Governments dislike the free circulation of information and news and have always sought ways to limit or prevent it

We see newspapers today as the 'mainstream media'; established and respectable. There was a time though when the British government did everything in their power to close them down

All governments dislike the spreading of news and information, for it often frustrates their purposes. They far prefer to act in secrecy, with no scrutiny of what they are up to. In the past, laws were passed which were openly intended to prevent the publication of news. These days, more subtle means have to be found to suppress independent journalism.

The first mass medium was the printed word. From the fifteenth century until about 1900, print was the only medium capable of reaching many people. Mass media are different from purely local media such as provincial newspapers and little radio stations serving just one city or district. To qualify as part of the mass media, a newspaper, television station or film maker really must reach the population of a whole country. From that perspective, national newspapers like The Times might be considered a mass medium in Britain during much of the nineteenth century, but this is a little misleading. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, at least half the adults in Britain were unable to read and were therefore unlikely to be buying, or even looking at, newspapers. Because of the taxes, at which we shall be looking below, the price of newspapers was artificially high, meaning that few ordinary, working people could afford them. We shall see shortly how this all changed by the end of the century, but first we must look at the very idea of newspapers and see how they were once viewed by the authorities in Britain.

Living as we do in a world where mass-circulation newspapers are part of the established order, it is difficult to grasp just how revolutionary and radical the idea once was of printing and circulating information about what is going on in the world; especially touching upon events in one’s own country. Today newspapers are, along with television and radio, referred to as the ‘Mainstream Media’, meaning that they represent the conventional and traditional way of distributing news. It was not always so. At one time, the very act of publishing a newspaper was regarded as seditious and calculated to damage the authority of the government. Simply relating what was happening politically and socially in the country was thought to be dangerous and undesirable. The publication of news was, in itself, felt to be an unwarranted interference in state affairs.

There is of course no such thing as unbiased news. This can be clearly observed when looking at two of the first English newspapers which were published during the English Civil War. Even when somebody can manage to keep his or her own views and opinions out of the way when writing a newspaper report, there will be a bias in what news is written about or reported. The news which we select says a lot about our own personal prejudices. This will be the case, even if the editorial policy is one of strict neutrality. Although there was, until the seventeenth century, government disapproval of printing information about domestic affairs, newspapers covering foreign news were tolerated, at least up to a point. So, in the 1620s, a paper was circulating in London called Courante or Weekely Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France. Several papers of this sort were distributed in London until 1632, until an item in one of them upset both the Spanish and Austrian ambassadors. The Court of the Star Chamber, which was responsible for state security, then banned all newspapers. This prohibition was relaxed in 1638, and the publication of domestic political news was, for the first time, permitted in England.

When the English Civil War began a few years after the newspapers reporting English affairs first appeared, it was at once seen why the authorities had been so hesitant in the past about letting newspapers of this kind exist. Two of the earliest such sources of news were both virulently partisan and saw it as their duty to champion one side or another in the struggle between Parliament and the King, rather than impartially reporting what was going on in the country. John Birkenhead, for example, founded the Mercurious Aulicus. According to the masthead, this contained, ‘Truth impartially related from thence to the whole kingdom’. The game was given away by the fact that above the title of the newspaper were large engravings of the King and Queen. For the opposing side, the Diurnalls set out the Roundhead point of view. Rather than reporting news, these newspapers were really agitating on behalf of Parliament or King. This was their chief purpose; rather than just informing readers what was happening.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, newspapers were appearing across much of Britain, but many were less concerned with distributing news that they were in attacking government policy and, as those running the country thought, creating mischief. It was no longer possible or politically desirable to suppress such things simply by passing a law and banning them, so the idea was dreamed up of taxing them out of existence. In 1712, the Stamp Act was passed; with the specific aim of restricting the flow of information to the public. Newspapers were now taxed at 1d a page. Other publications were also covered by the act, including political pamphlets.

As a consequence of the Paper Tax and Stamp Tax, The Times in 1815 cost 6d, between 2p and 3p in modern currency. Two-thirds of this price was to cover the tax payable on each copy of a newspaper at that time. The aim of this tax, which has been described as a ‘tax on knowledge’, was no secret; it was to prevent ordinary men and women from being able to afford newspapers. The British government believed that cheap newspapers had inflamed the situation in America, helping to fan the flames of the revolution there. They also felt that the French Revolution had been caused in part by the circulation of dangerous new ideas. The hope was that by preventing these ideas from being printed and distributed to the working classes, the danger of any kind of uprising in Britain could be averted. There was, it was true, popular unrest, but this was not always articulated by those dissatisfied with their lot. It was therefore thought necessary to suppress cheap publications, lest they encourage radical and seditious ideologies to flourish. Speaking in 1819, of the Newspapers Stamp Duty Act, Lord Ellenborough explained that ‘It was not against the respectable press that this Bill was directed, but against the pauper press.’

In many ways, the tax on newspapers achieved its end. By raising the cost of newspapers to 6d or 7d, they became beyond the reach of most working people. In 1815, an agricultural labourer might expect to earn perhaps two shillings (10p) a day. This meant that buying a copy of The Times every day would have taken about a quarter of a working man’s income. Clearly, this medium, although technically nationwide, was unlikely to reach everybody! It cannot really be called a mass medium at all. If we now fast-forward ninety years, to the time when Edward VII was on the throne, matters were completely different. By then, the price of the new, popular newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror had fallen to a halfpenny, about a quarter of 1p, while a labourer’s wages had risen to over five shillings a day (25p). In short, a daily paper now cost not a quarter of a working-class man or woman’s salary but less than one per cent.

Newspaper stamp duty was finally abolished in 1855, at which point it became possible to sell newspapers at a lower price. despite this, it took another forty years before mass-circulation papers appeared in Britain. The popular press came into being during Edward VII’s reign in part because this was the first time in the country’s history that almost everybody could read and write. The number of people who might buy the new newspapers was limited only by the actual population of Britain. This was a strange situation and one which was quite unprecedented. Literacy had always in the past been a minority attribute. In Shakespeare’s time, when printing was beginning to flourish in Britain, only about one child in eight attended school. This tended to set a natural and very low limit on the number of literate people in the country. Since it was only those able to read and write who would be in the market for books and other printed material, this in turn made printing an activity which catered for a minority; those who had been educated. Because schools were all fee-paying at that time, those who read printed matter were usually the better-off.

As the centuries passed, more and more children received some kind of education, however rudimentary. The rise of literacy was a slow process though and by the time that Victoria ascended the throne in 1838, half of all British adults were still unable to read or write. We know this, by the number of couples who signed the register when they got married, not with their names but by making a mark such as a cross. In 1840, a third of men were still signing their names in this way, as well as half the women getting married. There would obviously be no point in producing popular newspapers aimed at such individuals.

All this changed in 1870, when a law was passed which provided for education for all children in Britain, from the age of five. Ten years later, school attendance was made compulsory and as a result, illiteracy was virtually abolished over the next twenty years or so. Looking at the marriage registers for 1900 shows us that over 97 per cent of those getting married were now able to sign their names. This, then, was the situation as the twentieth century began. A new generation of young adults were almost all literate and starting to read for pleasure. It had also precipitated the rise of the newspaper magnate or press baron; the man in charge of a number of newspapers. Such characters, typified by Alfred Harmsworth and his brother Harold, later to become Viscount Northcliffe and Viscount Rothermere respectively, came to exercise enormous influence on the affairs of the countries in which they operated. Of course, their original aim was nothing more than the acquisition of large amounts of money, but as the years passed, this proved not to be enough to satisfy them. They wanted power as well. Not only did they wish to report news, they also wanted to create it and ultimately to get governments to do their bidding.

A few years after the end of the First World War, Lord Beaverbrook, perhaps the greatest of the press barons and a real baron to boot, was asked by Rudyard Kipling what his actual political beliefs were. Kipling was puzzled by the contradictory viewpoints expressed in Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, which was at that time the best-selling newspaper in the entire world. The answer was revealing. The famous newspaper magnate said bluntly, ‘What I want is power. Kiss ’em one day and kick ’em the next.’ It was probably having observed Alfred Harmsworth’s success in that field which prompted Beaverbrook to speak in this way. He had seen the immense influence which a newspaper proprietor could exert on the affairs of a nation by the example of Harmsworth’s Daily Mail in the years before the First World War. More particularly, Lord Beaverbrook must have noted the role which the Daily Mail played in preparing the British public for that conflict and ensuring that when the time came, men were queuing up and clamouring to be send to the killing fields of France.

It would be going a little too far to suggest that popular newspapers such as the Daily Mail were solely responsible for Britain’s entry into the Great War, but they certainly played their part in stimulating public support for the war with Germany. Before looking at what the Daily Mail was up to, the example of William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal may prove instructive.

Hearst acquired the New York Journal in 1895 and soon began a fierce campaign to raise circulation and compete with newspapers such as Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. A difficulty soon emerged, which was that while splashing on the front page an item about the death of a glamorous actress might boost sales for a day or two, such stories quickly faded. What Hearst wanted was continuing drama that he could publicise day after day, week after week or even month after month. He found a story of this sort in the insurgency raging in Cuba.

Cuba was a Spanish possession in the late nineteenth century. The United States did not view European colonialism favourably, at least not when it was so close to their own country, and so the Americans were vaguely supportive of the rebellion in Cuba against the Spanish authorities there. William Randolph Hearst was strongly in favour of American intervention in Cuba and he sent one of his employees to the country to cover the crisis there. Frederick Remington was a noted artist, but after spending some time in Cuba, where the fighting had now died down, he wired Hearst, saying ‘Everything quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. Wish to return.’ Hearst replied, ‘Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war’.

The chance for Hearst to ‘furnish the war’ came a few months later. In January 1898, the United States sent the battleship Maine to Havana to protect American interests. On 15 February, the battleship sank with the loss of 260 sailors, following a tremendous explosion. Although this was probably the result of an accident on board, Hearst’s New York Journal at once claimed that it had been sunk by a mine planted by Spanish forces. The idea was implausible, but for the next week, the New York Journal devoted no fewer than eight pages a day to promoting the notion that Spain was responsible for the disaster. The slogan, ‘Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!’ featured in this campaign. Public opinion in America was inflamed by the idea that a hostile European power had attacked an American warship and within weeks, the Spanish-American War had begun. Not only was Spain driven from Cuba, but the United States took the opportunity to seize the Philippines to, a Spanish possession on the edge of the South China Sea. The rise of America as a world power dates from the time that the United States began its expansion across the Pacific and laid claim to territories thousands of miles from the North American continent. It was popular journalism which prompted and encouraged this, the first overseas expansionist war in which the United States had ever engaged.

The example of Hearst’s political power in encouraging and then exacerbating an international crisis in this way proved attractive to Alfred Harmsworth. The Daily Mail was, at the beginning of the twentieth century, already becoming very influential and powerful. We don’t have to look very far to see the way in which it was shaping the very way that we see history. One of the most memorable features of the Edwardian years were the women in Britain who were fighting to get the vote. Ask anybody today what these militant campaigners were known as, and you will of course be told that they were suffragettes. The impression is that this was the name they called themselves. In fact, women like the Pankhursts had been known for many years as ‘suffragists’, those hoping to gain suffrage, or the right to vote in Parliamentary elections. On 10 January 1906, the Daily Mail coined the word ‘suffragette’ to describe the younger and more militant suffragists. The word was a patronising diminutive. Harmsworth’s newspaper though had managed to create the term by which the whole struggle for female emancipation has come to be known; even now, over a century later.

Devising a faintly insulting name for women who wanted to have the same rights as their husbands was a relatively harmless exercise on the part of a newspaper. Far more serious was the role played by the Daily Mail in stirring up animosity towards Germany and preparing the nation for the slaughter of the First World War. So determined was Lord Northcliffe, as Alfred Harmsworth became in 1905, that Britain would one day find herself fighting Germany, that Alfred Gardiner, editor of the Daily News, said after the First World War had begun that, ‘Next to the Kaiser, Lord Northcliffe has done more than any other living man to bring about the war.’

William Le Queux was a thriller writer who, in 1906, was commissioned by Northcliffe to provide a novel which was to be serialised in the Daily Mail. This was called The Invasion of 1910 and was a detailed account of how the German army invaded and occupied England. To publicise the story, and stimulate sales of his newspaper, Northcliffe arranged for actors to be hired to dress up as German soldiers and parade up and down Regent Street. Newspaper sellers in the street were also tricked out as German infantry, complete with spiked helmets. Northcliffe took a keen editorial interest in Le Queux’s book, insisting that parts of it were changed. He wished to ensure that the most exciting scenes of the fictional Anglo-German war were set in parts of the country where his newspapers were popular. Because of this, the Battle of Royston and the Siege of London became pivotal episodes in the drama.

The Daily Mail was full of scare stories about Germans infiltrating Britain, posing as waiters and shopkeepers, while just waiting for the chance to support an invasion when it took place. Boycotts were urged of restaurants employing German staff and the allegation was made that somewhere near London there existed a stockpile of rifles and ammunition ready to be used by these fifth columnists!

In 1906, the year that the Daily Mail serialised the story of a German invasion, the newly-elected Liberal government had grand plans for increasing expenditure on the less fortunate in society. There would be old-age pensions, subsidised medical care and a host of other measures, all designed to benefit the ordinary man and woman in the street. It would cost a lot of money, but this could be found through higher taxes for the wealthy and also a reduced defence budget. This was anathema to Lord Northcliffe, who wanted to see more military spending so that Germany could be challenged. In the early spring of 1906 a new type of battleship was launched by Britain. Commissioned by the outgoing Conservative government, HMS Dreadnought signalled a radical change in naval warfare. She was so heavily-armed, well-protected and fast that she was, to all intents and purposes, invincible. All other existing battleships were made obsolete once HMS Dreadnought went into service.

Building ‘Dreadnoughts’, as the type became known, was very expensive and the Liberals hoped to be able to focus on domestic expenditure, to tackle the problems of poverty and inequality which had afflicted the country for centuries. They found themselves under pressure from first Northcliffe’s Daily Mail and then, almost unbelievably, from working-class people themselves to change their priorities and build more warships! Germany had certainly begun building Dreadnoughts of her own and the fear, encouraged by the press, was that Britain and her empire were under threat. So began an arms race which the country could ill afford. This centred around the increasingly strident demands from the British public, urged on by Lord Northcliffe’s newspapers, to expand the Royal Navy’s capabilities by constructing more Dreadnoughts.

Lord Northcliffe managed to get the socialist Robert Blatchford to write a series of articles for the Daily Mail in 1909, which claimed that the British Empire was under threat and that Britain should introduce conscription and go onto a war footing. At a time when the Liberals were trying to force Chancellor Lloyd George’s budget through the Lords, in order to make more provision for the elderly, sick and unemployed, Blatchford wrote: ‘At the moment the whole country is in a ferment about the budget and the peers and the election. It seems sheer criminal lunacy to waste time and strength chasing such political bubble when the Empire is threatened.’ Summing up the desire or need for more Dreadnoughts, George Wyndham MP coined the phrase, ‘We want eight and we won’t wait!’. Encouraged by the Daily Mail, this became a popular chant in music halls. Social welfare could wait, as long as Britain had enough battleships.

The Anglo-German naval arms race culminated, of course, in the outbreak of war between the two countries in the summer of 1914, a war which nobody had done more to promote that Lord Northcliffe and his newspapers. Newspapers had influenced the course of wars before; reports in The Times during the Crimean War had even precipitated the fall of a government. Never before though had a British newspaper deliberately set out in this way to cause a conflict. It was only possible because so many people were now reading newspapers.

Looked at in this broad, historical context, one can perhaps have some sympathy for the desire of government to prevent news and propaganda being spread. The consequence can, after all, be catastrophic. As Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin famously remarked almost a century, the aim of the press is to achieve what he described as, ‘Power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot through the ages’.