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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
Maurice Milne's article restricts its discussion of press treatment of industrial disputes in this period to an analysis of coverage of three strikes in three Newcastle upon Tyne papers. He passes from this review to the following conclusion:
The facile assumption that radical political beliefs would predispose their holder to espouse the cause of organised labour will not stand up to close scrutiny, at least where one important industrial region and its newspapers are concerned.
1 “Strikes and strike-breaking in North-East England, 1815–44: The attitude of the local press”, in: International Review of Social History, XXII (1977).Google Scholar
2 Unintentionally: Maurice Milne is the author of a book about the newspapers of the area, The Newspapers of Northumberland and Durham (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971).Google Scholar
3 The Newcastle Journal (starting in 1832), the Newcastle Press (1833) and Newcastle Standard (1836), two short-lived radical papers, and the Northern Liberator (1837–40). This number excludes three less general periodicals, the Anti-Monopolist (1844), the English Non-Intrusionist (1843) and the London Coal Market / Prices of Coals on the London Coal Market (1822). All the titles referred to here are taken from the British Museum Catalogue and the list does not claim to be exhaustive.
4 The Gateshead Observer (1837), the Northumberland Advertiser (1831) and the Port of Tyne Pilot (1839).
5 The Sunderland Beacon / Northern Times (1838), the Sunderland & Durham General Shipping Gazette (1831 only), the Sunderland Herald (1831) and Sunderland Mirror (1839); the Durham County Advertiser (1814) and Durham Chronicle (1820); the Berwick Advertiser (1825) and Berwick & Kelso Warder (1835).
6 Northern Liberator, 20 April 1837.
7 The literature on social access to reading matter and the public reading of newspapers in the period is reviewed in P. Corrigan and V. Gillespie, Class struggle, social literacy and idle time: The provision of public libraries in England (Brighton, 1978).Google Scholar
8 Maehl, W. H. Jr, “Augustus Hardin Beaumont: Anglo-American radical (1798–1838)”, in: International Review of Social History, XIV (1969)Google Scholar, and “Chartist disturbances in Northeastern England, 1839”, ibid., VIII (1963).
9 D. J. Rowe, “Some aspects of Chartism on Tyneside”, ibid., XVI (1971). Maehl's reply to this is contained in his “The dynamics of Chartism: A case-study in Northeastern England”, in: Albion, VII (1975), esp. pp. 103–05.Google Scholar Rowe cites his evidence in his article as follows: “The Home Office Papers are the source of many of the references in this article. In order to avoid over-loading it with foot-notes such references are unacknowledged. The main categories are HO 40/42 and 40/46.” (p. 20, note 1) His remarks on the intellectual capacities of working-class people, “Provision stores and temperance associations dealt with practical matters which could hold the attention of working men — Chartism, by contrast, was a theoretical concept which had to build up to something tangible if it was to retain interest” (although “interest in British foreign policy acted as a diversion from Chartism”) (p. 35), are ill-considered. They take no account of either the contribution of working women to exclusive trading and other activities (cf. Port of Tyne Pilot, 25 May 1839: a meeting of Chartists' wives), or the level of analysis and debate evidenced in reports and contributions to the Northern Liberator.
10 Maehl, , “Augustus Hardin Beaumont”, p. 249Google Scholar, tells us Beaumont sold it on 1 January 1838, but the notice of publication in the paper itself indicates a “caretaker” period in the hands of Arthur James Beaumont until 29 March.
11 Rowe, loc. cit., p. 23. Fife by the summer of 1839 was certainly disenchanted. He led the “respectable” opposition to Chartism in Newcastle, cf. Northern Liberator, 27 July, 29 August 1839, etc., and Fife's correspondence with Lord John Russell quoted in Maehl, , “The dynamics of Chartism”, pp. 112ff.Google Scholar Rowe has also compiled a list of “known Tyneside Chartists”, which excludes the pit and other villages in the hinterland of Durham and Northumberland, published in the Bulletin of the North-East Group for the Study of Labour History, No 8 (1974).Google Scholar Here again the range of occupations is striking.
12 The Poor Law Assistant Commissioner for the area, Sir John Walsham, mentioned it feelingly in reports to Headquarters (e.g., Public Record Office, MH 32/77, 30 March and 1 August 1838), where Beaumont's influence was taken seriously (Chadwick, to Russell, Lord John, 1 02 1838, Chadwick Manuscripts 1733, University College, London).Google Scholar
13 A source not without defects. It is accepted, however, by Hollis, Patricia (The Pauper press (London, 1970), p. 146)Google Scholar, by Maccoby, S. (“Newspaper politics: A footnote to nineteenth-century history”, in: Politica, I (1934))Google Scholar, and, not least, by the Northern Liberator (27 January and 26 May 1838) and other local papers (e.g., Port of Tyne Pilot, 4 January 1840). Whatever their drawbacks as an absolute guide to numbers of readers, they may be regarded as a meaningful guide to relative sales as between different titles.
14 These figures are derived from the Parliamentary “Returns of the Numbers of Stamps issued […] for all newspapers in Great Britain and Ireland” (later “the several newspapers in England, Scotland and Wales”): for the period 30 June 1837 to 31 March 1838, Parliamentary Papers, 1837–38, XXXVI; for the quarters of 1838, 1839, XXX; for the quarters of 1839, 1840, XXIX; for the quarters of 1840, 1841, XIII.
15 Maehl, , “Augustus Hardin Beaumont”, p. 247Google Scholar, quoting from the Newcastle Courant, 28 July 1837.
16 24 February 1838, cf. Rowe, loc. cit., p. 24.
17 Northern Liberator, 31 August 1839.
18 Cf. ibid., 1 June; Port of Tyne Pilot, 25 May.
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