In 1931, the then leader of the Conservative party, Stanley Baldwin, made a speech in which he warned of the danger of letting a few individuals dominate the newspaper industry. What such people were seeking, he said, was “power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”.
Britain, he said, was a country envied the world over for its free press: “its fairness, the ability with which it is conducted, and the high principles of journalism to which it adheres” were world-renowned, and should not be allowed to fall under the control of press barons. He had in mind Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook, who had explicitly clashed with him over policy, and tried to remove him at least once as leader of the Conservative party. They were neither the first nor the last to use their papers as explicit weapons of political influence.
