be relevant but which, in the end, turn out to contain important information. 23. John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (London: Taylor and Francis, 2015), 78–79. 24. S. Vella, ‘Newspapers,’ in Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History, ed. Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann (London: Routledge, 2009), 192. 25. ‘Williams, Edward Francis, Baron Francis-Williams (1903–1970)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), accessed 7 March 2017, http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36919 26. Francis Williams, The Dangerous Estate. An Anatomy of Newspapers (London: Longmans Green, 1957), 17. 27. David J. Hart, ‘Changing Relationships between Publishers and Journalists: An Overview,’ in Newspapers and Democracy: International Essays on a Changing Medium, ed. Anthony Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), 268. 28. The main revenue for newspapers derived from the sales of copies and advertising space, and consequently the role of advertising in newspaper publication became increasingly important from the late nineteenth century onwards. It has been suggested that advertising allowed newspapers to be independent of political influence in the eighteenth century, and that the advertising bodies became increasingly influential over ‘newspaper fortunes’ in the interwar years. Advertising rates had been fixed with the size of the column, but Alfred Harmsworth (1865–1922), later Lord Northcliffe, changed the charging system and thereafter the advertising rate was linked to circulation. To increase advertising revenue, it therefore became necessary to increase circulation. However, the advertising income was unequally distributed, and while newspapers with relatively wealthy readers gained much advertising revenue, working-class papers had difficulty in gaining funding, as advertisers thought the readers would be unable to purchase their products, thus rendering such a readership unappealing. In using newspapers as primary materials, it is necessary to remember that advertising interests may influence what the newspapers chose to publish, and what and why they did not publish. See Leo Bogard, ‘Editorial Ideals, Editorial Illusions,’ in Newspapers and Democracy: International Essays on a Changing Medium, ed. Anthony Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980); Williams, The Dangerous Estate; Williams, Read All About It!; Hampton, Visions of the British Press. 29. The Report by the Royal Commission on Press shows circulation data for only 13 of the newspapers used in this book, The National Archive (henceforth, TNA), HO 251. The Audit Bureau of Circulations shows less data on circulation of local/regional newspapers.

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30. Vella, ‘Newspapers,’ 194. 31. Bingham and Conboy, Tabloid Century, 199. 32. Kevin Williams, ‘The Devil’s Decade and Modern Mass Communication: The Development of the British Media during the Inter-war Years,’ in Twentieth Century Mass Society in Britain and the Netherlands, ed. Bob Moore and Henk van Nierup (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 104–07. 33. William E.  Berry, British Newspapers and Their Controllers (London: Cassell, 1947), 12–17. 34. Newspaper chains, which owned multiple newspapers nationally and locally, had considerable influence over the newspaper environment in the first half of the twentieth century. Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail Group, known as Associated Newspapers Ltd., controlled many papers such as the Daily Mail, the Evening News, the Sunday Dispatch, the Evening World (Bristol), the Gloucestershire Echo (Cheltenham), the Derby Evening Telegraph (Derby), the Citizen (Gloucester), the Grimsby Evening Telegraph (Grimsby), the Hull Daily Mail (Hull), the Evening Mail (Leicester), the Lincolnshire Echo (Lincoln), the Evening Sentinel (Stokeon-Trent), and the South Wales Evening Post (Swansea). Lord Kemsley’s Kemsley Newspapers—former Allied Newspapers Ltd.—owned the Daily Graphic, the Sunday Graphic, the Sunday Times, the Daily Dispatch (Manchester), the Sporting Chronicle (Manchester), the Sunday Chronicle (Manchester), the Sunday Empire (Manchester), the Evening Chronicle (Manchester), the Press and Journal (Aberdeen), the Evening Express (Aberdeen), the Northern Daily Telegraph (Blackburn), the Western Mail (Cardiff), the South Wales Echo (Cardiff), the Daily Record (Glasgow), the Evening News (Glasgow), the Sunday Mail (Glasgow), the Evening Gazette (Middlesbrough), the Newcastle Journal and North Mail (Newcastle), the Evening Chronicle (Newcastle), the Sunday Sun (Newcastle), the Sheffield Telegraph (Sheffield), the Star (Sheffield), and the Yorkshire Evening Press (York). The Provincial Newspapers group, former United Newspapers, Ltd., owned the News Chronicle, the Edinburgh Evening News (Edinburgh), the Yorkshire Evening News (Leeds), the Chronicle and Echo (Northampton), and the Lancashire Daily Post (Preston). The Westminster Press, which was formerly known as the Starmer group, controlled the North Western Evening Mail (Barrow), the Birmingham Gazette (Birmingham), the Evening Despatch (Birmingham), the Sunday Mercury (Birmingham), the Yorkshire Observer (Bradford), the Telegraph and Argus (Bradford), the Northern Echo (Darlington), the Northern Despatch (Darlington), the Nottingham Journal (Nottingham), the Nottingham Evening News (Nottingham), the Shields Evening News (North Shields), the Oxford Mail (Oxford), the Shields Gazette (South Shields), and the Evening Advertiser (Swindon). Lord Beaverbrook owned the Daily Express, the Evening

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Standard, the Sunday Express, and the Evening Citizen (Glasgow). Lord Camrose owned the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, and Lord Astor controlled The Times. See Berry, British Newspapers and their Controller; James Curran, Power without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain (London: Routledge, 2010), 39. 35. Williams, Read All About It, 129. 36. Temple, The British Press, 28. 37. Williams, Read All About It, 129. 38. Ibid., 131. 39. Bingham, Tabloid Century, 199. 40. Williams, Read All About It, 136. 41. James Curran et al., ‘The Political Economy of the Human-Interest Story,’ in Newspapers and Democracy: International Essays on a Changing Medium, ed. Anthony Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), 295. 42. Ibid., 290. 43. Hampton, Visions of the British Press, 42. 44. Williams, ‘The Devil’s Decade and Modern Mass Communication’, 101. 45. Ibid., 102. 46. Ibid., 103. 47. Ibid., 104–05. 48. Williams, Read All About It, 170. 49. Richard Cockett, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 12–13. 50. Ibid., 6–8. 51. Ibid., 114–15. 52. Ibid., 164–79. 53. Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979). 54. Harold Herd, The March of Journalism: The Story of the British Press from 1622 to the Present Day (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952), 333. 55. Linton Andrews, The Autobiography of a Journalist (London: Earnest Benn Limited, 1964), 205. 56. Curran, Power without Responsibility, 57. 57. Cornelius P. Cotter, ‘Constitutionalizing Emergency Powers: The British Experience’, Stanford Law Review 5, no. 3 (1953): 403–06. 58. Aaron L.  Goldman, ‘Press freedom in Britain during World War II,’ Journalism History 22, no. 4 (1997): 146–51. 59. Curran, Power without Responsibility, 57; Charles Edward Lysaght, Brendan Bracken (London: Allen Lane, 1979), 194. 60. Nicholas John Wilkinson, Secrecy and the Media: The Official History of the United Kingdom’s D-Notice System (London: Routledge, 2009), 181.

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61. Garry Campion, The Good Fight: Battle of Britain Propaganda and the Few (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 27. 62. News agencies, most notably Reuters and the Press Association (PA), enabled small papers to gain news stories just like national papers at a reasonable cost. Since smaller and provincial papers could not afford to send journalists, they relied on news agencies for information. Therefore, news agencies played an essential role in providing content to regional and local newspapers, and the history of news agencies is linked to that of provincial papers. The PA was established in 1868 by the leading provincial dailies including Birmingham Daily Gazette, Cork Examiner, Dundee Advertiser, Scotsman, Glasgow Herald and North British Daily Mail, Leeds Mercury, Liverpool Courier, Daily Post and Mercury, Manchester Guardian and Examiner, Newcastle Northern Daily Express, Nottingham Journal, Sheffield Independent, and Yorkshire Post. It built a network among provincial papers that enabled them to gain world news at an affordable price. See Herd, The March of Journalism, 333; Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb, The International Distribution of News: The Associated Press, Press Association, and Reuters, 1848–1947, Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 101; John Lawrenson, The Price of Truth: The Story of the Reuters £££ Million (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1985), 53. 63. Ibid., 251. 64. Campion, The Good Fight, 27. 65. Andrews, The Autobiography of a Journalist, 189. 66. In addition to the censorship imposed by the British Ministry of Information, newspapers in Northern Ireland were restricted by the Stormont government. Northern Irish-specific censorship is explained in Chap. 2. 67. Note on the work of the Ministry in the regions, undated, TNA INF 1/296. 68. Ministry of Information Regional Organization, undated, TNA INF 1/296. 69. Ibid. 70. Local Press and Infringements of Defence Notices, 15 October 1939, TNA INF 1/315. 71. A report by J.  L. Palmer, the regional information officer at the South Western Region, 10 Jan. 1940, TNA INF 1/315. 72. Note on the work of the Ministry in the regions, undated, TNA INF 1/296. 73. Regional Censors, undated, TNA INF 1/188. 74. Note on the work of the Ministry in the regions, undated, TNA INF 1/296. 75. First, 60 per cent of newsprint supply was reduced between September 1939 and July 1940 by arrangement with newspapers, and a Paper Control Order in June 1940 forced papers to reduce the number of pages, with the

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circulation of each paper being pegged by the Newsprint Supply Company. A further 17 per cent of paper supply was cut in March 1941, 10 per cent in March 1942, and 2.5 per cent in February 1943. From September 1943 onwards, however, the paper supply increased little by little. It was increased by 11.5 per cent in September 1943, 5 per cent in June 1944, 2.5 per cent in April 1945, and 10 per cent in June 1945. See The Newspaper Press Directory 1945 (London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd., 1945), 48–49. 76. In 1942 press advertising was formally restricted in size by the government, which allowed only limited advertising space: for Sunday papers, only 40 per cent was assigned and for evening papers, 45 per cent. See Williams, Read All About It, 176. 77. Dennis Griffiths, Fleet Street: Five Hundred Years of the Press (London, 2006), 289. 78. The Wartime Social Survey shows British peoples’ reading habits of morning and evening newspapers, Sunday newspapers, and local weeklies and bi-weeklies. According to the survey, 15 per cent of people read local and provincial papers as their morning newspapers, and these types of papers were more popular in Scotland and in the North. Through an analysis of the readership of newspapers by Defence Region, it can be seen that 48 per cent of people in Scotland read a local and provincial morning paper: 31 per cent in the Northern, 26 per cent in the North Western, 26 per cent in the North Eastern, 6 per cent in the North Midlands, 8 per cent in the Midlands, 9 per cent in Wales, 9 per cent in the Eastern, 0 per cent in the Southern, 7 per cent in the South Western, 0 per cent in the South Eastern, and 0 per cent in London Region. Local and provincial morning papers were more popular among those who belonged to the upper and middle economic groups: 25 per cent of the upper group, 20 per cent of the middle group, and only 15 per cent of the lower group read a local and provincial morning daily. Evening papers were more often read in large towns, and local weekly and bi-weekly papers were read more widely in small towns and rural areas. More than half of the people read a local and provincial weekly or bi-weekly paper in Scotland, the Northern, the North Western, East Anglia, the Southern, the South Western, and South Eastern. Among these types of newspapers, people read Sunday newspapers most often. Three-quarters of the population read morning papers, and half the population read evening papers and local weeklies. There was not much regional difference in the readership of Sunday papers, except in Scotland where Scottish Sunday papers were more popular, although national Sunday papers were also read there. See Louis Moss and Kathleen Box, Newspapers and the Public (1943), 1–2, 14, 38–9, 41. 79. Williams, Read All About it, 7.

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References Manuscript Collections Regional Censors, undated, The National Archive (henceforth, TNA) INF 1/188. Note on the work of the Ministry in the regions, undated, TNA INF 1/296. Ministry of Information Regional Organization, undated, TNA INF 1/296. A report by J. L. Palmer, the regional information officer at the South Western Region, 10 Jan. 1940, TNA INF 1/315. Local Press and Infringements of Defence Notices, 15 October 1939, TNA INF 1/315.

Book and Journal Articles Addison, Paul. Home Intelligence Reports on Opinion and Morale 1940–1944. Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1979. Addison, Paul, and Jeremy Crang. Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain’s Finest Hour May to September 1940. London: The Bodley Head, 2010. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 2006. Andrews, Linton. The Autobiography of a Journalist. London: Earnest Benn Limited, 1964. Bates, Denise. Historical Research Using British Newspapers. Barnsley: Pen & Sword History, 2016. Berry, William E. British Newspapers and Their Controllers. London: Cassell, 1947. Bingham, Adrian. Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918–1978. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Bingham, Adrian. ‘Ignoring the First Draft of History?.’ Media History 18, no. 3–4 (September 2012): 311–26. Bingham Adrian, and Martin Conboy. Tabloid Century. The Popular Press in Britain 1896 to the Present. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015. Bogard, Leo. ‘Editorial Ideals, Editorial Illusions.’ In Newspapers and Democracy: International Essays on a Changing Medium, edited by Anthony Smith, 247–67. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980. Campion, Garry. The Good Fight: Battle of Britain Propaganda and the Few. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Cockett, Richard. Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. Cotter, Cornelius P. ‘Constitutionalizing Emergency Powers: The British Experience.’ Stanford Law Review 5, no. 3 (1953): 382–417.

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Curran, James. Power without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain. London: Routledge, 2010. Curran, James. ‘The Political Economy of the Human-Interest Story.’ In Newspapers and Democracy: International Essays on a Changing Medium, edited by Anthony Smith, 288–316. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980. Goldman, Aaron L. ‘Press freedom in Britain during World War II.’ Journalism History 22, no. 4 (1997): 146–55. Griffiths, Dennis. Fleet Street: Five Hundred Years of the Press. London: The British Library, 2006. Hampton, Mark. Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Hart, David J. ‘Changing Relationships between Publishers and Journalists: An Overview.’ In Newspapers and Democracy: International Essays on a Changing Medium, edited by Anthony Smith, 268–87. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980. Herd, Harold. The March of Journalism: The Story of the British Press from 1622 to the Present Day. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952. Lawrenson, John. The Price of Truth: The Story of the Reuters £££ Million. Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1985. Lysaght, Charles Edward. Brendan Bracken. London: Allen Lane, 1979. McLaine, Ian. Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II. London: Allen and Unwin, 1979. Moss, Louis and Kathleen Box. Newspapers and the Public. 1943. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1945. Roodhouse, Mark. “Fish-and-Chips Intelligence’: Henry Durant and the British Institute of Public Opinion, 1936–63.’ Twentieth Century British History 24, no. 2 (June 2013): 224–248. Silberstein-Loeb, Jonathan. The International Distribution of News: The Associated Press, Press Association, and Reuters, 1848–1947, Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Temple, Mark. The British Press. New York: Open University Press, 2006. Tosh, John. The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History. London: Taylor and Francis, 2015. Vella, S. ‘Newspapers.’ In Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History, edited by Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann, 192–208. London: Routledge, 2009. Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin. ‘Letters to the Editor in Local and Regional Newspapers: Giving Voice to the Readers.’ In Local Journalism and Local Media, edited by Bob Franklin, 221–31. London: Routledge, 1998. Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin. ‘Op-ed page.’ In Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism, edited by Bob Franklin, 70–78. London: Routledge, 2008.

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Williams, Francis. The Dangerous Estate. An Anatomy of Newspapers. London: Longmans Green, 1957. Williams, Kevin. Read All About It!. London: Routledge, 2009. Kevin Williams. ‘The Devil’s Decade and Modern Mass Communication: The Development of the British Media during the Inter-war Years.’ In Twentieth Century Mass Society in Britain and the Netherlands, edited by Bob Moore and Henk van Nierup, 93–112. Oxford: Berg, 2006. Wilkinson, Nicholas John. Secrecy and the Media: The Official History of the United Kingdom’s D-Notice System. London: Routledge, 2009.

Websites Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). ‘Williams, Edward Francis, Baron Francis-Williams (1903–1970).’ Accessed March 7, 2017. http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/36919.

CHAPTER 2

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has always held a special position in the UK. People in Northern Ireland can identify themselves as British, Irish, or Northern Irish, and with ignorance and sometimes with hostility some people in Great Britain have treated the Northern Irish as foreigners. Northern Ireland played an important role in the Second World War. Although conscription was not implemented, around 42,000 people volunteered. In order to protect Ireland from German invasion, Northern Ireland became the station for four divisions and later accommodated GIs. In spite of her war contributions, unemployment was much higher in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the UK, and wartime restrictions were somewhat loose due to the existence of a black market and lax border policing between Ulster and Éire.1 This chapter will explore the depictions of Churchill in Northern Irish newspapers during the Second World War in order to examine the nature of Churchill’s leadership seen from Northern Ireland and to provide a picture of hybrid identities in the territory, as well as of the position of Northern Ireland in the UK.  It will analyse diverse opinions about Churchill in response to four selected events during the Second World War: the return of Churchill to the Admiralty in September 1939, the early period of Churchill’s premiership in 1940, the conscription question in May 1941, and the period between the victory in Europe and Churchill’s defeat at the general election in 1945. Using Unionist, Nationalist, and © The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7_2

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religious newspapers, it will shed light on diverse identities seen in newspapers’ descriptions of Churchill, who symbolized ‘Britishness’ during the war.

Newspapers in Northern Ireland In Northern Ireland there were various newspapers published during the war, each with their own political affiliations, including Conservative Unionists, Liberal Unionists, Nationalists, and other religious groups. This chapter cannot cover every newspaper published in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. It will mainly examine widely read dailies and tri-weeklies, with weeklies and monthlies as supplements. There were many Conservative Unionist papers published in Belfast. The Belfast Telegraph was established in 1870 by the Baird brothers,2 and owned by the Baird family until it was bought by the Thomson organization in 1967. Although it was a Unionist evening daily, it maintained an objective description of events compared to other papers advocating Unionism.3 Over the Home Rule debates in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the paper remained opposed to Home Rule for Ireland. Though it was at first uncritical of Adolf Hitler, from 1936 onwards its leader writers started denouncing him on account of his attitude towards and treatment of Jews. In 1939, the Belfast Telegraph ran articles written by Churchill,4 such as ‘The Sacrifice Hitler Has Made’5 and ‘We Must Make it Clear That […] We Won’t Give Way To Bullying by the Japs’.6 The Belfast News-Letter is the oldest newspaper in Northern Ireland, established in 1737 by Francis Joy, one of whose ancestors was head of the Irish government in the early seventeenth century.7 It advocated strong Protestant beliefs and its principle was ‘loyalty to the throne, devotion to the religion of the Bible, and unswerving attachment to the Protestant constitution of these lands’.8 From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, its ownership remained with the Henderson family. The paper was strongly pro-Unionist and mostly supportive of British Conservatives. Even outside Belfast, there were many Conservative Unionist papers advocating strong opinions on British politics. The Londonderry Sentinel was a tri-weekly newspaper, published in Londonderry and founded in 1829. It was established by editors who left the Derry Journal when it supported Catholic emancipation and, since its establishment, had advocated anti-Catholic, Unionist opinions.9

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The Northern Whig and Belfast Post was a morning daily established in 1824  in Belfast, and its owner during the 1940s was the Cunningham family.10 It was Liberal Unionist in nature, and more sympathetic to Catholics than Conservative Unionist papers, and very much supportive of Churchill. Compared to Unionist papers, the number of Nationalist papers was limited. The Irish News and Belfast Morning News was a morning daily published in Belfast and was widely read in Northern Ireland. The Morning News was established by the Read brothers in 1855 and, although it was Catholic-owned, it is said that it was politically neutral. On the issue of Home Rule for Ireland, it supported Parnell, and when the divorce scandal of Parnell went public in 1890, the Morning News initially continued its support of him. P. J. Kelly, an editor who criticized Parnell, was dismissed, and became an editor of the Irish News, which was established in 1891 to voice anti-Parnellite Catholic opinions. The main shareholders of the Irish News were the Cardinal League, the Ulster bishops, and leading Catholic businessmen. While in Dublin most Catholics were still Parnellite, in Belfast most people were anti-Parnellite. The Irish News soon won the support of the Catholic population in Northern Ireland and, finally, the two papers merged to become the Irish News and Belfast Morning News.11 The newspaper was a devoted supporter of Joseph Devlin (1871–1937), the leader of the Nationalists in Northern Ireland, who originally worked as a reporter at the Irish News in the early 1890s.12 Outside Belfast, there was one Nationalist tri-weekly paper and six Nationalist weeklies in 1945 according to the Newspaper Press Directory 1945. The Derry Journal was a tri-weekly paper in Londonderry, established in 1772, and published by Derry Journal Ltd. The paper supported Catholic emancipation in the early nineteenth century and was widely read by Catholics in Northern Ireland. Since the paper harshly criticized the Northern Irish government, it was suspended by Stormont between 1 and 4 June 1940.13 Four weeklies (the Ulster Herald; the Frontier Sentinel; the Derry People; and the Fermanagh Herald) advocated Nationalist opinions and were owned by The North West of Ireland Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd. Each paper posted local news unique to each area, but they shared news stories on matters relating to Britain and war. They rarely published news about Churchill, and when they did so they were typically critical. Two weeklies, the Dungannon Observer and the Armagh Observer, also voiced Nationalist opinions. Owned by Patrick Mallon,

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each paper provided extensive local news, about, for example, local meetings. Due to this local focus, Churchill was little mentioned, and they tended to criticize Northern Irish Unionist politicians rather than British Conservatives. There were newspapers published by particular religious bodies, and they expressed opinions without sensitivity towards the authorities. The Ulster Protestant was a monthly newspaper published by the Ulster Protestant League, founded in 1936. It was extremely sectarian and anti-­ Catholic and carried many prejudiced slogans such as ‘Vote Protestant, Buy Protestant, Sell Protestant, Be Protestant’ and ‘Neither blueshirts nor blackshirts are worn by Loyal Protestants’.14 During the Second World War, approximately 7000 copies were circulated monthly. Because of its controversial stance towards Catholicism, and its description of events determined by its blind faith in Protestantism, the UK Home Office received many complaints from Americans in both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland about the Ulster Protestant. The Irish Christian Advocate, a weekly newspaper established in 1883 and published by the Irish Methodist Publishing Co., Ltd.,15 was evangelical in character and often very critical of Churchill. The Presbyterian Church published the Witness, a weekly paper established in 1874.16 The paper depicted Churchill as a Christian leader but was discontinued due to the shortage of paper in January 1941.

Censorship in Northern Ireland During the Second World War, many publications were censored in the UK. Northern Ireland, in particular, had a stricter censorship regime over the press and publishers than Great Britain. In addition to the censorship of the press by the British Ministry of Information, the Stormont government also paid a great deal of attention to newspapers in Ulster. Before April 1940, there was no effective censorship imposed by Britain in Northern Ireland. However, the Press Office was established under the Cabinet Secretariat, which was responsible for communication between Stormont and Westminster, and from May 1940 it worked as the regional office of the Ministry of Information. The press officer at the Press Office became the regional information officer of the regional office17 and the Ministry appointed a new press censor in Belfast who became responsible for guiding the local press from May 1940.18 According to Brodie, the Northern Ireland office of the Ministry resided at a building in Lombard

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Street, Belfast, and all the articles produced locally had to be submitted to the censor there. They handed in ‘three copies of each report’, and ‘800 words became 200 words, or sometimes were banned entirely’.19 Censorship by Stormont was sectarian in nature. Northern Ireland remained in the UK after partition in 1922, but it acquired self-­government due to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Since then, Stormont enforced many acts that would secure Protestant dominance in Northern Ireland: in the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the Northern Irish Parliament was allowed to enact laws that would preserve ‘peace, order and good government of Northern Ireland’, while it was banned from making laws that promoted religious inequality.20 To this end, the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act 1922 was introduced in order ‘to take steps for preserving the peace and maintaining order in Northern Ireland’.21 The act allowed the Minister of Home Affairs of Northern Ireland to make new regulations without parliamentary discussions when necessary.22 Articles 25, 26, and 27 of the act directly related to newspapers, with Article 26 stating that ‘The civil authority may by notice prohibit the circulation of any newspaper for any specified period, and any person circulating or distributing such newspaper within such specified period shall be guilty of an offence against these regulations’.23 The act enabled the Minister of Home Affairs to ban or suspend publications at their judgement, and according to Donohue, from its enactment until 1971 more than 140 publications were banned. During the Second World War, An Phoblacht, The Republic, The Loyalist or The Republican Press, Irish World and American Industrial Laborer, Fianna, The Republican Congress, An Siol or the Seed, Irish Freedom or Saoirse nah Éireann, Wolf Tone Weekly, The Sentry, The Irish Worker’s Weekly, The Derry Journal, Red Hand, The Critic, and The Orange Terror were banned.24 Most of them proclaimed the ideal of Republicanism, and some of them were socialist and communist. Sectarian politics retained an influence over the press during the Second World War. David Gray, the Ambassador of the United States of America in Dublin, kept complaining about the Ulster Protestant, a monthly paper advocating anti-Catholic opinions, and even asked about the possibility of censoring and suppressing the paper. It was in circulation in both Northern Ireland and Dublin, and Gray claimed that it was offensive to every Catholic soldier from the United States stationed in Northern Ireland during the war.25 The paper’s headlines were often nonsensical, such as ‘Plain Facts About Romanists—Papists are not Christians—They are pagans and idolaters—As well as slaves’,26 and ‘Why Aren’t Convents

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Inspected?—The Priests’ Brothel—Amazing Convent Revelations—The Murder of Infants’.27 It was possible, in Gray’s view, to negatively affect relations between the UK and the United States. The newspaper received many complaints from Gray, as well as from several prominent British politicians such as Clement Atlee, the Deputy Prime Minister, Brendan Bracken, the Minister of Information 1941–1945, Sir John Maffey (1877–1969), the UK representative in Dublin, and Lord Cranborne, the leader of the House of Lords and the Secretary State for Dominion Affairs. They wrote to Herbert Morrison, the then Home Secretary, calling for action to be taken against the controversial newspaper.28 Although Morrison admitted that he deplored the paper, he thought it difficult to ban it because ‘there shall be the utmost possible liberty, even under war conditions, for expressions of opinion’.29 Morrison instead asked Northern Irish prime ministers, first John Andrews (1871–1956) and then Sir Basil Brooke (1888–1973), to take care of the newspaper. Although they warned the proprietors, they never tried to suppress it. The Attorney General’s office claimed on 12 December 1942 that: the best way of accomplishing this would be, as the P.M. suggests, to endeavour to bring home to those responsible the danger to the national cause of this kind of propaganda. If this is not successful summary proceedings might be taken under Reg. 16 of the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act Regulations (being an act likely to cause disaffection among the civilian population.) Or you might prohibit the circulation of the paper under Reg. 26 if it is a “newspaper” within the meaning of that Regulation.30

The office contemplated using the Special Powers Act against the paper, but in the end it was never enforced. In his letter to Morrison on 19 November 1943, Brooke admitted that ‘The only powers we have are those deriving the Civil Authorities Act’, but he was reluctant to apply the act against the newspaper, stating that ‘Any such action on our part would also, of course, raise the more general question of interfering with the free expression of opinion—however deplorable—and I know how strong your views are on this’.31 While censoring Republican and communist papers, and even the widely read Nationalist Derry Journal, Northern Irish premiers were reluctant to halt a Protestant paper, however scurrilous and offensive it was.

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Censorship in the Irish Free State was more draconian than in Britain and Northern Ireland since the partition, and many papers were censored by the government. During the Second World War, Southern Ireland maintained neutrality and the German consulate remained open in Dublin. However, this neutrality was pro-British, and Anthony Eden believed that Éamon de Valera (1882–1975), the Irish Taoiseach, was ‘doing all he can for us’, even though Southern Ireland did not allow Britain to use her ports.32 A secret memorandum from the Irish Department of External Affairs dated May 1941 mentioned that Ireland cooperated with Britain in: Information on transport and military facilities in Ireland, free air spaces for British planes, Broadcasting facilities, collection of and passing on of information, a coast watch service, routing of official German and Italian communications through Britain, internment of spies and blacking out of areas at British request.33

When the war was over and the censorship ended, the Irish Times, a Dublin-based liberal daily that opposed de Valera’s neutrality policy, expressed their irritation: The Irish newspapers have been subject to an official discipline in some respects as Draconian and irrational at anything that ever was devised in the fertile brain of the late Josef Goebbels. […] We have been living and working in conditions of unspeakable humiliation.34

Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty When the Second World War broke out, Churchill returned to be the First Lord of the Admiralty, and his appointment was covered in most newspapers in Northern Ireland. However, in contrast to other periods during the war, the press showed less interest in him. Unionist newspapers only mentioned the appointment briefly and explained that the inclusion of Churchill would increase the efficiency of the war cabinet. The Belfast Telegraph and the Belfast News-Letter described Churchill’s role at the Admiralty in the Great War as encouraging and explained that his experience would contribute greatly to the newly formed cabinet.35 They refrained from mentioning the pre-war position of Churchill and his relationship with his colleagues in the cabinet. The Northern Whig welcomed Churchill as the head of the Admiralty and

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explained that his voice was ‘bridging the two of the most momentous occasions in British history’. The paper claimed that Churchill’s inclusion was cheered by the majority of the British people and it ‘will be hailed with the greatest satisfaction in all quarters’.36 Churchill’s return to the Admiralty allowed the paper to associate the Second World War with the Great War, when the British Empire defeated Germany, and ultimately to suggest British victory. In contrast, the Nationalist Irish News openly highlighted the differences and bitter relations between Churchill and other members in the cabinet: True to family tradition, Mr. Winston Churchill finds himself once more a member of a Ministry that suffered from his biting criticism […] when he became absorbed by the “enemy” at Westminster he quickly turned to equally good account his able abilities as a writer and an orator to trounce his former friends and supporters. When Ireland and her problems were the pivotal subjects of debate at the hustings and in the House of Commons Mr. Churchill found them quite to his liking. Like his father, he made this country and her aspiration merely a means for his political gyrations. Apart from this, it must be admitted that his appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty will strengthen the Cabinet. His administrative experience of the last war should stand him in good stead.37

While it acknowledged the possible positive effect of his inclusion in the cabinet, the paper showed the emotional dissatisfaction against Churchill held by many Nationalists. It also stated clearly the discomfort between Churchill and Chamberlainites with irony, suggesting that the cabinet was not monolithic. Apart from the Irish News, Nationalist papers did not pay much attention to Churchill’s return to the Admiralty. In the autumn of 1939, they were sympathetic to Poland, a Catholic country partitioned by Germany and the Soviet Union and identified partitioned Ireland with Poland. However, while they accused Germany, they never held the war to be their own war: it was England’s war. Religious papers paid less attention to Churchill and it is difficult to study their opinions of him in the run up to the outbreak of war in September 1939. During the early stages of the war, Unionist papers were cautious about focusing on disharmony within the newly formed cabinet and they avoided mentioning pre-war fights between Chamberlainites and Churchill. The Nationalist Irish News was blunter in

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writing about their acrimonious relationship before the war. But overall, they were not much interested in Churchill, as he was one of the ministers in war cabinet.

Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940 Churchill became prime minister on 10 May 1940, and, soon after the succession, he sent de Valera a friendly message, which was well received by Nationalist papers in Northern Ireland. Churchill was always irritated by Irish neutrality and approached de Valera several times in order to persuade Ireland to declare war against Germany. Churchill proposed a United Ireland to de Valera in June 1940; he told Ernest Bevin (1881–1951), a trade unionist and prominent labour politician serving as the Minister of Labour between 1940 and 1945,38 that: I certainly sh’d [sic] welcome any approach to Irish unity; but I have forty years of experience of its difficulties. I cd [sic] never be a party to the coercion of Ulster to join the Southern counties; but I am in favour of their being persuaded. The key to this is de Valera showing some loyalty to Crown and Empire.

He clearly mentioned that he would not support the coercion of Ulster, thus even if Éire joined the Allies in the war it was still uncertain whether a united Ireland would be realized. The offer was opposed by Ulster Protestants, but since Éire refused the offer, further discussion over a unified Ireland was brought to a halt.39 Generally, his succession was mostly supported by the Northern Irish press. Most newspapers of the time rated Chamberlain very highly and regretted his resignation; however, they welcomed and supported Churchill’s appointment as prime minister. Conservative Unionist papers were positive about Churchill’s appointment but at the same time lamented Chamberlain’s resignation. The Belfast News-Letter claimed that ‘Their determination to win this war, cost what the effort may, is no stronger under Mr. Churchill than it was under Mr. Chamberlain’,40 but at the same time accepted Churchill favourably as the new prime minister, stating that ‘Mr. Churchill’s qualities are seen to better advantage in wartime than in peacetime, and that is all to the good. If initiative and drive are the essential qualifications in the Prime Minister today, Mr. Churchill is the man to supply them’.41

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The Londonderry Sentinel blamed the Labour Party for Chamberlain’s resignation and just after the succession it mainly focused on Chamberlain’s goodwill. At the same time the paper associated Churchill with heroes in British history, and implied that Churchill was ‘the Man of Destiny’: he had a rare capacity to inspire the resolution in Parliament and people which would surely be required before we brought this struggle to a successful issue. […] One of the greatest war leaders in history was known as the Man of Destiny. In a different and more auspicious sense the term may be fittingly applied to Mr. Winston Churchill. It requires no stretching of facts to suggest that his whole career looks like a period of preparation for the mighty task that a combination of circumstances has not thrust upon him. […] Descendent of John Churchill, the great Duke of Marlborough, whose military genius two and a half centuries ago saved Europe from the domination of the all-conquering Louis XIV, he began by making soldiering his profession. […] Mr. Churchill is the first soldier to hold the office of Prime Minister since the Duke of Wellington, and the first officer of cavalry to hold this office since “that terrible cornet of horse,” William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.42

The Londonderry Sentinel, from the beginning of his premiership, propagated an image of Churchill that was deeply attached to a particular kind of Britishness. It disseminated stories that Churchill was a part of British history, and that he was the true national leader during wartime. The Northern Whig also analysed Churchill’s character and background in detail. Although it admitted that Chamberlain was one of the politicians who was responsible for the failure in the preparation for the Second World War, it described him as ‘a symbol of the earnest, peace-loving, determined character of the British nation’. It wanted Chamberlain to remain as premier but claimed that Chamberlain’s supporters, Sir Samuel Hoare and Sir John Simon, had no reason to stay in the cabinet.43 On 10 May 1940, the paper predicted who would be the next prime minister and named Churchill as the only viable choice. It assessed that Churchill was free from pre-war responsibility for the failure over rearmament. Though the paper admired Lord Halifax, it believed that it was difficult for a Lord to be a prime minister: there can be but one choice. There is Mr. Churchill […] throughout his manly speech there shone the genius of the statesman. […] To particularise Mr. Churchill’s qualification for the stupendous burden of leadership of the

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Empire in time of war is unnecessary. With his firm hand at the helm, the nation would buckle in renewed vigour to its fearful lack of conquering Hitlerism.44

When it was known to the public that Chamberlain had resigned and Churchill had taken on the premiership, the Northern Whig regretted Chamberlain’s resignation and described it as a ‘melancholy occasion’. It explained that ‘Mr. Churchill combines in his personality many qualities which singularly fit him to lead the Empire in this period of trial. […] His whole life and career, like that of the great ancestor Marlborough, seems to have been the training-ground for the present battle of endurance’.45 It likened Churchill to Pompey who would ‘exterminate those Nazi pirates’, and expected that he would bring ‘something of the initiative and resolution and thoroughness of Cromwell’. The paper claimed that Belfast was against Churchill who first came to the city in 1912 as a Home Ruler and was driven out, but analysed that the people of Belfast changed their views and became supportive of Churchill when he opposed mainstream politicians who, in Churchill’s view, ‘threaten the solidity and prestige of the Empire’46 following the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement in 1938, which returned Irish ports to Ireland. Unionist papers generally took the same line: Chamberlain’s resignation was tragic, but the new prime minister would be a truly national leader, whose qualities and family history were bound up in both Britain and Anglo-Irish ascendancy in Northern Ireland. For Nationalist newspapers, Churchill’s succession to the premiership was not considered as important as it was for Unionist papers. While the Irish News and the Derry Journal reported the news of his succession, most weeklies did not even mention it until Churchill sent de Valera a message intended to foster Anglo-Irish friendship. The Irish News plainly reported the news and did not give any opinion, either positive or negative, maintaining neutrality on the topic. The Derry Journal on the other hand made the ironic remark that it was Churchill who ‘opposed tooth and nail’ the return of Irish ports to Ireland.47 They were mostly critical of Northern Irish politicians, and when Lord Craigavon (1871–1940), the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, congratulated Churchill and declared Ulster’s loyalty to Britain, Nationalist newspapers attacked Craigavon as shameless: who was the one that drove out Churchill from Belfast in 1912?48 The Derry Journal claimed that while Lord Craigavon flattered Churchill, Churchill sought friendship with Éire rather than

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Ulster.49 After some articles attacking Stormont, the paper was suspended by the Minister of Home Affairs using the Special Powers Act, from 1 to 4 June 1940.50 Religious newspapers were generally supportive of the new prime minister. The Irish Christian Advocate claimed that ‘He is the man for the hour. Public confidence is implicit in him. He will have a difficult task but he has the entire British public behind him’. The paper explained that Chamberlain’s resignation was inevitable, since in wartime ‘someone at the head with greater courage and drive’ was necessary.51 The Witness, a Presbyterian weekly, presented Churchill as an honest and loyal politician: Those who know Mr. Churchill are aware he is incapable of disloyalty to a friend or a colleague. That is one of the reasons why he enjoys the friendship of those who are his bitter political opponents. […] Mr. Churchill is incapable of intriguing against a colleague, and the Premiership has come to him unsought and with the goodwill of Mr. Chamberlain […] and he has the right to claim the prayers and the active support of every loyal citizen of the King. We put prayers first because we know the new Prime Minister well enough to be able to say that he is a God-fearing man, who believes if this war is to be won the nation must repent of its sins and seek the aid of Him who is able to bring to nought the works of evildoers.52

It is difficult to confirm whether Churchill was God-fearing or loyal to his colleagues, but the paper tried to highlight qualities they believed necessary in an ideal leader. In May 1940, most newspapers presented Churchill in a positive light, except the Nationalist press. Many Unionist newspapers, Conservative or Liberal, made people associate Churchill with heroes of the past and propagated a British heritage of freedom, which was symbolized by Churchill. Religious papers depicted him as the leader who was honest and respected the gods. While most Unionist and religious newspapers exhibited a melancholy attitude towards Chamberlain’s resignation, they found different qualities in Churchill who could embody what each paper believed were British values.

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Conscription for Northern Ireland In late May 1941, the application of conscription in Northern Ireland was raised in the House of Commons. Before the Second World War, Chamberlain, the then Prime Minister, decided against the application of conscription in Northern Ireland due to staunch resistance from Éire. During the war, Churchill was irritated by Northern Ireland’s low level of participation. Conscription was not applied to people in Ulster and there was certainly a different atmosphere from other parts of Great Britain. The unemployment rate in Ulster in December 1940 was as high as that in Britain in 1932, when Britain suffered economically during the Great Depression.53 On 20 May, Churchill told the House of Commons that the question ‘has for some time past engaged the attention of His Majesty’s Government’, and would be decided soon.54 Since then he consulted with Ulster politicians like John Andrews, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish prime minister and politicians claimed that they were unanimously in favour of the application of conscription, and they were happy to take responsibility as Northern Ireland was a part of the UK. Nevertheless, the topic received dichotomized reactions from the Northern Irish press. While Unionist politicians and papers supported the idea of conscription, Nationalists protested against any compulsory form of participation in war. Nationalist newspapers supported anti-­conscription assemblies and featured de Valera’s protest to the possible application. The Belfast News-Letter published a ‘Correspondence’ column, where it posted diverse opinions. Many correspondents criticized Nationalists who had protested against conscription: for example, one person from Tyrone denounced those who opposed conscription as irresponsible, since they were UK citizens who received much benefit from the country: The citizen of any State enjoys certain privileges and in return, owes a duty to that State. […] This is a ‘total’ war, and we are fighting for our existence and the rights of those who come after us also, and we cannot afford to study the opinions of those who are politically opposed to a Northern Ireland Government. Any man refusing to accept conscription for the benefit of the State he lives in should automatically lose his right of citizenship and not be allowed to live in that State, or own property either. […] Many are glad to take the dole, pensions, &c.; yet the same people object to help to win this war.55

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The paper was wholeheartedly pro-conscription and anti-Nationalist; however, it also posted other opinions. One letter writer described himself as ‘imperialist’, claiming in the column that ‘If Ulster were as loyal as she has always proclaimed there would be no need for conscription. Ulster and the Government should be ashamed that they have to beg for conscription’. ‘Imperialist’ believed that half of those who would be affected by conscription were against it and suggested that it was better to promote a recruiting campaign.56 After Churchill declared that conscription in Northern Ireland would be ‘more trouble than it would be worth’, the Belfast News-Letter showed disappointment and stated that ‘the loyal people of Ulster cannot help feeling that the Cabinet in London have been guilty of a tactical blunder—that it would have been far wiser, and far better, not to raise the issue at all unless they were prepared to go ahead’.57 The Ulster Protestant, a provocative monthly newspaper that consistently attacked Catholics, denounced Nationalists over the question, and in the letters column of June 1940 an ‘Ex-service loyalist’ lamented that: Words fail to express one’s feelings at the reprehensible attitude taken up by the de Valerites and Nationalists here regarding the question of Conscription. […] They have by their action brought a lasting reproach upon and besmirched the fair name of our fair city and province, which, having a worldwide reputation for patriotism and loyalty to the British Throne and Constitution, might become a byword of the British Empire.58

The Irish Christian Advocate blamed Churchill: Mr. Churchill, we fear, has been guilty of lack of judgement in his dealing with the conscription issue. He would have been much better advised not to raise the question in the way he did if the Government had no intention of applying conscription to the area.59

They were disappointed by Churchill’s decision not to apply conscription over Northern Ireland, and blamed him and the Nationalists. All of the Nationalist papers were opposed to conscription. The Irish News supported Nationalist protests led by Irish primates and published words of Catholic bishops and de Valera extensively. It expected that ‘the words of the spiritual leaders will again remove all doubt and any wrong impressions there may be’.60 The Derry Journal believed that the Second World War was an English war, and it was none of Ireland’s business. It

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further claimed that it was only Protestant politicians at Stormont who wanted conscription, and that ‘the average Six-County Protestants’ did not want to participate in the war.61 When conscription was rejected, every Nationalist newspaper rejoiced in the decision and claimed that it was the Nationalists’ triumph. The Derry Journal published the headline ‘“More Trouble to Enforce Than It is Worth”—Mr. Churchill’s Statement— Northern Unionist Members Shouted Down’.62 They evaluated Churchill and his colleagues who decided not to impose conscription over Ulster and attacked Northern Unionists who criticized de Valera for interfering in Northern Irish policy. The Northern Irish newspapers showed a clear dichotomy in their attitude to conscription: Unionist and Protestant newspapers were pro-­ conscription while the Nationalist press was anti-conscription and pro-de Valera. Nevertheless, public opinion was not so clear-cut. The letters column in the Belfast News-Letter on 28 May posted an opinion of one Catholic, who was ‘serving for my King and country’. He claimed that the ‘most intelligent Roman Catholics are wholeheartedly on the side of Britain. Therefore, let those of them who are anti-Britain go to Éire and let Mr. De Valera look after them’.63 The Derry Journal posted a pro-­ conscription opinion by a subscriber, and the letter condemned the paper for advocating that Ireland did not care about England’s war: of all the arguments, not one word is devoted to the Nazi threat to the liberties of the world, a great part of which is now under the thraldom of Godless and ruthless Storm-troopers to the detriment of all Christian institutions. […] Irish Nationalists may have a grouch against England, but surely now is the time to sink differences, for the time being at least, and join together in an issue which totally transcends in its importance, our ancient antagonisms, or are the leaders of Irish thought constitutionally incapable of realising wider issues than their own, or that the world contains forces more evil than England was ever capable of at her worst.64

Indeed, significant numbers of Irishmen from the South, uncounted but certainly more than a hundred thousand, also fought in the British armed forces during the war, demonstrating the diverse opinions within Nationalist circles.65 On the Protestant side, it is said that many were against conscription, but since Catholics opposed conscription vehemently they did not have to resist alone.66 A student journal, the New Northman, published by Queen’s

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College Belfast, a Protestant university, was clearly opposed to the application of conscription to Ulster. Unfortunately, it did not mention the issue in 1941. It did, however, criticize conscription in the summer of 1939: there are thousands in this province who can be made to say […] that the fortunes of the Irish in their Éire are of no moment to them, and that the future prosperity of the North can be based only on continued separation from the South and exclusive association with Britain. The political excesses which from time to time have been committed, and may in the future be committed, in pursuance of this policy, have seldom brought Ireland so near to disaster as the recent agitation for the application of the British Military Training Bill to Northern Ireland.67

Although most Protestant newspapers were unquestionably pro-Britain, pro-conscription, and anti-Éire, as the New Northman showed, Protestant opinions were also diversified. In summary, therefore, the question over conscription certainly showed diverse perspectives and identifications of those who contributed to each paper, even within the same denominations. After the United States entered the war in December 1941, American soldiers were based in Northern Ireland. Churchill again tried to apply conscription to Northern Ireland in 1943 but gave up once more as the Northern Irish Premier John Andrews expressed deep concerns about the viability of applying conscription.68 In the end, conscription was not applied to Northern Ireland during the Second World War.

The End of the Second World War and the General Election The war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945 with British victory, and Churchill broadcast his review of the five years of war on 13 May. He appreciated Ulster’s support during the war and denounced Irish neutrality: Owing to the action of Mr. de Valera, so much at variance with the temper and instinct of thousands of southern Irishmen […] the approaches which the southern Irish ports and airfields could so easily have guarded were closed by the hostile aircraft and U-boats. This was indeed a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr. de

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Valera or perish forever from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which, I say, history will find few parallels, we never laid a violent hand upon them, which at times would have been quite easy and quite natural, and left the de Valera Government to frolic with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart’s content.69

Churchill’s personal attack on de Valera caused much resentment among Nationalists in Northern Ireland and Irish people outside the UK.70 Unionist newspapers tended to emphasize the importance of the ties of the British Empire, rather than the British role as the guardian of democracy. Using Churchill’s radio address on 13 May, the Belfast Telegraph denounced Éire’s neutrality and claimed that Northern Ireland’s loyalty to Britain saved Éire from German invasion. It appreciated Churchill’s broadcast, stating that ‘It is natural, therefore, that Northern Ireland feels grateful today for the generous acknowledgement made by Mr. Churchill to the loyalty and friendship of Government and people here at “the deadly moment” in Britain’s fortunes’.71 When de Valera broadcast his reply to Churchill, the paper attacked him further, calling him a ‘Prisoner of his past’. It claimed that: de Valera was suffering from shortness of memory when he made Partition the excuse for standing aloof. Earlier in the war he stated explicitly that even if Partition were abolished, that would not affect his policy of neutrality, so that his hypothetical question to Mr. Churchill is valueless as an argument. […] Partition was merely the recognition of a fundamental difference of outlook between the North and the South, and no one has supplied more reasons for the wisdom of it than Mr. De Valera and his policy.72

The paper posted an article by St John Ervine, which depicted Churchill as a much-loved leader, who was admired and liked by everybody, in contrast to Lloyd George, whom the writer claimed was admired but not liked. Ervine believed that Churchill would be a great peacetime leader, as he had qualities like resilience, physicality, mentality, and spirituality.73 The paper wholeheartedly supported the Conservatives during the election campaign and claimed that the Nationalist-Socialist link would cast the Unionists away once the Labour Party came to power.74 The defeat of Churchill was a ‘stunning surprise’, and it lamented that ‘there could be no more damaging blow to British prestige’.75

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The Londonderry Sentinel looked back at the war years emphasizing, in particular, the myth of the few and praising Churchill as a ‘Lion-hearted’ leader whose ‘courage inspired all’.76 It attacked de Valera who expressed condolences over Hitler’s death,77 and when Churchill criticized Éire’s neutrality the newspaper strongly agreed and praised Ulster’s loyalty during the war using Churchill’s words.78 When the general election campaign began, the paper supported a Unionist Party candidate for the Londonderry constituency, Colonel Sir Ronald Ross. The Conservative Party in Britain and the Unionist Party in Ulster enjoyed cooperative relations, and the Londonderry Sentinel declared that ‘A vote for Ross will be a vote for Churchill’.79 Just as the Conservatives relied heavily on Churchill’s personal popularity as the great war leader, Ulster Unionists also emphasized the link between the Unionist Party and Churchill, and tried to strengthen their image via association with the values Churchill embodied, such as victory and the British Empire. Conservative Unionist papers were mostly uncritical of Churchill, and even received his first election broadcast favourably.80 After the election they analysed the reasons behind Churchill’s defeat, including his attitude towards socialists; the Conservatives relied too much on his personal popularity. However, these papers did not fully recognize the change in the public’s mood that anticipated progress in social welfare. They believed that Ulster’s position in the UK was more secure under the Conservatives than under the Labour Party and kept emphasizing the bond of the British Empire. They considered that the empire was key to maintaining partition from Éire, therefore, they particularly stressed Ulster’s loyalty and their contribution to the war effort in contrast to the perceived disloyalty of the South. The Northern Whig, as with Conservative Unionist papers, praised Churchill and welcomed his condemnation of Éire. The paper claimed that ‘it is vitally important to them that Northern Ireland’s place in the Empire should be made secure for all times’.81 While it admitted that neutrality came from de Valera’s moral principles, which might have given him credit, his staunch refusal to let Britain use its ports certainly damaged his and his country’s reputation among ‘the freedom-loving nations’. The paper argued that de Valera lacked ‘knowledge of opinion outside his country’.82 During the election campaign, the paper positively reported on most of Churchill’s public activities but it did not avoid mentioning public dissatisfaction with him, indeed covering several occasions where people booed him. The Liberal Unionist paper showed little difference

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from Conservative papers in writing about Éire, but did, however, arguably provide more balanced reporting during the general election campaign. In contrast, each religious newspaper published unique comments on victory in Europe. The Ulster Protestant applauded Churchill as a great war leader, stating in its June 1945 issue that ‘We hail Winston Churchill, whose leadership and courage stiffened the stout hearts of our freedom people [sic]’. It posted a victory poem in which Churchill was described: Promised by Churchill, Britain’s grand old man, Born to be our leader in God’s all wise plan, Who like that old veteran could have stood the test, […] Never failed the Empire in her time of need, True to the traditions of the bulldog breed.

The poem was written by Jane Crowe from Ligoneil, and it continued to praise God and the British Empire after the verse dedicated to Churchill. As with wartime propaganda using Churchill, in this poem he embodied courage and it was suggested that he was chosen by God, and Britain and the empire were protected by the Divine. The newspaper was not satisfied in merely applauding its leader; in addition, it vehemently attacked its opponents on this happy occasion. Using Churchill’s broadcast on 13 May, it continued to attack Catholics and claimed that Ulster saved Éire from the Nazis: Surely Éamon de Valera and his gang of papal pro-Axis puppets at the Dáil must squirm under the righteous indignation of Britain and her Allies. Like their spiritual outlook, they live in a fool’s paradise—“Dev.” being the fool. His miserable, dirty little “Republic” has been clad and fed by Britain and his shores guarded, not by the Éire Navy, but guarded by the Royal Navy, and protected well behind the broad back of England.83

The paper was consistent in depicting Catholic and Southern Ireland as villains throughout the war and even in peacetime. In contrast to the Ulster Protestant, the Irish Catholic Advocate felt bitter about Churchill after victory. It claimed that now war was over, there was no place for him. The paper characterized his nature as a warmonger, and claimed that:

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Perhaps he found it more than ordinarily difficult to rouse himself and his listeners to the tasks of peace. He has enjoyed—if that is the correct word to use—war. The future will hold for him no task comparable to the ones he has so successfully discharged.84

It is said that many people expected him to retire with glory after the war, and to stay away from the toil of party politics.85 The paper might have reflected such opinions, stating that: Mr. Churchill, if he were wise, would resign and leave the parties to fight it out among themselves. He has served the nation well; he should stay away from the party conflict, for he is a national figure. If, however, he decides to ally himself completely with Conservative policy, it by no means follows that he will be of the same value to the party as he has been to the nation in the past dark years.86

Nationalist newspapers took an opposite view to Unionist newspapers over Ulster’s contribution to the British war effort and Éire’s neutrality. The Irish News celebrated victory and reported Churchill’s broadcasts in detail, but after his speech on 13 May they started criticizing his attitude towards Ireland. In a column entitled ‘An Open Letter to Mr. Churchill, Denis Ireland, the President of Ulster Union Club’, the letter’s author questioned Ulster Protestants’ ‘system of political gerrymandering’. He criticized Churchill’s speech against Éire stating that ‘You, sir, in the moment of your triumph, have chosen to embitter the waters of Anglo-­ Irish controversy. That is hard strategic regret’. He denounced the Britain that fought for ‘rights of democracies and of small nations’, while at the same time trying to force Éire to join the war despite its policy of neutrality. He was certain that Éire’s decision to remain neutral was right and, as it had sovereign rights, Britain had no right to interfere in Irish policy. He declared that the Irish people had been fighting for freedom, as had British, stating that: It is that the Irish are only more British than the British themselves in defence of their individual and national liberties. We, too, not only would fight, but have fought before now, on the beaches, in the streets, and on the mountains […] as you, sir, as an English statesman, must well remember.87

In a leading article on 17 May, the paper openly called into question ‘Ulster’s loyalty’, which was a stance echoed by Conservative Unionist

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newspapers after de Valera’s broadcast in reply to Churchill’s speech. It questioned whether such loyalty really existed, branding Lord Craigavon’s dissolution of the Northern Commons in protest against Chamberlain’s negotiation with de Valera over Irish ports as an example. The article claimed that ‘the melodramatic gesture’ by Craigavon ‘revealed how flimsy is the texture of its loyalty’. It stated that ‘Ulster loyalty impedes the cause of international morality’ by ‘trying to retard good relation between’ Ireland and Britain.88 The paper also threw doubt on Churchill’s attitude to Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century and remembered that Churchill did not protest against the Black and Tans and that he became ‘a main architect’ of partition in 1922. Mocking the words Churchill used on 13 May, the newspaper wrote, ‘“Memories are short,” said Mr. Churchill last Sunday. Yes: but not as short as that’.89 On the general election, the paper predicted that the Conservative Party was in the lead, since Churchill’s personal fame remained high and he chose the date, which suited his party.90 It portrayed Churchill as dictatorial and unsuitable for the role of peacetime leader in party politics,91 and when the Labour Party won the election, the Irish News criticized Churchill: The good temper he preserved throughout the war in relation to this country gave way to an unfair attack upon Éire and to fatuous Bridgehead message to the “Ulster” loyalists. Éire still stands where she did. The “Ulster” loyalists are worse off than they were at the last General Election, and Mr. Churchill begins to recede into the sad twilight where dwell so many leaders forsaken by the people.92

The paper criticized Churchill’s imperialism, which ignored Éire’s sovereign rights. It also denounced his acclamation of the Unionists’ war efforts, as it believed that these were motivated by their desire to remain separate from Éire, rather than by any loyalty to Britain. Churchill was seen as a leader of the British Empire who led the partition of Ireland and still threatened Irish rights and democracy. The Dungannon Observer was less interested in Churchill, but on the few occasions he was mentioned after the victory, he was treated harshly. On 2 June, the paper ironically called Churchill an advocate of both freedom and liberty, who declared that ‘we have to make sure that the new shape of the world freedom and liberty are not battered down’. It argued that what Churchill meant by freedom and liberty was ‘for all but Catholic’,

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and warned him to look at the situation in Ulster. 93 The paper rejoiced in the defeat of the Conservatives, stating that ‘Mr. Churchill, England’s War leader, has ceased to be Prime Minister and joins the list of English political “has beens”’.94 The victory and his appreciative speech on Ulster’s loyalty caused a diverse reaction in Northern Ireland: both Unionist and Nationalist newspapers wrote that Churchill was the leader of the British Empire, but each held different interpretations of imperialism. Whilst for Unionists the British Empire secured Ulster’s position in the UK and excluded Ulster from Éire, for Nationalists it meant centuries of oppression of Ireland by Britain, which still continued to influence Ireland.

Conclusion Wartime newspapers in Northern Ireland carried diverse opinions from various political and religious groups. Unionist newspapers were unanimously pro-British Conservatives as evidenced by the selected events in this chapter, and they never criticized Churchill. As Hajkowski explained in his research on the BBC, BBC Northern Ireland could not separate itself from Orangeism. Because Northern Ireland could be used as a bargaining chip by British politicians in negotiations with Éire, it showed obedience and provided full support to London.95 Northern Irish Unionist newspapers, like the BBC in Northern Ireland, presented a picture of loyal Ulster within the British Empire. For them the empire was the requirement to secure Ulster’s position in the UK and partition from Éire, thus they particularly emphasized the unity of the empire and Ulster’s role in it. Churchill, as an old-fashioned imperialist, was useful to Unionists for promoting a picture of Ulster within the British Empire. Nationalist newspapers’ opinions about the empire were always negative, as they believed that they belonged in Ireland, which had been oppressed and exploited by British imperialism. Most Nationalist newspapers attacked the Stormont government vehemently, but were mostly neutral about Churchill before his broadcast on 13 May 1945. In fact, Churchill was used to criticize the Unionists’ bigotry and opportunism, publishing the story about Churchill being forced by the Unionists to leave Belfast in 1912. Outside the newspaper press, Nationalist Jim Phelan published a book, Churchill Can Unite Ireland, which claimed that Churchill was on the side of the Nationalists and an opponent of the Ulster Protestants.96 Churchill was even seen as a friend of Ireland who

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would be the only politician that could end partition. However, after his broadcast on 13 May, he became one of their enemies in line with Ulster Protestants. Religious papers were unique in their depictions of Churchill and showcased their own ideals of leadership through Churchill during the war. Nevertheless, they criticized him without flattering authority when he was no longer seen to share their beliefs. Northern Irish newspapers from every group used Churchill’s speeches on Ireland and his involvement in the Irish question in the first half of the twentieth century in order to justify their own opinions or political interests, when Churchill was seen as the symbol of Britain and the strong war leader. After the war Churchill’s past was taken negatively by Nationalists, while Unionists relied on his fame and viewed his family history of Anglo-­ Irish ascendancy positively to maintain Ulster’s position in the empire.

Notes 1. Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939–1945 (London: Pimlico, 1999), 413–14. 2. Malcolm Brodie, The Tele: A History of the Belfast Telegraph (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1995), 12. 3. Bill Rolston, ‘News Fit to Print: Belfast’s Daily Newspapers’ in The Media and Northern Ireland: Covering the Troubles, ed. B. Rolston (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 158. 4. Brodie, The Tele, 61. 5. The Belfast Telegraph, 26 July 1939. 6. Ibid., 10 Aug. 1939. 7. Hugh Shearman, News Letter: A History of The Oldest British Newspaper (Belfast: Universities Press, 1984), 9. 8. Rolston, ‘News Fit to Print,’ 57. 9. Hugh Oram, The Newspaper Book: A History of Newspapers in Ireland, 1649–1983 (Dublin: MO Books, 1983), 51. 10. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945 (London: C.  Mitchell & Co., Ltd., 1945), 202. 11. Eamon Phonex, A Century of Northern Life: The Irish News and 100 Years of Ulster 1890s–1990s (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1995), 8–13. 12. Pat Buckley, Faith and Fatherland: The Irish News, the Catholic Hierarchy and the Management of Dissidents (Belfast: Belfast Historical and Educational Society, 1991), 26. 13. Freya McClements, ‘Press Censorship and Emergency Rule in Ireland: The Ban on the Derry Journal, 1932 & 1940’ (MA diss., Dublin City University, 2005), 7.

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14. Graham S. Walker, ‘“Protestantism before party!”: The Ulster Protestant League in the 1930s,’ The Historical Journal 28 (1985), 963. 15. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 202. 16. The Newspaper Press Directory 1939 (London: C.  Mitchell & Co., Ltd., 1939), 198. 17. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland in the Second World War: A Guide to Official Documents in P.R.O.N.I (Belfast: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 1976), 7. 18. John W.  Blake, Northern Ireland in the Second World War (Belfast: Blackstaff, 2000), 174–75. 19. Brodie, The Tele, 69. 20. Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1997), 9. 21. ‘Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 1922,’ CAIN Web Service, accessed 8 August 2015, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/ spa1922.htm 22. Keith D. Ewing and C. A. Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 372–74. 23. CAIN Web Service, ‘Civil Authorities Act.’ 24. Laura K.  Donohue, Counter-Terrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom, 1922–2000, New Directions in Irish History (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2001), 87–90. 25. A letters from David Gray to Sir John Maffey, 4 Jan. 1943 and 10 Sept. 1943, The National Archive (henceforth, TNA) CJ 1/86. 26. The Ulster Protestant, Feb. 1941. 27. Ibid., Oct. 1942. 28. A letter from Clement Attlee to Morrison on 19 Nov. 1942; a letter from Bracken to Morrison on 24 Nov. 1942; a letter from Lord Cranbourne to Morrison on 29 Sept. 1943, TNA CJ 1/86 29. A letter from Morrison to Attlee, 14 Dec 1942, TNA CJ 1/86. 30. The Attorney General’s office memo on 12 Dec. 1942, TNA CJ 1/86. 31. A letter from Sir Basil Brooke, the third Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, to Morrison on 19 Nov. 1943, TNA CJ 1/86. 32. John Ramsden, Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and His Legend Since 1945 (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 245. 33. Paul Bew, Churchill and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 149. 34. Cited in the Belfast News-Letter, 14 May 1945. 35. The Belfast Telegraph, 4 Sept. 1939; The Belfast News-Letter, 4 Sept. 1939. 36. The Northern Whig and Belfast Post, 4 Sept. 1939. 37. The Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 4 Sept. 1939.

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38. ‘Bevin, Ernest (1881–1951),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), accessed 2 February 2018. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/31872 39. Brian Girvin, The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939–1945 (Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 2006), 107. 40. Belfast News-Letter, 14 May 1940. 41. Ibid., 11 May 1940. 42. The Londonderry Sentinel, 16 May 1940. 43. Northern Whig, 9 May 1940. 44. Ibid., 10 May 1940. 45. Ibid., 11 May 1940. 46. Ibid., 13 May 1940. 47. The Derry Journal, 20 May 1940. 48. On 8 February 1912, Churchill planned to give a speech at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, where his father had previously ignited Ulster Protestants’ militant loyalism in 1886. Met by a strong Unionist reaction to his presence there, he could not reach the hall, and ended up speaking at Celtic Park. James Craig was one of the key politicians who blocked Churchill, and later this story was used by many Nationalist papers to attack Unionist opportunism to flatter Churchill when he became British prime minister. At Celtic Park, Churchill made it clear that he supported Irish Home Rule within the framework of the British Empire, stating that ‘The separation of Ireland from Great Britain is absolutely impossible. The interests and affairs of the two islands are eternally interwoven’, and if ‘Ireland could be freed, and Britain could be strengthened, and the Empire brought into a closer unity, by some great act of reconciling statecraft’. The Times, 9 Feb 1912. 49. The Derry Journal, 20 May 1940. 50. McClements, ‘Derry Journal’, 7. 51. The Irish Christian Advocate, 17 May 1940. 52. The Witness, 17 May 1940. 53. Brian Barton, ‘The Impact of World War II on Northern Ireland and on Belfast–London Relations,’ in The Northern Ireland Question in British Politics, ed. P. Catterall and S. McDougall (London: Macmillan, 1996), 47. 54. Hansard, vol. 371, cc1390–1, 20 May 1941. 55. Belfast News-Letter, 24 May 1941. 56. Ibid., 26 May 1941. 57. Ibid., 28 May 1941. 58. Ulster Protestant, June 1941. 59. Irish Christian Advocate, 30 May 1941. 60. Irish News, 26 May 1941. 61. Derry Journal, 23 May 1941.

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62. Ibid., 28 May 1941. 63. Belfast News-Letter, 28 May 1941. 64. Derry Journal, 26 May 1941. 65. Ramsden, Man of the Century, 246. 66. Gillian McIntosh, The Force of Culture: Unionist Identities in Twentieth-­ century Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999), 147. 67. The New Northman, summer 1939. 68. Brian Barton, Brookeborough: The Making of a Prime Minister (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queens University, 1988), 199. 69. The Times, 14 May 1945. 70. In reply to Churchill’s attack, de Valera made a broadcast on 16 May 1945: ‘Allowances can be made for Mr. Churchill’s statement, however unworthy, in the first flush of his victory. […] Mr. Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his action by Britain’s necessity. […] Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul? Mr. Churchill is justly proud of his nation’s perseverance against heavy odds. But we in this island are still prouder of our people’s perseverance for freedom through all the centuries.’ See Éamon de Valera, Mr De Valera’s Reply to Mr. Churchill. Why Ireland Was Neutral. Reprinted from ‘The Irish Press’ (Dublin: Irish Press, 1945), 5–7. 71. Belfast Telegraph, 14 May 1945. 72. Ibid., 17 May 1945. 73. Ibid., 18 May 1945. 74. Ibid., 4 July 1945. 75. Ibid., 27 July 1945. 76. Londonderry Sentinel, 8 May 1945. 77. Ibid., 12 May 1945. 78. Ibid., 15 May 1945. 79. Ibid., 23 June 1945. 80. On 4 June 1945, Churchill made the first broadcast for the general election and stated that a Socialist Government would ‘have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance’. The broadcast received negative reactions from voters, and some newspapers questioned his label as ‘national leader’ having blatantly attacked his former colleagues in the war cabinet. See Richard Toye,

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‘Winston Churchill’s “Crazy Broadcast”: Party, Nation, and the 1945 Gestapo Speech’, Journal of British Studies 49, no. 3 (2010), 655–80. 81. Northern Whig, 14 May 1945. 82. Ibid., 17 May 1945. 83. Ulster Protestant, June 1945. 84. Irish Christian Advocate, 18 May 1945. 85. Basil Kingsley Martin, Harold Laski (1893–1950): A Biographical Memoir (London: Gollancz, 1953), 168. 86. Irish Christian Advocate, 25 May 1945. 87. Irish News, 16 May 1945. 88. Ibid., 17 May 1945. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., 24 May 1945. 91. Ibid., 16 June 1945. 92. Ibid., 27 July 1945. 93. The Dungannon Observer, 2 June 1945. 94. Ibid., 28 July 1945. 95. Thomas Hajkowski, The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 1922–53 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 213. 96. Jim Phelan, Churchill Can Unite Ireland (London: Victor Gollancz, 1940).

References Contemporary Newspapers

and

Periodicals

The Armagh Observer The Belfast News-Letter The Belfast Telegraph The Derry Journal The Dungannon Observer The Fermanagh Herald The Frontier Sentinel The Irish Christian Advocate The Irish News and Belfast Morning News The Londonderry Sentinel The New Northman The Northern Whig and Belfast Post The Times The Ulster Herald The Ulster Protestant The Witness

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Manuscript Collections A letters from David Gray to Sir John Maffey, 4 Jan. 1943 and 10 Sept. 1943, The National Archive (henceforth, TNA) CJ 1/86. A letter from Clement Attlee to Morrison on 19 Nov. 1942; a letter from Bracken to Morrison on 24 Nov. 1942; a letter from Lord Cranbourne to Morrison on 29 Sept. 1943, TNA CJ 1/86 A letter from Morrison to Attlee, 14 Dec 1942, TNA CJ 1/86. The Attorney General’s office memo on 12 Dec. 1942, TNA CJ 1/86. A letter from Sir Basil Brooke, the third Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, to Morrison on 19 Nov. 1943, TNA CJ 1/86.

Book and Journal Articles Barton, Brian. Brookeborough: The Making of a Prime Minister. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queens University, 1988. Barton, Brian. ‘The Impact of World War II on Northern Ireland and on Belfast– London Relations.’ In The Northern Ireland Question in British Politics, edited by P. Catterall and S. McDougall, 47–70. London: Macmillan, 1996. Bew, Paul. Churchill and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Blake, John W. Northern Ireland in the Second World War. Belfast: Blackstaff, 2000. Brodie, Malcolm. The Tele: A History of the Belfast Telegraph. Belfast: Blackstaff, 1995. Buckley, Pat. Faith and Fatherland: The Irish News, the Catholic Hierarchy and the Management of Dissidents. Belfast: Belfast Historical and Educational Society, 1991. Calder, Angus. The People’s War: Britain 1939–1945. London: Pimlico, 1999. de Valera, Éamon. Mr De Valera’s Reply to Mr. Churchill. Why Ireland was Neutral. Reprinted from ‘The Irish Press.’ Dublin: Irish Press, 1945. Donohue, Laura K. Counter-Terrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom, 1922–2000, New Directions in Irish History. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2001. Ewing, Keith D. and Gearty, C. A. The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Ging, Debbie. Men and Masculinities in Irish Cinema. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Girvin, Brian. The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939–1945. Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 2006. Hajkowski, Thoms. The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 1922–53. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Hansard, vol. 371, cc1390–1, 20 May 1941.

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Hennessey, Thomas. A History of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1997. Martin, Basil Kingsley. Harold Laski, 1893–1950. A Biographical Memoir. London: Gollancz, 1953. McClements, Freya. ‘Press Censorship and Emergency Rule in Ireland: The Ban on the Derry Journal, 1932 & 1940.’ MA diss., Dublin City University, 2005. McIntosh, Gillian. The Force of Culture: Unionist Identities in Twentieth-century Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press, 1999. The Newspaper Press Directory 1939. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1939. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1945. Oram, Hugh. The Newspaper Book: A History of Newspapers in Ireland, 1649–1983. Dublin: MO Books, 1983. Phelan, Jim. Churchill Can Unite Ireland. London: Victor Gollancz, 1940. Phonex, Éamon. A Century of Northern Life: The Irish News and 100 Years of Ulster 1890s–1990s. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1995. Shearman, Hugh. News Letter: A History of The Oldest British Newspaper. Belfast: Universities Press, 1984. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland in the Second World War: A Guide to Official Documents in P.R.O.N.I. Belfast: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 1976. Ramsden, John. Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and His Legend since 1945. London: HarperCollins, 2002. Rolston, Bill. ‘News Fit to Print: Belfast’s Daily Newspapers.’ In The Media and Northern Ireland: Covering the Troubles, edited by Bill Rolston, 152–86. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991. Toye, Richard. ‘Winston Churchill’s’ ‘Crazy Broadcast’: Party, Nation, and the 1945 Gestapo Speech.’ Journal of British Studies 49, no. 3(2010): 655–80. Walker, Graham S. “Protestantism before party!’: The Ulster Protestant League in the 1930s.’ The Historical Journal 28 (1985): 961–67.

Website CAIN Web Service. ‘Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 1922.’ Accessed August 8, 2015. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/spa1922.htm. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). ‘Bevin, Ernest (1881–1951).’ Accessed February 2, 2018. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/31872.

CHAPTER 3

Scotland

During the Second World War, Scotland contributed greatly to the British war effort. It produced coal, iron, steel, and ships, as well as arms for the forces,1 and provided many soldiers to the British Army. According to Crang, by the end of 1944, 263,000 Scots were serving in a British Army of 2.8 million, which represented approximately 10 per cent of the total strength.2 While making a great contribution to the country’s military power, some Scots developed a feeling of anger towards the British government, for their use of ‘England’ for ‘Britain’, as seen in Duff Cooper’s speech in May 1940 entitled ‘the soldiers of England’,3 as well as for their policy of conscripting young, unmarried Scottish women who were sent to England for war works.4 Scottish nationalism was one important factor to colour the newspaper articles, and Scottish-specific concerns were reflected in the Scottish newspapers. Churchill’s career also influenced the attitude of the Scottish newspapers towards him, especially in Dundee. Churchill had been the Liberal MP for Dundee between 1908 and 1922. In the 1922 general election, Churchill was shouted down by his audience at a Dundee meeting and ultimately lost his parliamentary seat.5 When the freedom of Dundee was offered to Churchill in October 1943, J. H. Peck, one of his secretaries, wrote plainly, on behalf of Churchill, to the Dundee town clerk that ‘Mr. Churchill regrets he is unable to accept the honour which you have © The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7_3

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proposed to confer upon him’.6 This episode shows Churchill’s uncomfortable feelings towards Dundee, even twenty years after his loss in the 1922 general election; and, as seen in later analysis, the Dundee press also had complicated feelings towards Churchill’s rise to power. This chapter will study how Churchill was depicted in the Scottish press in several selected events: his appointment as the First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1939, the succession to the premiership in May 1940, his choices for Secretary of State for Scotland in May 1940 and February 1941, his treatment of Rudolf Hess who landed in Scotland in May 1941, the granting to him of the freedom of Edinburgh in October 1942, and the end of the war and the general election in May to July 1945. It will analyse the extent to which Scottish nationalism was reflected in the descriptions of Churchill in the Scottish newspapers, and how these portrayals differed according to each paper’s political affiliation and history.

Newspapers in Scotland Despite the rise of the UK national press in the interwar years, the Scottish press remained popular in Scotland. According to Bingham, ‘only 43 per cent of the population read a Fleet Street daily, whereas 60 per cent read a Scottish morning paper’ in 1935.7 This chapter uses newspapers in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee. Ferguson categorized the daily newspapers circulated in Scotland into three groups: those in the first group were published and owned by Scots, like the Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald, and the Dundee Courier and Advertiser; those in the second were subsidized by Kemsley Newspapers, such as the Daily Record; and the third group consisted of the London dailies, among which Ferguson included the Scottish versions of the London papers, such as the Scottish Daily Express.8 The chapter deals with the first group of newspapers mainly and those in second when they provided a Scottish-specific perspective of Churchill. In Edinburgh, the Scotsman was established in 1817 by two Scottish lawyers, William Ritchie and Charles Maclaren.9 According to the Newspaper Press Directory 1939, it was politically Unionist,10 and Morris claimed that the founders aimed at providing the Scottish capital with ‘a fearless and independent voice’; indeed, the paper occasionally attacked the government, over both local and national issues.11 Initially, it supported Chamberlain’s appeasement policy to establish peace in Europe, criticizing Churchill’s view on the Munich Agreement in 1938 as ‘a

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rhetoric and not fact’.12 When war broke out, it turned its support towards Churchill and subsequently took a positive and amicable attitude towards him. The Evening Dispatch was founded in 1885 and was Unionist in politics. It was owned by John Ritchie & Co, which also owned the Scotsman.13 The Edinburgh Evening News was established in 1873 and owned by Provincial Newspapers, Ltd. It was said to be independent politically.14 In Glasgow, the Glasgow Herald was first published as the Glasgow Adviser on 27 January 1783 by John Mennos.15 Since 1936 the editor was William Dunkeld Robieson, who read history at Glasgow University. The paper denounced the policy of appeasement and the Munich Agreement and was under pressure from the British government.16 It was owned by Outram Press Ltd., which also owned the Evening Times. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945 categorized the two newspapers as independent politically.17 The Daily Record was a Conservative tabloid founded in 189518 and had predominantly working-class readers.19 Together with the Evening News, which was established in 1870,20 it was owned by Scottish Daily Record and Evening News Ltd. and subsidized by Kemsley Newspapers, Ltd.21 Ferguson explained that the paper had ‘the outward appearance of being Scottish’ but it was ‘colourless and insipid’ as it was deprived of editorial independence.22 A Labour-supporting weekly paper, the Forward was established in 1906, and it was first managed and edited by Thomas Johnston, who later became Secretary of State for Scotland between 1941 and 1945.23 It originally aimed to voice Scottish socialist opinions but developed into the British organ of international socialism. After Johnston, Emrys Hughes, a Welshman and later a Labour MP, took over the editorship and kept his job during the Second World War.24 The Scots Independent was a monthly paper launched in 1926 by the Scots National League, to call for the foundation of ‘a Scottish National Party’. It voiced ‘the need for and merits of the cause for the Scottish Independence’.25 The paper consistently criticized the British government as ‘English Government’, which did not care about Scotland. In Dundee, D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd. owned many newspapers, and this chapter will use two of them, the Dundee Courier and Advertiser and the Evening Telegraph. Two newspapers, the Dundee Weekly Advertiser and the Dundee Courier, were amalgamated after the General Strike in 1926, and the Dundee Courier and Advertiser was born.26 Both the Dundee Weekly Advertiser and the Dundee Courier criticized Churchill

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scathingly during the 1922 general election campaign, and Churchill expressed his outrage at the proprietor David C. Thomson. According to Gilbert, Churchill believed that it was Thomson’s attitude that caused his popularity to sink. Churchill criticized the Courier and the Advertiser in his speech stating that: Behind those two, I say, you get the one single individual, a narrow, bitter, unreasonable being eaten up with his own conceit, consumed with his own petty arrogance, and pursued from day to day and from year to year by an unrelenting bee in his bonnet.27

It is said that the Courier blacklisted Churchill even when he was prime minister.28 A 1947 paper by the Royal Commission of the Press stated that it was Thomson’s favourite tactic to omit mentioning the person who incurred his wrath, and Churchill was targeted by these ‘calculated omissions’: For many years Mr. Churchill’s name seldom, if ever, appeared in the “Courier and Advertiser.” It is questionable whether the omission did Mr Churchill any harm, but it doubtless afforded Mr. D.C. Thomson personal satisfaction. Even during the recent war, when the name “Churchill” resounded throughout the world, the ban was retained. As it was manifestly impossible to ignore Mr. Churchill’s existence altogether, he was referred to as “the Prime Minister” or “the Premier.” After the election of 1945 Mr. Churchill’s name gradually re-appeared in the Thomson columns. It was evidently decided that he had been punished enough; or possibly the expression “Leader of the Opposition” was considered too unwieldy.29

Thomson, in reply to this, denied the omission of Churchill from his papers as he believed they ‘treated Churchill fairly’ and claimed it was Churchill who unfairly attacked his papers: In a vile temper at the papers not supporting him Churchill attacked me. We gave a full report of his attack and we also replied in plain language. […] No instructions were issued by me or with knowledge on my part to keep his name out. I have no regrets whatever over the part we played against Churchill’s arrogant attempt to bully us. There was no vendetta anyway on my side. Both our papers opposed the Lloyd George coalition of which Churchill was a member. That was the cause of Churchill’s anger.30

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Although Thomson denied the arbitrary omission of Churchill from his paper, the statement above shows his long-lasting hostility towards him. In addition to the Courier, Thomson owned the Evening Telegraph. It was established in 1877 by the Leng family and was originally radical and reforming in politics31 but was owned by the Conservative Thomson during the war.32

Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty Many newspapers anticipated Churchill’s inclusion in the war cabinet before it was formed, and after his appointment to the First Lord of the Admiralty, they welcomed his return. In Edinburgh, the Scotsman gave a detailed introduction to his career and explained the importance of his inclusion in the war cabinet. The paper wrote that Churchill would be ‘a tower of strength’ as he had ‘gifts that none of his contemporaries possess’. It anticipated that Churchill would play the role of Lloyd George in the Great War, providing ‘sufficient strength and initiation to dominate the others’.33 The Scotsman commented that his long and diverse career was incomparable to that held by his contemporaries and that although he had been out of office in recent years he had abundant knowledge of European affairs.34 In Glasgow, the Glasgow Herald described Churchill’s return to the Admiralty as ‘particularly welcome to most British people’. It mentioned his experience in the First World War and his pre-war pledge for war preparation, and anticipated that his appointment would greatly contribute to the mobilization of the Fleet.35 The Scots Independent did not mention Churchill’s appointment in September 1939 and criticized Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, which led Britain to war.36 The paper claimed that the war was ‘another clash between rival imperial systems’, and that England was fighting against Germany to protect its own interests: This war is fought so that England may guard her imperial interests, and hang on to the territory which she got by aggression in the past. There is not essential Scottish interest involved, therefore, as a Scottish Nationalist I object to assisting England to perpetuate her imperial domination. We are told that this war is fought for the rights of small nations but England has treated the rights of Scotland with contumely and disdain. We are told that England is fighting against “bad faith” in international dealing, but England

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has broken the Treaty of Union whenever it suited her purpose, so that it is no longer valid as a legal document; therefore, I deny the right of England to conscript Scotsmen to pull her out of the mess into which her own imperial systems have brought her.37

The paper criticized the hypocrisy of England in claiming she was fighting against Germany for the freedom of small European nations while oppressing small nations within the UK. The Forward did not comment on Churchill when he returned to the Admiralty and kept demanding peace with Germany as soon as possible. The paper lamented Labour’s ‘party truce’ with the Conservatives and claimed that it was ‘the very negation of democracy’.38 It expressed disgust with Churchill and described him as a shameless and untrustworthy opportunist changing his parties many times: It is not to be supposed that such a man as Mr Winston Churchill, the champion of the anti-Bolshevist intervention in Russia in 1919, of the use of armed force against the General Strike, of the diehard opposition to reforms in India—it is not to be supposed that this man is acting out of indignation at the treatment of the German workers under Hitler.39

A columnist ‘Ikonoblast’ wrote that Churchill and Chamberlain would soon start thinking about helping Hitler if Germany were to fight against Russia.40 The paper claimed that Churchill was the enemy of working classes in Britain, India, Spain, and Germany,41 and in the words of Sir Hugh R.  Roberton, the symbol of the incapable and dangerous ruling class.42 Churchill’s much-praised oratory, the paper declared, was intended to incite hatred towards Germans and thus to strengthen the war effort.43 In Dundee, Churchill’s inclusion in the war cabinet was plainly announced in the Dundee Courier and Advertiser and the Evening Telegraph, with few details and no discussion of his career and personality.44 At the beginning of the war, Scottish newspapers showed less interest in Churchill than in later stages, just like newspapers in other parts of the UK. When he was mentioned, he was mostly described as inspiring and able to strengthen the British government, except in Labour-supporting and Nationalist newspapers.

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Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940 Churchill’s succession to the premiership was mostly welcomed and the coalition government formed by him was generally popular among the Scottish press. In Edinburgh, the Scotsman on 9 May analysed his position, stating that ‘Mr. Churchill’s consummate Parliamentary gifts are recognised, but so also are his shortcomings, and many Unionists still regard him with latent distrust. They believe he is better placed as a second-in-­ command with the far-reaching powers now entrusted to him’. The paper anticipated that Lord Halifax, although he was a Peer, would be the next premier.45 When Churchill’s succession to the premiership was announced, the paper acknowledged that Churchill had imagination and ‘evident zest for the conflict’.46 It explained that the Labour Party had ‘great respect for him’47 so that the new government would be a truly united one. The Scotsman emphasized the unity of the parties and people in the UK: It is that spirit which will win the war, and the country has been waiting for just such a clarion call to national effort, supported by the evidence of complete unity, without which this country could not put forth its full strength against a mighty and unscrupulous enemy. […] History will show whether Mr Churchill will be equal to his great opportunity. He is largely dependent, of course, upon the loyalty and hard work of his fellow-Ministers and also upon the confidence and trust of the public but he enters upon his task with the good-will of the nation behind him—a nation not ignorant of the sacrifices which must be made for freedom.48

This quotation shows that what was meant by ‘the country’ and ‘the nation’ was Britain, not Scotland alone, which indicates the paper’s effort to contribute to the unity of the UK, rather than expressing Scottish distinctiveness. Commenting on his speech on 13 May, the paper called for unity and the importance of facing the war without complacency. It described his broadcasts in the early period of his premiership as inspiring, right, and honest; and in the letters column on 18 July, Basil A. Pilkington emphasized the confidence in Churchill held by the British people: who can doubt, after hearing the broadcasts of Mr Churchill and others of our statesmen, that upon this nation there rests a responsibility to humanity that no other on earth feels it is its duty to shoulder? These responsibilities are inscribed deeply in our naval code, and by this high resolve and

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s­ teadfastness of purpose we shall be the channel through which the blessings of peace and freedom will once more be restored to the old world.49

The comment shows that Churchill’s speeches had an important effect in justifying the British war cause and in claiming the moral high ground for the British in their fight against Nazi Germany. In Glasgow, the Glasgow Herald anticipated that Churchill was unwilling to be the prime minister on 10 May due to the ‘defects of his qualities’: In the House of Commons, although his great qualities are recognised and admired, there are those who would demur to his appointment to the chief post. As second in command he is par excellence. As a leader he may suffer from the defects of his qualities. […] I have it on the best authority that Mr Churchill has at the moment no ambition to become Prime Minister. Indeed, he took measures today to try to convince some of his Conservative friends known to be hostile to Mr Chamberlain that they were wholly mistaken in their estimate of the qualities of their leader, and that he was the only possible man to be Premier at this time.50

The paper believed that Churchill was at his best in a secondary position, as did the Scotsman, and that at the time Chamberlain was best suited to the premiership. Nevertheless, when Churchill became prime minister the Glasgow Herald claimed that he was the only possible leader for the British people: The discussions which culminated yesterday made it clear that the only man able to command, as Premier, the confidence not only of all parties in the House of Commons, but of the vast majority of the British people is Mr Churchill. He, it is expected, will be able to give to the direction of the war effort the qualities of energy, resource, courage, and daring which, it is so widely felt, have been lacking in the last eight months. His elevation to the leadership of the country in its greatest trial will fortify all sections of the nation, armed forces and civilians alike, for the tasks ahead.51

The paper emphasized a harmonious relationship between Churchill and Chamberlain and claimed that, at the moment, Chamberlain’s premiership should not have been judged. It described Churchill as a realistic and sober wartime leader, as well as a great speaker, and his speech on 13 May was likened to the words of Garibaldi.52 His speeches were reported very favourably as realistic and encouraging, and the paper evaluated highly the

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first three months of his premiership.53 Readers of the paper were also supportive of his government, and on 27 June, ‘A Scot’ in the letters column claimed that Churchill should have been given a position as dictator: Why not appoint Mr Winston Churchill dictator for the duration and give him power to appoint one or two possible successors? I have made the suggestion to numbers of people in the last week or two, and have yet to meet with an objector. There should be no need to elaborate the advantages of such a course. We want quick decisions and actions now, not red tape or talk. […] We should have a leader untroubled by carping criticism whom we can trust to see us through to a victorious end.54

The Glasgow Herald, although it evaluated Churchill at his best in a secondary position before the succession took place on 10 May, turned to portray him positively once he rose to power. The Evening Times, too, anticipated that Lord Halifax would be the next prime minister after Chamberlain,55 but when instead it was Churchill it praised his qualities as a war leader. Commenting on his 13 May speech that ‘there is not in his new Government, nor out of it, any statesman who is better known as a man of action’, the paper evaluated his character as energetic, active, and efficient.56 The paper also described Churchill as a ‘dictator’ in order to depict him as a strong defender of freedom: The position which Mr Churchill holds today is without parallel in our history. He is that contradiction in terms—the Dictator of Democracy. He has not, like the Hitlers and Mussolinis and Stalins, seized power by cunning and force and the suppression of popular liberties. He has emerged like a natural element by the authority of an indisputable genius and the sanction of a free, self-governing people […] Mr Churchill is as conspicuously our Man of Destiny now as William Pitt was then. […] He is the one great figure on the European stage who played a leading role in the Great War. He helped to carry us to victory then.57

While admitting that the words ‘dictator’ and ‘democracy’ were contradictory, it believed that Churchill, as the ‘Man of Destiny’, would lead the UK to victory just as Pitt did in the Battle of Trafalgar. The use by the two papers of the word ‘dictator’ to describe Churchill showed that strong leadership in wartime was much wanted and that he was the one who would supply it.

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Contrary to many newspapers, the Scots Independent negatively described Churchill’s new government as ‘a genuine English National Government, formed to win the war in earnest—for England’, and Churchill as ‘an Englishman whose limitations are as remarkable as his qualities’. The paper claimed that he chose some important ministers just because they were his friends and that he had no interest in economics and finance. It was not in favour of the coalition government, stating that the Labour Party had committed suicide by joining the Tories.58 Although initially describing Churchill in negative terms, the July issue took a slightly more positive view, singling out Chamberlain for blame: it seems that the Chamberlain Government were guilty, at the very least, of an incredible sloth complacency, timidity, lack of imagination, irresponsibility and even cowardice. Thank God stronger men are in the saddle to-day! Thank God we no longer have to depend for leadership on the unaided efforts of the English ruling class!59

It criticized the inclusion of Chamberlainites in the government, stating that ‘it is necessary to point that [sic] the parochialism and selfishness of the Chamberlain school of thought (and it was not confined to England or to the English political parties) was not only morally indefensible, but has proved politically and militarily disastrous’. The paper claimed that though Churchill was earnestly coping with his business, he was distracted by ‘the follies of previous government’. Although it still described Churchill and his colleagues as English, it admitted that they were free from the party machine: ‘Of course, Mr Churchill himself and many of his ablest lieutenants—all English, by the way—are Conservatives. But they are not leaders of the party machine. The real Tory leaders are Chamberlain, Hoare, Kingsley Wood, Halifax.’60 The Scots Independent was consistently critical of the Tory Party, but in the July issue the paper tried to emphasize the gulf between Churchill and orthodox Conservative politicians, and criticized the Chamberlainites. The Forward, although critical of Churchill before he became prime minister as the arch-enemy of the working class and as one who would join Hitler to fight against Russia, backed off from overt criticism of him and reluctantly supported the new war cabinet when the Labour leaders joined. It viewed Chamberlain as ‘a good scapegoat’ on his resignation but pointed out that in the Norway Campaign Churchill was more responsible for the debacle than Chamberlain. Comparing the characters of the two

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men, it thought Churchill the ‘more forceful’ and that the change was inevitable. While it suggested that it would support Churchill’s government with the inclusion of Labour Party leaders, it expressed its bewilderment, stating that ‘Now he became Prime Minister. Churchill! And Labour takes office with Churchill as Premier!’61 In discussing Churchill’s succession to the premiership, the paper showed an inconsistent attitude towards the British Empire. Although it had attacked Churchill as an imperialist who would not allow any concession to India, and had attacked the Conservative Party which it claimed was fighting Germany for the sake of the British Empire, following the formation of the coalition government the paper declared that the empire should be preserved at all costs. It was anxious that the United States would take over the British colonies and claimed that Churchill should not ask help from America, showing a clear distrust: Here we are ready to give our last drop of blood to defend the British Empire from Hitler and here is Churchill actually giving it away to Roosevelt. Every patriot with British blood in his veins will feel like wrapping himself in the Union Jack and committing hari-kari [sic]. Is this what Horatio Nelson died for? […] If as Churchill says we are then fighting from house to house and from back to back the Americans will be able to ask whatever they like. And if they know they can get the rest of the British Empire if they only hold out long enough they’ll be demanding India, so they will. All those greedy Yankee plutocrats will want to take over India and all the wealth of India that we now use in teaching the Indians how to be civilised. They will want the Indian coal mines, and the cotton mills of Bombay, and the jute mills of Calcutta.62

Here, ‘Ikonoblast’ admitted that the British Empire was the civilizing force for India and other British colonies and emphasized that Britain must not cede authority to the United States in exchange for war support, although previously the paper had advocated that Britain should abandon ‘the traditional policy of British Imperialism which has been based on armed force’63 and had proudly stated that the Labour Party had repudiated imperialism.64 In Dundee, the Courier was sceptical about Churchill’s ability and personality, stating that ‘Mr Winston Churchill is not a reconciling personality, and in the course of his diversified career he has provided many reasons for the doubts which so widely exist of his wisdom and reliability of judgement’, but at the same time it anticipated that Chamberlain, who would

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work with the new premier, would cover Churchill’s defects.65 While it regretted the resignation of Chamberlain, it also welcomed a united national government including Liberal and Labour leaders. As a result of the change of premiers, the paper claimed that ‘the marked tendency to complacency’ had disappeared, and that ‘the spirit of the country’ had become ‘invincible’.66

Churchill’s Choices of the Secretary of State for Scotland Churchill chose two Secretaries of State for Scotland from May 1940 to the end of the war in Europe. In May 1940, he chose Ernest Brown (1881–1962), the Liberal MP for Leith and an Englishman, and in February 1941, the Scottish Tom Johnston (1881–1965), Labour MP for West Stirlingshire. As secretary, Johnston established ‘a Council of State for Scotland’ which consisted of all the living former Scottish secretaries, and the Scottish Council on Industry which consisted of representatives from the Chambers of Commerce, the Scottish Trade Union Congress, the Scottish Development Council, the Scottish Office, and local authorities, in order to discuss Scottish issues.67 Churchill’s choices of secretaries raised both positive and negative comments in the Scottish press, especially that of the English Brown, which was considered to be derogatory to Scottish people. Brown was the second Englishman chosen as Scottish secretary next to Sir George Trevelyan (1838–1928) who took office under the Gladstone government in the late nineteenth century.68 In Edinburgh, the Scotsman commented that the appointment of Brown was unexpected, but contemplated that because of his thirteen years representing Leith Burgh and his experience as the Minister of Labour, he would be accepted without resentment.69 When Johnston succeeded to the Scottish Office in February 1941, the paper evaluated Brown’s tenure as secretary and emphasized his ties with Scotland, stating that: Not only has he held a Scottish seat in the House of Commons for many years, but he has closely identified himself with Scottish interests at many points. Indeed, although he represents the industrial constituency of Leith, his principal occupation during the past nine months has been with agriculture, and he has been able to obtain some benefit for the depressed hill sheep farming.

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The paper stated that there was no more suitable and popular successor than Johnston and praised his work as the Scottish regional commissioner since August 1939.70 In Glasgow, the Glasgow Herald reported that although there were various opinions about Brown’s appointment, many supported the new secretary as his capabilities were proven and Churchill trusted him with the job.71 When Brown became the Minister of Health and Johnston took over the post, the Glasgow Herald felt that the time Brown held the secretaryship was too short to leave a mark in Scotland but his endeavour to maintain a good war administration in Scotland would be remembered. The paper explained that Churchill chose Johnston, a Labour politician, in order to maintain party balance among state departments.72 In contrast, the Evening Times provided forthright opinions about the Secretary of State for Scotland. In the letters column on 16 May 1940, ‘Lex’ declared that the position should have been held by a Scotsman: On every consideration which should weigh in the matter the post should be held by a Scotsman. I can think of no compelling reason either from the point of view of strengthening the British war effort or of expressing the national unity in the allocation of Ministerial positions which leads to any other conclusion. Mr Brown is an able administrator of proved quality, but although he has represented a Scottish constituency for many years, some other means of employing his talents might have been found. In these grave and perilous times I agree that there is no place for local or sectional bickering, and any feelings like those I have expressed here will not diminish Scotland’s wholehearted support for the Government generally, but I think a protest is worth making.73

Although ‘Lex’ admitted that in wartime national unity was important, he declared that Scottish people held an uncomfortable feeling in the choice of an Englishman as their secretary and such feeling should not be ignored. The Daily Record in May 1940 took the choice of Brown positively and argued that the Scottish Office would not lose prestige or importance. The paper evaluated his previous work at the Ministry of Labour and was confident that Scotland would be happy if he would work ‘even half as well as he has done the Ministry of Labour [sic]’.74 The paper described him as ‘an intensely religious’ man, ‘teetotal and a non-smoker’ and ‘an early riser’, and emphasized his sincerity and diligence towards his job. To criticism by some Scottish MPs of an Englishman taking over the position

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of the Scottish secretary, the paper regretted that those MPs did not evaluate Brown’s ability and prioritized their emotional affection to the Scottish race.75 When Johnston accepted the post in February 1941, the paper believed that he was ‘the inevitable choice’ and expected that he would be a first-rate Secretary.76 The Scots Independent was angry about an Englishman becoming the Scottish secretary in June 1940, regretting how ignorant and uninterested English politicians were in Scotland: And Scotland has no real place in the Government. In English politics honest Brown, the one non-public school man who contrived to keep a place in previous “National” Government, the possessor of a voice of so loud that (according to a well known gibe) it can be heard from London to Leith, is a recognised joke. But just because he is a joke he is a popular figure in Parliament and a job had to be found for him. In London Scotland also is a joke, and the Scottish Office a Department held in reserve for those who can’t get anything better. No doubt it seemed natural enough to put two jokes together. So Scotland is now to be ruled by an Englishman whom England itself can neither use nor discard.

It declared that Scotland ‘means nothing to Englishmen’ and ironically claimed that England was treating Scotland just like other colonies.77 When Johnston took over the position from Brown, the paper did not publish an article on the change, but in May 1941 it questioned why Johnston was not included in the war cabinet, and declared that England disregarded Scotland.78 The paper was critical of Johnston’s work as the secretary and, in June 1945, it commented that no one would regret the end of his secretaryship. It claimed that ‘Under it Scotland has suffered innumerable discriminations against her, chiefly in the industrial field. Even if Tom Johnston be given credit for doing all he could within the limitations set, never once was there a challenge to any of those limitations.’79 While it admitted that Johnston did his best, it criticized England for oppressing Scotland in many fields and Johnston for not changing the status of Scotland. The Forward did not mention Brown in May 1940 but commented on the succession of Johnston, former editor of the paper, to the post in February 1941. It emphasized that the opinions of the paper did not reflect those of Johnston and vice versa, and claimed that the editor

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consistently opposed the Labour Party’s decision to join the coalition government in May 1940 as well as Johnston’s succession to the secretaryship: Both in these columns and at the Labour Party Conference I have argued against the Labour Party decision to enter Mr Churchill’s Government, and every argument against Attlee and the others entering the Government applies to Tom Johnston’s going into the Cabinet, too. I do not question that these men are actuated by the highest patriotism, but in my opinion it is a mistake for Socialists to be in a War-time Coalition and in a Cabinet overwhelmingly anti-Socialist. Tom Johnston takes the view that he is going into the Cabinet in the public interest of Scotland and nobody who knows his word for Scotland, his democratic Socialist outlook, his tireless energy and his unrivalled experience of the problems of Scottish Local Government doubts that from his point of view the Prime Minister has made a wise choice.80

The paper did not emphasize the importance of the Secretary of State for Scotland being Scottish, nor did it comment on the British government’s attitude towards Scotland. It explained the news from a socialist point of view rather than advocating Scottish nationalism, which many Scottish newspapers did. In Dundee, the Courier reported Brown’s appointment very briefly without giving an opinion towards Churchill’s choice in May 1940;81 however, when the succession of the secretaryship took place in February 1941 it clearly expressed its belief that the position should be held by a Scotsman. The paper reported the change to ‘A Scottish Scottish Secretary’. It claimed that the return of a Scotsman as the Scottish secretary would give satisfaction to Scottish people and that the position ‘should be held by a native of Scotland, whose whole life and experience provide a background of knowledge of Scottish affairs, feeling, and ways of thinking’. The paper described Johnston as having an ‘exceptionally wide knowledge of Scottish administration’ as well as ‘the qualities of common-sense in abundance’, and that he was ‘capable and courteous’.82 When an Englishman was chosen by Churchill as the Scottish secretary, many Scottish newspapers accepted the appointment and praised Brown’s qualities; however, many papers showed clear satisfaction when a Scotsman, Johnston, took over the post and declared that the Scottish secretary should be Scottish.

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Rudolf Hess in Scotland Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy and one of the most important Nazi leaders, flew to Scotland on 10 May 1941, landing to the north of Eaglesham village by parachute. He was found by a ploughman, David McLean, and then taken to the Third Battalion Renfrewshire Home Guard headquarters. Hess demanded to talk with the Duke of Hamilton claiming that he had an important message for him. The duke saw Hess on 11 May and Hess told him that he was on a mission of making peace between Britain and Germany, and that Hitler did not want further conflict with Britain. It is said that Hess had a delusion that his action could realize a peace between Britain and Germany, and that Britain would allow him to go back to Germany when the negotiations began.83 The duke met Churchill in the evening of 11 May and reported the event to him directly at Dytchley Hall.84 The newspapers in Scotland started reporting the arrival of Hess on 13 May, curiously as well as sceptically. In Edinburgh, the Scotsman reported the news in detail, explaining how he flew to Scotland, how he was treated, and the British Government’s handling of the affair, but the news was reported only intermittently after June. The paper described Hess as an ‘unimpressive figure’ and ‘no Goring in personality’,85 and reiterating in May 1941 that Churchill’s statement was awaited, but which was never delivered. It reported that people were impatient to hear what was behind the deputy Führer’s flight and anticipated that Churchill’s statement would clear their anxiety.86 In Glasgow, the Glasgow Herald first broke the news on 13 May 1941 but knew of the arrival of Hess just a few hours after he landed, as the Renfrewshire County Constabulary asked the paper to provide it with Hess’s biographical materials, in order to identify him.87 It reported that Hess arrived in the neighbourhood of Glasgow ‘apparently with the intention of surrendering himself’, and the events would cause ‘either scepticism or wishful thinking’. The paper claimed it was difficult to find the reason behind the flight,88 and explained how important Hess was in the Nazi Party. It described Hess as ‘Nazi No. 3’ who was to ‘follow Goering as successor to Hitler’, ‘the Fuehrer’s right hand man since early Party days’,89 and ‘Nazi Pythias to Hitler’s Demon’.90 Contrary to the fact that his purpose was to bring peace between the two countries, the Glasgow Herald reported that Hess deserted his friends and escaped to Britain, the only place he could avoid revenge from his colleagues.91 It hoped that Hess would not be regarded as a hero in public and declared that he had

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not received any special treatment. It emphasized that Hess did not bring any peace proposals with him, which was ‘definite and irrefutable’, and that the government had not been lulled into a sense of complacency.92 It explained that there were some leaders in America who claimed that Hess had brought peace proposals to Britain, and although the British government had clearly refuted the rumour, a clearer statement by Churchill had been awaited.93 The paper reported some occasions on which MPs in Parliament had urged Churchill to make a statement on Hess,94 which never materialized—a situation provoking much frustration: The public have the most profound trust in the Prime Minister, but that trust and confidence does not extend to all the Departments under his control. Until that confidence can be stimulated, as it could very easily be by an improvement in our propaganda services at home and abroad, the stimulus to work wholeheartedly for victory is bound to suffer. This is not to say, however, as some people do, that the Government should have told us more about the Hess affair. That is a matter upon which the Government, who alone are informed of the significance of Hess’s flight, must be the judge.95

The paper admitted that its judgement was for the good of British national interests, but pointed out that the improvement in propaganda was necessary in order to strengthen the confidence among people, implying their dissatisfaction towards the government over the Hess affair. The Forward believed that the fact Churchill did not clearly explain Hess’s flight to Scotland showed that he was hiding a proposed peace deal from the public, and described the government’s behaviour as ‘childish and suspicious conspiracy of silence’: And so the world is left with the impression that Hess has said something which the British Government wishes to hide, something which the Government must explain away, something secret which is for the inner circles only, something which may upset our pre-conceived ideas and injure the national morale. Who is responsible for this ridiculous and cowardly secrecy? […] It is the Prime Minister who has given evasive answers to the questions asked in the House of Commons and his is the responsibility. Everybody knows that Mr. Churchill has opposed anything in the nature of a formulation of Peace Aims. Is the mysterious silence about Hess due to the fact that he has come with some offer, personal or otherwise, to discuss

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peace terms and has thus presented the Premier with a problem which he is evading by taking refuge in discreet silence?96

The paper singled out Churchill for blame for concealing information, and as the paper was consistently pacifist it imagined that it was a peace deal proposed by Hess that Churchill was hiding. The letters columns in some papers showed clear frustrations among ordinary people caused by the Hess affair. In that of the Evening Times in Glasgow, readers expressed the view that Britain was too nice to enemies. Dorothy Dow Gann commented that newspapers in Britain were trying to depict Hess as a hero. It is amazing how the papers are making such a hero of Hess. Naturally he tries to win the hearts and sympathy of our people by telling them how kind they are to him and showing a photograph of his son, etc. This is the trouble with our nation—too soft-hearted. Would our Mr Churchill receive such treatment if he ever landed in Germany? Of course not. He would receive foul treatment. Germans are never to be trusted. I have a husband serving with H.M. Forces and I realise what it is to lose one’s home, etc., and I am only one of millions.97

The good treatment of Hess was also criticized in the Courier in Dundee, where ‘an Indignant Scotswoman’ claimed he was too well fed while British people were suffering rationing: I read with interest that our latest visitor to Scotland, Mr Hess, was enjoying in his country residence “a light luncheon of chicken, fish and eggs.” It is astonishing to think that a prisoner, who ought to be awaiting his trial for the murder of old people, women, and children, should be eating luxuries which are prohibitive for own people. Can we still be so gullible to a man who initiated concentration camps after we have seen the children of our own land so shocked with what they have been through that they are even unable to cry? Mr Hess should be kept to be judged by those whose relatives have been incarcerated in his concentration camps.98

Many readers clearly identified Hess as one of the Nazi leaders who decided on invading European countries rather than as a peacemaker, and some letters showed sympathy towards those who were invaded by Germany. ‘G.L.B.’ claimed that ‘His treatment, especially of the Poles, shows he is no kind-hearted enemy, so let us beware of another bit of

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German so-called diplomacy’.99 Although there was a letter claiming that Hess should be treated well in order that he would tell Britain something favourable and thus ending the war earlier, most letters on Hess were critical of him and the good treatment he received from Britain. There was little difference in reports on the event in the Scottish newspapers due to the information control, but each paper showed diverse opinions about Churchill’s handling of the issue and the treatment of Hess. Most newspapers were eager to hear from Churchill about the event in detail and were disappointed in him not doing so. The Hess affair caused frustration among the press and people, and Churchill’s silence fostered a sense of doubt and dissatisfaction.

Churchill’s Visit to Edinburgh in October 1942 On 19 October 1942, Churchill visited Edinburgh in order to receive the freedom of the city, and gave a speech at the Usher Hall, in which he referred to his ties with Scotland. It was the first freedom of a city Churchill had ever received, and the ceremony was reported in many newspapers in Scotland. In Edinburgh, the Scotsman emphasized that Churchill chose Edinburgh to be the first city to award him this honour, although he had had many invitations from other cities. It claimed that the Freedom of Edinburgh was particularly prestigious because previous English prime ministers like Disraeli, Gladstone, Palmerston, and Peel had received the honour in the past. The visit was a surprise for people in Edinburgh, but when it was announced by the police a crowd soon assembled to greet him.100 In Glasgow, the Glasgow Herald and the Evening Times, although they reported Churchill’s visit to Edinburgh in detail and cited his speech at the Usher Hall, focused on the content of his speech. Both papers mentioned only briefly that this was the first freedom of a city Churchill had ever received and emphasized his morale-boosting speech in which he commented on recent utterances by Nazi leaders.101 The Daily Record expressed their satisfaction on Churchill’s acceptance of the honour and claimed that Scottish people valued Churchill very highly and that, in turn, Churchill also admired Scotland: There is, indeed, something symbolic in the fact that the freedom of the Scottish Capital is the first honour of the kind that Mr Churchill has ever accepted. If England pictures the Premier as the typical John Bull, we prefer

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to think of him steadfast and dominating as the Castle Rock beside which he stood yesterday—that solid symbol of Scottish strength linking the past with the present, crowned by the historic castle towering above a city whose very stones speak at once of the military prowess and the intellectual grandeur of Scotland through the ages.102

The paper reported his speech in detail and emphasized his reference to Scotland as encouragement to Scottish people. In the Scots Independent, the news was mentioned in the letters column. Ruairidh MacGillfhinnein commented on Churchill’s reference to Scotland in his speech at the Usher Hall: The Scottish people will undoubtedly have felt satisfaction that the Prime Minister in the midst of his grave responsibilities should have consented to accept the Freedom of the Capital City of Scotland, and in appreciation, Mr Churchill, in the recognised method, touched us on two responsive cords, namely on the matter of the loyalty of Scotland to the Allied cause—which surely can never be taken in question—and upon our susceptibility to flattery. […] But it was a pleasant function, so one perhaps could hardly hope that the Prime Minister would devote even a sentence or two to dispose of the many problems peculiar to Scotland, which we have to face, such as the transporting of our women-folk, and now our engineers it is understood, to England, and the calculated strangulation of our distilling and fishing industries, to mention but three of an innumerable assortment.103

He commented that Churchill was just like other English politicians who had rarely visited Scotland and, although he admitted that Churchill’s speech provided encouragement for Scottish people, he emphasized that he had not done anything good for Scotland. In Dundee, both the Courier and the Evening Telegraph focused on Churchill’s speech, especially on his remarks about Nazi leaders, and did not comment on his acceptance of the freedom of the city.104 The Freedom of Dundee was offered to Churchill in October 1943; however, he refused to accept it.105 Churchill’s decision betrayed his uneasy relationship with his former Scottish constituency.106 Newspapers tended to report Churchill’s visit favourably, demonstrating his popularity among people in Edinburgh, and they were appreciative of his acknowledgement of Scottish pride in his speech at the Usher Hall. At the same time, some placed more emphasis on his remarks on his enemies and the war, showing realistic concerns rather than a focus on Scottish

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nationalism. As usual, the Nationalist paper complained about Churchill’s ignorance of Scottish problems, but it also recognized his inspiring role as war leader.

The End of the Second World War and the General Election When the war in Europe ended, Churchill’s leadership was much praised in many Scottish newspapers. However, while some consistently supported Churchill in the general election campaign, others turned to oppose him and his party. In Edinburgh, the Scotsman praised Churchill’s leadership during the war and maintained its support in the general election. It attributed the victory to Churchill, even calling VE Day ‘Mr Churchill’s Day’, and emphasized his inspiring role both in the UK and the United States: The time has come to record the nation’s pride in his own leadership. Oratory had a great part in it. He gave to the common will for resistance imperishable expression which inspired men with confidence, not only in this country, where they were subjected to ordeal by bombing, but also in America, on whose moral, economic, and finally military support so much depended. Mr Churchill’s leadership, however, did not consist in oratory alone. The part he may have played in the higher strategy of the war has still to be revealed.107

The paper claimed that the whole civilized world was in Churchill’s debt and that his position in history was firmly secured.108 It described how he symbolized British values, such as ‘the supple strength’, ‘the untold resilience’, and ‘a proud attachment to the institutions of liberty and an unshakable devotion to the Crown’, which the paper believed had created the Commonwealth.109 When Labour politicians refused to continue in the coalition government, the Scotsman criticized the Labour and Liberal parties for betraying Churchill and claimed that the early election was forced by the two parties.110 When the campaign began, the Scotsman wholeheartedly supported Churchill and the Conservatives. Reporting Churchill’s first election broadcast on 4 June, the paper emphasized the dangers of socialism:

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Oratorically he was at the top of his form. It was a speech studded with striking and flashing phrases, and no less powerful in its logic and common sense. It was a stark exposure of the dangers and evils that would inevitably follow from any attempt to put Socialism into operation in this country— dangers and evils that those who give an emotional or even an intellectual assent to that creed have probably not contemplated. […] Socialism is the negation of nearly everything that traditional Liberalism stands for. It challenges individualism, and the logical conclusion to which it leads is, as Mr Churchill said, totalitarianism. […] It has never been Mr Churchill’s habit to prophesy smooth things or to offer ease and comfort, and he gave a warning not to expect that the Government could usher in any Utopia.111

It emphasized that Labour would nationalize the Bank of England and hinder ordinary people’s right to prosper. Moreover, a socialist government, the paper claimed, would change the existing structure of government, and a socialist state would lead the country to the nationalization of ‘the means of production, distribution, and exchange’.112 The Scotsman believed that the decision of whether Churchill continued as prime minister was also a major issue in the general election. In the letters column on 23 June, ‘D.R.’ argued that Churchill was ‘far too big a man to shine as a sectional leader’. He commented that Churchill’s leadership was an absolute necessity for the country that had to cope with troubles.113 The paper reported the ‘magnificent welcome’ paid to Churchill in Scotland on his election tour and appealed to the electorate to vote for Unionist and National candidates: If the electorate want Mr Churchill they must give him that majority. It is futile for Liberals and Socialists to claim, as some do, that a vote for them is not a vote against Mr Churchill. […] Naturally, the Socialists regret that it is impossible to separate in Mr Churchill the war leader from the Unionist statesman. […] Mr Churchill is the Unionist and National Party leader. He finds himself opposed to Socialism because he believes, as he said yesterday, that it would strike at the self-reliance which is the mark of our nation and especially of the northern part. […] It is impossible, however, to have Mr Churchill and Socialist measures. The choice is plain, and there should be no mistake on this point in the minds of the electors when they cast their votes.

While explaining the tumultuous welcome of Churchill, the paper also reported negative attitudes towards Churchill on the streets: socialist supporters showcased posters urging people to ‘Vote Labour’, as well as a

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notice for ‘The Beaverbrook Press’, indicating their belief that Churchill was controlled by Beaverbrook and that the Beaverbrook papers were not to be trusted. It also reported that workers in Glasgow shouted ‘Down with Churchill’, and some ‘jokers’ called the fire brigade to the Conservative Club in Glasgow where Churchill and his wife planned to have lunch.114 Though the Scotsman expected the Conservatives to win the election, aided by the popularity of Churchill, it was anxious about each candidate who used Churchill in the campaign: ‘there are indications that a good deal will depend on the ability of the Government candidate, for the name of Mr Churchill in itself is not enough to carry all his supporters through.’ Robert Hurd, who was an elector in Edinburgh, wrote to the paper in the letters column on 2 July explaining that a National candidate, Viscount Simon, and other government speakers at the Usher Hall rally did not talk about Scottish issues enough, while spending much time on the similarities between the Liberal and Conservative policies, Churchill’s greatness, and a defamation of socialism.115 Election propaganda which relied too much on Churchill’s popularity and insults of the Labour Party had already come under question in the paper, which supported the Conservatives, and the disappointment shown by the reader suggests that some Scots found Conservative and Nationalist candidates ignorant about Scottish issues. When the Labour Party achieved its landslide victory, the Scotsman analysed why Churchill had been defeated: the increasing admiration of Russia, Churchill’s ignorance about economics, Unionist propaganda which relied on Churchill’s popularity too much, and a vague feeling among people who dared to give socialism a chance.116 It regretted that people had doubted that Churchill and his party would cope with domestic problems, rather than with foreign and defence issues. The letters column was filled with regret. For example, J. Pitt Watson lamented that the country had dropped the pilot: ‘The voice of the people if not the voice of God, is at least the voice by whose judgement, for weal or woe, we must abide.’ He suggested that people should show gratitude to Churchill, who spoke for them when they were voiceless during the war.117 Peter M’Farlane claimed that a new holiday, ‘Churchill Day’ on 8 May, should be created to honour Churchill.118 ‘C.R.’ claimed that the election result was not a personal defeat for Churchill but that it was due to the appeasement policy of Baldwin and Chamberlain.119 From 3 August, some readers discussed ways of showing gratitude to Churchill. Diana Broadhurst supported Sir William Y. Darling who suggested that people

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should contribute ‘towards the gift of a sum of money which would ensure his living in comfort in the future’;120 while ‘E.S.S.’ denounced such an idea as an insult to Churchill, suggesting instead that the electorate would vote for Churchill at the next election.121 Letters in the Scotsman were overwhelmingly supportive of Churchill and many readers were eager to show gratitude to him. In Glasgow, the Glasgow Herald applauded Churchill’s war leadership. It reminded readers of the difficult times during the war when Churchill encouraged people with his speeches and his energetic service to the country. The paper thanked him for leading the country through the war and anticipated he would lead them in the post-war period when jobs still remained to be done.122 When the Labour Party refused to continue within the coalition government, the paper argued that the prolongation of the coalition was not necessarily good: Throughout the war and increasingly in recent months, as Mr Churchill has noted, the inherent weakness of a coalition has been apparent in domestic politics. Here there have been genuine differences of opinion between the parties. One may be sure that the Prime Minister’s invitation was made in good faith and carries with it his guarantee to do all in his power to implement the bargain. But there seem to be practical difficulties that cannot be ignored […] in spite of Mr Churchill’s suggestion that the Coalition parties should do their utmost to implement the outstanding promised social legislation, it may be doubted if what has not proved matter for agreement in the recent past will be any more acceptable in the immediate future.123

While most newspapers regretted the end of the coalition government and praised the national unity which it represented, the paper set out the weaknesses of the coalition and accepted the end positively. When Churchill formed the Caretaker government, the paper called it ‘not merely a party Government’, because it included Liberals and non-­ party members, and claimed that it would be able to survive the general election and last four years.124 During the election campaign, the paper was consistently supportive of Churchill and the Conservatives. Reporting Churchill’s first election broadcast on 4 June, it described his claims as ‘reasoned and persuasive’. Although before the dissolution the paper pointed out the weakness of the coalition government and the necessity of the general election, it started to blame the Labour Party for leaving the

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coalition. It claimed that the socialists’ victory would threaten the freedom of the people, which the country had protected from foreign dictators for centuries.125 The paper supported Churchill’s manifesto as it believed it covered ‘far more ground than is usual in a pre-election manifesto’, and emphasized its national characters: Mr Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the electors well deserves the attention which it will assuredly receive from all serious citizens, whatever their political affiliations. It is commendably free from merely party points, as is fitting for the head of a Government that is national rather than part in composition; and if it covers far more ground than is usual in a pre-election manifesto, that is almost unavoidable in view of the many grave problems which face the country in the transition from war to peace. […] The real crux of the contest lies in the sphere of domestic policy; and here, it must be admitted, Mr Churchill’s expansive gaze lays himself open to the reproach that his Four-Year Plan will demand at least eight years of Parliamentary time.126

It placed importance on the Four-Year Plan and Churchill’s motivation to cope with the domestic issues as well as on free enterprise. Churchill’s personality and popularity were also emphasized in the paper. His election tour was reported in detail, and it depicted Churchill as a ‘creative listener’ of public opinion: In the course of his present tour Mr Churchill has, as I say, been not only speaking and electioneering, but learning from the leading personalities in each community the force of public opinion on current political problems. It has been a lifelong characteristic of his, as it was of the late Earl Lloyd George, to be a creative listener. […] His sensitiveness to the currents of political opinion may be regarded as being reflected in his choice of themes for his numerous speeches during his week in the different communities through which he has been passing.127

The paper emphasized his friendliness to ordinary people and his willingness to reflect public opinion in future policies. When he visited Edinburgh and Glasgow, it commented that in the latter the crowd was as if in a carnival, and some cried ‘God bless you’, ‘Good old Winnie’, and ‘You’re a man in a million’. While reporting his visit positively, the paper also covered negative attempts to disturb Churchill’s visit, such as shouts of ‘Down with Churchill’, and the attempt to cause traffic congestion by calling fire

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engines, or ordering flowers and wreaths in the name of the Conservative Club.128 The paper was confident that Churchill would secure a good majority and argued that there was no sign of a political swing. When Labour’s landslide victory became apparent, it deeply regretted the loss for the nation: The first reaction of the country to the verdict of the polls […] will be one of profound regret that it should coincide with the Potsdam Conference and the legacy of chaos left by the war. Apart from the unique prestige of Mr Churchill as War Minister and architect of victory, which has raised him to a position hardly equalled by Chatham and the younger Pitt, the Government which was defeated yesterday had many men of talent and long experience whose word carried weight in every foreign country. With the best will in the world their successors in the Labour Party cannot claim that experience of affairs either at home or abroad, and unless and until they prove themselves the equals of Mr Churchill and Mr Eden, they will wield less authority in international councils than their predecessors.129

It believed that his defeat was a loss not only for the UK but also for the empire and even for the world. It was ‘a personal tragedy’ for Churchill who led Britain in wartime and who, when the peace came suddenly, was dismissed by the people who he served so earnestly. The paper analysed the reasons of his defeat as the badly chosen election date that was resented by the public, and his emphasis on victory during the war, which made people believe that he lacked interest in domestic issues. However regrettable the result was, the paper was certain that Churchill’s position in history was firmly secured, and regardless of the result there was no doubt that people felt gratitude towards him.130 As in the Scotsman’s letters column, there was a heated discussion in that of the Glasgow Herald about establishing ‘a Churchill fund’ in order to show gratitude to Churchill.131 Generally, the letters column was filled with gratitude and admiration for Churchill, but there was also a letter opposing the Conservatives’ election tactics. A secretary of the Glasgow Trades Council criticized the use of Churchill by the Conservatives in the election campaign: That the Parliamentary result will be reflected in the municipal elections is, to me, a foregone conclusion, and the attempt to utilise the “high rates” bogey will be as ineffective as the Tories’ shameful use of Churchill’s great

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leadership—a tactic which failed ignominiously to mislead the electorate. The people are clearly recognising that improved social services call for increased expenditure, which in the past has been met by increased rates; but I have no hesitation in saying that the far-seeing and competent legislation of the Labour Government will go far towards easing this burden.132

The secretary attacked the Conservative propagandists for shamelessly using Churchill and claimed that such propaganda underestimated ordinary people. The Evening Times, although owned by the same proprietor as the Glasgow Herald, showed a different attitude towards Churchill and his party in the election campaign. While it highly valued his personality and Four-Year Plan, his social reform platform, the paper criticized Conservative propagandists like Lord Beaverbrook as well as Churchill’s broadcast. It blamed the Conservatives for their pre-war policy of appeasement and of rushing the election date for their own sake.133 It argued that Churchill’s criticism of socialism was old-fashioned and no longer true, and that he should have talked more about the Four-Year Plan in his election broadcasts.134 Mr Churchill has only himself to blame if the contrast between his sloshing at old-fashioned conceptions of Socialism and the call to the adventure of civilisation issued by Mr Attlee favours the method of the Leader of the Labour Party. […] Most voters have ever before them the price they, their families, their livelihood, their town—and Britain itself—all have paid for the years of bogus tranquillity and shameful appeasement of the dictators abroad. One of their doughtiest spokesmen then was Winston Churchill, the lone critic. They recognise now that Britain was far too complacent with the masterly inactivity of pre-war Governments and Parliaments, while Britain was losing her place both as the leader in social reform and as the most up-to-date industrial power.135

The paper regretted that the Social Reform was placed as the fifth task in his programme and found it difficult to grasp his financial and economic programme from his broadcasts.136 When the election result was declared, the paper commented that the Conservatives lost because of the short-­ sightedness of their propagandists. It regretted that the party could not make use of Churchill, its greatest asset.137 The Scots Independent was unique in criticizing both the Conservative and Labour parties in the election campaign. It claimed that the party

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leaders, Churchill and Attlee, were controlled by Lord Beaverbrook and Professor Laski, respectively: Our candidates fight in no “theatres” of war, in no phoney dust-up like that of the Punch Churchill and Judy Attlee, string-pulled behind the scenes by some Lord Beaverbrook or Professor Laski, and by anonymous, sinister, dexterous, imperial and international potencies.

It anticipated that the Conservatives led by Churchill would win as they believed that English people tended to vote for them: At the polls of July 5th no doubt the Anglo-Saxon majority will vote as usual, Tory. Especially at the end of a V-V-Victorious [sic] war, when faced with a choice between the colourful personality of Mr. Churchill, descendant of Marlborough, and Professor Laski’s pallid puppet Attlee, a sheep in sheep’s clothing, the Berkshire chawbacon [sic] and the Brummagem machine-tender will obviously plump for Churchill.

While expecting Churchill’s victory in England, the paper claimed that Scottish people tended not to vote for the Conservatives, and anticipated that in the general election their votes would be divided. However, it ironically stated that whichever party won, Scotland would be ‘ruled, not only by an alien majority, but a political combine which has received only a minority of Scots suffrages’.138 When the Labour Party won the election, the paper explained the result as ‘a negative rejection of the existing order and an inarticulate urge for change’. It analysed the landslide victory as more clearly marked in England, and that in Scotland, although the Labour Party gained some seats, the anti-Tory vote was split among various organizations.139 Indeed, according to Harvie, although there was a swing to the Left of 9.8 per cent in Scotland, this was 2.3 points lower than the UK average.140 In addition, the paper believed that Churchill’s self-designation as the ‘national leader’ caused much chafing among the Scottish Nationalists. Christopher Murray Grieve, the Nationalist candidate for Glasgow Kelvingrove, declared that Churchill’s call to vote in the national interest was a ‘bogus sense of the phrase’, and claimed that his nation was Scotland: Mr. Winston Churchill in his election broadcast has appealed to the electors to put country before party. I agree with this, but not in Mr. Churchill’s bogus sense of the phrase. Our country is Scotland. Mr. Churchill’s

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Government is overwhelmingly English. Scottish members are out-­ numbered eight to one by the English members. The same thing applies to all the political parties except the National Party of Scotland. They are all English-controlled. Scotland has done far more than her share in the joint war effort. What is her reward? Mr. Churchill refuses to give the figures of our Scottish casualties separately so that they can be compared with the English casualties. He has good reason to withhold these tell-tale figures.141

The paper claimed that it was only the National Party of Scotland that was not controlled by the English, that it was unfair that Scotsmen were not better represented in the British Parliament when they contributed significantly to the war, and that their contribution was not acknowledged sufficiently by the English leader. The Forward supported the Labour Party wholeheartedly in the 1945 general election. While a contributor, ‘Ikonoblast’ maintained support for Churchill, the editor Emrys Hughes denounced Churchill and Beaverbrook completely, especially after Churchill’s first election broadcast. The paper described this as ‘Unscrupulous, hypocritical, cynical, fraudulent, contemptible political crookery, of course it is, and a low-down swindle to cheat the ignorant and the timid, and to steal a march on the disillusioned fighting men before they come home’. It explained that Churchill used the word ‘Gestapo’ to denounce socialists only because he could not use ‘Bolsheviks’ as he soon had to talk with Stalin. The paper declared that Churchill was controlled by Beaverbrook,142 and criticized the Conservative’s election campaign as relying heavily on Churchill’s personal popularity. It argued that the Conservatives’ tactics were dangerous as they idolized one man as the only possible leader, which seemed similar to the propaganda of the Nazi Party.143 The paper declared that Churchill was not the leader of the Conservatives even though the party emphasized that he was the man who had won the war, because he was actually told what to do by the traditional ruling classes, such as coal owners and landlords.144 The Forward emphasized that the Conservatives used Churchill to attract votes, but that, actually, he had little authority. When the result emerged, the paper stated that the Labour Party was chosen democratically, ‘in the good old traditional way’, and envisaged that the Labour government with a good working majority would realize socialist programmes.145 In Dundee, the Courier supported Conservative fear-mongering about socialists and Churchill’s broadcast speeches in the election campaign,

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stating that socialist policies were ‘inseparably interwoven with the totalitarian principle of abject worship of the State’, and personal freedoms would be restricted under a socialist state.146 Although the paper expressed doubts about the possibility of realizing the social reforms proposed in Churchill’s manifesto, asking ‘how are these necessary aims to be accomplished? The Government’s record in this respect is not reassuring’,147 it was mostly supportive of Churchill and his party. The letters column was filled with Churchill-supporting correspondence: A.  C. Grahame asked, ‘Which one is competent to take the place of Mr Churchill? No one’;148 and ‘Safety First’ emphasized that Churchill’s pre-war warning about Germany was correct so his warning about socialism was likely to be right too.149 After Labour’s victory, the paper analysed the ‘many unstable factors’ that caused it, such as that much of the electorate was still in the armed force, and that there were many young voters under thirty who had never voted before. The paper accepted the result as ‘the verdict of the nation’, and emphasized that the new Parliament was chosen by a democratic and fair election, which was important in a British sense.150 After 27 July, the letters column was filled with comments of gratitude towards Churchill, and while many claimed that his leadership was essential in the war, some expressed that he did not win the war alone, and more acclaim should be given to ordinary people. Although the Courier was said to be anti-­ Churchill, it allowed positive and supportive comments about him in its letters column. However, even though Churchill’s name appeared more frequently in news reports and leader columns of the Courier as the war progressed, the paper’s editorial stance remained lukewarm towards him, in contrast to the praise he garnered from most other papers. Over the period between the victory in Europe and Labour’s victory in the general election, there were some Scottish-specific opinions expressed in the Scottish newspapers: one was the sympathy towards Polish people in Britain and another was discomfort towards English people using ‘England’ for ‘Britain’ or ‘the United Kingdom’. The sympathy towards Poles was seen in the letters columns of some newspapers. In the Daily Record, ‘Sickening’ praised Churchill’s ‘highest moral stature’ for suggesting that Poles in the country ‘should be allowed to become British subjects’;151 and in the Evening Times, R. J. Calder criticized those who opposed Churchill’s suggestion to give Poles British citizenship:

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As I understand there is much dissatisfaction over the Prime Minister’s declaration to give Poles in this country British citizenship, don’t you think it would be more in keeping with our democratic way of life if the people were allowed the opportunity to decide this issue at the forthcoming General Election?152

It is said that there were 20,000 Polish troops and 3000 civilian refugees in Scotland in June 1940,153 and that between July 1940 and early 1942 Polish troops assumed a critical role in the defence of Scotland.154 Clements wrote that the Scottish press was overall positive and sympathetic towards Polish refugees in 1940 but that this changed after the summer of 1943 when the rise in pro-Russia sentiment in Scotland clashed with the mostly anti-Russian Polish view, and when Poles were considered to be a threat to the native Scottish population, depriving Scots of housing and work.155 Though the letters in the Daily Record and Evening Times quoted above were positive about the Poles in Scotland, they do not suggest that the Scots were sympathetic to and supportive of them for the entire period of the war. Nonetheless, in praising Churchill’s treatment of the Poles, they may suggest, for good or ill, that Poles had an important presence in Scotland during the war. The frustrations towards English politicians and people were seen most often in the Scots Independent, but other newspapers also expressed them occasionally. In the letters column of the Courier, ‘Britisher’ complained that a BBC programme called ‘England Expects’ showed ‘sheer arrogant, insolent ignorance’ among English people: On Sunday past I listened in to the children’s hour on the B.B.C. to a play called “England Expects,” and never have I heard such sheer arrogant, insolent ignorance spoken,—such as that England and Englishmen beat Napoleon. That they never did, nor have they ever won a war since. But Britain and Britishers have. The misuse of the word “England” is intolerable, and a breach of faith against the first article in the Treaty of Union, since when Scotsmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen have played a very conspicuous part.156

There was much dissatisfaction among Scottish people that Churchill did not publish the Scottish casualties alone, and included them within the British casualties. ‘J. Carewell’ declared it was one example of oppression by England:

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Is this to be our reward, along with Salerno and the slurring remarks of the Prime Minister that a large proportion of the Scottish regiments are made up of Englishmen, whilst he refuses to give the reason why? To crown it all as far as Dundee is concerned, they bring English agents who, after sponging on the generosity of the people, immediately abuse them like children, refusing to answer their questions until they come back to the next performance in a fortnight’s time.157

He lamented that ‘Scotland sinks to the lowest form of civilisation’ and depicted Churchill as an ignorant English leader. While those newspapers were reluctant to express disharmony among the UK nations during the war, after the end of the war in Europe they posted opinions more freely that criticized the indifference and ignorance of Churchill and English people on diversity within the UK.

Conclusion Unionist, Conservative, and Independent newspapers in Edinburgh and Glasgow favourably reported on Churchill during the war and in the general election campaign, and Churchill was often likened to heroes in British history. In two Independent papers, it was even hoped that he could be a dictator, in a positive sense, demonstrating their desire for a strong war leader. By contrast, the editor of the Forward was consistently negative about Churchill, and was reluctant to support him when the Labour Party joined the coalition. The Scots Independent depicted Churchill as the English prime minister and the government as the English government, and repeated its claims that Scotland was underestimated and exploited by England. Although both the Labour-supporting weekly and the Nationalist monthly were critical of Churchill, their criticism differed in nature: the former was class-based, and the latter was nationalism-based. The Forward distanced itself from Scottish Nationalism and reported the news from a socialist point of view. The Labour Party’s attitude towards Scottish Nationalism was ambiguous during the war as Labour politicians felt the threat of the Scottish National Party winning parliamentary seats,158 and this might explain why the Forward did not advocate Scottish Nationalism as much as the other Scottish newspapers. The Dundee newspapers owned by Thomson were never keen on portraying Churchill, and although as the war progressed their reports on him

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gradually became approving, they refused to overly praise Churchill. Churchill’s past career as the Liberal MP for Dundee made a difference to his portrayal in that city, regardless of political affiliation. Scottish national identities were apparent in many newspapers other than the Labour-supporting weekly. The choice of Brown as Scottish secretary caused uneasy feelings among some Scottish people, although criticism was not directed at Churchill in the selected newspapers except in the Nationalist newspaper. In the general election campaign, many newspapers were critical of the Conservative Party ignoring Scottish issues. Nevertheless, throughout the war, although Scottish identities were actively expressed in the Scottish press, in many cases they were accommodated with British identities.

Notes 1. Jeremy. A.  Crang, ‘The Second World War,’ in A Military History of Scotland, ed. by E.M. Spiers, J. A. Crang, and M. J. Strickland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 559. 2. Ibid, 570. 3. Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 219. 4. Ibid, 224–26. 5. Those who opposed Churchill in the 1922 general election were mainly the Dundee Irish, the Jute and Flax Workers’ Union, the Prohibition Party and the Communist Party. See: W.  M. Walker, ‘Dundee’s Disenchantment with Churchill: A Comment upon the Downfall of the Liberal Party,’ Scottish Historical Review 49 (1970), 91. 6. A letter from William Borland, the Town Clerk of Dundee to Winston Churchill, 8 Oct. 1943; a letter from J.H. Peck to William Borland, 15 Oct. 1943, Churchill Archive, CHUR 2/363/155–156. 7. A. Bingham, Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918–1978 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 17. 8. Duncan Ferguson, The Scottish Newspaper Press (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1946), 12–13. 9. Albert Morris, Scotland’s Paper: The Scotsman 1817–1992 (Edinburgh: The Scotsman Publications, 1992), 9. 10. While the Newspaper Press Directory 1939 states that the Scotsman and the Evening Dispatch were politically Unionist, the Newspaper Press Directory 1945 describes them as politically independent. This chapter explains these newspapers as Unionist and Conservative as their analyses of

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Churchill had similarities with other Conservative newspapers in the UK.  See: The Newspaper Press Directory 1939 (London: C.  Mitchell & Co., Ltd., 1939), 184; The Newspaper Press Directory 1945 (London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd., 1945), 188. 11. Morris, Scotland’s Paper, 9–10. 12. Ibid, p. 50. 13. Newspaper Press Directory, 1939, 184. 14. Ibid. 15. J. M. Reid, Glasgow Herald: 1783–1958 (Glasgow, 1958), 18. 16. Alastair Phillips, Glasgow’s Herald: Two Hundred Years of a Newspaper 1783–1983 (Glasgow: Drew, 1983), 133–34. 17. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 190. 18. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 189. 19. Jack Campbell, A Word for Scotland (Edinburgh: Luath, 1998), 27. 20. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 189. 21. Ferguson, The Scottish Newspaper Press, 13. 22. Ibid, 21. 23. David Hutchison, ‘The History of the Press,’ in The Media in Scotland, ed. D. Hutchison (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 59. 24. Ferguson, The Scottish Newspaper Press, 30. 25. ‘Our Story so far: Scots Independent,’ The Flag in the Wing (2015), accessed 19 December 2016. http://scotsindependent. scot/?page_id=97 26. Gordon Small, The Lengs: Dundee’s Other Publishing Dynasty (Dundee: The Tay Valley Family History Society, 2009), 2. 27. Martin Gilbert, Winston S.  Churchill: Vol. 4 1916–1922 (London: Heinemann, 1975), 885–86. 28. Campbell, A Word for Scotland, 57. 29. ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE PRESS, PAPER 59 [sic], Material handed in by Mr. H.  B. Boyne and Mr. J.  H. Gregor, The National Archive (henceforth, TNA), HO251/25. 30. ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE PRESS, STATEMENT [sic] by D.C.  Thomson, Chairman and Senior Managing Director of D.C. THOMSON & CO. LTD. & JOHN LENG & CO. LTD. [sic] in reply to references in the Royal Commission Secretary’s letter of the 9 March 1948, TNA, HO251/25. 31. Small, The Lengs, 32. 32. Newspaper Press Directory 1939, 183. 33. The Scotsman, 4 Sept. 1939. 34. Ibid. 35. The Glasgow Herald, 4 Sept. 1939. 36. The Scots Independent, Sept. 1939.

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37. Ibid, Jan. 1940. 38. Forward, 7 Oct. 1939. 39. Ibid, 18 Nov. 1939. 40. Ibid, 9 Dec. 1939. 41. Ibid, 18 Nov. 1939. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid, 25 Nov. 1939. 44. The Evening Telegraph, 4 Sept. 1939; The Dundee Courier and Advertiser, 4 Sept. 1939. 45. Scotsman, 9 May 1940. 46. Ibid, 11 May 1940. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid, 14 May 1940. 49. Ibid, 18 July 1940. 50. Glasgow Herald, 10 May 1940. 51. Ibid, 11 May 1940. 52. Ibid, 14 May 1940. 53. Ibid, 23 Aug. 1940. 54. Ibid, 27 June 1940. 55. Evening Times, 9 May 1940. 56. Ibid, 14 May 1940. 57. Ibid, 23 Aug. 1940. 58. Scots Independent, June 1940. 59. Ibid, July 1940. 60. Ibid. 61. Forward, 18 May 1940. 62. Ibid, 31 Aug. 1940. 63. Ibid, 9 Sept. 1939. 64. Ibid, 30 Mar. 1940. 65. Courier, 11 May 1940. 66. Ibid, 13 May 1940. 67. Trevor Royle, A Time of Tyrant: Scotland and the Second World War (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2011), 133–35. 68. ‘Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, second baronet (1838–1928),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), accessed 26 December 2016. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36555 69. Scotsman, 15 May 1940. 70. Ibid, 10 Feb. 1941. 71. Glasgow Herald, 16 May 1940. 72. Ibid, 10 Feb. 1941. 73. Evening Times, 16 May 1940. 74. Daily Record, 15 May 1940.

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75. Ibid, 16 May 1940. 76. Ibid, 10 Feb. 1941. 77. Scots Independent, June 1940. 78. Ibid, May 1941. 79. Ibid, June 1945. 80. Forward, 15 Feb. 1941. 81. Courier, 15 May 1940. 82. Ibid, 10 Feb. 1941. 83. Peter Padfield, Hess: Flight for the Führer (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991). 84. Martin Gilbert, Winston S.  Churchill: vol. 6 Finest Hour 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983). 85. Scotsman, 13 May 1941. 86. Ibid, 21 May 1941. 87. Phillips, Glasgow’s Herald, p. 137. 88. Glasgow Herald, 13 May 1941. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid, 14 May 1941. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid, 15 May 1941. 93. Ibid, 20 May 1941. 94. Ibid, 17 and 20 May 1941. 95. Ibid, 20 June 1941. 96. Forward, 21 June 1941. 97. Evening Times, 15 May 1941. 98. Courier, 19 May 1941. 99. Ibid, 17 May 1941. 100. Scotsman, 13 Oct. 1942. 101. Glasgow Herald, 13 Oct. 1942; Evening Times, 12 Oct. 1942. 102. Daily Record, 13 Oct. 1942. 103. Scots Independent, Nov. 1942. 104. Courier, 13 Oct. 1942; The Evening Telegraph, 13 Oct. 1942. 105. CHUR 2/363/155–156. 106. Churchill never forgave Dundee. In later years when Linton Andrews, the editor of the Yorkshire Post during the Second World War and that of the Dundee Adviser before the First World War, repeatedly suggested to Churchill that he should reprint his speeches in Dundee in a book, Churchill refused it. Andrews explained that ‘Much of what he had to say, for example on regional self-government, still deserved to be pondered; in some reforms he had been more of a pioneer than the country knew. But Churchill would never revive that part of his past. I doubt whether he ever forgave Dundee for rejecting him at the polls in favour of a local

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character, the prohibitionists Ned Scrymgeour.’ Andrews, The Autobiography of a Journalist, 79. 107. Scotsman, 8 May 1945. 108. Ibid, 14 May 1945. 109. Ibid, 16 May 1945. 110. Ibid, 22 May 1945. 111. Ibid, 5 June 1945. 112. Ibid, 22 June 1945. 113. Ibid, 24 June 1945. 114. Ibid, 29 June 1945. 115. Ibid, 2 July 1945. 116. Ibid, 27 July 1945. 117. Ibid, 30 July 1945. 118. Ibid. 119. Ibid, 1 Aug. 1945. 120. Ibid, 3 Aug. 1945. 121. Ibid, 6 Aug. 1945. 122. Glasgow Herald, 14 May 1945. 123. Ibid, 22 May 1945. 124. Ibid, 26 May 1945. 125. Ibid, 5 June 1945. 126. Ibid, 11 June 1945. 127. Ibid, 28 June 1945. 128. Ibid, 29 June 1945. 129. Ibid, 27 July 1945. 130. Ibid. 131. Ibid, 2 Aug. 1945; 7 Aug. 1945; 8 Aug. 1945; 9 Aug. 1945. 132. Ibid, 6 June 1945. 133. Evening Times, 22 May 1945. 134. Ibid, 5 June 1945. 135. Ibid, 6 June 1945. 136. Ibid, 14 June 1945. 137. Ibid, 27 July 1945. 138. Scots Independent, July 1945. 139. Ibid, Aug. 1945. 140. Christopher Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland during the Second World War,’ The Historical Journal 26, no.4 (1983), 921. 141. Scots Independent, Aug. 1945. 142. Forward, 9 June 1945. 143. Ibid, 30 June 1945. 144. Ibid, 30 June 1945. 145. Ibid, 4 Aug. 1945.

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146. Courier, 5 June 1945. 147. Ibid, 11 June 1945. 148. Ibid, 29 May 1945. 149. Ibid, 11 June 1945. 150. Ibid, 27 July 1945. 151. Daily Record, 2 July 1945. 152. Evening Times, 22 June 1945. 153. Rachel Clements, ‘Press Reception of Polish Migrants in Scotland, 1940–2010,’ in Scotland and Poland: Historical Encounters, 1500–2010, ed. T. M. Devine and D. Hesse (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2011), 175. 154. Allan Carswell, ‘Bonnie Fetchers’ The Polish Army and the Defence of Scotland, 1940–1942,’ in Scotland and Poland: Historical Encounters, 1500–2010, ed. T. M. Devine and D. Hesse (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2011), 135. 155. Clements, ‘Press Reception of Polish Migrants in Scotland,’ 184. 156. Courier, 17 May 1945. 157. Ibid, 16 June 1945. 158. Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland,’ 931–34.

References Contemporary Newspapers

and

Periodicals

The Daily Record & Mail The Dundee Courier and Advertiser The Edinburgh Evening News The Evening News (Glasgow) The Evening Telegraph and Post The Evening Times The Glasgow Herald The Forward The Scots Independent The Scotsman

Manuscript Collections A letter from William Borland, the Town Clerk of Dundee to Winston Churchill, 8 Oct. 1943; a letter from J.H.  Peck to William Borland, 15 Oct. 1943, Churchill Archive, CHUR 2/363/155–156.

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ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE PRESS, PAPER 59 [sic], Material handed in by Mr. H. B. Boyne and Mr. J. H. Gregor, The National Archive (henceforth, TNA), HO251/25. ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE PRESS, STATEMENT [sic] by D.C. Thomson, Chairman and Senior Managing Director of D.C. THOMSON & CO. LTD. & JOHN LENG & CO. LTD. [sic] in reply to references in the Royal Commission Secretary’s letter of the 9th March 1948, TNA, HO251/25.

Book and Journal Articles Andrews, Linton. The Autobiography of a Journalist. London: Earnest Benn Limited, 1964. Bingham, Adrian. Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918–1978. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Campbell, Jack. A Word for Scotland. Edinburgh: Luath, 1998. Carswell, Allan. “Bonnie Fetchers’ The Polish Army and the Defence of Scotland, 1940–1942.’ In Scotland and Poland: Historical Encounters, 1500–2010, edited by T. M. Devine and D. Hesse, 135–56. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2011. Clements, Rachel. ‘Press Reception of Polish Migrants in Scotland, 1940–2010.’ In Scotland and Poland: Historical Encounters, 1500–2010, edited by T. M. Devine and D. Hesse, 173–85. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2011. Crang, Jeremy A. ‘The Second World War.’ In A Military History of Scotland, edited by E.M. Spiers, J. A. Crang and M. J. Strickland, 559–99. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Ferguson, Duncan. The Scottish Newspaper Press. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1946. Gilbert, Martin. Winston S. Churchill: Vol. 4 1916–1922. London: Heinemann, 1975. Gilbert, Martin. Winston S.  Churchill: vol. 6 Finest Hour 1939–1941.London: Heinemann, 1983 Harvie, Christopher. ‘Labour in Scotland during the Second World War.’ The Historical Journal 26, no. 4 (1983): 921–44. Hutchison, David. ‘The History of the Press.’ In The Media in Scotland, edited by D. Hutchison, 55–70. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Morris, Albert. Scotland’s Paper: The Scotsman 1817–1992. Edinburgh: The Scotsman Publications, 1992. The Newspaper Press Directory 1939. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1939. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1945. Padfield, Peter. Hess: Flight for the Führer. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991. Phillips, Alastair. Glasgow’s Herald: Two Hundred Years of a Newspaper 1783–1983. Glasgow: Drew, 1983. Small, Gordon. The Lengs: Dundee’s Other Publishing Dynasty. Dundee: The Tay Valley Family History Society, 2009.

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Rose, Sonya O., Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Reid, J. M. Glasgow Herald: 1783–1958. Glasgow, 1958. Royle, Trevor. A Time of Tyrant: Scotland and the Second World War. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2011. Walker, W. M. ‘Dundee’s Disenchantment with Churchill: A Comment upon the Downfall of the Liberal Party.’ Scottish Historical Review 49 (1970): 85–108.

Websites Oxford Dictionary of National Bibliography (2004). ‘Hedderwick, James (1814–1897).’ Accessed December 17, 2016. http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/60205. The Flag in the Wing (2015). ‘Our Story so far: Scots Independent.’ Accessed December 19, 2016. http://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=97. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). ‘Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, second baronet (1838–1928).’ Accessed December 25, 2016. http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/36555.

CHAPTER 4

Wales

Churchill’s involvement in Wales was limited compared with Ireland and Scotland. According to folk history, Churchill had not been popular in Wales since the time of the Tonypandy riots in 1910. He was remembered as ‘the long-time enemy of the miners’ who as Home Secretary had sent troops to Tonypandy in the Rhondda Valley when miners went on a series of strikes in the south Wales coalfield.1 Even forty years later, the incident was brought up by the Labour Party in the 1950 general election campaign as evidence that Churchill was the enemy of the working class who suppressed strikes by force.2 In addition, the General Strike of 1926, in which Churchill was reported to have led a ‘war party’ that refused to rule out the use of force over striking miners,3 and who was labelled as ‘a trigger-­happy extremist’, apparently left a long-lasting negative impression in Wales.4 Nevertheless, according to Morgan these past memories of Churchill were largely overlooked and forgotten, but not necessarily forgiven, during the Second World War.5 Was such a negative feeling towards Churchill in Wales reflected in the Welsh press? How did the Welsh perception of Churchill change during wartime? How did the newspapers in Wales compare Churchill and Lloyd George, the Welsh hero, for their wartime leadership? This chapter will examine these questions from the depictions of Churchill in newspapers in Wales during the Second World War. It will analyse these depictions in several selected events: Churchill’s rise to the First Lord of the Admiralty © The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7_4

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in September 1939, his succession to the premiership in May 1940, the discussions over the establishment of a Welsh Office under a Welsh Secretary of State in June and July 1943, the biggest industrial stoppage in South Wales in March 1944, the death of Lloyd George in March 1945, and the end of the war in Europe and the general election from May to July 1945.

Newspapers in Wales The difficulty of using newspapers in Wales is in the prevalence of the Welsh language. There were many Welsh-language newspapers and some which were bilingual. For example, a newspaper in Aberystwyth, the Welsh Gazette, was bilingual and Churchill’s name more often appeared in the Welsh part than in the English. The English section supported and admired Churchill, but it is doubtful whether the same can be said of the Welsh part. I do not read Welsh thus the materials mentioned in this chapter are limited to English-language newspapers. It means that the newspapers analysed here were not for Welsh people as a whole but for a limited group of people in Wales, who regularly used English and read English-language newspapers. These people were traditional Anglo-Welsh elites as well as people who lived in industrial areas such as Cardiff and its surroundings. This chapter utilizes English-language newspapers in Cardiff, Swansea, Pontypridd, and Aberystwyth. In Cardiff, the Western Mail was established in 1869 by the trustees of the third Marquess of Bute, after the Conservatives’ defeat in the 1868 general election.6 It was aimed at supporting the Conservative Party and promoting ‘the political aspirations of the Marquess of Bute’.7 Although the third marquess proclaimed himself to be Conservative and an old-fashioned Tory, he converted to Catholicism in 1868 and since then the Bute family has been Catholic. Davies explained that the marquess had no interest in politics and took no part in the foundation of the Western Mail.8 The paper was sold to Lascelles Carr, the editor of the Western Mail, in 1877,9 and was once controlled by David Alfred Thomas, the first Viscount Rhondda,10 but was entrusted to Henry Seymour Berry (1877–1928), first Baron Buckland, in 1916.11 It was passed on to Lord Buckland’s two brothers, William Ewart Berry, later Lord Camrose, and Gomer Berry, later Lord Kemsley. The Allied Newspapers Ltd., owned by William and Gomer Berry,12 long competed

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with Lord Rothermere’s Northcliffe Newspapers Ltd. in Wales as well as in other parts of Britain, but in 1928 the two companies agreed that Rothermere would not compete in Cardiff but would be allowed predominance in south-west Wales.13 In January 1937 William and Gomer Berry parted ways, and Gomer took over Allied Newspapers, which included the Western Mail, and renamed the company Kemsley Newspapers in 1943. The South Wales Echo was an evening daily, established in 1884. It was also owned by Kemsley Newspapers during the Second World War. Prior to this, it had been owned by the Liberal Duncan family, but was taken over by the Berry brothers in 1928,14 and in the Newspaper Press Directory 1945 its political affiliation was described as independent.15 The Welsh Nationalist was an organ of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist Party. The party first published Y Ddraig Goch, a Welsh-­ language monthly paper, but in order to publicize its opinions more widely, it established the Welsh Nationalist, the English-language version, in January 1932.16 By 1939, the sales of both papers were increasing steadily.17 The paper was consistently critical of Churchill and politicians in London. In Swansea, the South Wales Evening Post was an evening daily established in 1861.18 It was taken over by Northcliffe Newspapers in 1929 and belonged to the Daily Mail Group.19 The same proprietor owned the Herald of Wales and the Mid-Glamorgan Herald. In 1930, the Cambrian, the Mid-Glamorgan Herald, and the South Wales Weekly Post amalgamated with the Herald of Wales to form the new Herald of Wales.20 In Pontypridd, the Rhondda Valleys Newspapers owned and published some weekly newspapers. This chapter will use the Pontypridd Observer and the Rhondda Fach Gazette from the proprietor, as well as the Glamorgan Times, which was owned by Glamorgan County Times Newspaper. All of them categorized as politically independent.21 In Aberystwyth, the Welsh Gazette was a weekly newspaper established in 1899 whose proprietor during the Second World War was George Rees. It was Liberal in politics.22 The Cambrian News was initially established as the Merioneth Herald in Bala, renamed as the Merioneth Standard in 1864 and finally became the Cambrian News in 1869. The weekly paper was bought by Lord Rhondda in 1915 and Robert Read assumed the editorial chair.23

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Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty When Churchill became the First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1939, the Western Mail emphasized the importance of his experience in the Great War and described the welcoming mood in Parliament: It was good to hear the Opposition leaders so boldly supporting the Government in the cause and so firmly pledging co-operation in the task, most thrilling of all to listen to the eloquence of that grand old warrior, David Lloyd George, and the dynamic Winston Churchill, who sat together in the Asquith Cabinet of 1914. Everyone was delighted later to find Mr. Churchill back at the Admiralty and in the War Cabinet. The nation needs his driving force at a time like this, and the biggest cheer of the day in Parliament came when David Lloyd George dedicated himself to serve, if necessary, in the humblest capacity.24

Churchill was discussed with reference to his old political colleague Lloyd George, who was praised for his leadership in the Great War, and the paper indicated its hope that Lloyd George would be included in the war cabinet. The Western Mail also compared Churchill with Chamberlain on 29 September 1939: ‘Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Churchill were a curious contrast in style. The Prime Minister spoke in his usual quiet no rhetorical fashion, while Mr. Churchill’s buoyant eloquence brought memories of the perfervid speeches of 1914.’25 The fact that Churchill was compared with both former and current prime ministers from the time of his inclusion in the war cabinet may suggest the unique position he held and the possibility of his future premiership. The South Wales Echo received the news positively and also respected Churchill’s considerable experience as a politician, soldier, war correspondent, historian, and so on. It described him as ‘the controlling brain behind Britain’s “sure shield”’.26 The paper called Churchill’s oratory a ‘real tonic’, and linked the Second World War with the First World War through Churchill: He was, as one M.P. put it, “the 1914 touch.” Though nearly a quarter of a century has rolled away since Mr. Churchill was last at the Admiralty, and few of the old hands remain there, he has deeply impressed everybody already by his energy, concentration, imagination, and insight. Those who can recall him in 1914, when he mobilised the fleet well ahead of coming events and so saved us from a far more troublesome time than we actually

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had on our commerce routes, declare that only his figure betrays the fight of time. Mentally and temperamentally Winston is just as dynamic and alert now as then.27

It depicted Churchill as an energetic and dynamic figure who had contributed to the victory in the Great War. The South Wales Echo frequently covered Churchill’s war reviews and described them as heartening and inspiring. In Swansea, the South Wales Evening Post explained Churchill’s appointment as ‘a foregone conclusion’ but at the same time stated that the Navy did not need ‘Churchillian gingering-up’ as its efficiency had already been increased in preparation for war.28 In Pontypridd, although the Glamorgan Times did not mention his inclusion in the war cabinet immediately after its formation, from the end of September 1939 his speeches were frequently reported in the paper. In Aberystwyth, the Welsh Gazette did not report the news of his inclusion in its English-language articles,29 but his name frequently appeared in Welsh-language articles in September. When relating war news, the paper particularly emphasized the importance of freedom, democracy, and liberty, qualities which Britain tried to uphold against Nazi Germany. The Cambrian News reported his inclusion only briefly and gave neither positive nor negative comment on his appointment as the First Lord of the Admiralty.30

Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940 Churchill’s succession to the premiership took place on 10 May 1940 and many English-language newspapers in Wales reported the event with much enthusiasm. In writing about the Norway Debate, the Western Mail covered Lloyd George’s speech that attacked Chamberlain,31 and when the resignation of Chamberlain became inevitable it suggested the possibility of Lloyd George’s return to the war cabinet. Mr. Lloyd George’s chances of the Premiership have been much discussed in the lobby. Having regard his age, the task might be too much of a strain for him. He would no doubt be in a new Government, but without portfolio. Mr. Lloyd George has told some of his friends that he does not want the highest office, but would be prepared to work in a Government of which Mr. Chamberlain was not leader.32

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The paper was certain that Lloyd George would be in the war cabinet if not the prime minister. When Churchill became prime minister the paper described the succession as inevitable as he was the only politician who was acceptable to all parties,33 and described Lloyd George as his ‘oldest friend in the House’.34 The Western Mail was disappointed when Lloyd George was not included in the war cabinet, but believed that ‘It must be remembered that his friendship with Mr. Churchill has been prolonged, sincere and intimate. No one in close touch with Westminster believes that Mr. Churchill will not find a job of work for Mr. Lloyd George before very long.’35 Even on 19 June 1940, the paper posted an article about Lloyd George’s future and expected that Churchill would give him a new post soon,36 and on 3 August 1940 the paper again claimed that Churchill was considering a possible position for Lloyd George.37 In fact, Churchill did offer Lloyd George the post of minister of agriculture and invited him into the war cabinet. Lloyd George, however, never responded to the offer. Churchill offered him the post of ambassador to Washington in late 1940 but Lloyd George again declined it.38 According to Morgan, Lloyd George was ‘a long-term advocate of détente and harmony, even in wartime’; he acknowledged Germany as ‘a great nation under a formidable leader’ and believed it was ‘unnatural’ that Britain was at war with them; and he consistently sought peace with Germany.39 Grigg claimed that Lloyd George refused to accept any post because he believed that he would lead Britain when Churchill failed and peace was negotiated with Germany; and that Lloyd George’s belief in a negotiated peace came from realism, not defeatism.40 In addition, it is said that because Lloyd George was at odds with Chamberlain, who possessed huge influence within the Conservatives at the beginning of Churchill’s government and who was deeply suspicious of Lloyd George after the Norway Debate, Lloyd George did not wish to work with him in the war cabinet.41 Ultimately, Lloyd George was not appointed to any cabinet position during the war, but the Western Mail, in the early days of Churchill’s premiership, insistently suggested the possibility of Lloyd George’s return to the cabinet. The paper emphasized the good long-time friendship between Churchill and Lloyd George, and expected the old hero from Wales to return to the frontline. The South Wales Echo also supported Churchill as prime minister. When he became chairman of the Committee of Service Ministers in late April 1940, an article, ‘Marlborough’s Shadow’, discussed Churchill’s leadership qualities in terms of his family history:

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Thus in effect the mantle of Marlborough, the famous ancestor about whom he has written so magnificently, descends on Winston. He will be, so long as he holds this new and onerous post, the responsible head of our war councils and, let us hope, the inspirer of victory. […] Mr. Churchill by training, experience and temperament as well as tradition is a fighter. He should develop precisely those qualities most needed in this great national emergency.42

It valued Churchill’s abilities in office very highly, describing him as ‘a man of original and wide ideas’ as well as a man of drive.43 After he became premier his words were reported positively: they enabled people to recognize ‘the seriousness, the solemnity, and the “bulldog” confidence’ in him.44 The Welsh Nationalist, although it did not comment on his succession to the premiership, declared in May 1940 that: The Welsh Nationalist Party has been opposed to this war from its very beginning, regarding it a senseless clash of rival imperialisms from which no small nation had anything to expect but disaster and despair, and advocating with unbroken insistence a policy of armistice and conference.45

Blaming politicians such as Chamberlain, Lloyd George, and Churchill who, according to Professor J. E. Daniel, president of Plaid Cymru from 1939, dragged neutral countries like Norway into hostilities, the paper propounded the view that the war would threaten many small nations’ independence in Europe: This war, one of whose professed aims according to England, was the defence of small nations, bids fair to end with their destruction. If the Allies win the war, they may sit crowned with the laurels of victory, but it will be on the grave of the small peoples of Europe that they will set their throne.46

The paper mistrusted England, stating that ‘we refuse to keep all the soot for Germany and all the whitewash for England’.47 The quotation indicated that the moral high ground was not wholly held by England, and it appeared that Welsh nationalists were sympathetic to Germany. It is said that some Welsh nationalists were tainted by Fascism: Ambrose Bebb, one of the founders of Plaid Cymru, claimed in 1923 that ‘Wales needs a Mussolini!’; and the Welsh Nationalist described the Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) as ‘one of the two or three

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greatest statesmen in Europe today’ in September 1936.48 Whether they were really Fascist sympathizers or not, their pro-German statements showed their antagonism towards England and the Westminster Parliament. The Nationalist paper clearly opposed the war as it believed that it was England’s war alone, and claimed that small nations like Wales were victims of imperialism. This position, however, was not popular among people in Wales. Martin Johnes claimed that ‘most people in Wales were British nationalists rather than Welsh nationalists’.49 In Swansea, the South Wales Evening Post speculated on the friction between Chamberlain and Lloyd George and felt that it would be difficult to accommodate the two former premiers in the war cabinet.50 The paper associated Churchill with the Duke of Marlborough and praised his spirit of ‘free men fighting against a foray of slaves’.51 It covered Churchill’s famous speeches with enthusiasm and described them as ‘tonic for Britain’s friends’,52 which impressed the world.53 In Pontypridd the news was received with less attention. The Pontypridd Observer was sympathetic to Chamberlain in the Norway Debate and criticized Liberal and Labour politicians who attacked him,54 and when Chamberlain resigned the paper praised his self-sacrifice in the interests of national unity.55 The Rhondda Fach Gazette was proud of the new British premier. Referring to him as ‘Our Prime Minister’ it described Churchill’s leadership: History shows us that great emergencies sometimes find the men capable of meeting them. Great national emergencies in our British history have found Drake, Cromwell, Marlborough, Chatham, Nelson, Wellington, Pitt, Lloyd George, to guide Britain safely through them. We are to-day going through Britain’s most dangerous of national emergencies and it does look as if a lineal descendant of the great Marlborough, Mr. Winston Churchill, has been “sent” to lead this country safely to security, freedom and peace again. His speech this week has heartened the whole freedom-loving world.56

It is notable here that the paper calls Churchill ‘our Prime Minister’ and Welsh history as our British history, demonstrating Welsh affinity with the rest of Britain. It named English heroes in history in the same breath as Lloyd George and highlighted the unity of the UK rather than Welsh identity.

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Churchill’s Visit to Wales in April 1941 During the war Churchill visited many cities in the UK. In Wales, he visited Cardiff, Swansea, and some towns in Cardiganshire in April 1941. Generally, his visits were reported in English-language newspapers in Wales as cordial and welcoming. The Western Mail covered his visits to Swansea, Cardiganshire, and Cardiff and reported the attitudes of people in each area. The paper applauded his ‘remarkable vitality’ under heavy responsibility.57 Many cordial exchanges between Churchill and Welsh people were addressed in the paper: a workman who gently reproved Churchill for not carrying gas masks in Swansea; people expressing thanks to him at a Swansea dock; and a schoolboy ‘running down the garden path of his home, waved a Union Jack and shouted “Churchill for ever”’, when the cars of Churchill’s party were ascending a steep hill in Cardiganshire.58 The paper reported that Churchill was welcomed by huge crowds in Cardiff and in all the street workers greeted him: The visit, intended to be secret, developed into a triumphant tour. Arriving in the first of the areas which suffered in a recent “blitz,” Mr. Churchill spoke to several members of a demolition squad and in response to cheers said, “We’ll give it to them, boys.” “Bravo, Cardiff, God bless you,” the Premier shouted to the large crowd outside as he re-entered his car. In every street there were workers to greet him.59

The description of his visit emphasized Churchill’s popularity among workers and his frankness and friendliness towards them. In Swansea, the South Wales Evening Post described his visit to the town: ‘What a wealth of simple, human, man-to-man touches there were in the visit, in the town and at the docks! Swansea was left cheered and braced by her glimpse of this Man of Destiny.’60 The paper claimed that everywhere he went in Swansea he was greeted with cheers and he was happy to chat with local people, which ‘caused great pleasure’.61 In Aberystwyth, Churchill’s visit to Cardiganshire was covered in detail in the Welsh Gazette: Mr. Winston Churchill’s visit on Good Friday to a certain part of Cardiganshire […] was a complete surprise except for a very few people who kept it a well-guarded secret. […] As the cars left the station, the Prime Minister was soon recognised, and people went wild with excitement, cheering loudly as he passed. […] By the time the return journey was made,

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crowds had increased tremendously, all eager to catch a glimpse of the man who, more than anyone, holds the destinies of the Empire in his hand. Mr. Churchill, it is understood, expressed himself touched by the warmth of the reception. He also expressed his admiration of the Cardiganshire countryside. In the words of one of the persons concerned with the local arrangements, it was “a purely informal visit.” It is hoped that in happier times Mr. Churchill will again be able to visit the county and perhaps address a meeting.62

The paper reported the welcoming mood in the town and suggested that Churchill was tremendously popular among people there. Generally, the English-language newspapers in Wales emphasized that wherever he went in Wales he was welcomed by working-class people in docks and streets. No mention of Tonypandy was made, and no heckling was reported.

The Secretary of State for Wales and the Welsh Day In June 1943, Welsh MPs in the House of Commons requested the establishment of the post of the Secretary of State for Wales and the creation of a Welsh Office. They believed that Wales would be better governed by a more Welsh-oriented body, and that such a method of government would avoid economic depression after the war.63 The agitations for the establishment of the post had been on-going since the 1920s, but Baldwin refused it twice in 1928 and Ramsey MacDonald (1866–1937) in 1930 and 1931.64 Neville Chamberlain also declined to support it as he believed that Wales had already received ‘special treatment’, and that Wales ‘has been closely incorporated with England’ since 1535. Although Chamberlain’s refusal enraged the Welsh press, the issue was set aside following the outbreak of war.65 The movement resumed, however, in 1943 and on 10 June, when Welsh MPs questioned Deputy Prime Minister Attlee, they criticized him for being unaware of the demands of Welsh people that ‘there should be a Secretary of State for Wales’.66 They raised the issue again before Churchill on 6 July and David Grenfell, Labour MP for Gower, asked Churchill directly whether he was aware of the desire in Wales for ‘the institution of a Welsh Office under a Secretary of State for Wales’. Churchill’s answer was as follows:

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This is a large topic to be dealt with at Question Time. I am well aware of the sentiment cherished by the people of Wales and also of the very warm desire to gratify those sentiments which is the instinct of the English and Scottish people. At the same time, to create this entirely new Department in present circumstances would not, I think, be practicable. […] I think I prefer to be a little backward in that matter.67

The refusal to appoint a Secretary of State for Wales by Attlee and Churchill caused deep disappointment among Welsh newspapers. As a concession, the House of Commons established a Welsh Day, the first of which was held on 17 October 1944. The Western Mail featured the news in detail. In June, in reply to Attlee’s ‘point-blank’ refusal to appoint a Welsh Secretary, the paper described Attlee as being more ‘unsympathetic to the demand for a Welsh Secretary of State than was the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain’.68 It emotionally asked, ‘What further evidence does Mr. Attlee require! What more can be done to satisfy him and other Ministers of the strength and sincerity of the demand!’69 The paper declared that ‘Attlee’s “No” to Wales will be remembered’, demonstrating their animosity towards Attlee, and speculating that he was ‘out of touch with M.P.s of his own part in Wales’, and that he and other ministers were too busy to plan post-war reconstructions. The paper in June still expected that Churchill would make a difference, stating that: Mr. Attlee’s “No” ought to be a landmark in Welsh history. […] The Welsh M.P.s should have a Bill ready; and when they have won every important section of Welsh opinion in its support they should ask the Prime Minister himself to receive a deputation—and keep on asking until Mr. Churchill receives them.70

In July, when Welsh MPs asked Churchill directly about the possibility of a Secretary of State for Wales, his answer was not much different from that of the deputy prime minister: He preferred being a “little backward in that matter” and intimated, not without reason perhaps, that to create an office now would not be very practicable. It was a soft answer which did not quite succeed in its design to turn away wrath. […] Mr. Churchill, however, did not slam the door; his reply cannot be taken as final. The Welsh Parliamentary Party is taking the right course in informing him in the preparations being made towards the

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creation of a Secretaryship of State, and that they will be continued and that the proposals when completed will be submitted to him.71

Although the paper was disappointed by Churchill’s refusal to establish the post, it still expected that he would consider the issue. John Pennant, a regular political columnist for the paper,72 believed that ‘It is my conviction that when our case is properly made out and properly presented Wales will receive her rightful recognition at the hands of that statesman—no other than Mr. Churchill, our present Prime Minister’.73 During the discussion, Attlee was much attacked by the paper for his ignorance of the Welsh desire to have the right to look after themselves, while Churchill was not blamed and even considered to be the person who the paper trusted to improve the rights of Wales. The other point made in the Western Mail was the comparison between Wales and Scotland. The paper was frustrated by the fact that Scotland had had a Secretary of State since 1885, while Wales had not been allowed to have its own, even in 1943. It anticipated an unfair treatment of Wales by the government after the war, stating that: It can mean that while Scotland may be considered important enough to secure a £30,000,000 Government-sponsored scheme for post-war development that Wales is beneath notice, or that it is still regarded as a small corner of England to be dealt with in the “general wash” instead of as a country with special problems of its own.74

Headlined ‘Neglected Wales and Privileged Scotland’, the paper claimed ironically that ‘There was a firm demand in Wales for a Welsh Secretary and a Welsh Office despite a statement to the contrary by “a certain person” in Parliament recently’.75 It implied that ‘a certain personality’ meant Attlee not Churchill, as the previous articles in the paper targeted Attlee for the decision against the creation of the position. The Unionist paper clearly showed loyalty to Wales in its apparent expression of displeasure over the discussion of the secretaryship. It described the Welsh Day in October 1944 as the ‘Welsh “D” Day’ and a ‘memorable innovation’, and claimed that ministers in London recognized Welsh demands and wants. The paper believed that the day was successful and historic.76 The Welsh Nationalist did not mention the discussion of the creation of the secretaryship in 1943 but dealt largely with the 1944 Welsh Day. In October 1944, the paper posted a caricature with the caption ‘ONE day

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in the year has been granted by the House of Commons to discuss Welsh affairs’, and by capitalizing ‘one’, it ironically highlighted the lowly status of Wales within the UK. It described the day as ‘The Pageant of Welsh History’ with a caption: ‘The Awakening of King Arthur and His Knights: dramatis personae—The Welsh M.Ps’.77 In the caricature, the Welsh MPs are all sleeping, and Lloyd George as King Arthur is covered in cobwebs. Two who sound the fanfare are Idris Cox, a communist and editor of the Daily Worker, and John Pennant who wrote for the Western Mail and criticized Welsh nationalists as Fascists.78 The communist is waving the Welsh national flag, holding the hand of the columnist for the Conservative Western Mail. By portraying communist and Conservative individuals actively espousing Welsh Nationalism in contrast to the sleeping Lloyd George, the caricature shows their low expectations for Welsh Day and their mistrust of current Welsh MPs, who are all sleeping and seem to have no intention of going on to the stage. There are 615 members in Parliament. Of these 492 are English members […] 74 are Scottish, 13 are Northern Ireland and 36 are Welsh. That gives the English representatives an overwhelming preponderance in the House of Commons. They are mainly Conservatives and dyed-in-the-wool Churchillian Imperialists. And with the switch over of the Labour Party to the espousal of imperialism of the British Commonwealth of Nations honest-­ to-goodness-John-Bull variety we can see what a solid block of English opinion Wales had confronting her on the occasion of this debate. […] It is hardly necessary for me to comment in this connection that the deliberate policy of the English Government towards Wales has always had the design to destroy Welsh life and to impose on Wales an English uniformity. Instead of employing the Welsh workers in Wales the Government proceeded to deprive them of their work in Wales and provided them with work in England. Instead of spending money on the re-equipment of industry in Wales, where the workers live, they spent money lavishly in building new industries in England.79

The Welsh Nationalist believed that Wales had little representation in ‘English’ government and that England always deprived Wales of its way of life and prosperity. The paper admitted that the establishment of a Welsh Day by the House of Commons was certainly a step forward for Welsh representation in the English Parliament; however, such a concession was not enough to ease its mistrust of the English rule of Wales.

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In Swansea, the South Wales Evening Post complained that Attlee’s ‘unawareness’ of the concerns in Wales was ‘obscure’.80 His attitude towards Wales was resented by the paper and, comparing him with three other politicians, Conservative, National, and Liberal, the paper assumed that he had much less attention towards and interest in Welsh concerns. Churchill’s refusal also disappointed the paper. However, the South Wales Evening Post believed that despite this refusal, the fact that Welsh politicians were actively raising the matter with Churchill meant that at least the Welsh had a voice in the British Parliament.81 The paper also singled out Attlee as the one who refused the secretaryship for Wales even after Churchill declined to discuss the matter, repeatedly describing the government decision not to create the post as ‘Attlee’s refusal’.82 In Pontypridd, the Pontypridd Observer criticized Westminster, stating that: There is no doubt that there is a tendency at Westminster to regard Wales as some far distant colony. We believe it is quite true to say that many of our own legislators know very little indeed about this part of the country and are inclined to be prejudiced on that account.83

The paper indicated its deep suspicion of the Westminster Parliament, which it believed regarded Wales as a colony. In Aberystwyth, the Welsh Gazette singled out Attlee, stating that ‘Welsh feeling was deeply wounded by the recent declaration of Mr. Attlee in the House of Commons, that he was unaware of “a general desire that there should be a Secretary of State for Wales”’.84 Rather than criticizing Churchill, the paper attacked Attlee who first answered the question and blamed him for his ignorance of Welsh politics. As seen in the newspapers above, the discussion over the Welsh secretary demonstrated the negative impression of politicians in London; however, many papers attacked Attlee rather than Churchill, for his ignorance about Welsh people. The Labour Party, although its early leaders were sympathetic towards nationalism in Wales until 1914, after the interwar depression turned to support ‘major instruments of the idea of Britishness’ and promoted a London-centric national policy.85 In addition, Morgan claimed that ‘Attlee had no sympathy with Welsh separatism […] nor had Labour generally at this time’ and that he was perhaps ‘the least radical in his approach to constitutional affairs […] of any twentieth-century British prime minister’.86 The accusation against Attlee might have derived from his party’s centralism as well as his ignorance about separatism.

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The Biggest Industrial Stoppage in Wales in March 1944 In March 1944, miners in South Wales went on strike for better pay. This was the biggest industrial action in Wales during the Second World War. Between January and March 1944, there were thirty-eight strikes in rebellion against the Porter Awards, which settled miners’ wages. In March it is said that 75,000 miners stopped work in South Wales and that this was the most serious industrial action since the 1926 General Strike.87 The Western Mail blamed miners on strike and regretted that the Porter Award, which aimed at establishing peace in the industry by putting ‘more millions into their pockets’, resulted in the strike. It described strikers as ‘men who break their pledged word, ignore the claims of common patriotism and humanity, and not content with unprecedented concessions, are resolved to extort more’.88 In the letters section on 10 March, M. Calder, the Secretary of the Economic League in London, described the strike as ‘a direct attack on our war effort’ and resented it as he believed the strikers were betraying those who fought on the battle fronts. In the same column, however, E. Llewellyn Rees in Llanelly [sic] disagreed with Calder and claimed that miners just wanted ‘a fair deal. A straightforward cut-­ and-­dried plan for the adjustment of wages, which is fair and equitable.’ He criticized the idea that miners were sluggish, and claimed that the war Britain was fighting against Germany was for a ‘democratic way of life’, suggesting that the problem had to be solved democratically.89 The Welsh Nationalist was consistently critical of the government’s attitude towards miners in Wales. In July 1943, the newspaper posted a message to Churchill from Trefor Beasley, a young miner, who claimed that through the office of the colliery company he received a personal message from Churchill and ‘a copy of the speeches delivered by himself and Field Marshal Smuts at a secret conference of miners six months ago’. He was disappointed with Churchill who did not mention any of the miners’ problems, writing as follows: Miners suffering from this dread disease [silicosis] shuffle along the streets, gasping for breath, walking images of death. Yet, despite the alarming increase of silicosis in South Wales, and the heavy toll of fatal accidents, very little is being done in the form of preventative measures to alleviate this distress and suffering. […] I found no mention of these things in Mr. Churchill’s speech. It is all very well for Mr. Churchill to say, “where there

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is danger there is honour.” It is equally true that the lesser the danger, the greater the coal output. […] No mention was made of the plans and prospects for the future of coal. […] The whole of South Wales is threatened with extinction. Tinplate works, steel works and even collieries are being closed, and the population ruthlessly deported to England. We would like to feel that Mr. Churchill has a genuine concern for our present difficulties. We would like to feel that schemes are being prepared to improve conditions, and that the future of the South Wales coalfield will be happier than the story of the past. Give us an undertaking that these things shall be, and we will give you the coal. But Mr. Churchill’s message said nothing to encourage a young miner.90

In the Welsh Nationalist, the young miner pointed out that Churchill had not taken any measures to combat silicosis derived from coal mining and had not proposed a reasonable future plan for Welsh industries. When the strike broke out in March, the paper described it as an action against the government itself, rather than against the coal owners. It believed that the strike was uniquely Welsh, and it was derived from the principles of Welsh Trade Unionism: The Government virtually controls all the coal mines. The strike proves conclusively that the Welsh Miners reject not only capitalist ownership but also reject English Government Control over Welsh mines and Welsh miners. The only alternative for the Welsh miner is to destroy both capitalist and English control by establishing a Government in Wales with full power to safeguard the interests and welfare of the Welsh miners. There are aspects in our miners’ trade unionism which are essentially Welsh in character. They must be protected and developed. Through the recent strike, the Welsh Miners have demonstrated in clear terms that their rights as Welsh Trade Unionists must not be destroyed.91

As the official paper for the Welsh Nationalist Party, it criticized the violation of the rights of Welsh miners by the English government. It blamed Churchill for his ignorance of Welsh miners and for English control of the harsh environment surrounding Welsh miners. In Swansea, the South Wales Evening Post reported the strikes in detail, lamenting the loss it caused as ‘suicidal to the interests of Great Britain and her armed forces’.92 In Pontypridd, the newspapers were sympathetic to miners. The Pontypridd Observer described that some miners were dissatisfied with the Porter Award, especially skilled workers, who claimed

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that they were paid equally with the unskilled. The paper commented that ‘We do not wish to criticise unduly this attitude, nor would we claim that there is no justification for the bitterness felt by many who feel that their skill is not being properly recognised’.93 The Rhondda Fach Gazette claimed that the strike actions ‘at present cannot be condemned too strongly’ as the country needed miners to keep working to support the war effort.94 Pontypridd was one of the strike areas, and the paper was more sympathetic towards miners, compared with newspapers in other parts of Wales which criticized striking miners as sluggards. In Aberystwyth, neither the Welsh Gazette nor the Cambrian News mentioned the miners’ strikes in their English-language articles. With the exception of the Welsh Nationalist, the descriptions of the strikes in most newspapers were negative and critical of the miners’ industrial action. However, there were people who were sympathetic to miners for their severe working environment, and their opinion was expressed in the Pontypridd press as well as in the letters column in the Western Mail.

The Death of David Lloyd George Lloyd George died on 26 March 1945. Churchill and other party leaders, as well as MPs who had personal memories, gave tributes to him in the House of Commons on 28 March 1945. Churchill praised him as ‘so gifted, so eloquent, so forceful, who knew the life of the people so well’, and claimed that he made laws which shaped many people’s lives. He stated that Lloyd George was ‘the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors’, and thanked him for his contribution to the UK.95 His death was covered in many Welsh newspapers, and his life mostly received acclaim. The Western Mail attributed the improvement of the position of Wales in the UK to Lloyd George: what his fellow countrymen remember best, and what to them is most likely to immortalise his memory, was his long and devoted services to Wales. His dynamic genius transformed the whole outlook of the people. His achievements gave them a nobler sense of their destiny. Far more than any of his predecessors he succeeded in putting Wales on the map, in extending her horizon from that of an English province to that of a nation, and in removing some of the most intractable divisions which barred the way to internal unity of faith and purpose.96

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The paper depicted Lloyd George as the national hero of Wales, as well as of the UK, mentioning Churchill’s twenty minutes’ tribute to him in the House of Commons.97 The South Wales Echo also applauded him as ‘A Great Son of Wales’, ‘A Great Welshman’, and ‘the Welsh Wizard’.98 The paper claimed that Lloyd George represented Welsh opinions and that Wales was proud of herself for providing the great man in British history. Although the paper believed that his fame had been eclipsed by Churchill for his leadership during the Second World War, it expected that the British Empire would still show gratitude to Lloyd George for his premiership during the First World War.99 The paper published a cartoon titled ‘Old Age Has Lost a Friend’ by J.  C. Walker, which portrayed an old man watching Lloyd George ascend to Heaven, symbolizing a nostalgia for a Wales long since passed.100 Morgan described his death as ‘almost symbolic of the passing of an era, the final curtain on the human tragi-comedy of Welsh speaking, nonconformist, Liberal Wales which Lloyd George’s own career had so directly embodied’.101 In Swansea, the South Wales Evening Post described the death as ‘the passing of Britain’s most brilliant statesman and one of the most fascinating political figures of all time’.102 In Pontypridd, however, the Glamorgan Times was not effusive in its praise. The paper was disappointed with him for accepting his earldom, stating that ‘Much controversy has raged from time to time around this great Welshman, and not the least has been whether he should have accepted a peerage in the evening of his days after having been such a violent and uncompromising critic of “the other place”’.103 In Aberystwyth, both the Welsh Gazette and the Cambrian News covered his death and they were proud of him and his ties with Wales. The Welsh Gazette associated Lloyd George with Churchill and claimed that, like Churchill, Lloyd George also had courage, which was apparent in the time of crisis: The two most brilliant men in the country, the two men who have saved England in the two greatest crises she has ever known, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill—were both disliked by the Tories, Mr. Churchill in spite of the fact that he was himself a Conservative. The two greatest leaders of this century, both of them spent a long, long time in the wilderness. Mr. Lloyd George, with his usual courage, found many valuable occupations after his fall from power, and with his many-sided zest for life discovered

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ever fresh interests. Between his fall and the Premiership of Mr. Churchill we had no really great Premier. Alas for the world that we had not.104

The Welsh Gazette regretted that both men had been kept out of power in the interwar years, suggesting the mistrust of them within the Conservative Party and the gulf between those two war leaders and orthodox Conservative politicians. The paper clearly mentioned Lloyd George as the man who saved England rather than Britain or Wales, which suggests that the contributor to the paper was insensitive in describing Lloyd George’s affiliation, or that he/she believed that the two world wars were English wars. While the Welsh Gazette emphasized his greatness in national politics, the Cambrian News focused more on his ties with Wales: To North Wales he was a young man willing to sacrifice his career for the sake of the people […] the people of North Wales remember him as a young solicitor, brought up in stern Welsh surroundings, who staked his all in support of Nonconformity and Liberalism at a time when he might have settled down to a secure country practice supported by the squires and the Tory class […] let it be remembered that it was the Welsh village chapel and school which laid the foundations of his character—foundations which stood against mighty political opposing forces. Insofar as Wales, to-day, through its homes and its schools lays the same foundation so far will Wales prosper.105

The paper expected that Lloyd George would be an inspiration for future young Welshmen who would seek freedom. Emphasizing the importance of the Welsh environment in moulding the character of Lloyd George, the Cambrian News showcased the pride in being Welsh. In describing Lloyd George many newspapers used the words ‘Britain’ and ‘British’ since he was prime minister of the UK. At the same time they were proud of their nation for providing Britain with a great leader. These depictions imply that people held dual identities: while they expressed a Welsh national pride through Lloyd George, political separatism was set aside, at least among the English-speaking people in Wales during wartime.

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The End of the Second World War and the General Election In Wales, English-language newspapers’ portrayals of Churchill around the end of the war were similar to those in other parts in the UK, while some papers emphasized the Welsh contributions to the victory. In comparison, the press reports about the general election following the victory were more diverse and Welsh-specific. The election ended in a landslide victory for Labour, which secured twenty-five out of thirty-six seats in Wales, while the Conservatives won only three, the Liberals six, and the National Liberals only one.106 The two dailies in Cardiff held different views on Churchill over the election campaign. The Western Mail was consistently pro-Churchill and pro-Conservative, and ranked Churchill alongside Pitt, Canning, and Lloyd George for his leadership.107 It attributed the victory to Churchill,108 and Churchill’s broadcast speech on 13 May was reported favourably.109 The paper consistently emphasized that Churchill’s leadership was an absolute necessity and that in order to have him continue as prime minister the electorate must vote for the Conservatives. It considered the election as the opportunity to thank Churchill, stating that ‘the country does not want to lose, and has no intention of losing, Mr. Churchill’s leadership in the critical months that lie ahead. The Socialists must not complain if the election slogan, “Churchill or Attlee,” is generally adopted.’110 The paper claimed that Liberal supporters would vote for the Conservatives, as it believed that the Liberal Party had ‘little or no chance of being returned to power’ and had ‘more affinity with Mr. Churchill’s party than with the Socialists’:111 Considerations of modesty or propriety may prevent the Premier from stressing the supreme question, which is whether or not the country wishes to retain the leadership which has brought the country and the Empire, and indeed civilisation, through the greatest peril of all time. That leadership can only be secured by returning the Government of which he is the head. Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the National Liberals, wishes there was a way to continue Mr. Churchill’s leadership.112

It appealed to Liberal supporters to vote for the National Liberal candidates rather than those of the Liberals, claiming that voting for the Liberals would not return a Liberal government; rather, it would lead to a Labour

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government.113 The paper consistently attacked socialists who it believed would limit liberty and democracy. Churchill went on an election tour across the UK, but Wales was not included. Instead, the Western Mail requested that Churchill send a message to the Welsh people, and on 4 July it was published in the paper. In the message, he briefly regretted not visiting Wales on the tour and asked Welsh people to vote for the Conservatives. It was a short message and did not mention Welsh-specific topics.114 The Western Mail was certain that Churchill would win the election, but when Labour’s landslide victory was announced, it described it as ‘a staggering example of unpredictability of politics’ and ‘this sudden, perhaps ungrateful-seeming, rejection of Mr. Churchill and his Ministers’.115 The South Wales Echo, in contrast, was not a wholehearted supporter of the Conservatives. The paper was sceptical about the Conservative politicians around Churchill and hoped that Churchill would not follow the same pattern as Lloyd George who was used by the Conservatives for electoral purposes and then ‘thrown on the scrapheap’.116 Although the paper was not critical of Churchill’s leadership and policies, it criticized the election strategy of the Conservatives, for using Churchill as an idol to attract voters, and it encouraged readers to vote without worshipping political icons. The Welsh Nationalist mentioned little about the end of war in Europe in May, and posted negative articles about Churchill and the future of the UK led by Churchill. In May 1945, the paper criticized Churchill as an old-fashioned believer in the special relationship between Britain and America: a Europe of ruin and rubble will be forced by sheer necessity to go cap-in-­ hand to beg at the merciless portals of the American money-jugglers, and, as long as the interest is high, the money lords will invest on the crest of a volcano. […] Nations like Britain and France, that have sinned their trust away, will ultimately be crushed between the confident righteousness of Moscow and the soul-less gold of New  York. Stalin has a clear brain. Churchill still lives on the traditions of Blenheim. America can pour money and tractors and motor cars to Europe, and, as long as the dividends are paid, she will have no scruples at all about the suffering of Europe or Asia, but the day will come when they will not be paid.117

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As such, it showed a mistrust of the United States and of Churchill who was in their eyes very friendly towards America. A column by F. H. Amphlett Micklewright declared that the post-war Britain led by Churchill would head straight for ‘utter disaster’, complaining that ‘It is not a democratic England which despoils the Welsh valleys, uses vast tracts of Scotland for deer-forests, or creates a near-Fascist state in Ulster’.118 When the election campaign started, the Welsh Nationalist stated that there would be no difference in policy between a Tory or Labour government, and that both would allow Wales nothing, ‘not even a mere Secretary of State’.119 When the Conservative Party was defeated in the election, the paper argued that Churchill lost because of his broadcasts, which conjured images of ‘the national “Fuhrer” idea’.120 In Swansea, the South Wales Evening Post believed that losing Churchill and his party would reduce the international presence of Britain and worsen the Anglo-American relationship.121 When the election result emerged the paper claimed that ‘it is felt Mr. Churchill was ill-advised, as his principal supporters seemed to be completely out of touch with the feeling in the country’.122 In Pontypridd, the Pontypridd Observer claimed that Churchill’s leadership was necessary for the UK and asked readers in an editorial on 30 June to vote for a government supporter, Captain Cennydd Traherne, stating that ‘A vote for Capt. Traherne is a vote for Mr. Churchill’.123 In Rhondda, the Labour candidate for Rhondda West, Will John was unopposed, and there were no Liberal and Conservative candidates in the Rhondda East constituency. The Rhondda Fach Gazette regretted that people in Rhondda had not been given an opportunity to thank Churchill and to support a stable National Government.124 In Aberystwyth the Welsh Gazette regretted the end of the coalition government and blamed Labour politicians for its sudden termination. It appreciated Churchill’s role in the war and claimed that he and Eden would be essential in the peace-making process.125 While respecting Churchill as the great war premier, the paper warned readers that the election should not be considered an opportunity to show their respect for him. The Welsh Gazette believed that the election was not ‘between Mr. Churchill and some other leader, but between Toryism and Radicalism, between the forces of reaction and the forces of progress’.126 While espousing Radicalism the paper was consistently against the Labour Party, claiming that its policy was vague.127 It supported the Liberal candidate in Cardiganshire who would support Churchill’s administration until the end of the war with Japan and then the social security policy of Beveridge.128

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The paper’s support for the Liberals was oriented towards the Welsh Liberal tradition and when the election ended in Labour’s landslide victory it claimed that ‘The fall of the Liberal Party, however, is not an end of Liberalism. […] Both Conservatives and Labours own some of the most valuable elements in their present party beliefs to the teaching of the Liberal statesmen of the past.’129 On Churchill’s defeat, the Welsh Gazette commented that it was not because people were ungrateful to Churchill but because the Conservatives were mistrusted due to their record in the interwar years. The paper believed that people regarded Churchill as ‘a great Englishman’ and his defeat was a great loss: Never since Alfred the great saved the very existence of England, has any one man done so much for this country. It is easy to speak of his mistakes in electioneering; but if we want to find his equal we have to go back more than a thousand years to that hunted king of Wessex who was the last hope of the English. In 1940, when the world was falling around us, Mr. Churchill was our last hope. Labour talks much of Mr. Churchill’s faults, but their main objection to him is that he is a very great man and they are very small men.130

The acclaim given to Churchill indicates that the paper made a clear distinction between Churchill and other Tory politicians, and shows their antagonism towards Labour. The Welsh Gazette supported Liberalism, and Churchill was considered an ally of their political belief.

Conclusion With the exception of the Welsh Nationalist, all the newspapers used in this chapter were consistently in favour of Churchill and criticisms of him were absent during the war. Churchill’s involvement in the 1910 Tonypandy riots and the 1926 General Strike were not referred to in the selected events in these papers. He was very often compared with Lloyd George, the Welsh hero and leader of the UK during the Great War. Describing Churchill in connection with Lloyd George was not exclusive to Welsh newspapers; however, the similarities between the two were more frequently and particularly emphasized in Wales. In mentioning Lloyd George, however, many papers emphasized that he was the British leader and one paper explained that he saved England. These descriptions show ambiguous use of sensitive words and, except for the Welsh Nationalist,

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the English-language newspapers in Wales were often insensitive to the words used in describing their country. While advocating Welsh interests in the discussions for the establishment of a Welsh Secretary in June and July 1943 and the Welsh Day in October 1944, and while criticizing politicians’ ignorance about Wales, these newspapers were generally obedient to the British authorities. The analysis of the newspapers’ depictions of the leader shows that English-language newspapers in Wales possessed both British and Welsh affinities and, at times, Welsh identity came to the forefront. However, in general, they were very supportive of the British government, and political separatism was only seen in the Welsh Nationalist, an organ for Plaid Cymru.

Notes 1. Anthony Mor-O’Brien, ‘Churchill and the Tonypandy Riots,’ Welsh History Review 17, no. 1 (1994), 68. 2. Ibid, 67. 3. Martin Gilbert, Winston S.  Churchill vol. 5 1922–1939 (London: Heinemann, 1976), 151. 4. Paul Addison, Churchill: The Unexpected Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 118. 5. Kenneth. O.  Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 294. 6. John Davies, Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1981), 135. 7. John Davies, The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008), 615. 8. Davies, Cardiff and the Marquess of Bute, 23–26. 9. Ibid, 135. 10. Kenneth O.  Morgan, ‘D.A.  Thomas: The Industrialist as Politician,’ Glamorgan Historian 3 (1966), 33. 11. Davies, Encyclopedia of Wales, 60. 12. Aled Gruffydd Jones, Press politics and Society: A History of Journalism in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993), 210. 13. Ibid, 212. 14. Ibid, 211. 15. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945 (London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd., 1945), 175. 16. Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation, 207. 17. Ibid, 254. 18. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 180.

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19. William Ewart Berry, British Newspapers and Their Controllers (London: Cassell, 1947), 134. 20. Sandra Thomas, ‘The “Cambrian”,’ Gower 55 (2004), 56. 21. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 179. 22. Ibid, 173. 23. D.  Rhys Davies, ‘“Let Him Beware, We Have Our Eyes on Him”,’ in H.R.  Pratt Boorman ed., Newspaper Society 125  Years of Progress (Maidstone: Kent Messenger, 1961), 105. 24. The Western Mail, 4 Sept. 1939. 25. Ibid, 29 Sept. 1939. 26. The South Wales Echo, 15 Sept. 1939. 27. Ibid, 29 Sept. 1939. 28. The South Wales Evening Post, 5 Sept. 1939. 29. The Welsh Gazette, 14 Sept. 1939. 30. The Cumbrian News, 8 Sept. 1939. 31. Western Mail, 9 May 1940. 32. Ibid, 10 May 1940. 33. Ibid, 11 May 1940. 34. Ibid, 14 May 1940. 35. Ibid, 20 May 1940. 36. Ibid, 19 June 1940. 37. Ibid, 3 Aug. 1940. 38. John Grigg, ‘Churchill and Lloyd George,’ in Churchill, ed., Robert Blake and Wm. Roger Louis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 108. 39. Kenneth O.  Morgan, ‘Lloyd George and Germany,’ The Historical Journal 39, no. 3 (1996), 765. 40. Grigg, ‘Churchill and Lloyd George’, 108. 41. Richard Toye, Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness (London: Pan, 2007), 353–69. 42. South Wales Echo, 8 May 1940. 43. Ibid, 10 May 1940. 44. Ibid, 18 June 1940. 45. The Welsh Nationalist, May 1940. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Ivor Wynne Jones, Hitler’s Celtic Echo (Llandudno: Ivor Wynne Jones, 2006), 18–20. The accusation that Welsh Nationalists were sympathetic to Fascism was refuted by Richard Wyn Jones who claimed that ‘There was and is nothing Fascist about the ideas and standpoints of the party and its leadership’. Richard Wyn Jones, The Fascist Party in Wales? Plaid

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Cymru, Welsh Nationalism and the Accusation of Fascism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014), 73. 49. Martin Johnes, Wales since 1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 28. 50. South Wales Evening Post, 11 May 1940. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid, 15 July 1940. 53. Ibid, 5 June 1940. 54. Pontypridd Observer, 11 May 1940. 55. Ibid, 18 May 1940. 56. Rhondda Fach Gazette, 31 Aug. 1940. 57. Western Mail, 12 Apr. 1941. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid, 14 Apr. 1941. 60. South Wales Evening Post, 12 Apr. 1941. 61. Ibid. 62. Welsh Gazette, 17 April 1941. 63. Johnes, Wales since 1939, 29. 64. J.  Graham Jones, ‘Early campaigns to secure a Secretary of State for Wales, 1890–1939,’ Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1988), 170. 65. Ibid, pp. 172–74. 66. Hansard, vol. 390, cc 845–6, 10 June 1943. 67. Ibid, vol. 390, cc.1928–9, 6 July 1943. 68. Western Mail, 11 June 1943. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid, 26 June 1943. 71. Ibid, 8 July 1943. 72. Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 235. 73. Western Mail, 10 July 1943. 74. Ibid, 26 June 1943. 75. Ibid, 14 July 1943. 76. Ibid, 18 October 1944. 77. Welsh Nationalist, October 1944. 78. Jones, The Fascist Party in Wales?, 14. 79. Welsh Nationalist, November 1944. 80. South Wales Evening Post, 11 June 1943. 81. Ibid, 7 July 1943. 82. Ibid, 19 July 1943. 83. Pontypridd Observer, 21 Oct. 1944.

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84. Welsh Gazette, 19 Aug. 1943. 85. Kenneth. O. Morgan, ‘The British Identity, 1851–2008,’ British Scholar 1, no. 1 (2008), 11. 86. Kenneth. O.  Morgan, ‘Leaders and Led in the Labour Movement,’ Llafur: The Journal of the Society for the Study of Welsh Labour History 6, no. 3 (1994), 112. 87. Keith Gildart, ‘Coal Strikes on the Home Front: Miner’s Militancy and Socialist Politics in the Second World War,’ Twentieth Century British History 20, no. 2 (2009), 134–35. 88. Western Mail, 8 March 1944. 89. Ibid, 11 March 1944. 90. Welsh Nationalist, July 1943. 91. Ibid, April 1944. 92. South Wales Evening Post, 8 Mar. 1944. 93. Pontypridd Observer, 11 Mar. 1944. 94. Rhondda Fach Gazette, 11 Mar. 1944. 95. Hansard, vol. 409, col. 1377–1380, 28 March 1945. 96. Western Mail, 27 Mar. 1945. 97. Ibid, 30 March 1945. 98. South Wales Echo, 27 Mar. 1945. 99. Ibid. 100. Ibid. 101. Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation, 270. 102. South Wales Evening Post, 27 Mar. 1945. 103. Glamorgan Times, 31 Mar. 1945. 104. Welsh Gazette, 5 April 1945. 105. Cambrian News, 30 Mar. 1945. 106. Western Mail, 27 July 1945. 107. Ibid, 9 May 1945. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid, 14 May 1945. 110. Ibid, 28 May 1945. 111. Ibid, 31 May 1945. 112. Ibid, 4 June 1945. 113. Ibid, 3 July 1945. 114. Ibid, 4 July 1945. 115. Ibid, 27 July 1945. 116. South Wales Echo, 29 May 1945. 117. Welsh Nationalist, May 1945. 118. Ibid. 119. Ibid, June 1945. 120. Ibid, Aug.–Sept. 1945.

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121. South Wales Evening Post, 5 July 1945. 122. Ibid, 27 July 1945. 123. Pontypridd Observer, 30 June 1945. 124. Rhondda Fach Gazette, 30 June 1945. 125. Welsh Gazette, 24 May 1945. 126. Ibid, 31 May 1945. 127. Ibid, 28 June 1945. 128. Ibid. 129. Ibid, 2 Aug. 1945. 130. Ibid.

References Contemporary Newspapers

and

Periodicals

The Cambrian News The Glamorgan County Times The Herald of Wales, etc. The South Wales Echo & Evening Express The South Wales Evening Post The Pontypridd Observer The Rhodda Fach Gazette/ Leader The Welsh Gazette The Welsh Nationalist The Western Mail

Book and Journal Articles Addison, Paul. Churchill: the Unexpected Hero. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Berry, William Ewart. British Newspapers and Their Controllers. London: Cassell, 1947. Davies, D. Rhys. ‘Let Him Beware, We Have Our Eyes on Him.’ In Newspaper Society 125 Years of Progress, edited by H.R. Pratt Boorman, 100–08. Maidstone: Kent Messenger, 1961. Davies, John. Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1981. Davies, John. The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008.

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Gildart, Keith. ‘Coal Strikes on the Home Front: Miner’s Militancy and Socialist Politics in the Second World War.’ Twentieth Century British History 20, no. 2 (2009): 121–51. Grigg, John. ‘Churchill and Lloyd George.’ In Churchill, edited by Robert Blake and Wm. Roger Louis, 97–112. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Hansard, vol. 390, cc 845–6, 10 June 1943. Hansard, vol. 409, col. 1377–1380, 28 March 1945. Johnes, Martin. Wales since 1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012. Jones, Aled Gruffydd. Press politics and Society: A History of Journalism in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993. Jones, Ivor Wynne. Hitler’s Celtic Echo. Llandudno: Ivor Wynne Jones, 2006. Jones, J.  Graham. ‘Early campaigns to secure a Secretary of State for Wales, 1890–1939.’ Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1988): 153–75. Jones, Richard Wyn. The Fascist Party in Wales? Plaid Cymru, Welsh Nationalism and the Accusation of Fascism. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014. Morgan, Kenneth O. ‘D.A. Thomas: The Industrialist as Politician.’ Glamorgan Historian 3 (1966): 33–51. Morgan, Kenneth O. ‘Leaders and Led in the Labour Movement.’ Llafur: The Journal of the Society for the Study of Welsh Labour History 6, no. 3 (1994): 109–19. Morgan, Kenneth O. ‘Lloyd George and Germany.’ The Historical Journal 39, no. 3 (1996): 755–66. Morgan, Kenneth O. Rebirth of a Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Morgan, Kenneth O. ‘The British Identity, 1851–2008.’ British Scholar 1, no. 1 (2008): 4–20. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1945. O’Brien, Anthony. ‘Churchill and the Tonypandy Riots.’ Welsh History Review 17, no. 1 (1994): 67–99. Rose, Sonya O., Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Thomas, Sandra. ‘The ‘Cambrian’.’ Gower 55 (2004): 50–58. Toye, Richard. Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness. London: Pan, 2007.

CHAPTER 5

Birmingham

During the Second World War, Birmingham was the second most populated city in England after London, and in 1939 the population was 995,039.1 It was called ‘Chamberlains’ city’: the important Liberal Unionist politician Joseph Chamberlain and his son and Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain represented the constituency of Birmingham West (Joseph: 1885–1914, Austen: 1914–37) and the other son and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain represented Birmingham Edgbaston (1929–40). As the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Joseph Chamberlain radically changed its urban environment from 1873 to 1876: gas and water was municipalized, and a large part of central Birmingham was cleared and rebuilt.2 Thanks to his radical transformation, Birmingham was bestowed the status of city in 1889 and ‘Greater Birmingham’ was established by the merger of several municipalities, which allowed Birmingham to refer itself as ‘the second city in the Empire’.3 The memory of Joseph Chamberlain undeniably influenced the way people voted in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, and Aston Manor, Worcestershire East, Warwickshire Tamworth, and Staffordshire Handsworth, together with Birmingham constituencies, were called ‘Chamberlain’s Duchy’.4 According to Roger Ward, every progressive scheme in the city was somewhat associated with Chamberlain by Birmingham people,5 and ‘[m]ore than ever in these final years of his life, Chamberlain and Birmingham became, in the eyes of the public, © The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7_5

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synonymous’.6 Churchill described Joseph Chamberlain in the 1930s in The Great Contemporaries thus: we have Chamberlain the Radical Mayor—far worse than any naughty Socialist of to-day […] the citizens of Birmingham saw only their chief. And when he died he transmitted his power in hereditary succession to sons who have held it to this day in his name.7

David Cannadine explained that ‘The Chamberlains’ tradition’ experienced a decline following the death of Joseph. However, due to the centenary of his birth and the publication of his biography in the 1930s, the tradition recovered.8 Austen Chamberlain acknowledged that his father’s memory still remained strong in Birmingham in 1935, stating in a letter to his sister, ‘It is wonderful how Father’s memory is still cherished—I saw your dad. I carried a torch in the procession. We’ve always voted Chamberlain. My dad is thought everything of Joe & so on & so on in every variety of expression [sic].’9 However, in contrast to Austen’s account that his father’s tradition was still current in the 1930s, David Rolf was sceptical as to whether Chamberlain’s myth really mattered in Birmingham in the period. He pointed out that the decline of Chamberlain’s influence in Birmingham was derived from the change in local inhabitants by the influx of labourers from the North East and North West of England and South Wales who had no idea of the Chamberlain family, and from the fact that younger voters did not have direct memory of Joseph Chamberlain by the time of the Second World War.10 The gradual decline of the tradition started before the death of Neville Chamberlain, and Ward argued that, ultimately, it was Neville’s death and the bombs dropped on the city that erased the Chamberlains’ tradition. According to Ward, ‘“Birmingham exceptionalism” had died with Neville and the Chamberlains persisted only as a myth, which cast Joe in the role of the founder of modern Birmingham but found little room for either of his two sons’.11 Whether the tradition mattered in Birmingham or not, when Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in 1937 and his policy of appeasement was widely popular, many Birmingham papers applauded him, describing him as Birmingham’s ‘own son’ and his achievement as ‘our own son’s triumph in the role of peacemaker’. Cannadine argued that even after appeasement failed and the war had started, the Birmingham press continued to support Chamberlain following his replacement by Churchill as prime minister and until his death in 1940.12

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Newspapers in Birmingham, though they were rich in  local opinions and filled with unique criticism of politics in London, have rarely attracted historians’ attention. In Twilight of Truth, Richard Cockett explored Neville Chamberlain’s manipulation of the press in the years before the outbreak of the Second World War and how he managed to mould public opinion to favour appeasement, using national papers and some local papers. However, surprisingly, Cockett did not discuss any of Birmingham’s papers even though some of them were known to have close relations with the Chamberlains.13 The History of Birmingham by Briggs, Sutcliffe, and Smith briefly mentions some Birmingham papers but only as background information.14 This chapter, though the focus is on how the Birmingham papers portrayed Churchill, will examine how the Chamberlain tradition influenced the depictions of the great war leader. It will analyse how relations between politicians/political parties and newspapers in Birmingham were reflected in newspaper contents; whether there were any common features found in Birmingham newspapers (despite their different political views); and whether the death of Neville Chamberlain and the end of the Chamberlain tradition caused Labour’s landslide victory in Birmingham in the 1945 general election in the eyes of the Birmingham press. To this end, it will examine the time Churchill became the First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1939; when he became prime minister in May 1940; when Neville Chamberlain and Churchill visited Birmingham in February 1940 and in September 1941, respectively; when Chamberlain died in November 1940; and the period between the end of the war in Europe in May 1945 and Churchill’s defeat in the general election in July 1945.

Newspapers in Birmingham According to the Newspaper Press Directory 1945, there were ten newspapers that were published in Birmingham in 1945, and these represented a variety of political viewpoints including Unionist, Liberal, Independent, and Labour.15 Three Unionist papers, the Birmingham Post, the Birmingham Mail, and the Birmingham Weekly Post, were all owned by Birmingham Post and Mail, Ltd. The Birmingham Post was established in 1857 and initially supported the Liberals, but when Joseph split from the Liberals over Home Rule for Ireland in 1886, the paper also turned to Unionism. Henceforth it was Chamberlainite, Unionist, and protectionist,16 and it was the most

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supportive paper of Neville Chamberlain during the Second World War. Chamberlain often met Edgar W. Record, the editor of the Birmingham Post from 1933 to 1943, and once mentioned in a letter to his sister on 25 August 1935 that he told Record ‘what line to take’.17 Chamberlain sometimes dined with him and asked him what he thought of public opinion.18 Letters from Record to Chamberlain archived at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham, indicate that he appreciated his relationship with Chamberlain, stating in a letter to Chamberlain on 25 April 1933 that: Ever since I became associated with the Post, you have helped me in my work far more than you can know. Information often is more stimulating than facts. It may proceed, as the classical example indicates, from the hem of a garment. In my new position I shall greatly value both your guidance & your criticism; I shall know that, from you, even criticism is well-intentioned.19

In the early period of his editorship, the correspondence between Record and Chamberlain was amicable. Nevertheless, when the Birmingham Post commented on Chamberlain’s foreign policy, which Chamberlain believed ‘unfriendly’, he complained to Record. Defending the policy of the Birmingham Post, Record claimed that: My recollection of the comment is that it was concerned only with a point on which you made “one positive statement” […] & that far from being in a vein of unfriendly criticism it was a suggest of a way by which you may consolidate & increase the large volume of goodwill that is yours to command in the country generally.20

While Record paid much respect to Chamberlain, the Birmingham Post expressed their opinions relatively freely, carefully avoiding offence to Chamberlain. Record was the only editor in Birmingham in the 1930s whose letters to Chamberlain can be found in the papers of Neville Chamberlain at the Library. The fact that his letters were archived might show how much importance Chamberlain placed on the newspaper. A draft of a telegraph by Anne Chamberlain, Neville’s wife, which reported the death of Neville Chamberlain, was left in the Library and was only addressed to The Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Birmingham Post. This telegraph might show how important the Birmingham Post was for

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the Chamberlain family, having been grouped with two of the most influential national quality newspapers.21 Record died in 1943 and L. P. Hadley succeeded him; however, Hadley died in 1944 and from 1945 T. W. Hutton took on the role. The proprietor of the Birmingham Post during the Second World War was, initially, Sir Charles Hyde, who was succeeded by Lord Iliffe in 1943 on his death.22 Birmingham Gazette Ltd. owned one Liberal paper, the Birmingham Gazette, and two independent papers, the Birmingham Dispatch and the Sunday Mercury. The Birmingham Gazette was established in 1741 by Thomas Aris. Since the 1860s, it was supported by local Conservatives, and from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century it was Conservative Unionist.23 The newspaper was once owned by Lord Northcliffe but then acquired by the Westminster Press Group.24 According to Briggs the Birmingham Gazette ‘appealed to the moderate elements in Birmingham’ and ‘was always disliked by extremists’.25 The Birmingham Gazette Ltd. was stronger than the Birmingham Post and Mail, Ltd. in circulation and influence, and sympathetic to the Liberals. According to Sutcliffe and Smith, the Birmingham Gazette became a Liberal organ in the twentieth century.26 The Town Crier, established by W.  J. Chamberlain (1884–1945) in 1919, was the only Labour-supporting paper published in Birmingham during the Second World War. W. J. Chamberlain was a member of the No-Conscription Fellowship during the First World War and was imprisoned under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) in 1916 for the publication of the leaflet, ‘Repeal the Act’.27 He was a Quaker pacifist who identified the Labour movement as a religious faith.28 Although the Town Crier was not sponsored by the Birmingham Labour Party nor the Birmingham Trade Council, the two organizations supported its foundation and the paper acted as their official organ.29 According to Hayman, the paper was originally aimed at ‘members of local Labour organisations, rather than at a mass, non-party readership’.30 Chamberlain acted as the editor with a proclaimed pacifist and anti-Communist stance. In 1925, he declared the paper’s policy: The Town Crier is the official organ of the Birmingham Labour and Trade Union Movement in the sense of the Birmingham Borough Labour Party and the Birmingham Trade Council. […] The Town Crier is utterly opposed to the Communist point of view and for that reason does not devote space to its advocacy except in letter columns.31

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When the first Labour government took power in Westminster in 1924, Chamberlain turned to more mainstream views and distanced the paper from the Independent Labour Party. He resigned as editor in 1931 and Harold King, the advertising manager of the paper, became his successor. From the beginning, the paper experienced financial problems and changed ownership several times. In June 1938 King sold the paper to Frank Pakenham, a Labour politician and later 7th Earl of Longford and 1st Baron Pakenham, which saved the paper from extinction. A new editor, Philip Toynbee, who was a young communist, was not welcomed by readers and Pakenham failed to revitalize the paper. In order to cut financial losses, Pakenham sold the paper back to King in January 1939 and King again became the editor. When the Second World War began, the paper again experienced financial problems and King sold the copyright of the paper to the Blackfriars Press in the summer of 1940. Jim Simmons, the former Labour MP for Erdington and secretary of the Borough Labour Party, was chosen as the new editor and under his editorship the paper experienced financial stability, a transformation of outlook and content, and a rise in circulation. Simmons followed Chamberlain’s anti-­ Communist policy and successfully revitalized the paper until he resigned as editor in 1945, when he was elected as Labour MP for West Birmingham in the 1945 general election.32 During the war, the paper was initially owned by the Blackfriars Press, the printing firm of the Independent Labour Party, but when the circulation doubled from 300 to 600 due to the transformation made by Simmons, the advisory editorial board took over the copyright and The Town Crier Publishing Society was founded.33

Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty Unionist papers, the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Mail, both anticipated the inclusion of Churchill in the war cabinet on 2 September 1939, and reported the news of his return to the Admiralty on 4 September. The Birmingham Post described the general mood that welcomed Churchill’s new position but gave neither positive nor negative opinions, while the Birmingham Mail was positive about his ‘inspiring influence with the vision needed for such a post’.34 Both papers acknowledged his career as a politician who had ‘previously held most of the great offices of State’,35 and his experience in the last war, stating that ‘it would be hard to find a stranger repetition of political history than that which finds Mr.

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Churchill back in the same room, seated at the same desk, as that which he occupied at this momentous hour a quarter of a century ago’.36 The Birmingham Gazette was very supportive of Churchill and welcomed his return to the Admiralty. The Liberal-supporting paper, as with Unionist papers, placed importance on Churchill’s experience in politics and in the First World War, stating that ‘Mr. Churchill’s appointment will considerably strengthen the Cabinet. […] Mr. Churchill, who is in his 65th year, has held more ministerial posts than any living British statesman.’37 Together with Lloyd George, who was prime minister during the First World War, Churchill—who was a member of the Liberal Party at that time—was used in order to make people think of the last war and Britain’s victory, as well as to hint at the seriousness of the situation and that people should expect a long war ahead. By associating Churchill and Lloyd George, the Birmingham Gazette might have been attempting to imply the enhancement of Liberal influence to the war cabinet. The paper contrasted the styles of Chamberlain and Churchill, describing Chamberlain as straightforward and realistic and Churchill as inspiring and romantic: So far Mr. Chamberlain has had nothing but a plain and largely negative tale to tell […] and he has told it in a straightforward way which was as admirable for its purpose as Mr. Churchill’s telling of the much more romantic story of naval exploits. But some stoking up will be desirable, as the situation develops, in order that the Prime Minister may not only be but seem to be the leader of the country in war.38

The paper did not claim clearly but insinuated that the wartime leader should inspire people and that quality was held by Churchill rather than by Chamberlain. The Sunday Mercury was optimistic about war on 1 January 1939, as shown in the headline, ‘ENTER—A YEAR OF BRIGHTER HOPE— More Months of Uncertainty—But War Unlikely’, and supported the view of Chamberlain that Germany could be coerced financially;39 but from April 1939 onwards the paper changed its view on dictators completely. At the same time it also changed its portrayal of Churchill; when the war approached it wrote that ‘Mr. Churchill has proved his greatness in many directions. He would be worth innumerable battalions if only he could be appointed to restore this psychological initiative of self-­ confidence.’40 It believed that Churchill was the great spokesman for his country and provided inspiration for the people. The paper’s reporting

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emphasized the welcoming mood at the Admiralty on his appointment there, mentioning that ‘the psychological effect of that appointment will put a thrill through the ranks of the senior service’,41 who were ‘reacting in spirited fashion to his leadership’.42 Liberal and independent papers tended to compare Chamberlain and Churchill, and Churchill represented hope in the war cabinet. The Town Crier was critical of Conservative politicians, and even in early 1939 it claimed that ‘Chamberlain must go and Birmingham must see him off’. The Labour-supporting paper claimed that Chamberlain’s foreign policy was treacherous, and that he forced the country to face a crisis with the Nazis.43 It was consistently against war as it held a sense of camaraderie with German workers. When war was declared in September 1939 and Churchill became the First Lord of the Admiralty, the paper did not comment on his inclusion in the war cabinet. Nevertheless, after his return to the Admiralty, Churchill’s name often appeared within the phrase ‘the Chamberlain-Churchill Gang’ and he was considered as an ally of Chamberlain.44 It claimed that Churchill was ‘roped into the Admiralty, mainly in order to use the exploits and gallantry of the Senior Service to blind the public to the strategic and administrative failures of the Chamberlain clique’.45 The portrayal of Churchill until he became prime minister was consistently negative, and the paper had little respect for his oratory: Since Winston Churchill was taken into the Government he seems to have been given, or to have taken on himself, the job of “talking back” at the Nazi tub-thumpers. I wish he hadn’t. […] I can’t help deploring the fact that this swashbuckler is regarded abroad as the voice of the British people. Every time I hear him speak on the war I squirm. […] The net result of Churchill’s efforts so far is to draw unanimous protests from the neutral countries. […] Churchill has revived the “Hun”. […] And I wish to goodness Churchill would cut out his repeated challenges to the Nazis to “come on”; it makes the situation akin to the antics of two street urchins, each afraid of the other, standing at a distance and challenging each other to begin a scrap.46

The paper did not hide its strong animosity towards Churchill, declaring that ‘It will be gathered from what I have written that I don’t like Winston Churchill. I’m sorry, but it is because I have a vivid memory of his past attitude towards the workers.’47 The Town Crier aimed at supporting the

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Labour Party and until the coalition government was formed the paper showed strong hostility towards Conservative politicians including Churchill.

Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940 Except for the Town Crier, Birmingham newspapers showed warm feelings for Chamberlain over the change of premiers in May 1940. Before the crisis in Norway, Chamberlain managed to receive majority support from the public: Gallup polls show that until March 1940 more than half the population supported him: asking people who they preferred, Chamberlain or Churchill as the leader of Britain in December 1939, 52 per cent answered Chamberlain and 30 per cent chose Churchill. Chamberlain, however, lost public support after the fiasco. His approval ratings dropped sharply and in May 1940 only 33 per cent of people were satisfied with him as prime minister.48 Though Labour supporters preferred Churchill to Chamberlain, Chamberlain was still popular in his party. Moreover, Churchill was not the first choice among people to replace Chamberlain. A Gallup poll in March 1940 shows that people considered Eden more appropriate as a prime minister after Chamberlain,49 and public support for Churchill did not increase following the formation of his cabinet in May 1940. He became prime minister not because people chose him but because many politicians, regardless of political party, were ready to serve him.50 According to Calder, up to July 1940 Conservative backbenchers did not cheer Churchill’s speeches and received them with sullenness, until a patriotic journalist warned Chamberlain and Chamberlain took action.51 Under such circumstances, Unionist papers in Birmingham still showed a sense of loyalty to Chamberlain by criticizing the Labour Party’s animosity towards him. The Birmingham Post was consistently supportive of Chamberlain, and before his resignation it blamed the Labour politicians who shamefully singled out Chamberlain for criticism, claiming that many Labour politicians supported the Munich Agreement so they too were responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War. The Birmingham Post called Conservative members who voted against Chamberlain at the vote of confidence as ‘Unionist “non-jurors”’ but admitted that a reconstruction of the cabinet was inevitable. Nevertheless, the paper on 10 May still supported the cabinet led by Chamberlain, and hoped that ‘many good Government supporters and some Labour voters’ would take the

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view that ‘Mr. Chamberlain should be given another opportunity’.52 When Churchill’s succession to the premiership was announced, the paper regretted that Chamberlain had to leave because of Labour politicians’ unfair opposition to him. It believed that some of the opposition came from personal hostility: But obviously the House of Commons debate, nominally on the Norway campaign, which made either drastic reconstruction or a totally new Ministry necessary, merely brought to a head a mass of opposition to Mr. Chamberlain—some of it purely personal, some of it based on the fact that he strove hard for peace before he went to war—which had been simmering for a long while.53

The paper was satisfied with Churchill’s new cabinet as Chamberlain remained a member as well as the leader of the Conservative Party, and it praised Chamberlain’s sense of responsibility to work for his country even under Churchill, whom he had long detested. The Unionist papers held the view that the fall of Chamberlain was caused merely by the Labour Party’s refusal to work under Chamberlain, and avoided accusing him of failures in the conduct of the war. The Birmingham Gazette welcomed Churchill’s premiership positively. When he became the chairman of the Cabinet Committee of the Service Ministers in April 1940, it favourably reported his gaining of power and expected that his new status would ‘probably save the Government from a serious revolt in its own ranks’.54 The paper was balanced in the depictions of the two prime ministers. It was supportive of both Chamberlain and Churchill, but it portrayed them very differently. Chamberlain was deemed to be the peacetime leader whose moral superiority had been respected, while Churchill was depicted as a war leader, whose bulldoggish belligerence was deemed appropriate and necessary in the conduct of the war. When Labour refused to join the coalition government and a change of prime minister was inevitable in May 1940, the Birmingham Gazette predicted that the King would ask Lord Halifax to form a new government but that, if Halifax refused, Churchill would be the next and most likely option.55 When Churchill’s rise to the premiership was announced, the paper welcomed it as well as the inclusion of Chamberlain in the war cabinet.56 It repeatedly emphasized the friendly relationship between Chamberlain and Churchill after the changes in their positions.

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The Labour-supporting paper, the Town Crier, exhibited a unique transition in opinions about Churchill in 1940. When Churchill rose to the premiership and Labour politicians joined the coalition government, the paper suddenly changed its negative tone concerning Churchill to a positive and supportive one. It declared shamelessly that Churchill was the right and only national leader who could cross party lines: ‘He is beyond question the greatest orator of our time, and his perorations will go down in history as the most inspiring utterances given to the nation in its hour of trial.’57 The evaluation of Churchill changed completely and the editorials in the paper claimed that it supported him because he turned to appreciate the Labour Party during the war: I am no admirer of the pre-war Churchill; as my readers know, I have in the past not hesitated to express myself frankly about the man whose contempt for Socialists was obvious from his speeches and actions. But this war has changed Churchill as it has changed a great many others—myself included! […] I can see no man better fitted than Churchill to lead the nation and rally the forces of freedom to our side.58

The paper maintained its support for Churchill in July 1940 and claimed that ‘the nation can have no more efficient or appropriate leader than Mr. Winston Churchill—the only front-rank statesman who can be said to coordinate the confidence of men and women of every phase of political and moral faith’.59 Until October 1940, the Town Crier remained supportive of Churchill and any criticism was aimed at Chamberlain and his supporters, whose inclusion in the war cabinet was deeply resented by the paper.60 Nevertheless, the positive portrait of Churchill only continued for a few months; the paper reversed its position on Churchill when Chamberlain retired from the leadership of the Conservatives and Churchill succeeded him. The animosity towards the Conservative Party influenced the portrayal of Churchill who was now the leader of the Conservatives as well as of the country.

Prime Ministers’ Visits to Birmingham Chamberlain and Churchill visited Birmingham during their premiership, and both were warmly welcomed. Chamberlain visited on 24 February 1940, and Churchill on 26 September 1941, shortly after the Midlands were heavily bombed during Luftwaffe raids in this heavily industrialized

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region. While Chamberlain gave a speech at Birmingham Town Hall, Churchill’s visit was brief and he did not give a speech in the city. Chamberlain’s popularity as reported in Unionist newspapers was tremendous, and the Birmingham Post recorded on 26 February 1940 that: The Prime Minister on Saturday once again chose Birmingham, his home town, as the platform for a declaration of national policy and purpose that found eager listeners far beyond the shores of these islands. […] The Prime Minister’s voice softened in sympathy as he recalled the price that has to be paid in the loss of many brave lives given for their country. The vastness of the effort which the country is making on the home front received its due share of appreciation, and Mr. Chamberlain did not forget the spirit in which the women of the country are dedicating themselves to the winning of the war.61

The Birmingham Mail also welcomed Birmingham’s premier, citing the lord mayor’s speech which applauded Chamberlain and Birmingham: ‘The part Mr. Chamberlain had taken in the fight for freedom had been an inspiration to them all, and Birmingham and the Midlands had played a great part in the nation’s struggle and would play a still greater part.’62 Unionist newspapers depicted Birmingham’s prime minister as the leader who stood firm in international politics as well as one who had sympathy with ordinary people in domestic politics. The two papers cited his speech at the Town Hall and wrote favourable comments on his policy. Chamberlain himself was very satisfied with his visit to Birmingham. Shortly after the visit he talked with Record in London and was pleased to hear about the enthusiastic support given to him by Birmingham people. In a letter to his sister, he happily reported that: I met Record, the Editor of the Post, in London on Thursday and I have never known him so enthusiastic. Evidently he had talked to a good many people who had been there and I gathered they had all said it was the best speech I had ever made in Birmingham.63

Even the Town Crier, which usually took a negative line about Chamberlain, wrote a positive comment about his visit. Headlined ‘AS I SEE IT—CHAMBERLAIN LEAVES THE DOOR UNLOCKED’, ‘Observer’ described ‘the general odour of something like sanctity pervading the atmosphere’ at the Town Hall meeting and supported Chamberlain’s peace aims:

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To be perfectly frank, when I see the Prime Minister on a public platform, I find it hard to convince myself that he is the fiend incarnate which some of our friends would have us believe. […] Neville Chamberlain, aided to an extent by a natural benevolence of demeanour, possesses the very statesmanlike faculty being able to inspire a sense of humble omnipotence, particularly when addressing his “fellow citizens”, who have “made me what I am”, so to speak. […] No one knows better than Neville what Birmingham audiences like, and, being a keen psychologist, he lets them have it in full, but not overflowing, measure. […] Altogether, if we can forget for a moment that it was Neville Chamberlain talking, and regard his words as those of the accepted leader of the nation, there was a considerable element of hope to be read into that part of the speech which dealt with the larger issues of this conflict.64

The Town Crier usually attacked everything Chamberlain said or did. However, his visit to Birmingham and the declaration of his policy left a somewhat positive image of himself on the Labour-supporting paper. His ardent hope for peace might have matched the paper’s pacifist policy, and this direct encounter between the prime minister and ‘Observer’ may therefore have changed the paper’s general line about him, albeit only on this one occasion. The coverage of Churchill’s visit was relatively limited, compared with the space devoted to Chamberlain’s visit. Unionist and Liberal papers reported Birmingham’s cordial reception, while the Labour-supporting paper ignored the event completely. Those papers which reported his visit told the story of Miss Duncan, who presented the prime minister with a gift of cigars, in which she placed her message ‘To our very own Winston, from one of Birmingham’s war work girls. Your example inspired my world’s production effort’, and kissed his hand, saying ‘God bless you’. In addition, the Birmingham Mail reported people’s excitement: working-­ class people asking, ‘Is that our Churchill?’ and receiving the reply, ‘That’s ’im [sic] all right, yes, that’s Churchill—our Churchill!’65 The Birmingham Gazette also covered his visit, stating that ‘Winston made all smile. […] Mr. Churchill was in his happiest mood and the crowds, catching his infectious good humour, smiled, too, during his visit to Birmingham, yesterday’.66 Overall, the visit was positively reported in the Birmingham press, with the exception of the Town Crier, and most papers portrayed Churchill as the national leader who was supported by ordinary people; however, these reports were descriptive rather than interpretative, quoting people’s words and avoiding editorial opinions.

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While most of the Birmingham press cited remarks of those concerned with local politics and thus relatively well-to-do people over Chamberlain’s visit, for Churchill, more space was devoted to the opinions of the common man. According to Addison, those who supported Churchill differed from Chamberlain’s supporters: Chamberlain was popular among the elderly and women, who were relatively well off, whereas Churchill’s supporters were younger, lower class, and mainly male.67 The differences in reporting the visits of the two prime ministers might have reflected the section of the electorate to whom each leader appealed. Chamberlain’s visit was in early 1940 and Churchill’s was in mid-1941 so it is difficult to compare their popularity from the coverage, as the shortage of paper was severe in the darkest years of the war. However, apparently every paper paid more attention and devoted more space to Chamberlain’s speech in Birmingham Town Hall than to Churchill’s visit. Chamberlain was, whether they liked him or not, Birmingham’s prime minister. Negatively or positively, he was described as the leader from Birmingham, who first reached the summit of national politics from the provincial city with local pride.

The Death of Neville Chamberlain In October 1940, Chamberlain retired from the war cabinet and leadership of the Conservative Party due to severe illness. He died on 9 November and many Birmingham papers mourned his death. Unionist papers commemorated his death and praised his achievements as a politician of high moral virtue. From 11 November 1940 until later that month, the Birmingham Post repeatedly published articles on his death and achievements. The editorial on 11 November was filled with emotional comments on his death: In the passing of Mr. Neville Chamberlain the people of Great Britain, of the British Empire, and, indeed, of every region of the earth truly civilised, will see the passing of a politician who also, and primarily, was a statesman of first-rate administrative capacity, inspired by high ideals. […] We do not suppose that Mr. Chamberlain himself ever found it necessary, or possible, to regret the Munich or Berchtesgaden episodes which brought upon him so much obloquy. […] Mr. Chamberlain’s prompt and energetic action to begin to strengthen our defences is the best pointer to his assessment of the peril of dealings with Hitler; however high his hopes that peace might be

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preserved he never closed his eyes to the existence of the peril. […] We are the poorer for his death. Leaders of his quality will always be few; the greater the pity, then, that their place in history can never be agreed upon—if even then—until they are gone.

The paper focused on his great moral courage as a peacemaker and on his passion for social reform. Tracing the coverage of Chamberlain’s death, it emphasized how he contributed to improving the life of ordinary people both as lord mayor of Birmingham in the 1910s and as the minister of health in the 1920s.68 Regarding his appeasement policy, the Birmingham Post took a similar line to that taken by revisionists such as historian John Charmley in his work on Chamberlain’s foreign policy:69 if the war had started earlier without much preparation, Britain would have followed a much more bitter path;70 and therefore Chamberlain was right. It praised his high morals as a peacemaker but at the same time evaluated him as a realistic politician who tried to avoid war when Britain was not ready. It claimed that current criticism of Chamberlain came from ‘prejudice born of complete misunderstanding of the man, his character and the motives actuating him’, and the future historian would judge him objectively and he would be placed honourably in history.71 It praised his ‘self-effacement’ to work for his country under Churchill after his resignation from the premiership despite his ill health. Chamberlain’s ‘transparent sincerity and unfailing high-mindedness’72 was consistently praised both in domestic and international politics. Various tributes to Chamberlain were cited in the Birmingham Post, from Churchill and the Archbishop of Canterbury to the National Farmers Union in the UK, as well as from many important people in the Dominions. Through its eulogies, the paper clearly showed its loyalty to Chamberlain and its hope for a fair evaluation of him in the future. The Birmingham Mail, owned by the same company as the Birmingham Post, took a similar line depicting Chamberlain as peacemaker with moral courage; and at the same time marked his death as ‘the end of a chapter in British politics; a political chapter illumined with many great names, and none greater than that of Chamberlain’.73 The Birmingham Mail clearly stated the end of the Chamberlain tradition and regretted there was no Chamberlain to follow after his death, noting the end of the ‘almost hierarchic lustre of this local family of born statesmen and born reformers’.74 The Birmingham Gazette also emphasized the end of the Chamberlain era in Birmingham. It bemoaned the loss of ‘Birmingham’s son’: on 11

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November the paper headlined with ‘Birmingham Mourns Mr. Chamberlain—“End of an era” for the city’. It emphasized the importance of the Chamberlain family in Birmingham and commemorated the end of the tradition: ‘The death of Mr. Chamberlain means the severing of the connection of the Chamberlain family with Birmingham, which they have served so long.’75 Looking back over his life, the paper was uncritical of Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Though it called his foreign policy in the late 1930s ‘a grand failure’, it evaluated his effort to avoid war as sincere: No one could have worked harder for our peace, and although it seemed a failure, it was a grand failure. A man of his ideals and unselfishness was an inspiration, not only to us but to the generations to come, and probably what he has done was as great a work as that of people who had had an easy success.76

It claimed that it was a tragedy that his goodwill was betrayed by the dictator. The paper consistently portrayed Chamberlain as a selfless politician who contributed to his country in both peacetime and wartime: He came to that high position as the third member of the Chamberlain family to carry on a famous political tradition and as the first member of it to reach No. 10 Downing Street, in the midst of the European crisis which is now raging in war. […] His direct, sincere and single-minded pursuit of what has been called the policy of appeasement stands out as the greatest landmark in his career. […] His own unsparing habit of hardworking duty was a model to the whole nation until events and his ill-health made withdrawal necessary. He made way for Mr. Churchill with a dignity and simplicity which must always be remembered with gratitude.77

The paper placed importance on the Chamberlain tradition; it claimed that because of him, the umbrella became as much ‘a symbol of Birmingham in the world’s eyes as his father’s monocle and orchids. His lifetime was the span of the Chamberlain magic.’78 For the Birmingham Gazette it was an undoubted fact that the histories of the Chamberlains and Birmingham were intimately connected. As with the Unionist press, the paper optimistically expected that Chamberlain’s position in history would be evaluated positively by future historians ‘as the man who put peace first’; and it was proud that, in ‘Birmingham’s first Premier, the Midlands produced one of the most remarkable men of the age’.79

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Instead of mourning Chamberlain’s death, the Town Crier criticized Churchill’s succession to the leadership of the Conservative Party. Although the paper had backed Churchill since the inclusion of Labour Party ministers in his war cabinet in May 1940, the tone turned negative again in October 1940 when Chamberlain resigned the Conservative leadership. The paper anticipated that Churchill would not take on the role of Tory leader, as he was a national leader who was never ‘one of the “True Blue” type of Tory’.80 When Churchill did, in fact, become Tory leader, the paper accused him of being a party leader rather than a national leader; it denounced his speech in the House of Commons as ‘anything but inspiring’, and argued that he was trying to impose a burden on every citizen of the UK peremptorily.81 The paper devoted few articles to Chamberlain’s death and repeated claims of party division within the war cabinet. Following Chamberlain’s death, coverage of him in the Birmingham press became less frequent. His name reappeared in 1945 when the war was over and the election campaign commenced. This chapter, therefore, will now move to the time of the general election as it aims to study the influence of Chamberlain in the depictions of Churchill in Birmingham, and to clarify local patriotism which was partly influenced by the memory of Chamberlain.

The End of the Second World War and the General Election When the war was over, the Unionist papers applauded Churchill’s leadership in the war, emphasizing his characteristics that could generate a sense of a united nation: The thoughts and gratitude of the nation go out on this day of all days to Winston Churchill, the man who has led us to victory. It has often been said that the hour finds the man, and never was this aphorism better illustrated than in Britain in 1940 and early 1941, that darkest hour in the nation’s history, when we stood alone. It may be said that he typified the spirit of Britain, but it can also be asserted that he was the spirit of Britain. Nothing could shake his confidence and the blacker the outlook the greater his optimism, the more irrepressible his gaiety, his V sign, and the more jaunty the angle of his cigar. He never made rash promises, but we were never left in doubt that all would be right in the end.82

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As seen in the quotation above, by depicting Churchill as the symbol of Britain the Birmingham Mail emphasized his importance as war leader and his personal contribution to the victory. The notion of Churchill as a national leader was essential to present the Conservatives as a truly national party that was supported by every class, and as the direct successor of the coalition government. Now that the war was over, the attention of the British press moved to the upcoming general election. The Birmingham Unionist press denounced the Labour Party for refusing to work in Churchill’s coalition after victory in Europe, and supported the Conservatives wholeheartedly in the election campaign. They ignored pre-war antagonism between Churchill and the Conservative Party, and propagated a harmonious picture of the party where Churchill, his former political opponents, and other Conservative politicians held the same policies and every member worked amicably under the leadership of Churchill. Nationally, Conservative newspapers portrayed the Conservatives as Churchill’s party with the slogan, ‘Let Him Finish the Job’, featuring Churchill exclusively.83 Birmingham Unionist papers took the same line and believed that Churchill’s personal legacy would lead the Conservatives to victory in the general election. They emphasized that if the Conservatives lost, Churchill would be out of office. They criticized rumours that they believed prevailed among the public: Churchill stood for election only in order to help the Conservatives win and soon after the election he would retire.84 They also refuted the lie they believed socialists to be spreading: that voting for Labour is not voting against Churchill since if Labour were to win Churchill would remain as prime minister.85 Churchill’s manifesto was also praised by the Unionist papers. They explained that his social policy was the fulfilment of the Four-Year Plan set out by the coalition government during the war: Mr. Churchill’s manifesto contains no surprises and few invitations to political controversy. It is a restatement of the Four Year Plan which he broadcast in outline over two years ago as the programme to be followed by the National Government after the war in Europe. […] Mr. Churchill takes as his programme the aims and objects agreed by the National Government.86

Therefore, the Birmingham Mail claimed that the Conservative Party led by Churchill was the heir apparent to the National government, which was supported by people regardless of party affiliations.

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While focusing mainly on reporting Churchill, Birmingham Unionist papers did not forget to mention Chamberlain. Even in May 1945, the Birmingham Post refused to admit the end of the Chamberlain family, claiming that Colonel Terence Maxwell, son-in-law of the late Sir Austen Chamberlain, stood as the National Conservative candidate for Acock’s Green in order that the family tradition should not end.87 The Birmingham Mail displayed mixed feelings about Chamberlain and his supporters: although it was generally uncritical of Churchill, the paper did once show dissatisfaction when the caretaker cabinet was formed. The paper claimed that Churchill chose younger politicians and ignored experienced Chamberlainites: As a matter of fact, Mr. Churchill has left out a good many people one might have expected to see in office for political reasons—people of weight and substance—and has picked his runners, as one observer puts it, “on form.” His eye has lighted on some very likely colts, several of whom hail significantly from Tory Reformers’ stable. […] Mr. Churchill is too good and old a campaigner to have much love for diehardism, as such.88

In the election campaign, Chamberlain and his supporters rarely appeared in the Birmingham Mail since allying with them could lessen support for the Conservatives; however, it certainly felt loyalty to them, just as in times past. When the Conservative Party was defeated in the 1945 general election, the Birmingham Mail refrained from analysing the result; instead, it cited an article by Jim Simmons, the newly elected Labour MP for Birmingham West and the editor of the Town Crier, headlined ‘The Labour Point of View—New M.P. on “Why I Won”’: the voters saw behind Churchill ‘the pigmy figures of those who represent the old order of things’.89 The defeat of the Conservatives and Churchill’s resignation were hot topics in the letters columns until late August 1945, and many readers were sorry to see Churchill leaving office. For example, G. H. Northfield claimed that Labour’s victory was ‘the greatest single act of national ingratitude since the beginning of time’; ‘Methodist’ called Churchill ‘the man whom God raised up for us’.90 In Unionist papers, Churchill was consistently portrayed positively in line with orthodox Conservative politicians, who had been political opponents of Churchill before the Second World War. They criticized Labour politicians who

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betrayed the goodwill of the national leader, and tried to use Churchill’s legacy in the election for the sake of their party. The Birmingham Gazette was supportive of Churchill alone and declared its clear opposition to the Conservatives in the election. After the war, the Liberal-supporting paper repeated the speculation that Churchill would be rewarded with a dukedom, suggesting he would be made Duke of London91 and would remain as the national leader rather than a party leader. It criticized the Conservatives who used Churchill as a party icon to increase votes in the general election. The paper believed that using Churchill as a star attraction was a plot by Lord Beaverbrook. Churchill as a party leader was, according to the Birmingham Gazette, against the view held by the Liberals: ‘Churchill’s prodigious services were given not to one party, but the state.’92 The paper declared that Churchill had liberal instincts and his policy was not ‘a Conservative policy at all’.93 The paper’s mistrust of the Conservative Party derived from the time when the Conservatives discarded Lloyd George who formed a coalition government with them during and after the First World War. The paper expected that the Conservative Party would ‘elbow’ Churchill ‘out just as they dispensed with Lloyd George once he had served his turn by winning the Khaki Election for privilege’.94 Whilst applauding Churchill as an ‘absolutely brilliant War Minister’ and ‘a first-class fighting man’, the paper denounced the administration of his colleagues.95 The Birmingham Gazette was consistently sceptical as to why Churchill had to be the leader of the Conservatives since Churchill received a snub from them before the war; the Liberal-­ supporting paper wished him to be ‘free enterprise’ with a Liberal instinct.96 The Birmingham Gazette rarely mentioned the Chamberlains in the general election or Neville Chamberlain as a contributor to the war, since mentioning him never helped the Liberal Party, which the paper supported in the election. When the general election ended in Labour’s landslide victory, the paper argued that the defeat of the Conservatives was due to the impression that they prioritized international over domestic issues. Though the Conservative Party was defeated, the paper still hoped that Churchill would be appointed to ‘a post directing strategy in the Pacific’.97 It anticipated that the leadership of the Tory Party would be granted to Eden, and that Churchill would be national leader again, as well as receiving a dukedom for his services in the war.98

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The Sunday Mercury was also anti-Conservative after the end of the war in Europe. As with the Birmingham Gazette, the paper expressed discomfort with them for using the national leader as a party instrument to increase votes for the party. It stressed the difference between Churchill and the Conservative Party, and claimed that the Conservatives were ‘peeved with Churchill’: Tory speakers at the conference had been shaking the rafters with strident demands for the sweeping away of all forms of control. What a slogan! What a chance! But no. Mr. Churchill stamped on that by declaring that “necessary” controls will have to remain. […] Mr. Churchill is, of course, quite right. The Conservative Party is in for an electoral shock. […] It wouldn’t do, would it, to ask the electors to look backwards at the Conservatives’ record in office; but the great unemployment slump, the great Baldwinian Silence on Germany’s rearming, the falling away of our major industries, the kowtowing to Mussolini, the insults to Russia, Munich and the “peace in our time” paper-waving will take some forgetting. Are the makers of these things to run Britain’s post-war Government?99

Headlined ‘SHOULD CHURCHILL STAND ELECTION BATTLE— Party or Man is voter’s puzzle’, the Sunday Mercury showed its support for Churchill regardless of political parties. It was strongly anti-Tory, criticizing the Conservatives’ treatment of Churchill in the interwar years; it also declared that ‘the evils denounced by Mr. Churchill before he became President of the Conservative Party, still exist. They have endured all through the Party’s long tenure of office. Vast area of Britain’s little land are still owned by half a dozen nobles.’100 Both the Birmingham Gazette and the Sunday Mercury clearly distinguished between Churchill and other Conservative politicians, and tried to use him to help the Liberal Party, by emphasizing his Liberal past and his wilderness years away from the Conservatives in the interwar period. The Town Crier focused on domestic politics rather than the war and international diplomacy. In preparation for the expected general election after the war, the paper posted many negative articles about the Conservative Party: it would be unable to improve the standard of living for ordinary people. When the war in Europe was finally over in May 1945, the paper plainly covered the VE day ceremony and did not mention Churchill’s contribution to his country as the national leader. The Town Crier was determined to denounce Churchill and the Conservatives,

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in order to increase the number of votes for the Labour Party. Churchill was portrayed as being against social reform, calling him ‘that life-long enemy of the hopes, aspiration and wishes of the people’,101 as well as being anti-Russian. The paper reflected the pro-Russian feeling gathered during the Second World War,102 and it supported the view that Britain should be a friend of the Soviet Union—despite the fact that the paper was known to be anti-Communist and that the editor in this period was Jim Simmons, the Labour candidate for Birmingham West in the 1945 general election. The paper claimed that choosing Churchill and the Conservative Party would mean siding with America, which the paper believed would ‘come into a planned world economy on some federal political basis because a war between English-speaking peoples is unthinkable’.103 As with Liberal and Independent papers, it condemned the use of Churchill in Conservative Party propaganda ironically, stating that Churchill was now ‘a hostage of the Conservative Party’ who was cheapened by the Tories.104 The Town Crier claimed that the emphasis placed by the Conservatives on Churchill’s personality meant that there was no one but Churchill who could be relied on in the party.105 When the election ended in Labour’s landslide victory, the paper praised ‘the greatness of this nation has for its foundation the home life of its people’,106 instead of praising the greatness of the war leader seen in Unionist, Liberal, and Independent newspapers. As a Labour-supporting paper, it never claimed that Churchill’s personality contributed to the victory over Germany; instead, the paper praised the people’s power and will for saving the UK.  Analysing the defeat of the Tories, the Town Crier explained that the party relied too much on Churchill’s glamour and that it did not provide positive policies. It also claimed the victory was partly derived from the end of the Chamberlain tradition. After the election, the Town Crier declared that now ‘Chamberlain’s influence’ had ended in Birmingham, people were free to vote ‘on issues and principles rather than personalities’.107 The Labour-supporting newspaper claimed that the end of the Chamberlain tradition meant the liberation of the people. Unionist, Liberal, and Independent papers emphasized the importance of Churchill as the British leader in winning the war, whereas the Labour-­ supporting paper placed more importance on ordinary people’s war effort. Public opinion was also divided: in June 1945 a Gallup poll asked, ‘Some people say that it is necessary to keep Churchill as Prime Minister till the Japanese are beaten. Others say the war will be won anyway. Which do you agree with?’ Forty-six per cent of people answered in favour of keeping

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Churchill, while 49 per cent thought war would be won anyway without him.108 Unfortunately, the poll did not disclose the social background or location of the respondents, thus it is not possible to analyse further the pro-Churchill section of the population. However, the result of the poll showed that approximately half of British people supported the view that Churchill was not indispensable. Except for the Town Crier, most Birmingham papers emphasized the importance of Churchill’s personality for the victory but as the poll shows, this idea was only shared by half of British people. Even the Birmingham Post, a strong advocate for the Conservatives, cited a letter from a reader on 6 August 1945, which declared that it was the people’s victory, not Churchill’s alone: The very fact that Churchill allied himself again to these men, who, not so very long ago he was condemning fiercely, is enough to have shown mistrust in the minds of many electors. I give Churchill credit for untiring effort, but I will not believe that he has fought and won alone. Rather I would say that he set the example for all of us to follow whether it be man or woman, soldier or civilian, so that it was as a team that we triumphed. But thank you, Winston Churchill, just the same; we shall not forget you. God bless the people.109

Over the coverage of the election campaign, the Birmingham newspapers became merely party organs, and seemed not to reflect the public opinion. Unionist papers had to support Churchill’s Conservative Party, and emphasizing Churchill as the party icon as well as the national leader was the policy of the Conservatives nationally. Chamberlain’s name was almost forgotten in the national discourse. However, the Birmingham Unionist press showed some resistance, in not being so negative towards Chamberlain as well as showing some dissatisfaction over Churchill’s choice of ministers in the caretaker cabinet. The Liberal and Independent papers also emphasized Churchill’s contribution and claimed that he was Liberal in nature. The Labour-supporting paper was consistently negative towards Churchill and supported the view that the war was won by the people, not by one politician.

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Conclusion Analysis of the Birmingham press has shown the strong party division and influence over newspapers of each party. Each paper’s opinions were to some extent based on the policy of the party they supported, and when writing against their party their comments were short and inoffensive. Compared with newspapers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, those in Birmingham were more concerned with party politics, and their regional identities were only seen in their support of Neville Chamberlain. Unionist and Liberal papers were mostly supportive of Churchill during the war, and after the war they claimed that Churchill was on their side, in order to use his personal popularity to increase the number of votes for their respective parties. The Labour-supporting paper was mostly negative and critical of Churchill except in the period between May and October 1940, when the paper believed that Churchill was on the Labour Party’s side. It is difficult to discover how the Chamberlain tradition in Birmingham influenced the depictions of Churchill during the Second World War. There is little correspondence between Chamberlain and the Birmingham press in the archives, except for some letters between him and Record, the editor of the Birmingham Post. Although Chamberlain had personal contact with Record in person and by letters, the paper maintained a fair and reasonable stance on his foreign policy before the war without causing Chamberlain offence. The Chamberlain tradition certainly existed in Birmingham, and most papers except the Town Crier were mild in criticizing Chamberlain. However, as far as the Neville Chamberlain papers cited in this chapter show, it cannot be claimed that Chamberlain’s authority determined the tone of the Birmingham newspapers. While this chapter does not suggest that Neville Chamberlain had control over the Birmingham press, the dynasty certainly influenced the political atmosphere in the city. Up to Chamberlain’s death, Churchill was consistently compared with him in the Birmingham newspapers over the nature of their leadership, with Churchill portrayed as the romantic, inspiring war leader and Chamberlain as the realistic, straightforward peacetime leader. The death of Neville Chamberlain marked the end of the Chamberlain tradition in the eyes of many Birmingham papers, and the Labour Party’s landslide victory at the general election was partly explained by the end of an era where Birmingham people were influenced by personalities.

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Notes 1. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945 (London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd., 1945), 97. 2. Roger Ward, City-state and Nation: Birmingham’s Political History c. 1830–1940 (Chichester: Phillimore, 2005), 75–76. 3. David Cannadine, ‘The Bourgeois Experience as Political Culture: The Chamberlains of Birmingham,’ in Enlightenment, Passion, Modernity: Historical Essays in European Thought and Culture, ed. Robert L. Dietle and Mark S. Micale (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 149. 4. A. E. Reekes, ‘Birmingham Exceptionalism, Joseph Chamberlain and the 1906 General Election’ (MA diss., University of Birmingham, 2014), 6. 5. Ward, City-state and Nation, 147. 6. Ibid, 161. 7. Winston Churchill, Great Contemporaries (London: Butterworth, 1937), 44–47. 8. Cannadine, ‘The Bourgeois Experience as Political Culture,’ 160. 9. Robert Self, The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters: The Correspondence of Sir Austen Chamberlain with His Sisters Hilda and Ida 1916–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 493. 10. David Rolf, ‘Birmingham Labour and the Background to the 1945 General Election,’ in Worlds of Labour: Essays in Birmingham Labour History, ed. A.  Wright and R.  Shackleton (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1983), 130–33. 11. Roger Ward, The Chamberlains: Joseph, Austen and Neville 1836–1940 (Stroud: Fonthill Media, 2015), 166. 12. Cannadine, ‘The Bourgeois Experience as Political Culture,’ 158–63. 13. Richard Cockett, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the Manipulation of the Press (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989). 14. Asa Briggs, History of Birmingham, Vol. 2: Borough and City, 1865–1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952); A.  Sutcliffe and R.  Smith, History of Birmingham, vol. 3: Birmingham, 1939–70 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974). 15. A sports paper in Birmingham was excluded. 16. Harold Richard Grant Whates, The Birmingham Post 1857: 1957 A Centenary Retrospect (Birmingham: Birmingham Post & Mail, 1957), 149. 17. Robert Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters vol. 4 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 149. 18. A letter to Ida Chamberlain, Neville Chamberlain’s sister, from Neville Chamberlain on 23 April 1939, Cadbury Research Library (henceforth CRL), NC18/1/1095.

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19. A letter to Chamberlain from Record on 25 April 1933, CRL, NC7/11/26/33. 20. A letter to Chamberlain from Record on 14 July 1937, CRL, NC11/1/773. 21. An undated draft telegraph by Anne Chamberlain, Neville Chamberlain’s wife, CRL, NC13/20/41. 22. Whates, The Birmingham Post, 232–36. 23. Ward, City-state and Nation, 163. 24. Briggs, History of Birmingham, Vol. 2, 322. 25. Asa Briggs, Press and Public in Early Nineteenth Century Birmingham (Oxford: Dugdale Society, 1949), 6. 26. Anthony Sutcliffe and R.  Smith, History of Birmingham, vol. 3: Birmingham, 1939–70 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 325–26. 27. ‘William Joseph Chamberlain,’ The Man Who Said No: Conscription Objectors 1916–1919, accessed 3 February 2018. http://menwhosaidno.org/men/men_files/c/chamberlain_wj.html 28. John Boughton, ‘Working-class Politics in Birmingham and Sheffield, 1918–1931’ (PhD diss., University of Warwick, 1985), 248. 29. Peter Drake, ‘The Town Crier: Birmingham’s Labour Weekly,’ in Worlds of Labour: Essays in Birmingham Labour History, ed. A.  Wright and R. Shackleton (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1983), 106–08. 30. Mark Hayman, ‘The Labour Party and the Monarchy’ (PhD diss., University of Warwick, 1999), 263. 31. Drake, ‘The Town Crier’, 111. 32. Ibid, 112–20. 33. Ibid, 118–19. 34. The Birmingham Mail, 4 Sept. 1939. 35. Ibid, 4 Sept. 1939. 36. The Birmingham Post, 4 Sept. 1939. 37. The Birmingham Gazette, 2 Sept. 1939. 38. Ibid, 30 Sept. 1939. 39. The Sunday Mercury, 1 Jan. 1939. 40. Ibid, 16 Apr. 1939. 41. Ibid, 10 Sep. 1939. 42. Ibid, 24 Sep. 1939. 43. The Town Crier, 31 March 1939. 44. Ibid, 24 Nov. 1939. 45. Ibid, 10 May 1940. 46. Ibid, 2 Feb. 1940. 47. Ibid.

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48. George H. Gallup, The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls Great Britain 1937–1975  vol. 1, 1937–1964 (New York: Random House, 1976), 33. 49. Ibid, 32. 50. Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front 1900–1945 (London: Pimlico, 1993), 327. 51. Calder, The Myth of the Blitz, 92. 52. Birmingham Post, 10 May 1940. 53. Ibid, 11 May 1940. 54. Birmingham Gazette, 8 May 1940. 55. Ibid, 10 May 1940. 56. Ibid, 11 May 1940. 57. Town Crier, 12 July 1940. 58. Ibid, 19 July 1940. 59. Ibid, 26 July 1940. 60. Ibid, 19 July 1940. 61. Birmingham Post, 26 Feb. 1940. 62. Birmingham Mail, 26 Feb. 1940. 63. Self, The Neville Chamberlain, 504. 64. Town Crier, 1 Mar. 1940. 65. Birmingham Mail, 27 Sept. 1941. 66. Birmingham Gazette, 27 Sept. 1941. 67. Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (London: Pimlico, 1975), 80. 68. Birmingham Post, 11 Nov. 1940. 69. John Charmley, ‘Neville Chamberlain and the Consequence of the Churchillian Hegemony,’ in The Origins of the Second World War: An International Perspective, ed. F.  McDonough (London; Continuum, 2011), 168–85. 70. Birmingham Post, 19 Nov. 1940. 71. Ibid, 11 Nov. 1940. 72. Ibid, 13 Nov. 1940. 73. Birmingham Mail, 11 Nov. 1940. 74. Ibid. 75. Birmingham Gazette, 11 Nov. 1940. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Town Crier, 18 Oct. 1940. 81. Ibid, 16 Nov. 1940. 82. Birmingham Mail, 7 May 1945.

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83. Rolf, ‘Birmingham Labour and the Background to the 1945 General Election,’ 145. 84. Birmingham Post, 27 June 1945. 85. Birmingham Mail, 28 June 1945. 86. Ibid, 11 June 1945. 87. Birmingham Post, 19 June 1945. 88. Birmingham Mail, 28 May 1945. 89. Ibid, 26 July 1945. 90. Ibid, 30 July 1945. 91. Birmingham Gazette, 12 May 1945. 92. Ibid, 5 June 1945. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid, 12 June 1945. 95. Ibid, 14 June 1945. 96. Ibid, 4 July 1945. 97. Ibid, 27 July 1945. 98. Ibid, 28 July 1945. 99. Sunday Mercury, 18 Mar. 1945. 100. Ibid, 27 May 1945. 101. Town Crier, 3 Feb. 1940. 102. There was ‘a vague enthusiasm for the Soviet Union’ which grew during the Second World War, partly because the USSR became a part of ‘Grand Alliance’ and the Economist suggested that nationalization gained ‘an almost middle-class respectability’. See: Michael D.  Kandiah, ‘The Conservative Party and the 1945 General Election,’ Contemporary British History 9, no. 1 (1995), 38. 103. Town Crier, 27 Jan. 1945. 104. Ibid, 9 June 1945. 105. Ibid, 16 June 1945. 106. Ibid, 28 July 1945. 107. Ibid, 28 July 1945. 108. Gallup, The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls, 110. 109. Birmingham Post, 6 Aug. 1945.

References Contemporary Newspapers The Birmingham Gazette The Birmingham Mail The Birmingham Post The Sunday Mercury The Town Crier

and

Periodicals

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Manuscript Collections A letter to Ida Chamberlain, Neville Chamberlain’s sister, from Neville Chamberlain on 23 April 1939, Cadbury Research Library (henceforth CRL), NC18/1/1095. A letter to Chamberlain from Record on 25 April 1933, CRL, NC7/11/26/33. A letter to Chamberlain from Record on 14 July 1937, CRL, NC11/1/773. An undated draft telegraph by Anne Chamberlain, Neville Chamberlain’s wife, CRL, NC13/20/41.

Book and Journal Articles Addison, Paul. The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War. London: Pimlico, 1975. Addison, Paul. Churchill on the Home Front 1900–1945. London: Pimlico, 1993. Boughton, John. ‘Working-class Politics in Birmingham and Sheffield, 1918–1931.’ PhD diss., University of Warwick, 1985. Briggs, Asa. Press and Public in Early Nineteenth Century Birmingham. Oxford: Dugdale Society, 1949. Briggs, Asa. History of Birmingham, Vol. 2: Borough and City, 1865–1938. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952. Calder, Angus, The Myth of the Blitz. London: J. Cape, 1991. Cannadine, David. ‘The Bourgeois Experience as Political Culture : The Chamberlains of Birmingham.’ In Enlightenment, Passion, Modernity : Historical Essays in European Thought and Culture, edited by Robert L. Dietle and Mark S. Micale, 148–64. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Charmley, John, ‘Neville Chamberlain and the Consequences of the Churchillian Hegemony.’ In The Origins of the Second World War: An International Perspective, edited by F. McDonough, 168–85. London: Continuum, 2011. Churchill, Winston. Great Contemporaries. London: Butterworth, 1937. Cockett, Richard. Twilight of Truth : Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the Manipulation of the Press. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. Drake, Peter. ‘The Town Crier: Birmingham’s Labour Weekly.’ In Worlds of Labour: Essays in Birmingham Labour History, edited by A.  Wright and R. Shackleton, 103–26. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1983. Gallup, George H. The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls Great Britain 1937–1975 vol. 1 1937–1964. New York: Random House, 1976. Hayman, Mark. ‘The Labour Party and the Monarchy.’ PhD diss., University of Warwick, 1999. Kandiah, Michael D. ‘The Conservative Party and the 1945 General Election.’ Contemporary British History 9, no. 1 (1995): 21–47. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1945.

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Self, Robert. The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters: The Correspondence of Sir Austen Chamberlain with His Sisters Hilda and Ida 1916–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Self, Robert. The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters vol. 4. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Sutcliffe, Anthony and R.  Smith, History of Birmingham, vol. 3: Birmingham, 1939–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Reekes, A.  E. ‘Birmingham Exceptionalism, Joseph Chamberlain and the 1906 General Election.’ MA diss., University of Birmingham, 2014. Rolf, David. ‘Birmingham Labour and the Background to the 1945 General Election.’ In Worlds of Labour: Essays in Birmingham Labour History, edited by A.  Wright and R.  Shackleton, 127–55. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1983. Ward, Roger, City-state and Nation: Birmingham’s Political History c. 1830–1940. Chichester: Phillimore, 2005. Ward, Roger. The Chamberlains: Joseph, Austen and Neville 1836–1940. Stroud: Fonthill Media, 2015. Whates, Harold Richard Grant. The Birmingham Post 1857: 1957 A Centenary Retrospect. Birmingham: Birmingham Post & Mail, 1957.

Websites The Man Who Said No: Conscription Objectors 1916–1919. ‘William Joseph Chamberlain.’ Accessed February 3, 2018. http://menwhosaidno.org/men/ men_files/c/chamberlain_wj.html.

CHAPTER 6

North England

This chapter will study newspapers in Manchester and Leeds, the industrial and commercial centres of Lancashire and Yorkshire. It will consider how the Manchester and Leeds newspapers, which were known nationally, described Churchill and his policies, particularly his attitude towards social improvement after the war, and how Lancashire and Yorkshire identities were reflected in the portrayal of Churchill. It will look at depictions of Churchill in five events: his appointment as the First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1939, his succession to the premiership in May 1940, his visits to Manchester in April 1941 and to Leeds in May 1942, his response to the Beveridge Report and his post-war plan from December 1942 to March 1943,1 and his general election campaign after the war in May to July 1945. The chapter will analyse changes and continuities in portrayals of Churchill in the Manchester and Leeds papers over six years of war, focusing on domestic issues and post-war reconstruction in measuring his popularity, while showing how his attitude towards such issues mattered in the 1945 general election. Manchester has long been the financial, economic, industrial, and transport centre of Lancashire. Since the industrial revolution, it had prospered with the growth in manufacturing, especially that of cotton. In 1931, the population of the city was 766,311, and it was said that the city was definitely in one of ‘the most important cotton and engineering regions’ in Great Britain and ‘possibly in the world’.2 Churchill © The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7_6

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represented Manchester North East briefly between 1906 and 1908 as a Liberal politician.3 When he was defeated in 1908, he commented that the Manchester people’s opposition to Irish Home Rule caused his defeat.4 As Manchester prospered with the cotton industry, successful industrialists were free traders as well as Liberals, because they imported raw material from abroad and exported products abroad.5 Moore claimed that Manchester was ‘the symbolic home of both Victorian Liberalism and modern Labour politics’.6 The Manchester cotton industry faced severe competition with Japan in the interwar years, and together with the Great Depression starting in the late 1920s, the city saw depression before the Second World War.7 In the 1935 general election, Manchester returned four Labour members and six Conservative members, but in 1945 only one Conservative member survived.8 Pre-war conditions, in addition to wartime austerity, made people in Manchester passionately discuss social security and this ultimately led to the landslide Labour victory in 1945. During the Second World War, Manchester was often targeted by the Luftwaffe due to its importance in producing munitions; notoriously, a Blitzkrieg in December 1940 destroyed important city buildings including the Free Trade Hall and the Royal Exchange9 as well as public houses, cinemas, public utilities, and transport infrastructures, which caused a lowering of morale.10 Despite enemy actions, the newspapers in Manchester continued encouraging and informing people of the importance of freedom, which Britain tried to save from Germany. Leeds, the commercial metropolis of Yorkshire, is said to have had a quiet war.11 Since the Industrial Revolution, Leeds had experienced a massive increase in population and rapid urbanization. The city prospered as a result of growth in textiles, engineering, and the clothing trade; and with plentiful natural resources close by and a good transport network, it established its central position in Yorkshire.12 Meadowcroft explained that it emerged as a regional centre in the 1930s, as branches of five government departments were set up there, which enhanced its already well-established position in the region.13 With the development of such industries, Leeds became a predominantly working-class city. As with other industrialized centres, Leeds had serious housing problems. Thompson claimed that in the early nineteenth century, housing in Leeds was chronically bad and that until the First World War, ‘there was a desperate kind of uniformity about its housing’.14 The slum clearance began in the 1870s at a low level,15 but this increased during the period from 1934 to 1939.16 In the 1929 general election, the

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Labour Party secured four out of six seats in Leeds, and the remaining two were won by the Conservatives. Although Labour lost two seats in the 1935 election, the results were close. In the 1945 election, Labour won five of the six constituencies.17 Hartley argued that the Second World War did not bring a shift in attitude or direction in politics, as there was ‘no sense of having endured a great test, no feeling that anything other than a regrettable interruption of business as usual had occurred’.18

Newspapers in Manchester and Leeds According to the Newspaper Press Directory 1945, fourteen newspapers were published daily and weekly in Manchester in 1945.19 This chapter analyses five of these newspapers to examine how Churchill was portrayed within the prosperous, industrial city. Two of them were owned locally and the other three were owned by Lord Kemsley. In Manchester, ownership made a clear difference in news reporting, which depended on whether the paper was local or belonged to a chain. Above all, the most important newspaper in Manchester was and has been the Manchester Guardian. The paper was established in 1821 by John Edward Taylor, a cotton merchant who was against radical reformers. William Percival Crozier, the editor between 1932 and 1944, often met important politicians during the war, including Churchill. Churchill once said to Crozier, ‘I always read the MG [sic] though I didn’t always agree with it’20 and referred to the paper as ‘our leading Liberal paper, no the only Liberal paper’.21 After Crozier died in 1944, Alfred Powell Wadsworth took over editorship and though he admired Churchill as the greatest living Englishman, the paper openly criticized Churchill and his party in reporting the general election of 1945.22 The same company owned the Manchester Evening News, an evening daily established in 1868, which was represented as politically independent even though the editorials were often ‘strongly radical’.23 It is said that the paper widely circulated in Lancashire, Cheshire, North Derbyshire, and North Wales.24 Three newspapers owned by Lord Kemsley are also analysed in this chapter. Edward Hulton, a Manchester newspaper publisher and proprietor of multiple newspapers, launched the Manchester Evening Chronicle in 1897 and introduced the Manchester Dispatch in 1900.25 They were acquired by Lord Kemsley and remained a part of the Kemsley Newspapers during the Second World War. The same proprietor owned the Empire News, established in 1884. All three papers were represented as politically

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independent,26 but they consistently supported Churchill throughout and after the war. Leeds had a long tradition of newspapers. According to Thompson, it had been the regional printing centre since the days of Queen Anne. The first newspaper founded in the city was a Liberal newspaper, the Leeds Mercury.27 Since then there had been many newspapers, daily and weekly, and in the twentieth century the Yorkshire Post was known and read not only in Yorkshire but also outside the region. The Yorkshire Post was originally published as the Leeds Intelligencer in 1754 as a weekly,28 but after 1866 it was published daily and renamed the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer.29 It declared: ‘The political principles of this journal are Conservative; while supporting every practical improvement, it will resist organic changes.’30 It was a nationally recognized political newspaper, and although it was owned by the Yorkshire Conservative Newspaper Co., Ltd., it often took a different political stance to that of the Conservative Party. Arthur Mann took on the editorship between 1919 and 1939 and expressed opinions contrary to the Conservative Party over the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936 and, most notably, to the policy of appeasement.31 In 1939, the Leeds Mercury was merged into the Yorkshire Post.32 The Leeds Mercury at this point was read largely by working-class people and was a small tabloid paper, owned by the same proprietor as the Yorkshire Post. As it was difficult for Leeds to have two morning dailies, in addition to the wartime shortage of newsprint, the proprietors decided to merge the two papers.33 The merger was also due to the worsening financial state of the Yorkshire Post, and the chairman of the Yorkshire Conservative Newspaper Association, Rupert Beckett, decided to ‘lower its quality’ in Mann’s words, to increase sales when merging the two papers. Mann strongly protested against the amalgamation and change in tone, and when the paper became the Yorkshire Post and the Leeds Mercury on 25 November 1939, he resigned as editor. The price of the new paper was reduced to 1d and, according to Cockett, following the retirement of Mann, the paper lost its international position.34 W. Linton Andrews, the editor of the Leeds Mercury, became the new editor of the Yorkshire Post.35 According to Andrews, the new Yorkshire Post made a good profit in 1940, partly due to the severe winter that delayed the distribution of the London and Manchester papers.36 The paper had close relations with Churchill, Eden, and Brendan Bracken, even when they were out of power in the 1930s. Eden married a niece of Rupert Beckett and strongly protested a possible sale of the paper to Lord Kemsley, whose papers

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supported Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement.37 For Andrews, Churchill had been ‘a hero of mine’ since the time Churchill was a war correspondent in South Africa, and the editor stated that ‘it was always heartening to see Winston Churchill’.38 The editor believed that ‘the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury were the firmest upholders of Churchill’s brilliant gifts and bulldog courage during the ten years when he remained out of office, to the nation’s grave loss’.39 The same company owned the Yorkshire Evening Post, established in 1890,40 and Churchill contributed some articles to the paper before the Second World War. The Yorkshire Evening News was an evening daily newspaper, established in 1872. According to the Newspaper Press Directory 1945 it was owned by Provincial Newspapers, Ltd., and its political affiliation was independent and progressive.41 It was supportive of Churchill during the Second World War and of the Liberal Party both during and after the war. The Leeds Weekly Citizen was a weekly newspaper, established in 1911. Its owner was the Leeds Labour Publishing Society, and the paper supported the Labour Party. According to the Newspaper Press Directory 1945, it advocated ‘the interests of workers in Leeds and district’.42

Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty In Manchester, when the Second World War broke out, the Manchester Guardian contrasted Churchill’s qualities with those of Chamberlain and claimed that Churchill supplied what Chamberlain lacked: Mr. Chamberlain sober, contained, cold, but, in his own fashion, still promising for the British people, together with our French allies, unrelenting war on Hitlerism. Excellent it was after its kind, as, indeed, all his statements have been, but always you miss the touch that should be “felt along the heart,” quickening the pulse. That is not within Mr. Chamberlain’s scope and wisely he never attempts it. Mr. Churchill can supply all deficiencies of that kind, and he did it to-day with the House cheering him and enjoying him as it has cheered and enjoyed no one, Prime Minister or anybody else, since the war began.43

The paper emphasized Churchill’s gift of oratory as inspiring, and a letter to the editor also commented that people were ‘waiting to hear the voice of Mr. Churchill’.44 Churchill’s return to the Admiralty was reported briefly in the Manchester Evening Chronicle45 without much comment,

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and the Manchester Dispatch emphasized his long career and various positions he had held in British politics as well as his experience in the Great War.46 In Leeds, the news that Churchill had become the First Lord of the Admiralty was reported briefly in the Yorkshire Post and the Yorkshire Evening News but not in the Leeds Weekly Citizen. The Yorkshire Post called the Second World War ‘the War of Liberation’ and welcomed the appointment of Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty. The paper was continually critical of Chamberlain’s pre-war appeasement policy, and some anti-appeasement articles were published by Churchill in the Yorkshire Evening Post, owned by the same proprietor, so the paper’s pre-war stance was firmly justified by the outbreak of war. It appreciated Churchill’s previous war experience as well as his position before the war, stating that Churchill and Eden were both determined to support the ‘policy of collective defence against aggression’ before the war.47 The Yorkshire Evening News emphasized the harmonious atmosphere within the war cabinet, noting, ‘The last possibility of political difference has been removed by Cabinet appointments including those of Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden’. It characterized Chamberlain’s leadership as trustworthy, as having a ‘good cause’ and ‘the friendship of every democrat in the world’.48 The Leeds Weekly Citizen criticized the Conservative Party for the outbreak of the Second World War. It claimed that it was ‘the unjust peace of 1919’ that caused the war and asserted that the Labour Party had been trying to assuage the unjustness for Germany to bring the country back to the ‘councils of the civilised nations of the world’: The building up of a Peace Front was a demand voiced by Labour in a louder and louder tone as one country after another became the victim of the aggressor, but Mr. Chamberlain would not listen. The past is not forgotten, and in due course the Labour Party will press its claim to be the government of the country.49

Although the paper declared that its proprietor would support the government sincerely, it emphasized the failure of interwar policies, which were mainly determined by Conservative politicians. The Leeds Weekly Citizen made little mention of the inclusion of Churchill in the war cabinet nor of this cabinet’s composition and focused instead on the party division.

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Except for the Socialist newspaper in Leeds, at the beginning of the war many papers in Manchester and Leeds positively reported Churchill’s return to the Admiralty and explained that he provided Chamberlain’s government with inspiration, belligerence, and experience.

Churchill as Prime Minister in May 1940 In Manchester, even before the change of premiers, the Manchester Guardian noted Churchill’s importance in the war cabinet, stating that he would be the only one who could advise Chamberlain to radically reconstruct his government and to adopt a more vigorous war policy.50 When Chamberlain’s resignation seemed inevitable, the paper named Churchill as the most realistic successor, because it believed that the Labour Party would be reluctant to join a government under Lord Halifax, the other possibility, due to his peerage.51 When Churchill finally became the Premier, the Manchester Guardian described his government as ‘a truly National Government’ for the first time. Comparing Churchill with Lloyd George twenty-five years earlier, it explained that Churchill had ‘the confidence of the nation even more than had Mr. Lloyd George’ and asserted that the nation wanted his leadership and qualities such as ‘the baldness, the imagination, the sense of social justice, the capacity to rouse the enthusiasm and devoted service that we need to bring us through the hard and gruelling times that lie ahead’.52 The Manchester Evening News believed that Lord Halifax was the more probable successor to Chamberlain before the succession, believing that the Labour Party would not serve under Churchill, stating that they had ‘never forgiven him for the gibe that they are not fit to govern’.53 Yet when Churchill became the prime minister, the paper welcomed the formation of the coalition government and highly valued his choices of Bevin as the Minister of Labour as well as of Morrison as the Minister of Supply, saying that they would get ‘the great British industrial machine in its full working order’.54 While the paper applauded Churchill’s leadership as a wartime prime minister, it also noted that it suited wartime only: Churchill is in many ways not an ideal peace-time leader. In post-war years he has shown no sign of the great, constructive thinking which the world so badly needs. It is true that his will has been bent on the safety of the British Empire to the exclusion of all else, and that every attitude he has adopted can be traced to that basic principle, but there has yet been something

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l­acking. […] Moreover, his highly developed combative instinct, which shows so finely in war, is in some respects a handicap in peace. A nation fights better for being at loggerheads with its enemy. It does not build better for being at loggerheads within itself. And in Churchill that spirit is an essential part of the man. It goes deep to the roots of his mind. It is, perhaps, inextricably locked with his passionate feeling for Britain—the land for which he has been fighting, in peace and in war, all his life.55

While the paper maintained a positive line towards Churchill’s wartime leadership, it criticized his policies occasionally without flattery. It lamented Churchill’s decision to close the Burma Road and appease Japan, stating that he had not learned from Chamberlain’s failure.56 The Manchester Evening News was particularly harsh on Chamberlain before and after 10 May, and after his resignation, it lamented the fact that he remained a member of the war cabinet because he maintained influence over Conservative members.57 The paper claimed that Chamberlain was unfit to be a premier, stating that ‘the incredible thing […] is that a great nation allowed itself to remain under the almost undisputed sway, for a long period of acute danger, of a man whose abilities were so unequal to the task’.58 It regretted that Chamberlain kept his yes-men around him and put politicians like Churchill and Eden aside in the 1930s. Moreover, it found him pathetic, stating ironically, ‘His would be a tragic figure if he could see how his limitation had brought near to disaster the very things he holds dear. Fortunately for him he does not even now realise the streets of Europe to-day are paved with his good intention.’59 On the contrary, three newspapers owned by Lord Kemsley maintained supportive lines towards Chamberlain and at the same time praised Churchill’s new war cabinet as a truly united, all-party administration. The Manchester Dispatch criticized the Labour politicians who attacked Chamberlain in the Norway Debate as ‘self-confessed obstructionists’ who refused to cooperate with Chamberlain in the time of a national crisis.60 When Churchill became premier, the paper described him as ‘a born fighter’ who was the most feared in Germany, and while it welcomed Churchill’s new leadership, the paper also praised Chamberlain as a selfless politician who resigned for the good of the nation and who served under Churchill.61 The Manchester Evening Chronicle and the Empire News were happy that Chamberlain remained in the government; the former positively commented that Chamberlain would continue serving the nation under Churchill, and the latter stated: ‘History will pay just tribute to Mr.

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Chamberlain’s valiant efforts to preserve the peace of Europe and to his tenacity in prosecuting war, when peace was out of question, to such an end as will ensure the blessing of a just and a permanent peace.’62 They depicted Churchill’s war cabinet as harmonious and united, rather than emphasising the failures of the former Prime Minister and his followers. In Leeds, when the change of premier was discussed, the Yorkshire Post predicted that the Labour Party would be more likely to serve under Churchill than Chamberlain, as the paper believed that Labour politicians viewed Churchill as dynamic and more appropriate as a war leader.63 When the succession was announced, the Yorkshire Post evaluated Churchill’s various experiences as a soldier, war correspondent, and politician, as well as the men Churchill chose as ministers: We take it, finally, as a happy omen that at the onset of the greatest battle that has ever swept the Low Countries we have again a Marlborough in command. […] But this is no war of armies only, as it was in the days of Blenheim and Oudenarde. It is a war of peoples, and the fate and future of all free peoples are at stake. Mr. Churchill is the man for the hour. He is a Prime Minister who will not spare himself; let him not spare a nation which is ready for all sacrifices and asks only to be given its duty to do.64

The paper emphasized the importance of national unity and explained that Churchill’s new government was ‘a vivid symbol of national solidarity’. It explained that the government included men of all classes: Lord Halifax and Eden represented the landowning class; Chamberlain, Sir Andrew Duncan, and Sir Kingsley Wood represented the business community; and Arthur Greenwood represented the working class.65 The paper also respected Churchill as a realistic leader, who had ‘never been given to false optimism’ and who could deal with the consequences of Dunkirk, which was ‘a colossal military disaster’.66 The paper reported his speeches very favourably and viewed them as historic, ranking them alongside those of Pitt and Lincoln.67 The Yorkshire Evening Post also welcomed Churchill as prime minister and reminded its readers of his pre-war stance against appeasement. It cited articles written by Churchill before the war for the paper, for example, ‘Signals Set for Danger’ on 1 May 1936, in which he claimed that Germany was moving towards military escalation and that it would endanger peace.68 The Yorkshire Evening News expected that Churchill would be the next prime minister after the Norway Debate,69 and when he succeeded

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Chamberlain, it argued that Churchill was the appropriate leader for the UK: It is a virile and confident Britain that confronts Hitler to-day. At the helm is a great Englishman, bearing a famous martial name, who, by his firm grasp of the enormous problem of Hitler and all which that implies, together with his instinctive understanding of the common people of our race, inspires us all. He knows the immeasurable things which we can achieve, [and] he comprehended the villainy with which we are confronted. […] We believe it is the high destiny of Winston Churchill to lead us to victory, and it is symbolic that, as he was taking over the great office of Prime Minister, British and French motorised divisions were roaring along the roads that lead to the enemy.70

The paper stated that Churchill followed in his family’s tradition as war leaders, but at the same time asserted that he had knowledge of ordinary people. John Strong, professor of education at the University of Leeds between 1919 and 1933, called Churchill ‘a natural and entirely satisfactory leader’, stating that he received affection from people as he was ‘typically British, so forthright, so intensely human’.71 The Leeds Weekly Citizen emphasized the importance of the fact that Labour politicians had joined the National government and claimed that although Churchill was an acceptable leader he was not a ‘superman’: Old “sweats” at any rate do not believe that even Mr. Winston Churchill is altogether a superman. We all recognise his driving force, his strategical ability and his dash of sheer genius, but we have not forgotten Gallipoli or the Antwerp Expedition in 1914—when raw troops were so ill-equipped that in some cases their rifles had bits of string instead of belts.72

It pointed out that Churchill had failed at Gallipoli and Antwerp in 1914 and warned against the public acclaim for Churchill’s career and personality promoted by other newspapers. The paper declared that he was not an absolute necessity for winning the war and continued to criticize the ‘short-sighted policy of the Chamberlain-Simon-Hoare type of politicians’ that had caused it, claiming that the Labour Party was not involved in the policy of appeasement.73 Whereas most newspapers praised Churchill’s qualities as a national leader and his power to encourage people to take an active part in the war, the Leeds Weekly Citizen maintained its criticism of the appeasement policy of Chamberlain and his supporters, and

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questioned the excessive praise of Churchill from other papers. By mentioning Churchill’s failure in the First World War, the paper refused to single out one man for praise and claimed that the war would be won by the power of ordinary people.

Churchill’s Visits to Manchester in April 1941 and Leeds in May 1942 Manchester, 26 April 1941 Churchill visited Manchester on 26 April 1941 to inspect damages following the German blitz. It was his sixth official visit to Manchester; he had been there in 1904, 1907, 1909, 1938, and 1940.74 The Manchester Guardian emphasized the link between Churchill and Manchester when he visited the ruin of the Free Trade Hall where he made his first speech to Manchester audiences as a Liberal member of the Parliament thirty-six years earlier. Although his tour had not been announced to the public before, people soon assembled on the streets, and Churchill was greeted by people with the cry of ‘Good old Winston’, and he waved them back with his hat.75 The Manchester Evening News also reported a tremendous welcome paid to the premier in Manchester and described how Churchill cheered and encouraged people, especially those in the working class: He saw wrecked buildings, chatted with workmen engaged on their demolition. And he said, “Manchester will rise again. You’re a wonderful people.” To some workmen Churchill cried, “Never mind. We’ll win.” […] On other points of his tour he commented on the bravery of Manchester people and he told the Lord Mayor; “You can congratulate the people of this famous city on my behalf.”76

The paper showed how Churchill encouraged people in Manchester and portrayed his relationship with the working class as amicable. The Manchester Evening Chronicle described the effect of his visit on people as ‘electrical’ and also emphasized his popularity among working-class people, reporting many workers and waitresses came out from their workplaces to see Churchill, as did shoppers, and all greeted Churchill with energetic cheers.77

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Leeds, 16 May 1942 Churchill visited Leeds for three hours during Saturday morning on 16 May 1942.78 It was reported that he was warmly welcomed and that he gave a short speech at the Town Hall. It is said that 25,000 people gathered outside the Town Hall to see him.79 With the exception of the Leeds Weekly Citizen, the press reported the cordial welcome given to Churchill and his friendly exchanges with the Leeds public. In the Yorkshire Post J. Illingworth, its special correspondent, explained that Churchill was confident and his mood was ‘as expansive and as genial as sunlight itself’.80 The paper emphasized his iconic features such as his V-sign, cigar, and black Sandringham hat and depicted him as the strong, bulldoggish leader of Britain. It reported that people were pleased to see him and that they responded with great cheer, holding Unions Jacks in their hands.81 It published a story of a woman in the crowd who asked Churchill for his autograph in her ‘tiny Victory calendar and diary’, which Churchill signed in red ink. The paper believed it significant because red ink was usually used for special emphasis, and thus, by signing in this manner, it claimed that he showed his determination to win the war.82 Churchill also visited factories in North and North-East Leeds where women of all ages worked, and it was reported that he spoke amicably with female workers there.83 The Yorkshire Evening News reported that there were many people holding Union Jacks, who were entertained with patriotic songs and cheered Churchill with enthusiasm. The paper described the tremendous popularity of Churchill and the public’s appreciation of him: To hear the burst of cheering and see the affectionate enthusiasm of thousands of folk in Leeds to-day as Winston Churchill passed through our streets was to realise how much the chosen leader of the nation he is. […] In Churchill people feel that their own pugnacious, aggressive spirit is symbolised. Their gratitude to him is deep: their hope high.84

It claimed that Churchill symbolized the people’s spirit and that he was important in encouraging commoners. By reporting the tremendous welcome given to the prime minister and emphasizing his power to inspire the common folk, many newspapers in both Manchester and Leeds contributed to sustaining the morale of the

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public as well as to building Churchill’s image as the great war leader who had sympathy towards and an understanding of ordinary people. The Beveridge Report and Its Reactions The Beveridge Report, officially titled Social Insurance and Allied Service: Report by Sir William Beveridge, was published on 2 December 1942,85 and it is said that some half a million copies were sold in the UK and fifty thousand copies in the United States. Outside Britain, it was often considered as strong British propaganda, and in Germany the press was ordered not to mention it.86 When it was published, Churchill and other senior politicians were outraged, and according to Bullock, Churchill ‘is reported to have taken strong exception to the report, to have refused to see its author and forbidden any government department to allow him inside its doors’.87 Nevertheless, after experiencing the public opinion in support of the report, Churchill broadcast a speech about the Four-Year Plan after the war on the BBC on 21 March 1943, in which he discussed the post-­ war world both internationally and domestically: I am very much attracted to the idea that we should make and proclaim what might be called a Four-Year Plan. […] When this Plan has been shaped it will have to be presented to the country, either by a National Government formally representative, as this one is, of the three parties in the State, or by a National Government comprising the best men in all parties who are willing to serve.

While supporting the ideas in the report, Churchill ended the broadcast with emphasis on the war effort: ‘Let us wish them God-speed in their struggle and let us bend all our efforts to the war and the ever more vigorous prosecution of our supreme task.’88 It was said that Churchill’s reluctance to realize the proposed social reforms in the Beveridge Report was one reason for his defeat in the 1945 general election.89 Newspapers in Manchester and Leeds exhibited diverse opinions about Churchill’s attitude towards post-war reconstruction, and an analysis of those opinions shows the weakness of Churchill, the coalition government, and the Conservative Party. In Manchester, the Manchester Guardian whole-heartedly supported the ideas proposed in the Beveridge Report. It pointed out the connection between the report and the Atlantic Charter regarding their propaganda

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values that would project British legitimacy in the war while it simultaneously claimed that it was of the utmost obligation of the government to implement proposals in the report.90 The paper was disappointed with the government after the discussion of the Beveridge Report in February, stating that they failed to recognize what ordinary civilians needed and how people outside Britain saw Britain.91 When Churchill finally spoke on the social security in March, the paper was not satisfied with his Four-Year Plan because it would be implemented only after the war, and it was disappointed with the Labour ministers who agreed on not taking action before the end of the war.92 While it regretted the government’s attitude towards social security, it found one positive message from Churchill’s broadcast; the paper claimed that Churchill’s ‘apparent lack of interest in post-war reconstruction was regarded as explained by his intention to retire’, but people learned from the broadcast that he intended to continue leading the nation.93 The Manchester Evening News was also critical of the government’s attitude towards the Beveridge Report and showed clear disappointment towards the Labour politicians in the coalition government. It contended that Churchill ‘was not speaking for himself alone but for the War Cabinet’ that included the Labour ministers94 and stated that the ‘wishy-washy, safety-first, all-party motion on the Beveridge Report satisfies none of its supporters’.95 As with the Manchester Guardian, the paper regretted that the Labour ministers did not call for progress immediately and questioned if the coalition government obstructed progress by preventing the Labour politicians from obstructing Churchill. On the contrary, newspapers owned by Lord Kemsley generally approved Churchill’s claim that the progress would come after the war. The Manchester Evening Chronicle explained Churchill’s Four-Year Plan as realistic, stating that he expressed in ‘simplified form the mood of the mass of English-speaking peoples’ and sketched ‘a plan for translating them into action, and at the same time remind us of the difficulties which will surely arise’. It emphasized that progress could not be made instantly and that people need patience to see changes.96 The Empire News supported Churchill’s claim that the unity of all political parties was necessary during wartime and warned that some ‘mischievously-minded politicians’ were trying to break the coalition government over the discussions of the Beveridge Report.97 The Manchester Dispatch also praised Churchill’s leadership both in wartime and peacetime, stating that ‘From the bankruptcy and tedium of Hitler’s barren curses it is like walking into sane

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sunlight to pass to Churchill’s picture of our possible future. It was the statesman and nation-builder we heard as much as our war-leader.’98 These papers supported Churchill’s priority to finish the war first and accepted the Four-Year Plan without criticism. While the Manchester Guardian and the Manchester Evening News never appreciated Churchill nor his colleagues in the coalition government during the debate, those in the Kemsley chain supported them whole-heartedly. The discussions over the Beveridge Report revealed the weakness of the coalition government in the eyes of the papers that were independent of any newspaper chain, and they perceived the nature of a ‘national’ government as oppressive and likely to prevent progress. In Leeds, the Yorkshire Post welcomed the Beveridge Report and envisaged that it would encourage the war effort at home as well as among Britain’s allies abroad by providing comfort and reassurance about a post-­ war improvement of life.99 It reported an enthusiastic reception to the report and explained the public mood in Britain as follows: The prevalent feeling is that we have here a State Paper of historic moment; one that is likely to exert a far-reaching influence on the country’s social future and at the same time cannot fail to heighten Britain’s war-time prestige by giving the world a challenging vision of some features of that better world which, through victory, we mean to achieve.100

It valued the report’s influence on post-war reconstruction as well as its propaganda value to justify Britain’s presence in the war. When the House of Commons spent three days discussing the Beveridge Report in February 1943, the Yorkshire Post pointed out the financial difficulty in carrying out its proposals, stating, ‘It may be said, quite truly, that the cost of the Beveridge scheme is not to be measured merely by the exchequer’s contribution’.101 It reported the presence of dissatisfaction and suspicion in ‘left wing circles’ over the government’s attitude towards the report, and the paper sincerely wanted Churchill to speak on the topic: We earnestly wish that Mr. Churchill could still be persuaded to speak before the debate concludes. The calls upon his time and attention are most grievously heavy, and never more so than during this present phase of the war. But Mr. Churchill has a unique hold on the country’s confidence. A few words from him, setting the seal of his approval on the broad lines of the Beveridge scheme, would go far to prevent a national issue from becoming unhappily entangled in partisan controversies.102

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The paper regretted that the government failed to respond to criticisms in the absence of Churchill due to illness but believed that once he returned and commented on the report the tension would be eased: The need for post-war social reform is not a party issue; and no Government could expect to command the confidence of the country if it were shown to be preparing a strategic retreat from the Beveridge challenge. This whole question, moreover, is not one that bears merely on the post-war years. The Government’s handling of the Beveridge Report is capable of influencing appreciably, for good or ill, the nation’s war effort during the critical months ahead. […] As we said yesterday, it is the Churchillian note, a resonant fighting note, that requires to be struck. Our earnest hope is that if it cannot be struck by the Prime Minister personally, a vigorous echo of it at least will be heard from the Government benches before the debate concludes.103

When Churchill finally spoke about post-war reconstruction on 21 March 1943, the paper’s appreciation of his leadership increased, stating that ‘a lengthy acquaintance with politics make one chary of superlatives’: It was a speech surprising as it was stupendous. Often it has been said that Mr. Churchill was interested only in the war and that he was impatient about post-war problems. Often, it must be admitted, the Prime Minister’s conduct has seemed to justify that inference. Now we know it to be false. The truth is that Mr. Churchill’s grasp of events is both wider and more realistic than that of his contemporaries. He has not told us about the peace before because the time, in his mind, had not yet come. Now he has decided that that time has come.104

While the Yorkshire Post admitted the common conception that Churchill had less interest in peacetime politics including social reforms, it claimed that his broadcast, in which he outlined the Four-Year Plan, proved that he acknowledged the importance of the Beveridge Report and was prepared to countenance post-war social reforms. From the evidence of his speech, the paper was assured that Churchill would not retire after the war and would lead Britain to realize the reconstruction plan.105 The Yorkshire Evening News explained the Beveridge Report in detail and called it ‘a plan of “all-in” social insurance to abolish want’ and ‘a star of the first magnitude in the political and social firmament’.106 As well as evaluating the proposals in the report highly, it emphasized the role of Churchill in previous social reforms in Britain. It claimed that Churchill

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‘established the Beveridge cult’ because he was ‘the first Minister in distress to seek the expert assistance of Sir William Beveridge’ as a Liberal MP and the president of the Board of Trade in the early twentieth century.107 After the three-day debate on the report in the House of Commons in February 1943, the Yorkshire Evening News argued that the discussion was unsatisfactory and that the government was ‘out of touch with public opinion’: From our leaders we expect to hear the stern call to toil, blood, sweat and tears to meet the enemy of poverty and insecurity which has inspired us in war. […] It is in this way that the Peace will challenge us if we are to progress as a nation, and we look for some new Churchill of peace-time Britain to sound the challenge that we may be inspired to answer it.108

Churchill at this stage had not spoken about the Beveridge Report, and the paper was eager to hear him and to see him take a lead on social reform. When he commented on post-war reconstruction, the paper was satisfied with his broadcast, noting, ‘The more obvious points about which the Premier spoke with manifest sincerity have already been grasped by the public’. It claimed that Churchill outlined ‘a mighty picture’ of post-war Britain, which showed his ‘insistent faith in the British way of life with its deep-rooted well-tried, and historic values’.109 The paper exalted Churchill’s grasp of the needs of ordinary people and claimed that ‘his ear was to the ground as usual’.110 When the Beveridge Report was published, the Leeds Weekly Citizen claimed that it followed proposals by the Fabians111 and once referred to it as the Beveridge–Greenwood Report.112 It claimed that it owed ‘a good deal to the Fabian Society Social Security Sub-Committee’.113 In the letters column on 11 December 1942, Jack Dawes of Hunslet declared that the report did not originate with Beveridge: I have been most astonished at the fulsome praise accorded to Sir William Beveridge for “his” social security proposals. He has, admittedly, done a competent job of work, but it is no more than Socialists, through their research and propaganda organisations, have been doing for years. It seems to me quite ten years ago since I saw a Social Security Plan just as comprehensive and detailed as Beveridge’s produced by a Socialist propagandist aided only by voluntary workers. Beveridge, you know, had a whole office to aid him—not to mention the excellent plan submitted by the Fabian Society.114

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Dawes claimed that Socialist propagandists had already proposed a plan similar to the Beveridge Report ten years previously, and he criticized the general atmosphere that praised the report as originating from Beveridge alone. On Churchill’s attitude towards the report, the paper claimed that ‘Churchill quibbles about post-war planning costs’ and that ‘with his Four Year Plan, Mr. Churchill has in mind no new world’. The paper reported the words of J. P. Davies, prospective Labour candidate for the Skipton constituency, who criticized Churchill’s broadcast: it was the Premier’s Labour colleagues in the Government who had persuaded him to turn his mind to the subject of planning, and in his view the Four Year Plan presented the utmost progress on which the Government could agree. […] Mr. Churchill had said the present Government could not pledge its successor either to particular schemes or to any great new expenditure by the State.

Davies claimed that Churchill was a man of action but not a thinker.115 The paper emphasized that it was the Labour Party who would be able to implement post-war social reforms, not the Conservative Party led by Churchill, whose priority was winning the war. Articles on the Beveridge Report in the Yorkshire Post and the Yorkshire Evening News in February 1943 implied that while politicians in the government were out of touch with public opinion, Churchill alone acknowledged the needs of ordinary people. Once he spoke out about the report, they claimed, all the criticism would be diminished. In these articles, they might have succeeded in praising Churchill as the national leader, but at the same time they showed that his government was completely dependent on him and that without him it was incapable of answering criticism. The Yorkshire Evening News emphasized Churchill’s role in previous social reforms in Britain and by doing so suggested that the Liberal Party originated the report. The fact that Beveridge was a Liberal MP added justification to this claim. The Leeds Weekly Citizen claimed that the report did not originate with Beveridge; but rather, it was the result of proposals made by Fabians, Socialists, and the Trade Unions. It therefore claimed that the report owed a debt to the Labour Party. The paper emphasized Churchill’s reluctance to support post-war social reforms and declared that the Labour Party would be better at improving the standard of life in post-war Britain.

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The End of the Second World War and the General Election The end of the war in Europe and the general election that followed in 1945 led to a clear difference in opinions among newspapers in Manchester and Leeds. In Manchester, local-owned Liberal and Independent newspapers openly criticized Churchill when reporting his election campaign, while newspapers owned by Lord Kemsley continuously maintained a supportive line towards him. In Leeds, it was only Conservative newspapers that supported Churchill, and the independent and Labour-supporting press criticized his leadership just after the war was over. The Manchester Guardian praised Churchill’s wartime leadership when the war ended, but soon regretted that tribute when he diminished into a mere party leader who would decide on the July election for the sake of the Conservative Party.116 The paper lamented Churchill’s willingness to let the Conservative Party use his prestige for their election campaign and regretted that Churchill used the word ‘national’ to describe his party: For “national” we are probably meant to read “Conservative.” It is a pity that the Coalition, which has done so much great things for the British people in the last five years, should go out under these ambiguous circumstances. […] Not the least regrettable thing about it is the change in the position of Mr. Churchill himself. Mr. Attlee says, not unjustly, that Mr. Churchill is departing from his position as national leader by allowing his party thus to exploit him. Many in the other parties will feel it painful, after his magnificent services to his country, to have to criticise him for his action, but he has left them no alternative.117

While the Manchester Guardian regretted that Churchill was a party leader, it still appreciated his service to the nation and hoped that during the election campaign, the parties would show respect to each other: This can be done with good temper, with genuine appreciation of excellencies of the partnership now broken up and, in particular, of how much we owe to the Prime Minister himself. It will be a regrettable thing, a lowering of the national dignity, if the campaign degenerates into a fight between Churchillinites and anti-Churchillinites. That would be an unreal and an untrue distinction, and in any case not one for a democratic society.118

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Unfortunately, the election campaign proceeded in the way the Manchester Guardian had hoped it would not, and it was Churchill who started the party divisions and animosity in his broadcast on 4 June 1945, using ‘a spell in his old days carefree rhetoric’: There are many people who will be shocked by Mr. Churchill’s statement that Labour and the Liberals have put party before country. That was unworthy of Mr. Churchill and a slight hard to forgive on men who have shown patriotism no less great than his own. Taken together, this broadcast will produce a sense of disappointment quite as much as resentment in the Labour and Liberal parties. Is Mr. Churchill’s contribution to post-war Britain, it will be asked, more than the sterile anti-Socialism that he preached in the twenties?119

The paper believed that Churchill’s broadcast speeches were written by Bracken and Lord Beaverbrook, but claimed that he let them use him and advocated ‘a cheap and grotesque form of argument’.120 It warned readers that Churchill’s assertion of his government as ‘national’, as well as the Conservative Party’s attempt to make the election an opportunity to show appreciation towards Churchill, resembled claims by dictators: All war leadership has in it something of dictatorship. In Britain the war has seen the position of Prime Minister heightened and enhanced; it has gained in authority and prestige because it embodies the central Executive to which both Parliament and people have been willing to surrender their liberties. But there is danger in relying too much on one man. Any form of personal government must be curbed if our democratic system is to work well. […] When, therefore, Mr. Churchill calls up the nation’s vast reserves of affection towards him for the benefit of a reactionary party which only lately despised and rejected him, when he divides the candidates at the election into his friends and his opponents, when, in short, he asks for a personal plebiscite, he is straining loyalty too far.121

It clearly stated that Churchill’s leadership was for wartime only and warned readers that a one-man government would not suit peacetime democracy. Though the paper predicted the victory of the Conservative Party, it also expected the Labour Party would gain seats.122 When the nation-wide landslide victory of the Labour Party was announced, the Manchester Guardian explained that it was Churchill’s broadcasts that ruined himself and his party, thus causing his defeat. The

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paper also argued that his popularity could not overcome the Conservative Party’s record of appeasement before the war. While the paper praised his wartime leadership as ‘the greatest Prime Minister we have known since Gladstone and the greatest national leader since Pitt’, it criticized Churchill for turning the election into ‘a personal plebiscite’, and claimed that he had become a symbol of reactionary politics, which the world had turned against during the war.123 The Manchester Evening News was more critical of Churchill and the Conservative Party. The paper was disappointed with Churchill’s victory speech on 13 May 1945 because he did not mention much about the transition from wartime to peacetime, ignoring issues such as demobilization, restoration of manufacture, and housing.124 The paper found the July election unacceptable because it prevented many people from voting, as July was holiday season and voter legislation would not be complete in such a short period of time nor would people have time to study the policies of each party.125 It was rather happy to see the end of the coalition government as there were ‘fundamental differences of opinion’ that made it unable to prepare for peacetime.126 The paper hoped to see a new government of the Left, and although it declared that the paper had no tie with any particular political party, it was devoted to some political principles, especially the programme of reconstruction. Therefore, the paper clearly claimed that the Conservative Party was not fit for post-war reconstruction and asked voters to vote for Liberal and Labour candidates: It is to be hoped that wherever there is a straight fight against a Conservative, the Liberal or Labour elector will use his vote to keep the Tory out. It is quite likely that this election will give the Liberal party the opportunity of putting Labour into power. A Left Coalition—a Bevin-Beveridge Government—could accomplish great things in this old country and be a power of good throughout the world.127

During the election campaign, the Manchester Evening News bitterly criticized Churchill’s election tactics and behaviours. After his first broadcast, the paper described Churchill’s manner as that of ‘a small boy released from school who runs for his helmet and his wooden sword’ and who ‘waves his sword without much thought of the damage it will cause’, further lamenting that his broadcast ‘was not a speech which anybody of adult years could take seriously’.128 The paper also criticized Churchill and his party for not presenting their policies over the serious issues facing the

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country129 and for vulgarly blaming his former Socialist colleagues in the coalition government. Churchill’s visit to Manchester on 25 June was reported in a negative way; he was seventy-five minutes behind schedule and the paper emphasized that his delay caused thousands of people to miss his speech, implying he was belittling people.130 When the result came out, the paper explained that the Conservative Party misread the nature of the Second World War. For them, it was a simple fight for survival, but for the British people, it was a fight against fascism, a reactionary force that threatened ‘to strife the swelling demand for progressive reforms’. The paper believed that Churchill and his party never showed much enthusiasm for social progress and instead presented ‘a choice between an idol and a bogy, as if the people of Britain were children or a primitive tribe’.131 The paper believed such a reactionary attitude ultimately caused the defeat. In contrast, three papers owned by Lord Kemsley showed loyalty to Churchill throughout the election campaign. The Manchester Dispatch emphasized that Churchill wished for the continuance of the coalition government but that the Labour Party selfishly refused his offer. Additionally, it echoed Churchill’s claim of Socialist fear presented in his broadcasts, namely that a Socialist government would ‘be the institution of British Gestapo’.132 Likening the Labour Party to Hitler, the paper claimed that the Labour Party had a totalitarian nature because ‘the will of the Labour Party is going to be paramount in anything and everything’, stating, ‘Scratch a Labour leader and you will find a dictator’.133 It kept a fear-mongering line towards the Labour Party and claimed that freedom and individual liberty, which Britain had defended in the war, would be threatened under a Socialist government with ‘cranky, impractical, and Utopian plans for the erection of a vast Government machine controlling everybody and everything, nationalising everybody into a concentration camp of universal serfdom’. Therefore, the paper claimed, ‘A vote for Churchill is a vote for freedom.’134 The paper called Churchill ‘the Parliamentary pioneer of security’, who tried to expand welfare benefits such as unemployment insurance, health insurance, and old-age pensions.135 When it learned of the victory of the Labour Party, the Manchester Dispatch, which had repeatedly mentioned the importance of democracy, accepted the result, though ‘not cheerfully’ nor ‘philosophically’.136 As a paper published in Manchester where the cotton industry prospered, it was concerned that the Labour Party’s policy towards India, which it

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believed had not fully developed, could influence the cotton trade. It hoped the party would present a short-term policy as soon as they could to clear their anxiety.137 The Empire News regretted the defeat of the Conservative Party and claimed that the nation would have been better served by maintaining the National government until the end of the war with Japan.138 Over the election campaign, the newspapers in Manchester split up into two: the locally owned newspapers that sharply criticized Churchill and those owned by Lord Kemsley who maintained a supportive line towards Churchill. In Leeds, the Yorkshire Post claimed that Churchill had saved the country by his ‘indomitable leadership’.139 Andrews, editor of the Yorkshire Post, further applauded Churchill, stating that it was Almighty God who sent him to Britain: we may well rejoice and give thanks to Almighty God that Winston Spencer Churchill was at hand ready to take on his broad shoulders an incredible burden. […] He was the statesman who most prominently championed a policy of realistic preparedness against the menace of Nazi Germany, and he knew how to fight. There was no British statesman whom the Nazi hated and feared so much. […] He himself had reminded us of our years of rearmament delay as years that the locust hath eaten. […] Five years ago it seemed as if the hand of God had sent Mr. Churchill to our rescue. That thought should be still with us as we look upon all he has done. […] Clearly this was a man of the right mettle and the right enduring toughness to deal with dictators and with all enemies of the people.140

Churchill was depicted as the only politician who had predicted the Nazi danger before the war and who never fell into complacency. The Yorkshire Post wholeheartedly supported the Conservative Party and praised Churchill as the great leader of Britain in the election campaign. It emphasized that Churchill wanted the coalition government to continue until the end of the war with Japan and that he tried hard to cooperate with Labour politicians. When the Labour Party criticized Churchill for rushing into the election in July in order to benefit the Conservatives, the paper rejected the claim, stating that it was Labour who had chosen to hold an election.141 The paper particularly emphasized the importance of Churchill’s strong leadership in post-war Britain:

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Under the tireless, indomitable leadership of a man who will rank for all time among Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers, these gifted and diverse individuals have tackled heart-breaking problems of production and organisation, facing unparalleled emergencies with a clear head and a stout heart. We believe that the vast majority of the nation will agree that in tackling these grave problems the authority, courage and leadership of Mr. Churchill, backed by Mr. Eden’s great sincerity and incomparable experience in world affairs, are essential.142

It further claimed that it would be difficult for the Labour Party to persuade the electorate to vote for them as the paper believed that people would be unwilling to give Churchill up.143 It argued that the focal point in the election was whether to trust Churchill as prime minister to implement social reforms: The issue before the public now is plain. Does it wish this programme to be tackled by Mr. Churchill’s able team, or does it believe that the time is ripe, despite all the perplexing problems and exacting tasks that await us at home and abroad, for Britain to embark upon the uncertain seas of Socialist experiment? The Prime Minister himself gave the only reasonable answer to this question when he suggested that this was not the moment for such a venture which can only lead to controversy, weakness and grave uncertainty at a point in her history when Britain must be united, resolute, clear-headed and confident.144

The paper consistently claimed that while a National government with Churchill at its head would stabilize Britain and realize the Four-Year Plan successfully, a Socialist government would bring confusion to post-war Britain. When Churchill visited the city in his election tour on 26 June 1945, the paper covered the ‘tumultuous’ welcome given by the people of Leeds. It was reported that although Churchill was three hours behind schedule when he reached the city, people were happy to wait for him; 25,000 people assembled in the square in front of Leeds Civic Hall in order to thank him.145 From the fervent welcome given to Churchill in many places, the paper believed it certain that the Conservative Party would win the election.146 It optimistically expected that Churchill’s visits to Labour strongholds would increase votes for candidates who supported Churchill.147

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While describing as fair the election campaign of Churchill and the National government, the Yorkshire Post criticized as unfair the actions of those who attacked Churchill. It reported that posters of Churchill were deliberately defaced in Bradford, suggesting that it was done by ‘an organised gang’ who were opposed to the Conservatives.148 It also reported that Churchill was severely heckled and booed at Walthamstow on 3 July 1945, commenting, ‘I could not help feeling it a pity that a great man like Mr. Churchill should have to cope with such tomfoolery’.149 Without analysing why such defacements occurred and why people heckled him, the paper simply criticized the ungraceful attitude towards Churchill. The Yorkshire Post was certain that the Conservatives would win the election; the question was how many seats the party would secure. It claimed that Churchill needed a large majority in order to represent the country at international conferences ‘with the support of the great mass of the people’.150 For them, the election result was ‘a grave disaster’. When the defeat of the Conservatives became apparent, the Yorkshire Post criticized it as a ‘cruel ingratitude’ to Churchill, who the paper called ‘one of the greatest Prime Ministers Britain has had in the whole of her long history’.151 It argued that although the Conservative Party had been defeated, it did not mean that people mistrusted Churchill for his conduct of the war, declaring that the ‘Churchillian spirit’ still remained in British people: The Churchillian greatness of spirit has not gone out of our people. The Churchillian influence will still be felt on every bitterly fought front. And when the day of final victory comes, Winston Churchill will still be acclaimed as the pilot whose masterly skill and undaunted courage brought the ship safely through the storm.

It anticipated the possibility that Churchill would retire and write his memoirs of the Second World War but hoped that he would still play an advisory role in British politics. It attacked the Labour politicians now in power, writing that it was Conservative politicians such as Churchill and Eden who were right about Germany before the war.152 The paper also criticized the Liberal Party, who the paper believed had caused the defeat of the Conservatives. Osbert Peake, the Conservative candidate in the North Leeds Division, claimed that by putting up candidates who had no possibility of winning a parliamentary seat, the Liberal Party lessened the number of votes for the Conservatives. He concluded that it was ‘the Liberal’s partisan tactics’ that determined Labour’s victory.153 The paper

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reported a story in Leeds about some electors that voted for Labour politicians mistakenly: one person believed that if the Labour Party won it would cancel ‘the Control of Employment Order’, which would not have happened soon whichever party had won; another person believed that Churchill would remain as prime minister even if the Labour Party won. After introducing these stories, the Yorkshire Post concluded that there must have been many voters like them who mistakenly voted for the Labour Party.154 The paper did not accept the Labour Party’s landslide victory as a fair reflection of public opinion. The Yorkshire Evening News was critical of Churchill’s election campaign. It commented that Churchill’s broadcast on 4 June 1945 was regarded as weak and unsatisfactory within intellectual circles: He makes himself more a Liberal than they are themselves. He describes his political programme as a Liberal one. Therefore, by acting as leader of the Conservatives, Mr. Churchill, the Sinclair Liberals say, betrays his own fundamental principles, and they want to remind the public of Mr. Churchill’s membership of their party in years gone by.155

The paper explained that the election fight was ‘predominantly for or against Mr. Churchill personally’, which showed ‘how confused are the views of many people on Parliamentary procedure’.156 It predicted the victory of Churchill but claimed that the election strategy by the Conservative Party was confusing and misleading: Never was there a more puzzling General Election. By all accounts it looks like a Churchill victory. Against that I put the negative impression produced by the Conservatives’ camouflage of themselves as Nationals. Mr. Eden in his broadcast, you may have noticed, did not use the word Conservative at all. Mr. Churchill, leader of the Conservative Party, avoids calling it by the name. That creates in the mind of many people an uneasy feeling. They become inclined to listen to accusations of trickery and subterfuge.

The Yorkshire Evening News criticized Conservative politicians for avoiding calling themselves Conservative, and, in using the word ‘National’, they puzzled voters as to knowing who they really were.157 When the Conservative Party was defeated, the paper explained that the public felt that Churchill was the ‘symbol of the most heroic qualities of this nation in her darkest hour’ and ‘the embodiment of their own personal will to resist all that is evil’. Nevertheless, while recognizing him as a great fighter,

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it noted his ‘autocratic nature’ and declared that he did not ‘know really the importance of good team work’. Furthermore, it claimed that although his place in British history would be assured, Churchill was lucky, as Britain’s victory in the war obscured his weaknesses: let me explain how lucky Churchill is, because the defeat is so complete. His team was so painfully, so insufferably weak. Through the war years Churchill masked that weakness by his all absorbing personality. […] Churchill’s team was a weak one, because of his passion to suck up all authority into himself, and also because of his mistake of being loyal to personal friends.158

The paper emphasized how Churchill played down the teamwork required to win the war and suggested that this was the reason for his defeat. The Yorkshire Evening News was critical of Churchill and the Conservative Party once the war was over and clearly noted Churchill’s defects, suggesting that his current position as the great man was just a function of his good fortune. The Leeds Weekly Citizen looked back on Labour politicians’ contribution to the war.159 When the election campaign commenced, the paper emphasized that Churchill did not win the war alone: We do not believe Winston Churchill is indispensable. He has done a good job, but he has not done it alone. […] Further, it would not be Churchill’s personal views which guided the country, it would be the policy of the Tory party. He is only a figurehead. […] Thus the great, all-powerful Churchill could not act because the Conservative party would not let him. There are plenty of the old gang left and fundamentally, the Tory policy has not changed. The Tories’ chief assets for the next election are Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, but these are only two and, in any sphere, we can put forward twenty teams of able men to their one team.160

The paper claimed that Churchill would not be able to do anything without the consent of the Conservative Party and alleged that those who were responsible for the policy of appeasement still held power in the party. It further claimed that the Ministry of Labour, held by Bevin, was the most difficult and unpopular of all ministerial positions during the war and that Conservative politicians could not manage the workforce in Britain by themselves. The paper criticized the Conservative Party as shameful because it ‘spurned Churchill and sneered at him’ before the war but used him to attract voters during the election campaign:

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they pretend the Chamberlain age of friendship for the Hitlers and Mussolinis of Europe never existed, and they pretend they have always admired Winston Churchill […] let the country remember this: Winston Churchill may be a great man, but the Conservative Party is not made up of Winston Churchill—it is made up of coal owners, company directors, lords and dukes, bankers and stockbrokers, none of whom cares two-pence for the ordinary man.161

This statement ignored the fact that Labour politicians were also supportive of appeasement; and, in addition, it attempted to show a clear distinction between Churchill and the rest of the Conservative Party. The paper further attacked the Conservative Party for being owned by privileged people who never cared for the lives of ordinary people, and emphasized the strong representation of the upper class within the party.162 Kyle Simpson claimed that Churchill’s caretaker cabinet was made up mainly of privileged politicians who went to Eton and Harrow, which ironically showed what Churchill meant by ‘a truly National Government’.163 Moreover, the paper dismissed Churchill’s qualities as prime minister, listing his failures in the past: his intervention in Russia that ‘sought to strangle the revolution in its cradle’; his decision as Chancellor of the Exchequer to return Britain back to the Gold Standard; and his support of Mussolini and Franco. Criticizing Churchill’s broadcasts, the paper claimed that he belittled ordinary people: Churchill must know that he was talking nonsense; but he has so low an opinion of the intelligence of the people of this country that he imagines that they will swallow anything which falls from his lips. […] Churchill has been reduced to the level of Beaverbrook because he and the party he represents are terrified of losing this election. The Labour Party has a plan. The Conservative Party has no plan.164

By stating that Churchill fell to the level of Beaverbrook, the paper also expressed its disapproval of the Conservatives’ use of the Beaverbrook and Bracken press during the election campaign. It complained that the Conservative Party borrowed from ‘Dr. Goebbels the whole bag of propaganda tricks. Promise everybody everything was Dr. Goebbels’ recipe for achieving power in democracy.’165 When the election result emerged, the paper mentioned little about Churchill’s reaction or why he was defeated. It simply reported Labour’s

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victory and the attitude of the Conservative newspapers that ‘accepted their defeat in a sober spirit’.166 The newspapers in Leeds showed diverse opinions about Churchill after the war in Europe was over. The Conservative Yorkshire Post showed total support of Churchill and his party, while the Yorkshire Evening News and the Leeds Weekly Citizen were both critical of Churchill and the Conservatives.

Conclusion In Manchester and Leeds, two important industrial cities in northern England, newspapers paid much attention to post-war reconstruction. In Manchester, the locally owned Liberal and independent newspapers, the Manchester Guardian and the Manchester Evening News, criticized Churchill and his government’s position towards the Beveridge Report as being lukewarm even in wartime. Moreover, after the war, they openly criticized the Conservative Party who they described as neither fit to implement progressive reforms nor enthusiastic for the improvement of people’s lives. In contrast, three papers owned by Lord Kemsley, the Manchester Dispatch, the Manchester Evening Chronicle, and the Empire News, which were categorized as politically independent, showed complete support for Churchill throughout and after the war. This dichotomy shows how the type of newspaper ownership, whether locally owned or controlled by a chain, determined the line taken. In Leeds, the Conservative and independent press supported Churchill and his government wholeheartedly during the war, but afterwards the independent newspaper, the Yorkshire Evening News, became more negative. In the early stages of the war, Churchill was described by the Yorkshire Post and the Yorkshire Evening News as the realistic, belligerent leader who symbolized Britain at war. In the middle of the war, their reports on his visit to Leeds emphasized his friendliness to the working class and his good grasp of the life of ordinary people. Throughout wartime, these newspapers portrayed Churchill as the leader who had a deep understanding of what ordinary people wanted and who took their lives seriously. Their articles on the Beveridge Report further strengthened the image of Churchill as someone who not only encouraged people in their war efforts but who also sought to improve the lives of people. Over the discussion of the Beveridge Report, the importance of Churchill’s strong leadership was particularly emphasized. This, however, worked both ways. While after the

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war the Yorkshire Post identified his strong leadership as a virtue, the Yorkshire Evening News labelled it as a weakness. The Leeds Weekly Citizen was consistently critical of Churchill and emphasized his resistance towards the Beveridge Report, as well as the ignorance of Conservative politicians about the lives of ordinary people. After the war the paper claimed that Churchill was no more than a figurehead of the Conservative Party, which was controlled by the privileged class. The Manchester and Leeds press did not express a regional identity in their coverage of Churchill in the five selected events, and with the exception of Churchill’s visits to Manchester and Leeds, the articles discussed in this chapter rarely referred to a Lancashire or Yorkshire identity in relation to Churchill. Regional identities in Lancashire were only seen in articles about the cotton industry, while regional identities in Yorkshire, which were considered to be strong and chauvinistic, were surprisingly less manifested compared with national and regional identities in the other UK territories analysed in this book. It may be partly because their identities had never been challenged by Churchill. Although Churchill represented Manchester North West very briefly between 1906 and 1908, and although Churchill was unseated in Manchester, he did not take it as a personal rejection, thus the defeat did not leave him feeling a bitter animosity towards the city, as Dundee did. Churchill did not become involved in politics in Leeds, unlike other territories analysed in this book. Therefore, the Manchester and Leeds newspapers had no need to express their regional identity through their reporting of Churchill and UK politics.

Notes 1. It is difficult to find a Manchester-specific event and a Leeds-specific event during the Second World War in which Churchill was involved. Therefore, this chapter analyses how newspapers in Manchester and Leeds reported on the Beveridge Report and Churchill’s reaction to it, because two cities had a considerable working class population and newspapers often wrote about social reforms. 2. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945 (London: C. Mitchell and Co. Ltd. 1945), 135. 3. Ronald V. Sires, ‘Winston Churchill and the Liberals,’ The Historian 20, no. 4 (1958), 419. 4. William M.  Walker, ‘Dundee’s Disenchantment with Churchill: A Comment upon the Downfall of the Liberal Party,’ The Scottish Historical Review 49, no. 147 (1970), 92.

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5. Rachel Montague Ryan, A Biography of Manchester (London: Methuen, 1937), 5. 6. James Robert Moore, ‘Progressive Pioneers: Manchester Liberalism, the Independent Labour Party, and Local Politics in the 1890s,’ The Historical Journal 44, no. 4 (2001), 989. 7. Barnard Ellinger, ‘British Foreign Policy in Relation to the Lancashire Cotton Industry,’ International Affairs 16, no. 2 (1937), 253–255. 8. Geoffrey K.  Fry, ‘A Reconsideration of the British General Election of 1935 and the Electoral Revolution of 1945’, History 76, no. 246 (1991), 45. 9. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 135. 10. Bradley Beaven and J. Griffiths, ‘The blitz, civilian morale and city: mass-­ observation and working-class Britain, 1940–41,’ Urban History 26, no. 1 (1999), 78. 11. Owen Hartley, ‘The Second World War and After, 1939–74,’ in History of Modern Leeds, ed. D. Fraser (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), 443–44. 12. E.  J. Connell and M.  Ward, ‘Industrial Development 1780–1914,’ in History of Modern Leeds, ed. D.  Fraser (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), 142–43. 13. Michael Meadowcroft, ‘The Years of Political Transition, 1914–39,’ in History of Modern Leeds, ed. D.  Fraser (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), 430–31. 14. Brian Thompson, Portrait of Leeds (London: Hale, 1971), 21, 100. 15. Meadowcroft, ‘The Years of Political Transition,’ 419. 16. Thompson, Portrait of Leeds, p. 102. 17. Hartley, ‘The Second World War and After, 1939–74’, 437. 18. Ibid., 443–44. 19. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 135–6. 20. W.  P. Crozier, Off the record: Political Interviews 1933–1943 (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1973), 379. 21. Ibid., 299. 22. ‘Wadsworth, Alfred Powell’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), accessed 19 August 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/36673 23. Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 136. 24. Ibid. 25. John Nicholson, ‘Popular Imperialism and the Provincial Press: Manchester Evening and Weekly Papers, 1895–1902,’ Victorian Periodicals Review 13, no. 3 (1980), 88. 26. The Newspaper Press Directory 1939 (London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd., 1939), 133; Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 135.

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27. Thompson, Portrait of Leeds, 61. 28. M.A. Gibb, ‘Some Aspects of Journalistic Enterprise in Leeds,’ University of Leeds Review 4, no. 4 (1955), 332. 29. Ibid., 335. 30. Ibid. 31. M.A.  Gibb and B.  Frank, The Yorkshire Post: Two Centuries (Leeds: Yorkshire Conservative Newspaper Co., 1954), 70. 32. Gibb, ‘Some Aspects,’ 331. 33. W. Linton Andrews, The Autobiography of a Journalist, (London: E. Benn, 1964), 125. 34. Richard Cockett, Twilight of Truth, 127–9. 35. Gibb, ‘Some Aspects’, 338. 36. Andrews, The Autobiography of a Journalist, 172–3. 37. Ibid., 160. 38. Ibid., 195. 39. Ibid., 149–150. 40. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945, 130. 41. Ibid., 129. 42. Ibid. In addition to these newspapers, West Leeds News Ltd. owned two weeklies, both politically independent, The Leeds Guardian and the North Leeds News. Neither of them commented much on Churchill nor provides unique opinions about politics, thus they are not analysed in this chapter. 43. The Manchester Guardian, 27 Sept. 1939. 44. Ibid., 28 Sept. 1939. 45. The Manchester Evening Chronicle, 4 Sept. 1939. 46. The Manchester Dispatch, 4 Sept. 1939. 47. The Yorkshire Post, 4 Sept. 1939. 48. The Yorkshire Evening News, 4 Sept. 1939. 49. The Leeds Weekly Citizen, 8 Sept. 1939. 50. Manchester Guardian, 4 May 1940. 51. Ibid., 10 May 1940. 52. Ibid., 11 May 1940. 53. The Manchester Evening News, 8 May 1940. 54. Ibid., 14 May 1940. 55. Ibid., 20 Aug. 1940. 56. Ibid., 19 Aug. 1940. 57. Ibid., 6 June 1940. 58. Ibid., 24 Aug. 1940. 59. Ibid. 60. Manchester Dispatch, 10 May 1940. 61. Ibid., 11 May 1940.

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62. The Empire News, 19 May 1940. 63. Yorkshire Post, 10 May 1940. 64. Ibid., 11 May 1940. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 19 June 1940. 67. Ibid., 21 Aug. 1940. 68. Yorkshire Evening Post, 14 May 1940. 69. Yorkshire Evening News, 10 May 1940. 70. Ibid., 11 May 1940. 71. Ibid. 72. Leeds Weekly Citizen, 17 May 1940. 73. Ibid., 5 July 1940. 74. The Manchester City News, 2 May 1941. 75. Manchester Guardian, 28 Apr. 1941. 76. Manchester Evening News, 26 Apr. 1941. 77. Manchester Evening Chronicle, 26 April 1941. 78. Yorkshire Post, 18 May 1942. 79. Yorkshire Evening News, 16 May 1942. 80. Yorkshire Post, 18 May 1942. 81. Ibid., 18 May 1942. 82. Ibid., 18 May 1942. 83. Ibid., 20 May 1942. 84. Yorkshire Evening News, 16 May 1942. 85. John Hills, J. Ditch, and H. Glennerster, Beveridge and Social Security: An International Retrospective (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 1. 86. B.  Abel-Smith, ‘The Beveridge Report: Its Origins and Outcomes,’ in Beveridge and Social Security: An International Retrospective, ed. J. Hills, J. Ditch, and H. Glennerster (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 10. 87. A. Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, vol. 2: Minister of Labour (London: Heinemann, 1967), 226. 88. Yorkshire Post, 22 Mar. 1943. 89. John Swift, ‘Randolph Churchill and the General Election in Preston, 1945: Bucking the Trend,’ Northern History 48, no. 1 (2011), 125. 90. Manchester Guardian, 11 Dec. 1942. 91. Ibid., 19 Feb. 1943. 92. Ibid., 24 Mar. 1943. 93. Ibid., 23 Mar. 1943. 94. Manchester Evening News, 22 Feb. 1943. 95. Ibid., 15 Feb. 1943. 96. Manchester Evening Chronicle, 22 Mar. 1943. 97. Empire News, 28 Mar. 1943. 98. Manchester Dispatch, 22 Mar. 1943.

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99. Yorkshire Post, 2 Dec. 1942. 100. Ibid., 4 Dec. 1942. 101. Yorkshire Post, 16 Feb. 1943. 102. Ibid., 17 Feb. 1943. 103. Ibid., 18 Feb. 1943. 104. Ibid., 22 Mar. 1943. 105. Ibid., 24 Mar. 1943. 106. Yorkshire Evening News, 1 Dec. 1942. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid., 19 Feb. 1943. 109. Ibid., 22 Mar. 1943. 110. Ibid. 111. Leeds Weekly Citizen, 4 Dec. 1942. 112. Ibid., 1 Jan. 1943. 113. Ibid., 4 Dec. 1942. 114. Ibid., 11 Dec. 1942. 115. Ibid., 16 Apr. 1943. 116. Manchester Guardian, 12 May 1945. 117. Ibid., 22 May 1945. 118. Ibid., 24 May 1945. 119. Ibid., 5 June 1945. 120. Ibid., 22 June 1945. 121. Ibid., 25 June 1945. 122. Ibid., 4 July, 1945. 123. Ibid., 27 July 1945. 124. Manchester Evening News, 14 May 1945. 125. Ibid., 22 May 1945. 126. Ibid., 23 May 1945. 127. Ibid., 4 July 1945. 128. Ibid., 5 June 1945. 129. Ibid., 20 June 1945. 130. Ibid., 26 June 1945. 131. Ibid., 26 July 1945. 132. Manchester Dispatch, 5 June 1945. 133. Ibid., 25 May 1945. 134. Ibid., 19 June 1945. 135. Ibid., 14 June 1945. 136. Ibid., 27 July 1945. 137. Ibid., 6 June 1945; Ibid., 27 July 1945. 138. Empire News, 29 July 1945. 139. Yorkshire Post, 8 May 1945. 140. Ibid., 9 May 1945.

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141. Ibid., 22 May 1945. 142. Ibid., 24 May 1945. 143. Ibid., 26 May 1945. 144. Ibid., 27 June 1945. 145. Ibid., 27 June 1945. 146. Ibid., 28 June 1945. 147. Ibid., 29 June 1945. 148. Ibid., 23 June 1945. 149. Ibid., 4 July 1945. 150. Ibid., 5 July 1945. 151. Ibid., 27 July 1945. 152. Ibid. 153. Ibid. 154. Ibid., 28 July 1945. 155. Yorkshire Evening News, 5 June 1945. 156. Ibid., 27 June 1945. 157. Ibid., 29 June 1945. 158. Ibid., 27 July 1945. 159. Leeds Weekly Citizen, 11 May 1945. 160. Ibid. 161. Ibid., 25 May 1945. 162. Ibid., 1 June 1945. 163. Ibid., 22 June 1945. 164. Ibid. 165. Ibid., 29 June 1945. 166. Ibid., 10 Aug. 1945.

References Contemporary Newspapers

and

City News Empire News Leeds Weekly Citizen Manchester Dispatch Manchester Evening Chronicle Manchester Evening News Manchester Guardian Yorkshire Evening News Yorkshire Evening Post Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury

Periodicals

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Book and Journal Articles Abel-Smith, B. ‘The Beveridge Report: Its Origins and Outcomes.’ In Beveridge and Social Security: An International Retrospective, edited by J. Hills, J. Ditch, and H. Glennerster, 10–22. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. Andrews, Linton. The Autobiography of a Journalist. London: Earnest Benn Limited, 1964. Beaven, Bradley and J.  Griffiths. ‘The blitz, civilian morale and city: mass-­ observation and working-class Britain, 1940–41.’ Urban History 26, no. 1 (1999): 71–88. Bullock, A. The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, vol. 2: Minister of Labour. London: Heinemann, 1967. Connell, E. J. and M. Ward. ‘Industrial Development 1780–1914.’ In History of Modern Leeds, edited by D. Fraser, 142–76. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980. Crozier, W. P. Off the record: Political interviews 1933–1943. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1973. Ellinger, Barnard. ‘British Foreign Policy in Relation to the Lancashire Cotton Industry.’ International Affairs, 16, no. 2 (1937): 245–262. Fry, Geoffrey K. ‘A Reconsideration of the British General Election of 1935 and the Electoral Revolution of 1945.’ History 76 246 (1991): 43–55. Gibb, M.A. ‘Some Aspects of Journalistic Enterprise in Leeds.’ University of Leeds Review 4, no. 4 (1955): 330–39. Gibb, M.A. and B.  Frank. The Yorkshire Post: Two Centuries. Leeds: Yorkshire Conservative Newspaper Co., 1954. Hartley, Owen. ‘The Second World War and After, 1939–74.’ In History of Modern Leeds, edited by D.  Fraser, 437–61. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980. Hills, John, John Ditch, and Howard Glennerster eds. Beveridge and Social Security: An International Retrospective. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. Meadowcroft, Michael. ‘The Years of Political Transition, 1914–39.’ In History of Modern Leeds, edited by D. Fraser, 410–36. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980. Moore, James Robert. ‘Progressive Pioneers: Manchester Liberalism, the Independent Labour Party, and Local Politics in the 1890s.’ The Historical Journal 44, no. 4 (2001): 989–1013. The Newspaper Press Directory 1939. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1939. The Newspaper Press Directory 1945. London: C. Mitchell & Co., Ltd, 1945. Nicholson, John. ‘Popular Imperialism and the Provincial Press: Manchester Evening and Weekly Papers, 1895–1902.’ Victorian Periodicals Review 13, no. 3 (1980): 85–96. Ryan, Rachel Montague. A Biography of Manchester (London, 1937).

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Sires, Ronald V. ‘Winston Churchill and the Liberals.’ The Historian 20, no. 4 (1958): 415–427. Swift, John. ‘Randolph Churchill and the General Election in Preston, 1945: Bucking the Trend.’ Northern History 48, no. 1 (2011): 123–44. Thompson, Brian. Portrait of Leeds (London: Hale, 1971). Walker, William M. ‘Dundee’s Disenchantment with Churchill: A Comment upon the Downfall of the Liberal Party.’ The Scottish Historical Review 49, no. 147 (1970): 85–108.

Websites Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). ‘Wadsworth, Alfred Powell.’ Accessed August 19, 2018. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/36673.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

Regional newspapers provide crucial historical knowledge of society. While many have said that the regional press saw a significant decline in the interwar years,1 this book has demonstrated that they still provided unique and honest opinions and did not set out to flatter the authorities during the Second World War. By analysing national, regional, and local newspapers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and three English cities (Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds), this book showed the diversity of public opinion in each of these areas at a time when the regional press was believed to have declined, and a monolithic Britishness was being emphasized. The book has shown that regional newspapers actively engaged in the lives of people and has provided diverse examples of communication between ordinary people, newspaper people, and the government. As Matthews pointed out, the Second World War benefited the provincial newspapers, and for the government, they became an important medium to communicate with people.2 Although regional newspapers saw a decline in the interwar years because of consolidation of ownership and expansions of London newspapers, they still retained influence outside London and Southeast England just before the outbreak of war. The 1938 report by the Political and Economic Planning showed that the local evening papers flourished in the West Midlands; people preferred reading local newspapers in Lancashire and West Riding of Yorkshire. Moreover, the circulation of UK-national morning newspapers in Scotland was lower © The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7_7

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than anywhere else in Great Britain.3 In general, the further away from London, the more people read local newspapers.4 During the Second World War, due to paper rationing, guaranteed sales, rise in demand for information, and cooperation among rival newspapers, many smaller papers made more profit than they would have in peacetime: between 1937 and 1947, the circulation of provincial morning newspapers increased from 1.6 million to 2.7 million, and that of provincial evening newspapers increased from 4.43 million to 6.78 million. The Second World War was thus good for many regional newspapers financially, and many newspapers that had been financially distressed before the war managed to avoid shutting down during wartime.5 This book has also shown the voluntary and moderate nature of censorship during the Second World War. Many regional newspapers worked closely with the government to win the war, voluntarily censored information that would help Britain’s enemies, reported wartime events in line with government propaganda and heroized suffering. Matthews claimed that the regional press propagated a London-centric ‘blitz spirit’ and followed a particular ‘ideal value of serving the good of the community’.6 The government believed that regional newspapers were vital to communicate with and encourage people, so it provided them with more leeway regarding censorship than their national counterparts.7 This cooperative relationship, however, did not suppress the press’s fair and reasonable criticism of the government. As Matthews pointed out, censorship conducted at the provincial level was intended to ‘delay news about weather and to anonymize reports of attack on regional towns’,8 and criticism of politicians was rarely censored. Wartime censorship was moderate, with the exceptions of the suppression of the Daily Worker and the Week and the Unionist Stormont government’s sectarian attitude towards Nationalist newspapers in Northern Ireland. Small provincial newspapers that news agencies did not serve were often published without much censorship. This was a matter of concern for regional information officers and resulted in the establishment of regional censoring offices. Nevertheless, authorities in London were not keen on behaving in too draconian a fashion. The press in all the territories covered in this book criticized Churchill’s government freely, making the current research possible. Freedom of expression was considered important in Britain in its fight against totalitarian Germany, and the sub-UK national and regional press expressed a variety of unique opinions on the war leader.

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The book has highlighted the interactive character of the regional press. It published readers’ opinions on their contents in addition to those of writers, owners, and politicians. The regional press in wartime was a profit-­ driven business thus cared about what readers wanted to read and did not ignore their needs. The press is not a perfect example of public opinion; nevertheless, it hints at what was popularly discussed and what people thought. The book demonstrated that the regional press as a source of historical research is rich with information on contemporary concerns and ideas which many historians have overlooked as a primary source, having used only national newspapers as well as widely read regional newspapers such as the Manchester Guardian. Tosh claimed that the press is ‘the most important published primary source for the historian’,9 and this book suggests that this claim is even more valid in the context of the provincial press during wartime—especially when studying the intentions of various actors. This book has also provided examples of the similarities and differences of opinions across the UK as well as insights into the notion of ‘Britishness’ through the press’s reports on Churchill. As the previous chapters have shown, there were many common elements in the reports on Churchill across the newspapers in the examined territories. To an extent, this was the result of the newspapers’ similar political affiliations. In reporting Churchill’s return to the Admiralty, newspapers supportive of Churchill and the war cabinet in all territories emphasized his long career in politics and his experience in the Great War. Additionally, newspapers that were against Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement before the outbreak of the Second World War, such as the Glasgow Herald and the Yorkshire Post, praised Churchill’s strong opposition to the policy and by doing so justified themselves. Whereas a Nationalist paper in Ulster highlighted the disharmony between Churchill and others in the war cabinet as well as commented on Churchill’s family traditions and his positive influence on the war effort, Nationalist newspapers in Scotland and Wales did not report on his inclusion. Instead, they blamed England for the outbreak of the war, declaring that the Second World War was an English war and Scotland and Wales had nothing to do with it. Labour-supporting newspapers did not report on Churchill’s return and rather criticized Chamberlain and pre-war Conservative policies. Two of the three Labour-­ supporting newspapers referred to in this book, the Forward in Scotland,

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and the Town Crier in Birmingham, showed animosity towards Churchill, calling him the enemy of working-class people as well as of socialism. Churchill was often likened to heroes from British history in reports of his rise to the premiership. John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough and Churchill’s ancestor, Drake, Cromwell, Pitt of Chatham, Pitt the Younger, and the Duke of Wellington were frequently invoked to convey greatness on the part of Churchill and to link past victories with present circumstances. In Wales, Lloyd George was added to this list of heroes. Likening Churchill to them was a common practice among Unionist, Liberal, and Independent newspapers across the UK. Generally, positive depictions of his succession mentioned his historic lineage, his image as a pugnacious and natural war leader and as a ‘Man of Destiny’. His war cabinet was depicted as a symbol of national unity, though precisely what ‘national’ meant could be ambiguous. Many newspapers also claimed that the change of premiers would help move a stagnating situation forward. There were, of course, negative depictions as well: a Nationalist newspaper in Ulster denounced Churchill as the enemy of Ireland. Additionally, Nationalist papers in Scotland and Wales continued to claim that the Second World War was an English war and called Churchill an Englishman with a limited idea of small nations. After the coalition government was formed in May 1940, Labour-supporting papers stopped criticizing Churchill and singled out Chamberlain for blame instead. Comments by newspapers of all political affiliations about Churchill in the 1945 election campaign demonstrated the weaknesses of the Conservative Party. The Conservative-supporting press tended to report on Churchill and the Conservative Party positively, praising Churchill as the man who won the war and his leadership as indispensable to the UK. Nevertheless, some papers expressed confusion with the Conservative election propaganda, which attacked the Labour Party vehemently but explained little about Conservative policies. Although these papers admitted the greatness of Churchill as a British leader, they could not hide their disappointment with individual Conservative candidates, who the papers felt did not define their policies clearly. The Conservative Party had arguably not developed its post-war policies adequately during the war and the general election, and it could not present a sufficiently coherent manifesto. It is said that the organization of the Conservative Party became less effective in wartime because of an ‘electoral truce’ with Labour and Liberal parties, according to which each party would not field candidates during by-elections against the incumbent candidate. The party was also said to

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be less effective because many of its activists and officials were involved in war work and spent little time within their constituencies at the time of the general election. When the war ended, the Central Office of the Conservatives was unable to offer adequate lines for Conservative parliamentary candidates to take,10 which partly contributed to the unfavourable depictions of Conservative candidates even in Conservative-supporting newspapers. Liberal-supporting papers were divided in their position towards Churchill after the war. Most of them supported the Liberal Party and Churchill, who was once their member, and criticized the Conservatives, who tried to use Churchill to attract votes, emphasizing the pre-war antagonism between Churchill and the Conservatives. Other papers criticized both Churchill and the Conservatives, claiming that their policy was too close to that of the Liberals. Using the word ‘National’, these papers claimed that the Conservative Party confused voters as to who they really were. Their criticism of the use of the label ‘National’ was connected with their frustration regarding overall Conservative policies, the weakened party organization, and the party’s overreliance on the personality of Churchill. The Labour-supporting press was consistently opposed to Churchill and the Conservatives and depicted Churchill as anti-Russia, anti-working class, and ignorant of public opinion and the life of ordinary people just as it had before Churchill became prime minister in May 1940. The pro-­ Labour press argued that Churchill and the Conservative Party were an inappropriate choice for implementing post-war reconstruction initiatives and that only the Labour Party could successfully realize the necessary social reforms. Churchill and the Conservatives were reluctant to implement the social reforms suggested in the Beveridge Report, and their attitude certainly had a negative influence on their image in some of the newspapers, potentially influencing voters who desired post-war reconstruction. The Labour-supporting papers believed that the Beveridge Report revealed clear differences between the Conservative and Labour parties in their enthusiasm for social reform, and that the electorate viewed the Labour Party as ‘its obvious champion’.11 They also highlighted the weakness of Churchill within the Conservative Party, emphasizing that he was controlled by the privileged class who supported the Conservatives and that he would be unable to decide anything without their consent. They claimed that Lord Beaverbrook and Brendan Bracken controlled Churchill and that the two newspapermen directed the Conservatives’

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election propaganda. This criticism played on Churchill’s inadequacies as a party leader, which negatively influenced the planning of the Conservative election campaign. Churchill had a wary relationship with his party managers, and their advice was often mixed with the opinions of Lord Beaverbrook and Bracken, who were Churchill’s friends.12 The fact that Churchill was ostracized in the 1930s and had been an opponent of appeasement gave the Labour Party opportunities to attack the Conservatives in Churchill’s own words from that time,13 and the Labour-­ supporting newspapers emphasized the disharmony between Churchill and the Conservative Party. While political affiliations encouraged certain similarities in Churchill’s depictions across the UK, distinctive national and regional identities also manifested themselves. They played an important part in determining how newspapers from different regions reported Churchill, each area revealing itself differently. As Chap. 2 has shown, in Northern Ireland, Unionist newspapers were generally supportive towards Churchill to maintain their continued separation from Eire and their privileged position in Ulster. Churchill, as an old imperialist, seemed to them beneficial for consolidating Northern Ireland’s position in the British Empire as a distinct entity from Eire. Nationalist papers had criticized Churchill’s involvement in the Irish question in the past but were more or less uninterested in Churchill during the Second World War because their target of criticism was Unionist politicians in Stormont who had discriminated against Catholics. Until he overtly attacked the Irish Taoiseach de Valera in his broadcast speech on 13 May 1945, Churchill was covered in a relatively neutral sense in Nationalist newspapers. However, after the speech, Churchill was depicted as an old imperialist who exploited Catholic Ireland in line with Ulster Protestants. Northern Ireland had its own censorship measures in addition to the British ones implemented by the Ministry of Information. The Stormont government banned some Nationalist and Communist papers during the war, including a Nationalist paper the Derry Journal. However, although many British politicians and an American ambassador complained about a scurrilous Protestant paper, the Ulster Protestant, Unionists in Northern Ireland never implemented any measures to halt its publication. Despite such perceived imbalances, the Nationalist press in Ulster continued to present critical accounts of both Stormont and the British government. As has been discussed in relation to conscription in Northern Ireland, various

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opinions were expressed in Unionist, Nationalist, and religious newspapers. Although they declared their religious identity forcefully in news reports and editorials over the issue, some opinions expressed in the letters columns challenged the editorial lines of the papers. This indicated the diversity of views within each religious community in Ulster. Chapter 3 has demonstrated that many newspapers except the Labour-­ supporting newspaper the Forward promoted and emphasized Scottish identities. The Nationalist Scots Independent was most explicit in promoting Scottish identities consistently throughout the war, whereas other papers were more moderate and restrained. Scottish newspapers, regardless of political affiliations, often resented English politicians’ insensitive use of ‘England’ for ‘Britain’. Most obviously, Scottishness became a matter of discussion when Churchill chose an English politician, Ernest Brown, as Secretary of State for Scotland in May 1940 and a Scottish politician, Tom Johnston, in February 1941. Many newspapers appreciated Brown’s experience and qualities, but when the appointment of Johnston was announced, they did not hesitate to express their satisfaction in having a Scottish-born Secretary of State for Scotland. The ways in which Churchill was reported certainly reflected Scottishness and Scottish interests. However, except in the Nationalist newspaper, the Scottish identities expressed in the selected newspapers also accommodated British identities. Most newspapers commented positively and supportively on Churchill in general, but Thomson newspapers in Dundee, which D. C. Thomson owned, declined to join in with the acclaim of Churchill. One reason for this abstention may be that Thomson and Churchill had a personal feud that went back to the time Churchill represented the Dundee constituency between 1908 and 1922. The relationship between Churchill and his former constituency negatively affected the local depiction of Churchill even in wartime. The Courier presented an example of how the proprietor’s personality and experience could strongly influence the newspaper’s editorial line. Chapter 4 has shown that even in English-language newspapers in Wales, responses to Churchill displayed Welsh sentiments. Although it is said that the Tonypandy riots in 1910 and the General Strike in 1926 left marks of resentment among Welsh people towards Churchill, these incidents were never mentioned in the selected events in the selected newspapers. Newspaper reports about Churchill during the Second World War—except in the Nationalist paper, the Welsh Nationalist—were mostly supportive. In many newspapers, Welsh identities were expressed by

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praising and supporting Lloyd George, the UK Prime Minister during the First World War. Churchill was often compared with Lloyd George, and their close friendship was emphasized throughout the war. Although most newspapers maintained a supportive attitude towards Churchill and his government, Welsh-specific issues such as the proposed establishment of a Welsh Office under a Secretary of State for Wales in 1943 as well as the miners’ strike in 1944 indicated the existence of distinct Welsh identities and a disaffectedness with English politicians. Nevertheless, the Welsh press avoided attacking Churchill on these issues. In its discussion over the Secretary of State for Wales, the Welsh press singled out Attlee for condemnation even though both Churchill and Attlee rejected the creation of the office and position. Churchill tended to be described as someone who understood Welsh sentiments and would realize such measures for Wales when the time was right. Except in the Welsh Nationalist, Churchill was not criticized for ignoring the conditions of Welsh miners during the 1944 strike. Whereas some papers were critical of miners on strike and said they had brought shame to Wales, other papers in mining regions were sympathetic towards the miners because they worked in such harsh environments. However, these papers did not attack the British government or view the strike as a Welsh-specific issue except for the Welsh Nationalist. The English language newspapers in Wales occasionally expressed clear Welsh sentiments derived from their Welsh identities; however, just like the Scottishness of Scottish newspapers, this Welshness accommodated British identities during the war. Chapter 5 has demonstrated that in Birmingham, territorial identity was manifested through a display of loyalty to Neville Chamberlain and was influenced by Birmingham papers’ pride and affection for the Chamberlain family. The way Birmingham papers reported Churchill changed as his position and that of Neville Chamberlain changed during the course of the war. Churchill was consistently compared with the former prime minister, who the city was proud to call its ‘own Premier’. The death of Neville Chamberlain in November 1940 seems to have marked a substantial decline in the Chamberlain influence in Birmingham. Yet while some Birmingham papers were able to move on following Chamberlain’s death, Conservative-supporting newspapers sustained this aspect of their identity through the support of a remote relative of the Chamberlain family as well as of Chamberlainite politicians in the 1945 general election. Chapter 6 has shown that Manchester and Leeds newspapers did not express distinctive regional identities when reporting Churchill. These

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newspapers were likely secure in their identities, so it was not necessary for them to manifest these identities when reporting UK-wide news. The absence of territorially distinct Churchill coverage in these papers may also be attributed to the fact that, unlike in other parts of the UK, their identities had not been challenged by Churchill and his family. Churchill had been involved in the Irish question in the early twentieth century, and his family had significant connections with British rule in Ireland. He had a strained relationship with Dundee constituency, which he used to represent. There was also mutual resentment between him and the Welsh people over the Tonypandy riots of 1910. He had been a political opponent of a premier with close links to Birmingham, Neville Chamberlain. Although Churchill represented Manchester between 1906 and 1908 and was unseated in 1908, this was not considered a personal rejection. Leeds, meanwhile, had no such relationship with Churchill and his family. Therefore, the Manchester and Leeds newspapers had little reason to be sensitive when reporting on Churchill during the Second World War. These chapters have demonstrated that national and regional identities, except in Manchester and Leeds, clearly influenced how newspapers portrayed Churchill and on what aspects of Churchill they wrote and did not write. Although the British government propagated a monolithic Britishness and promoted ‘national’ unity, the differences in the newspapers from the six areas examined in this book showed that Scottish and Welsh national identities, as well as religious and regional identities, were actively expressed in the newspapers and were very important in moulding opinions in each area. Through these analyses, the book has shown that profoundly positive images of Churchill were created not only through the one-sided propaganda that Churchill and the government spread but also through the press’s strategy of utilizing the war leader’s fame for its own purpose. Many newspapers with various political and religious affiliations generally depicted Churchill in a favourable way, but these depictions derived from a desire to use the war leader to promote particular positions. Although Churchill was a half-English, half-American statesman, his relations with Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the past as well as his political affiliations as both a Conservative and a Liberal were particularly emphasized in these newspapers. His long political career allowed them to position themselves either positively or negatively towards Churchill. This was particularly apparent in their reports on the 1945 general election. Many newspapers across the UK claimed that Churchill was on their side to attract more

204 

H. ISHIKAWA

votes for the parties with which they were linked. After his defeat, some of these papers were sympathetic to Churchill. Of course, as the chapters have demonstrated, there were many negative descriptions of Churchill in these papers as well. Nevertheless, by the end of the Second World War, many of them had acknowledged the greatness of Churchill as a war leader. The press reporting of Churchill broadly agreed that he was a great man, but this outlook was often mediated by the experience of each city and by national and regional identities. This book has provided many examples of the diverse positive and negative opinions about Churchill and has shown that newspapers exposed people to discussions about his and his government’s fallibility. Despite all the criticisms, as has been seen in the selected newspapers in various areas, it remains the case that Churchill, at the end of the Second World War, was considered to be a great and historic figure in Britain. Churchill has been a significant figure in British history, and he will remain significant in the future. The diversity of territorial coverage of his character, actions, and political alignments serve, in a sometimes counterintuitive way, to strengthen this observation.

Notes 1. Kevin Williams, ‘The Devil’s Decade and Modern Mass Communication: The Development of the British Media during the Inter-war Years,’ in Twentieth-Century Mass Society in Britain and the Netherlands, ed. B. Moore and Henk van Nierup (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 104–07. 2. Rachel Matthews, The history of the provincial press in England (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 139, 147. 3. Political and Economic Planning. Report on the British press, a survey of its current operations and problems with special reference to national newspapers and their part in public affairs (London: PEP, 1938), 236–246. 4. Matthews, The history of the provincial press in England, 132. 5. Although the provincial newspapers gained more profit in wartime than in peacetime, revenue from advertisement decreased for the provincial evening newspapers despite the rise in advertising rates. This was because of the limited space available for advertisements, which was influenced by paper rationing and government regulation to limit the ratio of space allotted for advertisements. This, however, was covered by the increase of price and guaranteed sale. The demand for advertisement space exceeded the supply in wartime. Therefore, for commercial enterprise as well as the government who wanted advertisement spaces, the importance of provincial

7 CONCLUSION 

205

newspapers expanded during the war. Matthews, The history of the provincial press in England, 139, 152–3. 6. Ibid., 155. 7. Ibid., 158. 8. Ibid., 147. 9. John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (London: Taylor and Francis, 2015), 78–79. 10. Michael D.  Kandiah, ‘The Conservative Party and the 1945 General Election,’ Contemporary British History 9, no. 1 (1995), 24–30. 11. Ibid., 29. 12. Ibid., 30. 13. Ibid., 40.

References Kandiah, Michael D. ‘The Conservative Party and the 1945 General Election.’ Contemporary British History 9, no. 1 (1995): 21–47. Matthews, Rachel. The history of the provincial press in England. New  York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Political and Economic Planning. Report on the British press, a survey of its current operations and problems with special reference to national newspapers and their part in public affairs. London: PEP, 1938. Tosh, John. The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History. London: Taylor and Francis, 2015. Williams, Kevin. ‘The Devil’s Decade and Modern Mass Communication: The Development of the British Media during the Inter-war Years.’ In Twentieth Century Mass Society in Britain and the Netherlands, edited by B. Moore and Henk van Nierup, 93–112. Oxford: Berg, 2006.



Appendices

Appendix 1: Newspapers in Northern Ireland1 Name

Type

Armagh Observer Belfast NewsLetter Belfast Telegraph

Weekly

City

Armagh/ Dungannon Morning Belfast daily

Political Proprietor in Year of affiliation in 1939/1945 establi 1939/1945 shment

Price Memo in 1939/ 1945

Nationalist

1930

1d/2d

1737

1d/1.5d

1870

1.5d

1883

2d

1855

1d

1824

1d

Unionist

Evening daily

Belfast

Unionist

Irish Christian Advocate

Weekly

Belfast

Methodist

Irish News and Belfast Morning News Northern Whig and Belfast Post

Morning Belfast daily

Nationalist

Morning Belfast daily

Unionist

Patrick Mallon Belfast NewsLetter, Ltd. W. & G. Baird, Ltd. Irish Methodist Publishing Co. Ltd. Irish News, Ltd.

Northern Whig Ltd.

Property of Cunningham family

(continued)

© The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7

207

208 

APPENDICES

(continued) Name

Type

City

Political Proprietor in Year of affiliation in 1939/1945 establi 1939/1945 shment

Price Memo in 1939/ 1945

Ulster Protestant

Monthly

Belfast

Conservative Unionist/ Protestant Presbyterian

1936

2d

1874

2d

Ulster Protestant League Witness Weekly Belfast The Irish Presbyterian Church Dungannon Weekly Dungannon Nationalist Patrick Observer Mallon Fermanagh Weekly Enniskillen Nationalist The North Herald West of Ireland Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd. Derry Tri-­weekly Londonderry Nationalist Derry Journal Journal Ltd. Londonderry Tri-­weekly Londonderry Conservative James Sentinel Unionist Colhoun Frontier Weekly Newry Nationalist The North Sentinel West of Ireland Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd. Ulster Weekly Omagh Nationalist The North Herald West of Ireland Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd.

1.5d/2d 1902

2d

1772

2d

1829

2d

1904

2d

1901

2d

Discontinued in January 1941

Dundee

Edinburgh Independent

Edinburgh Unionist/ Independent Glasgow Conservative

Glasgow Glasgow

Evening daily

Evening daily

Morning daily Daily Record Morning and Mail daily

Weekly Evening daily

Evening daily Morning daily Monthly

Forward Evening News

Evening Times Glasgow Herald Scots Independent

Independent Independent Nationalist

Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow

Socialist Independent/ Conservative

Independent

Dundee

Morning daily

Political affiliation in 1939/1945

Dundee Courier and Advertiser Evening Telegraph and Post Edinburgh Evening News Scotsman

City

Type

Name

The Scots National League

George Outram & Co., Ltd.

Associated Scottish Newspapers, Ltd./Scottish Daily Record and Evening News Ltd. George Outram & Co., Ltd.

John Ritchie & Co./The Scotsman Publications, Ltd. Associated Scottish Newspapers, Ltd./Scottish Daily Record and Evening News Ltd.

Provincial Newspapers, Ltd.

D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd.

John Leng & Co., Ltd. and D.C. Thomson Co., Ltd.

Proprietor in 1939/1945

1926

1783

1876

2d

2d

1d

2d 1d

1d

1895

1906 1870

2d

1d/1.5d

1d

1d

Price in 1939/1945

1817

1873

1877

1801

Year of establishment

Appendix 2: Newspapers in Scotland

Kemsley Newspapers.

Kemsley Newspapers.

The price rose to 1.5d on 19 May 1941.

Memo

 APPENDICES 

209

Weekly Weekly Evening daily Monthly Morning daily Weekly

Cambrian News Welsh Gazette South Wales Echo and Evening Express Welsh Nationalist Western Mail and South Wales News Glamorgan County Times

Weekly

Weekly

Proprietor in Political affiliation in 1939/1945 1939/1945

Independent Swansea Press, Ltd.

Aberystwyth Independent Cambrian News Ltd. Aberystwyth Liberal George Rees Cardiff Independent Western Mail and Echo, Ltd. Cardiff Nationalist Plaid Cymru Cardiff Unionist Western Mail and Echo, Ltd. Pontypridd Glamorgan County Times Newspaper and Printing Co., Ltd. Pontypridd Independent Percy S. Phillips/ Rhondda Valleys Newspapers, Ltd. Pontypridd Independent Percy S. Phillips/ Rhondda Valleys Newspapers, Ltd. Swansea Independent Swansea Press, Ltd.

City

South Wales Evening Evening Swansea Post daily

Rhondda Fach Gazette/Rhondda Fach Leader Herald of Wales

Pontypridd Observer Weekly

Type

Name

1d/2d

1d/2d

1d/2d

1895

1897

1916

1861

1d/1.5d

1d/2d

1d 1d

1932 1869

1847

2d 2d 1d/1.5d

Price in 1939/1945

1860 1899 1884

Year of establi shment

Appendix 3: Newspapers in Wales

The price rose to 1.5d in October 1940 and to 2d in October 1941. Subsidized by Associated Press, Ltd. The price rose to 1.5d in July 1940. Subsidized by Associated Press, Ltd.

Kemsley Newspapers.

Kemsley Newspapers.

Memo

210  APPENDICES

Birmingham Independent

Birmingham Progress (Labour)

Morning daily

Sunday

Weekly

Birmingham Post

Sunday Mercury Town Crier

Birmingham Unionist

Birmingham Unionist

Birmingham Liberal

Morning daily Evening daily

Political affiliation in 1939/1945

Birmingham Gazette Birmingham Mail

City

Type

Name

Birmingham Gazette Ltd. Sir Charles Hyde, Bart/ Birmingham Post and Mail, Ltd. Sir Charles Hyde, Bart/ Birmingham Post and Mail, Ltd. Birmingham Gazette Ltd. Hon. Frank Pakenham/ The Town Crier Publishing Society 1861

1918

1857

1870

1741

Proprietor in 1939/1945 Year of establishment

Appendix 4: Newspapers in Birmingham

2d

2d

1d

1d

1d

Price in 1939/1945

Westminster Press Group

Westminster Press Group

Memo

 APPENDICES 

211

Manchester Independent/ Conservative Manchester Independent

Morning daily

Evening daily

Evening daily

Morning daily

Manchester Daily Dispatch

Manchester Evening Chronicle Manchester Evening News

Manchester Guardian

Manchester Liberal

Manchester Independent

Manchester Independent/ Conservative

Weekly

Allied Newspapers, Ltd./Kemsley Newspapers, Ltd. Allied Newspapers, Ltd./Kemsley Newspapers, Ltd. Allied Newspapers, Ltd./Kemsley Newspapers, Ltd. Manchester Guardian and Evening News, Ltd. Manchester Guardian and Evening News, Ltd.

Political affiliation Proprietor in in 1939/1945 1939/1945

Empire News

City

Type

Name

1821

1868

1897

1900

1884

Year of establishment

Appendix 5: Newspapers in Manchester

2d

1d/1.5d

1d/1.5d

1d

2d

Price in 1939/1945

Kemsley Newspapers

Kemsley Newspapers

Kemsley Newspapers

Memo

212  APPENDICES

Leeds Conservative

Leeds Conservative

Evening daily

Evening daily

Yorkshire Evening News

Yorkshire Evening Post

Yorkshire Post Morning and Leeds daily Intelligencer/ Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury

Leeds Independent Progressive

Leeds Labour

Weekly

Political affiliation in 1939/1945

Leeds Weekly Citizen

City

Type

Name

Yorkshire Conservative Newspapers Co., Ltd. Yorkshire Conservative Newspapers Co., Ltd.

The Leeds Labour Publishing Society, Ltd. Provincial Newspapers, Ltd.

Proprietor in 1939/1945

1754

1890

1872

1911

Year of establishment

Appendix 6: Newspapers in Leeds

2d/1d

1d/1.5d

1d/1.5d

1d/2d

Price in 1939/1945

The Yorkshire Post and the Leeds Mercury merged in 1939.

The price rose to 1.5d on 29 April 1940.

Memo

 APPENDICES 

213

214 

Appendices

Appendix 7: Press Chains2 Name

Owner/proprietor

Newspapers

Daily Mail Group-­ Associated Newspapers, Ltd. (Northcriffe Newspapers, Ltd.) Kemsley Newspapers-­ Allied Newspapers, Ltd.

Lord Rothermere

Provincial Newspapers-­ United Newspapers, Ltd. Westminster Press-the Starmer group

William Harrison

Daily Mail, Evening News, Sunday Dispatch, Evening World (Bristol), Gloucestershire Echo (Cheltenham), Derby Evening Telegraph (Derby), Citizen (Gloucester), Grimsby Evening Telegraph (Grimsby), Hull Daily Mail (Hull), Evening Mail (Leicester), Lincolnshire Echo (Lincoln), Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent), and South Wales Evening Post (Swansea) Daily Graphic, Sunday Graphic, the Sunday Times, Daily Dispatch (Manchester), Sporting Chronicle (Manchester), Sunday Chronicle (Manchester), Sunday Empire (Manchester), Evening Chronicle (Manchester), Press and Journal (Aberdeen), Evening Express (Aberdeen), Northern Daily Telegraph (Blackburn), Western Mail (Cardiff), South Wales Echo (Cardiff), Daily Record (Glasgow), Evening News (Glasgow), Sunday Mail (Glasgow), Evening Gazette (Middlesbrough), Newcastle Journal and North Mail (Newcastle), Evening Chronicle (Newcastle), Sunday Sun (Newcastle), Sheffield Telegraph (Sheffield), Star (Sheffield), and Yorkshire Evening Press (York) News Chronicle, Edinburgh Evening News (Edinburgh), Yorkshire Evening News (Leeds), Chronicle and Echo (Northampton), and Lancashire Daily Post (Preston)

Daily Express Group

Lord Beaverbrook

Lord Kemsley

J. B. Morrell (chairman)Sir William T. Bailey and W. R. Derwent (the joint Managing Director up to the end of 1946)

North Western Evening Mail (Barrow), Birmingham Gazette (Birmingham), Evening Despatch (Birmingham), Sunday Mercury (Birmingham), Yorkshire Observer (Bradford), Telegraph and Argus (Bradford), Northern Echo (Darlington), Northern Despatch (Darlington), Nottingham Journal (Nottingham), Nottingham Evening News (Nottingham), Shields Evening News (North Shields), Oxford Mail (Oxford), Shields Gazette (South Shields), and Evening Advertiser (Swindon) Daily Express, Evening Standard, Sunday Express, and Evening Citizen (Glasgow)

Dundee Courier and Advertiser Edinburgh Evening News Scotsman Glasgow Herald Evening Times Daily Record and Mail Evening News Western Mail and South Wales News South Wales Echo and Express South Wales Evening Post

Newspaper name

40,282 48,135

215,557 313

263,724 313

90,178

54,880

105,230 311

47,783

312 311

311

311

311

309

309

309

311

311

313

312 313

111,200 312

311

312

77,836

312

312

312 312

310

312

43,180

310

107,876 310

61,280

82,553

259,565 312

225,300 312

38,371 49,861

115,200 311

83,889

312

312 312

310

312

41,389

310

107,306 310

63,200

93,018

269,813 312

237,955 312

42,064 55,276

112,326 312

86,484

44,966

112,320

61,440

95,159

256,532

240,399

43,040 63,096

105,667

87,744

1942

1941

1939

1940

Number Average of issue net sale per issue

Number Average Number Average Number Average of issue net sale of issue net sale of issue net sale per issue per issue per issue

310

310

310

312

312

312

313 312

312

313

1943 312

1944

312 313

310

48,728

310

117,760 310

64,480

107,023 313

259,224 313

240,115 313

45,949 65,871

312

310 311

309

54,980

309

133,007 309

74,048

101,859 310

294,910 310

267,285 311

51,363 74,243

119,500 311

96,104

1945

(continued)

59,929

145,280

79,950

111,713

321,386

288,358

57,235 81,992

127,558

100,295

Number Average Number Average net of issue net sale of issue sale per per issue issue

108,025 339

90,194

Number Average of issue net sale per issue

Appendix 8: Circulation Figures Cited on Royal Commission on Press Report, HO 251, National Archives

 Appendices 

215

Herald of Wales Birmingham Gazette Birmingham Mail Birmingham Post Sunday Mercury Manchester Guardian Manchester Evening News Yorkshire Evening News Yorkshire Evening Post Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer/ Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury

Newspaper name

(continued)

182,578 311

31,005

62,957

51,405

196,506 311

87,200

187,449 311

32,288

309

309

53

314

309

310

309

309

311

310

310

52

311

310

76,433

314

52

3899

52 309

50

309

52

310

309

87,160

310

170,888 310

81,800

192,940 310

50,662

60,681

30,525

205,844 310

82,359

4415 309

52

309

52

310

310

92,422

310

165,959 310

84,323

198,942 309

59,408

63,317

29,910

199,705 310

85,111

4347

108,254

166,105

93,835

200,238

62,534

65,055

30,546

205,328

77,896

4650

1942

1941

1939

1940

Number Average of issue net sale per issue

Number Average Number Average Number Average of issue net sale of issue net sale of issue net sale per issue per issue per issue

310

310

310

311

309

52

310

310

309

52

1943

314

53

1944

314

53

310

120,628 310

175,534 310

101,962 335

216,379 310

68,202

72,590

32,236

309

52

309

52

309

132,570 309

193,132 309

114,904 309

238,956 309

75,727

80,156

35,143

237,109 309

94,609

5523

1945

142,407

206,745

126,694

259,873

86,646

88,757

38,803

251,517

101,440

6192

Number Average Number Average net of issue net sale of issue sale per per issue issue

214,277 310

85,962

5058

Number Average of issue net sale per issue

216  Appendices

 Appendices 

217

Notes 1. The information provided is mainly based on the Newspaper Press Directory 1939 and 1945. Where information is not in the Directory, especially about political affiliation, the cell remains blank. 2. The information here comes from: William E.  Berry, British Newspapers and Their Controllers (London: Cassell, 1947). Newspapers that are referenced in this book are bolded.

Index1

A Aitken, Max, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, 8, 10, 20n34, 79, 83–85, 146, 176, 184, 199 Andrews, John, 32, 39, 42 Andrews, Linton, 11, 13, 160, 179 The Armagh Observer, 29 Astor, John J., 1st Baron Astor of Hever, 10, 11, 21n34 Attlee, Clement R., 1st Earl Attlee, 32, 71, 83, 84, 106–108, 110, 116, 175, 202 B Baldwin, Stanley, 10, 106 The Belfast News-Letter, 28, 33, 35, 39–41 The Belfast Telegraph, 28, 33, 43 Berry, Gomer, 1st Viscount Kemsley, 8, 10, 20n34, 58, 98, 159, 160, 164, 170, 175, 178, 179

Berry, William, 1st Viscount Camrose, 8, 10, 21n34, 98 The Beveridge Report, 157, 169–174, 185, 199 Bevin, Ernest, 35, 163, 183 The Birmingham Gazette, 20n34, 131, 133, 136, 139, 141, 142, 146, 147 The Birmingham Mail, 129, 132, 138, 139, 141, 144, 145 The Birmingham Post, 129, 130, 132, 135, 138, 140, 141, 145, 149, 150 Bracken, Brendan, 12, 32, 160, 176, 199 British Empire, 34, 40, 43–45, 47, 48, 67, 114, 140, 163, 200 Brooke, Sir Basil, 32 Brown, Ernest, 68–71, 89, 201

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 H. Ishikawa, Winston Churchill in the British Media, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48252-7

219

220 

INDEX

C Censorship, 10–14, 30, 33, 200 Chamberlain, Arthur Neville, 4, 10, 11, 16, 17, 34–39, 47, 58, 61, 62, 64–67, 100–104, 106, 107, 127–130, 133–143, 145, 146, 148–150, 161–166, 184, 197, 198, 202, 203 Chamberlain, Joseph, 16, 127–129 Chamberlain, Sir Joseph Austen, 16, 127, 128, 145 Chamberlain, W. J., 131, 132 Churchill, Winston S. (Sir Winston Churchill), 1, 3, 4, 11, 12, 15–17, 27–30, 48, 49, 57–61, 88, 89, 97–99, 119, 128, 129, 150, 157, 159–161, 185, 186 and the Beveridge Report, 169–174 and the conscription for Northern Ireland, 39–42 and de Valera, 42–47 First Lord of the Admiralty (1939–40), 33–35, 61, 62, 100, 101, 132–135, 161–163 and the general election in 1945, 43, 44, 46–48, 77–88, 116–119, 143–149, 175–185 and the Hess affair, 72–75 his choices for the Secretary of State for Scotland, 68, 69, 71 his visit to Birmingham in September 1941, 137, 139, 140 his visit to Edinburgh in October 1942, 75–77 his visit to Leeds in May 1942, 168, 169 his visit to Manchester in April 1941, 167 his visit to Wales in April 1941, 105, 106 and Lloyd George's death, 113–115

and miners in Wales, 111, 112 and Neville Chamberlain's death, 141–143 Prime Minister, 35–38, 63–68, 101–104, 135–137, 163–167 and the Secretary of State for Wales, 106–108, 110 The Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act 1922, 31, 32, 38 Craig, James, 1st Viscount Craigavon, 37, 47 D The Daily Mirror, 9, 10 The Daily Record, 20n34, 58, 59, 69, 75, 86, 87 The Daily Telegraph, 10 The Daily Worker, 12, 109, 196 Dawson, George Geoffrey, 10 de Valera, Éamon, 33, 35, 37, 39–45, 47, 200 Defence Notices, 12, 14 Defence Regulation 2C, 12 Defence Regulation 2D, 12 The Derry Journal, 28, 29, 31, 32, 37, 40, 41, 200 The Derry People, 29 The Dundee Courier, 58–62, 67, 71, 74, 76, 85–87, 201 The Dungannon Observer, 29, 47 E Eden, Robert Anthony, 1st Earl of Avon, 33, 82, 118, 135, 146, 160, 162, 164, 165, 180–183 The Edinburgh Evening News, 20n34, 59 The Emergency Powers Act 1939, 12 The Empire News, 159, 164, 170, 179, 185

 INDEX 

Evening Citizen, 21n34 Evening News, 20n34 The Evening Telegraph, 20n34, 59, 61, 76 The Evening Times, 59, 65, 69, 74, 75, 83, 86, 87 F The Fermanagh Herald, 29 The Forward, 59, 62, 66, 70, 73, 85, 88, 197, 201 Four-Year Plan, 81, 83, 144, 169–172, 180 The Frontier Sentinel, 29 G Gallup poll, 2, 135, 148 The Glamorgan Times, 99, 101, 114 The Glasgow Herald, 22n62, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 69, 72, 75, 80, 82, 83, 197 Government of Ireland Act 1920, 31 Gray, David, 31, 32

221

J Johnston, Thomas, 59, 68–71, 201 K Kemsley Newspapers, 20n34, 58, 59, 99, 159, 185 L Laski, Harold, 84 The Leeds Weekly Citizen, 161, 162, 166, 168, 173, 174, 183, 185, 186 Lloyd George, David, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, 16, 43, 60, 61, 81, 97, 100–104, 109, 113–117, 119, 133, 146, 163, 198, 202 The Londonderry Sentinel, 28, 36, 44

H Harmsworth, Alfred, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, 8, 9, 19n28, 131 Harmsworth, Harold, 1st Viscount Rothermere, 8, 20n34, 98 The The Herald of Wales, 99 Hess, Rudolf, 58, 72–75 Hoare, Samuel, 1st Viscount Templewood, 10, 36, 66

M The Manchester Dispatch, 159, 162, 164, 170, 178, 185 The Manchester Evening Chronicle, 159, 161, 164, 167, 170, 185 The Manchester Evening News, 159, 163, 164, 167, 170, 171, 177, 185 The Manchester Guardian, 4, 17, 22n62, 159, 161, 163, 167, 169–171, 175, 176, 185, 197 Mass Observation, 2 The Ministry of Information, 2, 7, 11, 13, 30, 200 Morrison, Herbert, 12, 32, 163

I The Irish Christian Advocate, 30, 38, 40 The Irish News, 29, 34, 37, 40, 46, 47

N The New Northman, 41, 42 The Northern Whig and Belfast Post, 29, 33, 36, 37, 44

222 

INDEX

The Norway Debate, 101, 102, 104, 165 P Pearson, Arthur, 9 The Pontypridd Observer, 99, 104, 110, 112, 118 The Press Association, 12, 14, 22n62 R Record, Edgar W., 130, 131, 138, 150 Reuters, 12, 22n62 The Rhondda Fach Gazette, 99, 104, 113, 118 S The Scots Independent, 59, 61, 66, 70, 76, 83, 87, 88, 201 The Scotsman, 22n62, 58, 61, 63, 64, 68, 72, 75, 77–80, 82 The South Wales Echo, 20n34, 99–102, 114, 117 The South Wales Evening Post, 20n34, 99, 101, 104, 105, 110, 112, 114, 118 Stormont, 29–31, 38, 41, 48, 196, 200 The Sunday Mercury, 20n34, 131, 133, 147 T Thomson, D. C., 59–61, 88

The Town Crier, 131, 134, 135, 137–139, 143, 145, 147–150, 198 U The Ulster Herald, 29 The Ulster Protestant, 30, 31, 40, 45, 200 W The Wartime Social Survey, 2, 15, 23n78 The Week, 12 The Welsh Gazette, 98, 99, 101, 105, 110, 113–115, 118, 119 The Welsh Nationalist, 99, 103, 108, 109, 111–113, 117–119, 201 The Western Mail, 98, 102 The Witness, 30, 38 Wood, Edward, 1st Earl of Halifax, 10, 36, 63, 65, 66, 136, 163, 165 Y The Yorkshire Evening News, 20n34, 161, 162, 165, 168, 172–174, 182, 183, 185, 186 The Yorkshire Evening Post, 161, 162, 165 The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 4, 10, 11, 17, 22n62, 160, 162, 165, 168, 171, 172, 174, 179, 181, 182, 185, 197