Daily Herald (United Kingdom)
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The Daily Herald was a
Origins
In December 1910 the printers' union, the London Society of Compositors (LSC), became engaged in an industrial struggle to establish a 48-hour workweek and started a daily strike bulletin called The World. Will Dyson, an Australian artist in London, contributed a cartoon. From 25 January 1911 it was renamed the Daily Herald and was published until the end of the strike in April 1911. At its peak it had daily sales of 25,000.
The initial organising group included Tillett,
. Retaining the strike sheet name they formed a Daily Herald company. Readers and supporters formed local branches of the Daily Herald League, through which they had their say in the running of the paper.Syndicalist period, 1912–1913
The first issue appeared on 15 April 1912, edited by William H. Seed. A key feature was Dyson's cartoons, which made a contribution to the paper's political tone. Its politics were broadly
Staff writers included W. P. Ryan, Langdon Everard and George Slocombe. The editor of the Women's Page was Margaret Travers-Symons, and Katharine Susannah Prichard wrote for it.[1] Vance Palmer's poems were used on the front page. G. K. Chesterton was a frequent contributor. His brother Cecil and Hilaire Belloc were occasional contributors. After Seed was removed as editor, Rowland Kenney, the brother of Annie Kenney; C. Sheridan Jones; and finally Charles Lapworth held the position.
In June 1913, the Daily Herald company was forced into liquidation. Lansbury and Lapworth formed a new company, the Limit Printing and Publishing Company. (When the Liberal leader Lloyd George was asked a question about the Herald he declared "That paper is the limit.")
The shortfall in production costs was guaranteed by wealthy friends of Lansbury, and Francis Meynell joined the board as their representative. From December 1912 until August 1914 one of the main financial supporters was
In late 1913, Lapworth was asked by the other two board members to resign as editor. Lansbury and the paper's financial backers were disturbed by Lapworth and other writers' attacks on individuals, both in the establishment and the labour movement. "Hatred of conditions by all means, but not of persons" was how Lapworth quoted Lansbury. The aftermath was aired in the letter pages of The New Age between December 1913 and April 1914.
The Herald under Lansbury, 1914–1922
The new paper struggled financially but somehow survived, with Lansbury playing an ever-increasing role in keeping it afloat.
Under Lansbury, the Herald took an eclectic but relentlessly militant political position and achieved sales of 50,000–150,000 a day. But
The Herald resumed daily publication in 1919, and again played a role propagandising for strikes and against armed intervention in Russia amid the social turmoil of 1919–21. When the radical wave subsided, the Herald found itself broke and unable to continue as an independent left daily. Lansbury handed over the paper to the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party in 1922. The newspaper had begun to publish the Bobby Bear cartoon strip in 1919.
In August 1920
Historical copies of the Daily Herald are available to search and view in digitised form at the British Newspaper Archive.[5]
The third Daily Herald, 1922–1929
The Herald was official organ of the
Between 1923 and 1964 the newspaper awarded the Order of Industrial Heroism, popularly known as the "Workers' VC", to honour examples of heroism carried out by ordinary workers.[6]
The fourth Daily Herald, 1930–1964
The TUC sold a 51 per cent share of the Herald to
The Daily Herald strongly condemned the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Soviet invasion of Finland. In an editorial about the latter, the paper stated "Now finally Stalin's Russia sacrifices all claims to the respect of the working class movement...The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is dead. Stalin's new imperialist Russia takes its place".[8][9]
The Herald's sales were static or in decline during the post-war period, but a survey in 1958 suggested that it had the highest level of appreciation of any newspaper among its almost exclusively working class readership.[10] Amongst the oldest and poorest people living in Britain, 59% of them were male, the highest proportion of any newspaper being published at the time.[11] According to Roy Greenslade, the editorial staff were firmly entrenched between those advocating populism or politics with no "synthesis" between the positions possible.[12]
The
Following a study commissioned from market researcher
The photographic archive of the Daily Herald, including the work of photographers such as James Jarché, is at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. In 2022, nearly 50,000 images from the Daily Herald Archive were digitised and published online in partnership with Google Arts & Culture.[16]
Editors
- 1912: William H. Seed
- 1912: Rowland Kenney
- 1913: Charles Lapworth
- 1913: George Lansbury
- 1922: W. P. Ryan
- 1922: Hamilton Fyfe
- 1926: William Mellor
- 1931: W. H. Stevenson
- 1936: Francis Williams
- 1940: Percy Cudlipp
- 1953: Sydney Elliott
- 1957: Douglas Machray
- 1960: John Beaven
- 1962: Sydney Jacobson
Source: D. Butler and A. Sloman, British Political Facts, 1900–1975, London: Macmillan, 1975, p. 378
References
- ^ https://www.brandl.com.au/loving-words/310, 321
- ISBN 978-1-317-70423-2.
- ISBN 978-1-137-60388-3.
- ^ Gilbert, Martin. Winston S. Churchill, Volume IV 1917–1922. Heinemann: London. 1975. pp.423–424.
- ^ "Results | Daily Herald | Publication | British Newspaper Archive" – via British Newspaper Archive.
- ^ "TUC | History Online". unionhistory.info.
- ^ "Julius Salter Elias, Viscount Southwood, 1873 – 1946 - From Office Boy to Press Baron". 15 May 2022.
- ISBN 0719006961(p.36).
- ISBN 9781435649651. (p.97)
- ^ Curran, p.86
- ^ Roy Greenslade Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits From Propaganda, London: Pan, 2004, [2003], p.112
- ^ Gereenslade, p.114
- ^ James Curran and Jean Seaton Power Without Responsibility, Abingdon: Routledge, 2010, p.85
- ^ Greenslade, p.155
- ^ Roy Greenslade Press Gang, p.157
- ^ "National Science and Media Museum collaborates with Google Arts & Culture to unveil newly digitised archive images in AI-powered experiment – National Science and Media Museum".
Sources
- Stanley Reynolds Poor Men's Guardians: A Record of the Struggles for a Democratic Newspaper Press, 1763–1973 (ISBN 0853153019) Pages 173 to 178.
- Unpublished notes, written in 1960 by Robin Page Arnot, held by the Working Class Movement Library.
- The New Age – Letters to the Editor, particularly 18 December 1913, 8 January, 26 February and 5 March 1914.
- James Curran The British Press: a Manifesto, Macmillan, London, 1978