Manchester and its press under the bomb: Britain’s ‘other Fleet Street’ and its contribution to a myth of the blitz Item Type Thesis or dissertation Authors Hodgson, Guy R. Publisher University of Chester Download date 23/09/2021 18:03:53 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10034/314716 This work has been submitted to ChesterRep – the University of Chester’s online research repository http://chesterrep.openrepository.com Author(s): Guy Richard Hodgson Title: Manchester and its press under the bomb: Britain’s ‘other Fleet Street’ and its contribution to a myth of the blitz Date: January 2014 Originally published as: University of Chester PhD thesis Example citation: Hodgson, G.R. (2014). Manchester and its press under the bomb: Britain’s ‘other Fleet Street’ and its contribution to a myth of the blitz. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Chester, United Kingdom. Version of item: Submitted version Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10034/314716 Manchester and its Press Under the Bomb Britain’s ‘Other Fleet Street’ and its Contribution to a Myth of the Blitz by Guy Richard Hodgson Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Chester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2014 II CONTENTS ABSTRACT VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VII INTRODUCTION 1 PART I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK/LITERATURE REVIEW CHAPTER 1: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 1. THE AGE OF THE PRESS BARONS 10 2. BRITISH NEWSPAPERS IN THE COUNTDOWN TO WAR 15 3. CONCLUSION 21 CHAPTER 2: ANALYTICAL CONCEPTS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. MYTHOLOGY AND THE BLITZ 22 2. THE LITERATURE 31 2.1 THE BLITZ 32 2.2 MANCHESTER AND OTHER BRITISH CITIES 47 2-3 MORALE, PROPAGANDA AND CENSORSHIP 53 2.4 NEWSPAPERS, PRESS BARONS AND THE BBC 58 3. NEWS VALUES, OBJECTIVITY AND REPORTING IN WAR 65 3.1 NEWS VALUES 66 3.2 OBJECTIVITY 68 3.3 IMPARTIALITY AND PROPAGANDA 72 3.4 BALANCE 78 4. NEWSPAPERS AND THEIR AUDIENCE 80 5. CONCLUSION 82 PART II: METHODOLOGY CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 1. INTRODUCTION 84 2. SOURCES 86 2.1 SAMPLING 87 2.2 APPROACHING THE NEWSPAPERS 91 2.3 CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS 100 3. THE LIMITS OF THE RESEARCH 104 III PART III: RESULTS AND ANALYSIS CHAPTER 4: MANCHESTER: ITS BLITZ AND ITS NEWSPAPERS 1. INTRODUCTION 107 2. THE BOMBING OF MANCHESTER 109 3. THE ‘OTHER FLEET STREET’ 116 3.1 MANCHESTER GUARDIAN 117 3.2 EVENING CHRONICLE 119 3.3 MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS 122 4. THE INTERNAL MANAGEMENT OF MANCHESTER’S NEWSPAPERS 124 5. CONCLUSION 134 CHAPTER 5: CENSORSHIP 1. INTRODUCTION 135 2. ‘THEY COULD NOT HELP THE ENEMY BUT ARE THEY ANY USE TO US?’ 138 3. GUIDANCE TO EDITORS: MANCHESTER GUARDIAN AND THE CENSOR 147 4. FIT TO PRINT: CENSORSHIP AND THE MANCHESTER BLITZ 152 5. SELF CENSORSHIP AT THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN 162 6. CONCLUSION 166 CHAPTER 6: PROPAGANDA AND THE MANAGEMENT OF OPINION 1. INTRODUCTION 169 2. BEFORE THE MANCHESTER BLITZ 173 2.1. MANCHESTER GUARDIAN 173 2.2. MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS 175 2.3. EVENING CHRONICLE 176 3. THE BLITZ EDITIONS 179 3.1. MANCHESTER GUARDIAN 179 3.2. MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS 185 3.3. EVENING CHRONICLE 188 4. THE POST-BLITZ EDITIONS 192 4.1. MANCHESTER GUARDIAN 192 4.2. MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS 195 4.3. EVENING CHRONICLE 197 5. CONCLUSION 198 CHAPTER 7: ALL IN THIS TOGETHER? 1. INTRODUCTION 201 2. THE SOCIAL DIVIDE 202 3. CRIME AND NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF THE COURTS 209 4. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 214 5. CONCLUSION 218 IV CHAPTER 8: MANCHESTER IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE BLITZ 1. INTRODUCTION 221 2. MASS OBSERVATION 222 3. HOME INTELLIGENCE’S REPORT ON MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL 230 4. CONTEMPORARY REACTION 238 5. LOOKING BACK ON MANCHESTER’S BLITZ 241 6. CONCLUSION 243 CHAPTER 9: ESCAPING THE WAR 1. INTRODUCTION 247 2. ENTERTAINING THE MASSES 248 3. INVESTIGATING THE NEWSPAPERS 254 4. CONCLUSION 259 CHAPTER 10: THE MOVING NEWS AGENDA 1. INTRODUCTION 261 2. ANALYSING THE NEWS AFTER THE MANCHESTER BLITZ 264 3. THE TIMES, THE DAILY MIRROR AND THE SALFORD CITY REPORTER 270 4. CONCLUSION 277 PART IV CONCLUSION 1. INTRODUCTION 278 2. PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPERS 279 3. THE REACTION TO BEING BOMBED 282 4. REPORTING THE BLITZ 284 5. PROPAGANDA AND THE AUDIENCE 287 6. ‘SUBJECT TO THE INEVITABLE ABRIDGEMENTS’ 289 BIBLIOGRAPHY 293 APPENDICES 1. NEWSPAPER CIRCULATIONS 307 2. QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE NEWSPAPERS 308 3. NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS PRINTING IN MANCHESTER IN 1940 317 V LIST OF TABLES 1. MANCHESTER GUARDIAN: PROPORTIONS OF NEWSPAPERS ON TUESDAYS FROM 17 DECEMBER 1940 TO 4 FEBRUARY 1941 257 2. MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS: PROPORTIONS OF NEWSPAPERS ON TUESDAYS FROM 17 DECEMBER 1940 TO 4 FEBRUARY 1941 258 3. EVENING CHRONICLE: PROPORTIONS OF NEWSPAPERS ON TUESDAYS FROM 17 DECEMBER 1940 TO 4 FEBRUARY 1941 259 4. NEWS STORIES ON THE MANCHESTER BLITZ ON TUESDAYS FROM 24 DECEMBER 1940 TO 4 FEBRUARY 1941 269 VI MANCHESTER AND ITS PRESS UNDER THE BOMB. BRITAIN’S ‘OTHER FLEET STREET’ AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO A MYTH OF THE BLITZ Guy Richard Hodgson ABSTRACT The Manchester Blitz was relatively short, lasting two nights in December 1940, when around 1,000 people were killed and more than 3,000 injured in the city centre, Salford and the residential areas near Old Trafford. This thesis focuses on the reaction to this heavy bombing by the local and regional newspapers of Manchester, which was Britain’s second press centre at the time. The newspapers, the Manchester Guardian, Manchester Evening News and Evening Chronicle, are studied over an eight-week period from mid December 1940. According to these editions, Mancunians were unbowed by the death and destruction wrought by the Luftwaffe and had a steely determination to win the war. Contemporary writing, including individual diaries and reports from Mass Observation and Home Intelligence, tells a more complicated and nuanced story. The thesis finds that the Manchester newspapers submitted their coverage to more self-imposed censorship than was being demanded even by a government desperate to maintain morale. They did so partly because they feared they would be closed down if they offended the censor, but also because they felt that patriotism had a greater priority than maintaining the news values of the time. The newspapers could have exposed local authority incompetence and shortcomings in the emergency services but chose instead to paint a rosy picture of defiance by omission, distortion and, in some cases, deceit. They did not do so independently, but in accordance with the reporting norms in Fleet Street and other British provincial cities during the Second World War. Circulations rose for both national and local newspapers during the war, but the cost was a further severing of the confidence people had in their press. When readers themselves became the story by being the victims of the Blitz they discovered there was often a gap between the truth and what appeared in print. It is a trust that has not been recovered to this day. VII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is the product of a life-long interest in newspapers. I would like to express my gratitude to my parents for planting this seed and Peter Anderson, Michael Nally and Bernard Pratt for cultivating it so that it became a theoretical subject beyond the ‘Who? Why? What? Where? When?’ of news reporting. Bernard also helped with the research for the newspapers of 23-27 December 1940. I could not have written this thesis without the advice and prompting of my supervisors, Dr Michael Huggins and Professor Peter Gaunt, and I would also like to thank the numerous people who have had the patience to help and the eagerness to encourage. These include Brendan O’Sullivan, the Dean of Arts and Media at the University of Chester, Sheila Jefferson, Simon Roberts, Vera Slavtcheva- Petkova, and the staff of John Rylands and Central Libraries in Manchester. 1 Introduction The author John Steinbeck was not complimentary when he reviewed the work of journalists in the Second World War. ‘We were all part of the war effort,’ he wrote. ‘We went along with it, and not only that, we abetted it.’ He added: ‘I don’t mean the correspondents were liars… It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies.’1 Steinbeck was a special war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune from June to December 1943 and in this relatively short time, his work had followed that of other reporters in avoiding writing about the reality of war and, instead, he had subscribed to an idealised view of the Allied war effort in which ‘our’ people were eternally stoic, ‘our’ soldiers impeccably brave and ‘our’ bombers unerringly accurate. He went where British journalists had travelled before. Several academics, such as Angus Calder, Phillip Knightley, James Curran and Jean Seaton, have noted that the writing of the myth of the war against Adolf Hitler had begun from the moment Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain formally announced the opening of hostilities on BBC radio on 3 September 1939.2 It encompassed, among what appear often to be other rose-tinted distortions and half truths, the ‘triumph’ of Dunkirk, ‘we’re all in this together’, the ‘few’ of the Battle of Britain, genial Uncle Joe Stalin and, perhaps the most potent of all, the all-encompassing Blitz Spirit. This thesis will help bring a further understanding of the British press and the experience of bombing during the Second World War. It will examine the myth of that Blitz Spirit that has become so engrained in the UK’s popular perception that, 70 1 John Steinbeck, Once There was a War (New York: Viking, 1958), cited in Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p.