the startling rise in the Daily Mirror ’s popularity (beginning in the mid-1930s but accelerating from 1943, with circulation rising from two million that year to three million by 1946). Drawing inspiration directly from America, it successfully relied on a threefold formula: a brash irreverence (not only in peacetime) towards the authorities; a Labour-supporting politics of a far more populist, less heavy-duty type than that ponderously upheld by the Trades Union Congress-backed Daily Herald ; and a very professionally assembled tabloid blend of cartoons, comic strips (the legendary Jane), human interest, sport and (often Hollywood) celebrities. ‘Catering for short tea-breaks and even shorter attention spans’, in the regretful but probably accurate words of one historian, it was a formula whose time had come. 37
A final survey. Patterns of Marriage by Eliot Slater (a psychologist) and Moya Woodside (a psychiatric social worker) was not published until 1951, but its richly suggestive fieldwork comprised a detailed survey conducted between 1943 and 1946 of 200 working-class soldiers and their wives, mainly from the London area. Slater and Woodside’s central focus was on courtship, marriage and sex – revealing in the last area an extensive amount of what the authors called ‘passive endurance’ on the part of the wives, typified by one’s remark: ‘He’s very good, he doesn’t bother me much.’ But there was much else. Both men and women, they found on the class front, ‘were dominated by the distinction that is expressed in “We” and “They”, and, even in this war in which all were involved together, by the feeling of a cleft between the “two nations”’. Typical assertions quoted were: ‘there’ll never be much improvement so long as the country is run by people with money’, ‘the working class should be given a fairer do than they have had’, and ‘MPs have no worries, they’ve all got money in the bank.’ The war itself had done little or nothing to broaden horizons. Nearly all the male conscripts, Slater and Woodside found, ‘were bored and “fed up”, took little interest in wider and impersonal issues, and were only concerned to get the war over and get home again’. As for their wives, ‘the war was a background to daily life, irritating, endless, without significance other than its effects on their personal lives.’ And for ‘men and women alike patriotism was a remote conception, not altogether without meaning, but associated with feelings which were entirely inarticulate’.
For the husbands in particular, Slater and Woodside emphasised, one concern dominated above all:
The spectre of unemployment is never very far away. Some have experienced it themselves; others remember its effect on their own childhood; and for still others it exists as a malignant bogy that must dog the steps of every working man. Again and again a preference is expressed for the ‘steady job’ as opposed to high wages, more especially by the older men. It is not likely that the lesson that England learned from the years of the trade depression will ever be forgotten . . . There was a strong feeling that the fate of the individual under the capitalist system had little to do with merit, and depended on nebulous and unpredictable social forces. If only these could be controlled, a rich reward for personal ambitions was of secondary importance.
None of which guaranteed any more than a minimal interest in politics: ‘Politics, it was felt, had nothing to do with their ordinary lives, in which other interests, sport and home, predominated. Politics was a special subject, beyond the understanding of the uneducated, or too vast and impersonal for any individual effort to influence.’ A mere 21 out of the 200 men took ‘an active interest in politics’, but the attitude of the overwhelming majority was summed up by assertions like ‘I’m not interested in politics, it isn’t my
A final survey. Patterns of Marriage by Eliot Slater (a psychologist) and Moya Woodside (a psychiatric social worker) was not published until 1951, but its richly suggestive fieldwork comprised a detailed survey conducted between 1943 and 1946 of 200 working-class soldiers and their wives, mainly from the London area. Slater and Woodside’s central focus was on courtship, marriage and sex – revealing in the last area an extensive amount of what the authors called ‘passive endurance’ on the part of the wives, typified by one’s remark: ‘He’s very good, he doesn’t bother me much.’ But there was much else. Both men and women, they found on the class front, ‘were dominated by the distinction that is expressed in “We” and “They”, and, even in this war in which all were involved together, by the feeling of a cleft between the “two nations”’. Typical assertions quoted were: ‘there’ll never be much improvement so long as the country is run by people with money’, ‘the working class should be given a fairer do than they have had’, and ‘MPs have no worries, they’ve all got money in the bank.’ The war itself had done little or nothing to broaden horizons. Nearly all the male conscripts, Slater and Woodside found, ‘were bored and “fed up”, took little interest in wider and impersonal issues, and were only concerned to get the war over and get home again’. As for their wives, ‘the war was a background to daily life, irritating, endless, without significance other than its effects on their personal lives.’ And for ‘men and women alike patriotism was a remote conception, not altogether without meaning, but associated with feelings which were entirely inarticulate’.
For the husbands in particular, Slater and Woodside emphasised, one concern dominated above all:
The spectre of unemployment is never very far away. Some have experienced it themselves; others remember its effect on their own childhood; and for still others it exists as a malignant bogy that must dog the steps of every working man. Again and again a preference is expressed for the ‘steady job’ as opposed to high wages, more especially by the older men. It is not likely that the lesson that England learned from the years of the trade depression will ever be forgotten . . . There was a strong feeling that the fate of the individual under the capitalist system had little to do with merit, and depended on nebulous and unpredictable social forces. If only these could be controlled, a rich reward for personal ambitions was of secondary importance.
None of which guaranteed any more than a minimal interest in politics: ‘Politics, it was felt, had nothing to do with their ordinary lives, in which other interests, sport and home, predominated. Politics was a special subject, beyond the understanding of the uneducated, or too vast and impersonal for any individual effort to influence.’ A mere 21 out of the 200 men took ‘an active interest in politics’, but the attitude of the overwhelming majority was summed up by assertions like ‘I’m not interested in politics, it isn’t my
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