Pop News, Lab Par & Bri Pol Pb

‘IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT’ was the famous headline claim of Britain’s most popular newspaper following the Conservative Party’s surprise victory in the 1992 general election. It followed a vitriolic press campaign against Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party and dramatically highlighted the conflict between a socialist Labour party and a capitalist popular press. Labour’s frequent complaints of the political and electoral unfairness of newspaper bias meant that some commentators considered that this dispute had a heritage as old as the party itself. Others argued that, despite past tensions, the 1992 election marked the culmination of an unprecedentedly hostile campaign of vilification against the party. This book assesses these competing claims by looking not only at the 1992 election but back and forward to examine the continuities and changes in newspaper coverage of British politics and the Labour Party throughout the 20th century.