Programme Outline
This programme asks whether one can trust what the papers said, and if not, why not. It begins by looking at the dispute between the Daily Mail and its printers when they refused to print an article. It seems very much as if the government was trying to engineer a constitutional crisis. The polarisation of the press suggests that the struggle was serious and bitter.
The programme covers the ways in which press accounts differ on a number of issues:
- The aims and nature of the Strike.
- Violence and struggle.
- The effectiveness of the Strike in paralysing the country.
- Public reactions to the Strike.
Other evidence from the time suggests that the public disliked Winston Churchill's British Gazette, finding it rather vulgar. On the other hand, there is little evidence to suggest that the British Worker was treated with any more respect by neutrals. The Strike reflected the divisions apparent in British society before the Great War and accelerated by economic hardship after it.
