One of the features of the commemorative chorus of publications aimed at a wider readership in recent years was the re-publication of articles and editions of contemporary newspapers. The Revolution papers project reissued copies of national dailies alongside contextual articles by historians while individual newspapers included editions from the 1910s and 1920s alongside historical supplements. Such initiatives offered readers an opportunity to glimpse how people at the time read about the events and followed the news. Erin Scheopner's new monograph, however, offers us more than a glimpse: it provides a detailed analysis of how British newspapers followed the political events of 1916 to 1922, while also posing questions about the role of newspapers and their readers more widely.
Scheopner's work, based on her doctoral thesis, is a carefully researched book. The introduction is very useful and contextualises the development of the British press from the abolition of the ‘taxes on knowledge’ (1853–61), Hampton's model of ‘educational’ and ‘representative’ ideals for understanding the role of newspapers, and the development of the new journalism. One of the exponents of the latter was, of course, Irish Party M.P., T. P. O'Connor, and he features in the newspaper analysis which follows alongside some familiar Irish political and literary figures like George Bernard Shaw and Stephen Gwynn.
The book is organised in a traditionally chronological fashion — focusing on phases in the Anglo-Irish question, beginning with the rise of republicanism after 1916 and concluding with the signing and passing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. A key feature of the book is Scheopner's categorisation of the newspapers according to what she calls the ‘dominant themes identified’ in her research. While she concedes this is ‘not rigid’, she assembles publications under the headings: partisan (whether Labour like the Daily Herald, or conservative like the Morning Post); settlement (including the Manchester Guardian and The Times); pragmatic (Mirror, Telegraph and Observer); and pro-government (Daily Express and Daily Mail).
From the outset, certain themes are visible. There is a concern to place Ireland and the Anglo-Irish question in wider context. British concern for American public opinion is made clear (the book opens with a quote from The Times's Washington correspondent reporting on the Treaty), but so too is the wider imperial context. Winston Churchill is quoted concerning the ‘odious reputation’ which was ‘poisoning our own relations with the United States’ (p. 169) by 1921 while Lloyd George worried about the influence of the Irish diaspora across the empire.
While Scheopner's case for the significance of the press is convincing, the study is necessarily, therefore, a chiefly high-politics one. The account of reports on the conscription crisis, for example, says little about the major civil action Ireland. This work fits, however, within the trend of media history to argue that newspapers played an important role beyond merely reporting events, while readers themselves played an ‘active’ role in ‘consuming newspaper content’ (p. 9). As she argues, there was a ‘blurring of the line’ between the press as ‘facilitator of public discussion and the press as political mouthpiece’ (pp 251–2).
This comes across most strongly in the closing chapters which are the strongest in the book. Here, Scheopner argues that the press was influential in pushing the British government towards offering dominion status to de Valera in the summer of 1921 which they had been opposed to doing months earlier. Another pleasing feature is Scheopner's analysis of political cartoons as well as editorials and columns, which enriches the overall consideration of the newspapers through the tumults of the time.
Indeed, the role of newspapers in the months leading into the Treaty negotiations are well brought out with controversies noted such as the Daily Chronicle’s reporting of a supposed conversation between the king and Lloyd George, engulfing press baron Lord Northcliffe in the eye of a political storm (p. 194), and The Times's leaking of the settlement proposal given to the Irish plenipotentiaries on 3 December (p. 224). The imperial dimension is also used to good effect to contextualise press reporting on the diplomatic exchanges — as is the various newspapers’ stances on the position of Northern Ireland. The role of Jan Smuts in the talks before the Treaty negotiations is properly acknowledged, while by the end of the period surveyed, both the Morning Post and The Times concluded that Craig's government would fare better dealing with its southern counterparts than the British government. Yet, for the Daily Telegraph, we read that the Treaty ‘will strengthen America in the belief in the essential saneness of the British political temperament and stimulate the tendency towards concord between the English-speaking nations’ (p. 230). Even the Manchester Guardian felt it would be regarded as a ‘symptom of the moral recovery of mankind’.
Such remarks would not, of course, bear the weight of the events which followed. Scheopner's book, however, succeeds in illuminating the arguments and priorities of the various papers as they viewed the Irish question in British, imperial and wider contexts. A well-researched study, it will interest historians of Ireland and Britain more widely, as well as those engaged in the study of media history.
