Winston Spencer Churchill (1874â1965) is regarded as having embodied a particular kind of Britishness during the Second World War through qualities such as defiance and fortitude in leading the struggle against the Axis powers. Since then he has become a major political and cultural icon in both the United Kingdom (UK) and abroad.1 This positive image was largely created and consolidated after the war. However, contemporary accounts of Churchill were much more complicated and nuanced in the UK. One dimension of these complex responses to Churchill involved the diverse identities2 which existed in different territories of the UK. The book will explore how Churchill was portrayed in the UK press during the war, comparing his depictions in Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and provincial English newspapers. By using a variety of newspapers in the four territories, it will examine local opinions about Churchill at the time he was the wartime prime minister. It will analyse how Churchill was received and depicted by newspapers in the UK and why differences in these depictions emerged in each area. The book aims to contribute to the study of public opinion in the war and of Churchillâs reputation, as well as to the study of the notion of Britishness, focusing on local perspectives.
Methodology
The book uses wartime newspapers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and provincial England. Primary sources that have thus far been utilized to explore public opinion during the Second World War vary: the Gallup Polls, the Mass Observation reports, and reports by the Ministry of Information are among these sources. The British government took public opinion very seriously and believed it important to the conduct of the war. In March 1940, the Home Intelligence department of the Ministry of Information was established in order to learn more about public opinion.3 It drew information from the Gallup Polls, Mass-Observation, the Wartime Social Survey, and other sources that included interviews with local people by regional information officers and BBC listener search surveys.4
While these sources reflect interesting and diverse opinions and identities, they do not provide simultaneous, UK-wide data on specific policies and persons.5 Regional and local newspapers, as part of their function of regularly informing the public of national,6 regional, and local news, reported on a wide range of topics at the same time as all these topics were hotly discussed. Since many towns, cities, regions, and nations in the UK had their own newspapers during the war, using them as a primary source allows for the examination of various opinions, as well as a comparative approach among geographic territories. The Home Intelligence department also admitted that the press had a considerable influence on public opinion and civilian morale. In addition to the Gallup Polls, Mass Observation, and the Wartime Social Surveys, the Home Intelligence reports often referenced the British press and noted peopleâs criticisms of newspapers.7
Newspapers have had roles in educating people as well as in representing them.8 They also functioned as monitors of authority and preventers of corruption.9 Moreover, the press played a part in moulding communities and shared identities, as Benedict Anderson stated in Imagined Communities that newspapers âprovided the technical means for âre-presentingâ the kind of imagined community that is the nationâ.10 It allowed thousands or millions of readers to consume the same newspaper simultaneously and through this habitual reading engendered the creation of an âimagined communityâ.11 Bingham and Conboy analysed the role of British newspapers in moulding an âimagined communityâ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in three ways: glorification of British achievements abroad; analyses of the other, whether in Europe or in other continents, as contrasted with British citizens; and emphases on the threat of foreigners settling in Britain.12 Also, Williams stated that national newspapers helped mould national identities, and at the same time regional and local identities were enriched by regional and local newspapers.13 For instance, Temple argued that by reporting sports, local newspapers âforge a sense of local and regional identity by distinguishing local papers from neighbouring publications, and the use of voluntary contributors for much of the sports content also helped to strengthen local newspapersâ ties with their communitiesâ.14 Many cities in the UK had their unique press culture, and regional and local newspapers have provided regionally and locally specific news as well as reports on UK politics. In each chapter, various titles are chosen based on their political stance and religious affiliation (if they had one).
Choice of Particular Areas and Newspapers
In order to find diverse identities and opinions towards Churchill in different parts of the UK, the book looks at newspapers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and three cities in England: Birmingham in the Midlands, Manchester in Lancashire, and Leeds in Yorkshire. In the chapter on Northern Ireland, newspapers which were Unionist, Nationalist, fervently Protestant, Methodist, and Presbyterian are studied to show different opinions derived from diverse identities. Newspapers in Belfast, its capital city, and those in Londonderry, the second largest city in Northern Ireland, were mainly used; however, as the number of Nationalist newspapers was limited, some Nationalist newspapers outside the two cities were also used in the second chapter. In the chapter on Scotland, newspapers in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee were used. Newspaper culture prospered in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and each city had a number of newspapers representing diverse positions. In addition to the two cities, Dundee was selected as it was Churchillâs former constituency (1908â22); he had unhappy memories of the city, as he lost his seat in the 1922 general election and was criticized severely by some Dundee newspapers. In the chapter on Wales, newspapers in Cardiff, Swansea, Pontypridd, and Aberystwyth were chosen as the primary source materials. I do not read the Welsh language, thus newspapers used in the fourth chapter are limited to those written in English. Three cities, Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, were selected from England. First, Birmingham, a city in the West Midlands, was selected as it had close relations with Neville Chamberlain (1869â1940), Churchillâs political opponent and predecessor. It was the second largest city in England and had newspapers oriented to each of the three major political parties, allowing the fifth chapter to showcase different depictions of Churchill in contrast to Chamberlain. Manchester and Leeds were selected for the sixth chapter because they had locally owned newspapers of national readership, the Manchester Guardian and the Yorkshire Post . Also, both cities have known of their strong regional identities, Lancashire and Yorkshire identities.
In each territory, newspapers were selected through the following steps. First, all newspapers in the selected cities, which were indicated on the Newspaper Press Directory 1945, were considered. Sports newspapers and newspapers of particular occupational groups, for example, agriculture and farming news, were excluded from the list. After these selections, all of the remaining newspapers were read at the Newspaper Room at the British Library and those mentioning Churchill in the selected events in the book were used as primary sources. When several newspapers within the same city had the same publisher and proprietor and their contents about Churchill were mostly the same, just one of these papers was used for the book. Each paperâs history and background are explained in the following chapters as well as in the appendices. Although UK ânationalâ newspapers also had a wide readership in each territory selected in this study, as the book is concerned with locally oriented opinions apart from L...