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British Government and Conservative Press Relations BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND CONSERVATIVE PRESS RELATIONS DURING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 1936-1939 GEOFFREY PHILIP MEDDELTON Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D The London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, 2001. 1 UMI Number: U61BB32 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U613332 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 f y°\zz , U o n , ^ ffl h- ^ c ABSTRACT The subject of this thesis is the relationship between the Conservative dominated National Government and the Conservative Press in Britain during the Spanish Civil War. This thesis takes issue with previous findings that during the late 1930s the government was successful in manipulating the press. By focusing on the civil war however, it becomes clear how limited government influence actually was, even amongst its traditional allies. This was a cause of concern to a government, which realized that improved relations between Britain and the western dictator states depended to a great extent on its ability to influence the way, in which foreign affairs were reported, especially events in Spain. As a result of this study, the following conclusions can be made. Firstly, as already stated, the government was only partially successful in securing the reporting of events in a way that would not undermine appeasement, the central plank of British foreign policy at this time. Quite simply, the dictators failed to grasp the limitations of an accountable government’s power in a parliamentary state. Secondly, and paradoxically, the relationship between Britain and the ‘New Spain’ was poor, even though British policy during the civil war had aided the victory of Franco. The conservative press bore some responsibility for this. Thirdly, the war caused divisions, which cut across established ideological lines within the conservative movement. Since party discipline ensured the support of conservatives within Parliament, it was within the press, with its freedom from government control, that these divisions were most evident. Inevitably, therefore, as the war progressed, conservative papers actually contributed to the growing anti- Franco and anti-fascist sentiment among the British public. The civil war was thus a period during which, far from achieving the support of the press for its policies, the government became increasingly frustrated as it saw its foreign policy being undermined. 2 CONTENTS Chapter One: Government and Media in Early Twentieth Century Britain. 4 Chapter Two: The Conservative Press Between the World Wars. 40 Chapter Three: Government and Press In the Early Stages of the Civil 96 War. Chapter Four: The Struggle To Maintain a Conservative Consensus in the 152 Face of Growing Axis Intervention in the War. Chapter Five: The Deepening Crisis Between Government and Conservative 219 Press. Chapter Six: The Intensification of Government attempts to Influence the 280 Conservative Press during the Closing stages of the War. Chapter Seven: The Impact of the Conservative Press on relations between 332 Britain and Spain. Conclusion 355 Bibliography 362 3 CHAPTER ONE: GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA IN EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITAIN. The subject of this thesis is the relationship between the Conservative dominated National Government, in power in Britain during the later thirties, and the conservative press. Particular reference will be made to the way in which the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9 caused that relationship to change. Indeed the Civil War had a tremendously divisive impact on British society, a phenomenon almost unprecedented in modem British history.1 The divisions provoked by the outbreak of the war cut across traditional party political loyalties, so that by the last months of the conflict the majority of the British public, regardless of political convictions, was sympathetic towards the Republican side. Publicly, on the issue of the Spanish Civil War, the government was committed to a policy of neutrality. It was a cynical policy, aimed at lulling its domestic critics. Yet it failed to convince them and, as we shall see in later chapters, growing popular sympathy for the Spanish Republic would be a cause of poor Anglo-Spanish relations following the final victory of Franco in the spring of 1939. It has been suggested that, both before and after the outbreak of fighting there, class and ideology had a profound influence in shaping the views and policies of the British government towards Spain.2 Indeed the election of the coalition under Manuel Azana in February of 1936 provoked alarm among government and business circles in Britain. These circles were to become increasingly concerned at the threat to private property in Spain. This was especially important given that Britain had very substantial investment in that country.3 4 The rising tide of Spanish social and economic unrest in the five years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War had made both investors and ministers nervous at the long­ term prospects for British interests. Hence the military rising of the Spanish generals in mid-July of 1936 was welcomed in London as a necessary counter revolution which would put an end to what appeared to be the threat of communism in Spain. However, as will be demonstrated, the unity among the British right-wing at the start of the rebellion was to be short lived. The conservative consensus rested on the assumption that the issue in Spain was clear-cut, namely that the Republican regime was clearly unable to contain its radical and revolutionary elements. These left-wing elements defending the Republic were, it appeared, as much opposed to a parliamentary democracy on the British model as the rebel generals. Hence, the insurgents were seen as the lesser of the two evils, for they seemed to pose no threat to foreign capitalist interests in the peninsula. However, the conservative consensus, shaped by a too simplistic ideological perception of the issues at stake, gradually broke down following the failure of Franco to take the Spanish capital in the late autumn, thereby turning what had been an insurrection into a prolonged civil war. Among the opposition parties in Britain the main issue at stake was that a popularly elected government was confronted with an illegal and therefore treasonable rebellion by its army. Furthermore, the rebels were dependent for support from National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy, at that time the two most dangerous European powers.4 Foreign intervention in Spain was both to transform the war and to prolong it. Outside aid to Franco from Germany and Italy was far more substantial than any aid reaching the legally recognised Republican government. Thus, Franco was to be increasingly identified with international fascism, which was to ensure at least a superficial unity against him among the political opposition in Britain. Moreover, this identification of Franco as the most recent adherent to the club of fascist dictators was progressively to undermine support for him in British society as a whole. This was because the outbreak of the Civil War coincided with a gathering crisis in international relations in Europe. Both Italy and Germany had done much to provoke this by their flagrant breaches of the Paris peace settlements signed after the First World War. Initially, there had been substantial support in Britain for the grievances espoused by Hitler at the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles towards his adopted country.5 However, when the dictators moved from mere hyperbole to more aggressive and even militaristic means by which to achieve their goals this caused alarm in Britain, for what was being brought into focus was the potential of Germany and Italy to threaten the world power status of Britain and France. Although opinion polls were still in their infancy, those taken during the later thirties show that there was a progressive swinging around of opinion against the dictators.6 German and Italian intervention in Spain served only to encourage this trend. Not just the parliamentary opposition therefore, but millions of ordinary British people sympathised with the Spanish Republic in what they saw as its struggle against international fascism. The scale of German and Italian involvement in Spain was to have three main effects. Firstly, it kept at the forefront of the political agenda the military and strategic threat posed by fascism to Britain and France in the Mediterranean. Secondly, the use of German and Italian aircraft to bomb undefended towns in Spain greatly influenced British public opinion. Horror at the devastation caused by these attacks also led to increased• public sympathy for the Republic.Q Thirdly, it was these strategic and 6 humanitarian concerns provoked by intervention, which fuelled general anti-fascist sentiment in Britain. This was to have important consequences for Britain’s relationship with Germany and Italy, both of which the British government was attempting to appease. In order to avoid recourse to war, Neville Chamberlain, even more than his predecessor, Stanley Baldwin, consciously sought a new settlement between the western democratic powers and the fascist dictators. However, as we shall see, fascist intervention in Spain was to hinder the process of appeasement, souring relations between the western democracies and the dictator governments. German and Italian intervention, precisely because it raised the prospect of a new balance of power in the western Mediterranean, which would be detrimental to Britain and France, meant that the war could no longer be viewed solely in those ideological terms, which had been the basis for the conservative consensus both within Parliament and without.
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