"We must get in front of these blighters": Political Press Culture in the West Midlands, 1918-1925

Abstract

This chapter seeks to challenge the current orthodoxy that a 'national' political culture had emerged by 1918 and that the provincial press failed to reflect the new, class-based politics of the period. By focusing on the experience of Birmingham and the West Midlands, it seeks to demonstrate that although national issues dominated the political debate in the area, these were refracted through the local press and played out in a regional context. The rise and fall of two local political newspapers acts as a prism for the changing political culture of the inter-war years but demonstrates that a resilient Midlands identity was present in the politics of the period.