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Lloyd George's Acquisition of the Daily Chronicle in 1918
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2023
Extract
Five weeks before the armistice in November 1918 an unprecedented thing happened in Britain. The control of a modern popular newspaper passed from private ownership into the hands of the prime minister of the day. Ever since David Lloyd George assumed the premiership twenty-two months earlier there were signs aplenty that relations between Downing Street and Fleet Street had entered a new era. But the sale of the Daily Chronicle to agents of the head of the government went far beyond custom or precedent. Lloyd George's immediate predecessors had remained old-fashioned even in the face of the press revolution wrought by the likes of Sir George Newnes and Alfred Harmsworth (immortalized as Lord Northcliffe). The phenomenon of mass-circulation newspapers had little appeal to great aristocrats like Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery, who were very selective in their dealings with Fleet Street. Likewise Herbert Henry Asquith scarcely troubled to hide his Balliol-bred contempt, ever preferring quality journalism to quantity, while Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman seems not to have exerted himself unduly to cultivate and exploit the good will of editors and proprietors.
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- Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 1982
References
1 On this point, see Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain, (London, 1981), I, 412.
2 A.J.P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965), p. 187.
3 Quoted by H.A. Taylor in Robert Donald (London, 1934), p. 189, but date not given.
4 For the early history of the Daily Chronicle see Taylor, Donald, pp. 19-21, and Alan J. Lee, The Origins of the Popular Press in England, 1855-1914 (London, 1976), pp. 162-67.
5 According to such publications as Sell's World's Press (34th ed.,1915) and the A.P.S. Monthly Circular (issued by the Advertisers’ Protection Society).
6 More on wartime circulation figures will be found in the author's article on this subject in The Journal of Contemporary History for July 1982.
7 House of Lords Record Office (hereafter HLRO), Robert Donald's memorandum entitled “Daily Chronicle Negotiations, 1917-1918,” 16 pp. Robert Donald Papers, D/2/3.
8 Taylor, Donald, p. 25.
9 For the role of the Daily Chronicle in events leading up to Asquith's downfall, see J.M. McEwen, “The Press and the Fall of Asquith,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1978), pp. 863-83.
10 Taylor, Donald, p. 154.
11 Trevor Wilson (ed.), The Political Diaries ofC. P. Scott, 1911-1928 (London, 1970), p. 309. This was an entry in Scott's diary for 21 October 1917.
12 Saturday Review, 9 February 1918.
13 Lord Beaverbrook, Men and Power, 1917-1918 (London, 1956), p. 55.
14 See for example Trevor Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914-1935 (London, 1966), pp. 113-17.
15 Taylor, Donald, Chapters IX and X, pp. 165-93. See also Wilson, Downfall of the Liberal Party, pp. 117-18; Stephen Koss, Fleet Street Radical: A. G. Gardiner and the ‘Daily News’ (London, 1973), pp. 243-44; and A.J.P. Taylor, Beaverbrook (London, 1972), pp. 157-58
16 See n. 7 above.
17 “Daily Chronicle Negotiations, 1917-1918,” pp. 1-2.
18 Ibid, pp. 4-5. The “Canadian friend” may have been Colonel Grant Morden, a financier of dubious reputation and later one of the “hard-faced men” of the Coupon Parliament. He was the owner of The People in 1924 when it published a sensational interview with Stanley Baldwin.
19 HLRO, “Sale of the Daily Chronicle. By Harry Jones, parliamentary correspondent,” Robert Donald Papers, D/2/4, 11 pp. Donald described this attempt to Jones on 5 October 1918, the day he left the Daily Chronicle forever. Colwyn may have been on friendly terms with Lloyd George, but Sir Walter Runciman was the father of the Liberal ex-minister Walter Runciman whom Lloyd George disliked and distrusted only slightly less than his principal bete noire, Reginald McKenna.
20 “Daily Chronicle Negotiations, 1917-1918,” p. 8.
21 Ibid, p. 12.
22 Ibid, p. 12.
23 For a brief account, see Taylor, Beaverbrook, pp. 157-58.
24 “Daily Chronicle Negotiations, 1917-1918,” p. 14.
25 Daily Chronicle, 7 September 1918.
26 Ibid, 13 September 1918.
27 Taylor, Donald, pp. 172-73.
28 “Daily Chronicle Negotiations, 1917-1918,“p. 9.
29 HLRO, Beaverbrook to Lloyd George (n.d.), Beaverbrook papers, Box E/10, folder 269.
30 Ibid, Box E/10, folder 269. This letter contains more information on Beaverbrook's financial proposals. At one moment he “offered over half a million to buy a [newspaper] business” to back Lloyd George. Then, “I offered £ 100,000 to your friends to put into newspaper politics irrespective of the financial side.” And finally, in an attempt to get Lloyd's Weekly News, “I undertook to pay £ 200,000 of my own money.” Such agility was too much for the Lloyd George camp, and they backed away from their prospective partner.
31 Apparently this refers to the meeting between Beaverbrook and Donald at the ministry of information on 17 April. See p. 135 above.
32 HLRO, Beaverbrook to Lloyd George (n.d.). Beaverbrook Papers, Box E/10, folder 269.
33 See for example Taylor, Beaverbrook, p. 134.
34 HLRO, Lloyd George to Guest (n.d.). Lloyd George Papers F/21/2/32.
35 Ibid, Guest to Davies, 24 August 1918. F/21/2/34.
36 Lord Riddell's War Diary, 1914-1918 (London, 1933), pp. 352-53.
37 Ibid, p. 365.
38 “Daily Chronicle Negotiations, 1917-1918,” p. 2 of diary postscript. Also quoted in Taylor, Donald, p. 178.
39 Taylor, Donald, p. 179.
40 “Sale of the Daily Chronicle. By Harry Jones,” p. 3.
41 Bodleian Library, Oxford. Spender to Maclean, 8 October 1918. Asquith Papers, Box 145.
42 HLRO, Mrs. M. Canivet to H.A. Taylor, 5 May 1933. Robert Donald Papers, D/2/18.
43 “Sale of t h e Daily Chronicle. By Harry Jones,” p. 10.
44 Ibid, p. 17.
45 110 H.C. Deb., 78-94, 15 October 1918.
46 This is suggested by A.J.P. Taylor (English History, 1914-1945, p. 118), who writes: “The [Lloyd George] fund is generally held to have been a decisive element in discrediting Lloyd George. If this is so, Maurice—by provoking Lloyd George to a step which greatly increased the fund—helped him, in the end, on the road to political ruin.“
47 When it merged with the Daily News to form the News Chronicle which perished in 1960.