Editing History of British newspapers (section)

===Developments===
By the 1930s, over two-thirds of the population read a newspaper every day, with "almost everyone" taking one on Sundays.<ref name="historyandpolicy">{{cite web|url=http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-27.html|title=Monitoring the popular press: an historical perspective|last=Bingham|first=Adrian|date=May 2005|publisher=History & Policy|access-date=9 December 2010|location=United Kingdom|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110807101755/http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-27.html|archive-date=7 August 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref>
[[File:Headlines london bombing 7 july 2005 Waterloo station.JPG|thumb|left|''[[Evening Standard]]'' headlines on 7 July 2005]]
The ''[[Morning Star (British newspaper)|Morning Star]]'' was founded in 1930 as the ''Daily Worker'', organ of the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]] (CPGB). is a left-wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues.<ref name="news.bbc.co.uk">{{cite news| url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4361137.stm |work=BBC News  | title=Pressing on | date=21 March 2005 | access-date=13 May 2010}}</ref> 
[[File:Y Cymro, Porthmadog - geograph.org.uk - 162726.jpg|thumb|''[[Y Cymro]]'' (''The Welshman'') is a Welsh language national weekly paper first published in 1932.]]
A 1938 ''Report on the British Press'' (from the [[think tank]] [[Political and Economic Planning]]) expressed concerns that "a dangerous tendency has recently been manifesting itself by which entertainment ceases to be ancillary to news and either supersedes it or absorbs it; many people welcome a newspaper that under the guise of presenting news, enables them to escape from the grimness of actual events and the effort of thought by opening the backdoor of triviality and sex appeal. Such readers are left ill-informed and unable to participate intelligently in political debate." The report also contained worries about the fact that "general accuracy of the Press is comparatively low by scientific or administrative standards," and about early [[Paparazzi|press intrusion]] causing "considerable public indignation against sections of the press." They closed by advising "the formation of a Press Tribunal to address complaints, and a Press Institute to provide continuous scientific study of the Press."<ref name="historyandpolicy"/>

The first [[Royal Commission on the Press, United Kingdom|Royal Commission on the Press]] recommended in 1949 that a General Council of the Press should be formed to govern the behaviour of the print media. In response to a threat of statutory regulation, the voluntary General Council of the Press was formed in 1953, funded by newspaper proprietors. Membership was initially restricted to newspaper editors but was reformed as the [[Press Council (UK)|Press Council]] in 1962, with 20 per cent lay members. The council had a non-binding regulatory framework with the stated aim of maintaining high standards of ethics in journalism. In 1980 the [[National Union of Journalists]] withdrew from membership. In 1991, the Press Council was replaced by the [[Press Complaints Commission]].

When he relaunched the flagging ''[[The Sun (United Kingdom)|Sun]]'' newspaper in [[Tabloid journalism|tabloid]] format on 17 November 1969, [[Rupert Murdoch]] began publishing photographs of clothed glamour models on its third page. ''[[Page 3]]'' photographs over the following year were often provocative, but did not feature nudity. On 17 November 1970, editor [[Larry Lamb (newspaper editor)|Larry Lamb]] celebrated the tabloid's first anniversary by publishing a photograph of a model in the nude sitting in a field with one of her breasts visible from the side.<ref>Braid, Mary. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3651850.stm Page Three girls – the naked truth]. [[BBC News]] Online, 14 September 2004</ref> The ''Sun'' gradually began to feature Page Three girls in more overtly topless poses. Although these photographs caused controversy at the time, and led to the ''Sun'' being banned from some public libraries, they are partly credited with the increased circulation that established the ''Sun'' as one of the most popular newspapers in the United Kingdom by the mid-1970s.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1026989.stm Flirty not dirty at 30] Friday, 17 November 2000 – BBC News – UK</ref><ref>{{cite book | title=Ethics for journalists | series=Media skills | first=Richard | last=Keeble | publisher=Taylor & Francis | year=2009 | isbn=978-0-415-43074-6 | page=205}}</ref> In an effort to compete with the ''Sun'', the ''[[Daily Mirror]]'' and ''[[Daily Star (United Kingdom)|Daily Star]]'' tabloids also began publishing images of topless women. The Mirror stopped featuring topless models in the 1980s, deeming the photographs demeaning to women.

The ''[[Scottish Daily News]]'' was a [[Left-wing politics|left-of-centre]] daily newspaper published in [[Glasgow]] between 5 May and 8 November 1975. It was hailed as Britain's first worker-controlled, mass-circulation daily, formed as a [[Worker cooperative|workers' cooperative]] by 500 of the 1,846<ref name="pressgazette2">{{cite magazine|url=http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/?t=article&l=back_issues_270505 |title=Journalism news and jobs for journalists |magazine=Press Gazette |access-date=18 September 2011}}</ref> journalists, photographers, engineers, and print workers who were made [[Redundancy (law)|redundant]] in April 1974 by Beaverbrook Newspapers when the ''[[Daily Express|Scottish Daily Express]]'' closed its printing operations in Scotland and moved to Manchester.

The [[Wapping dispute]] was a significant turning point in the history of the [[trade union]] movement and of UK industrial relations. It started on 24 January 1986 when some 6,000 newspaper workers went on strike after protracted negotiation with their employers, [[News International]] (parent of Times Newspapers and News Group Newspapers, and chaired by [[Rupert Murdoch]]). News International had built and clandestinely equipped a new printing plant for all its titles in the London district of [[Wapping]], and when the print unions announced a strike it activated this new plant with the assistance of the [[Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union]] (EETPU). Despite the widespread use of the [[Offset lithography|offset litho]] printing process elsewhere, the Murdoch papers in common with the rest of [[Fleet Street]] continued to be produced by the hot-metal and labour-intensive [[Linotype machine|Linotype]] method, rather than being composed [[Desktop publishing|electronically]]. [[Eddy Shah]]'s Messenger group, in a long-running and bitter dispute at [[Warrington]] had benefited from the [[Margaret Thatcher|Thatcher]] government's trade union legislation to allow employers to de-recognise unions, enabling the company to use an alternative workforce and new technology in newspaper production. He launched ''[[Today (UK newspaper)|Today]]'' on Tuesday 4 March 1986, as a middle-market tabloid, a rival to the long-established ''Daily Mail'' and ''Daily Express''. It pioneered computer photosetting and full-colour offset printing at a time when national newspapers were still using Linotype machines and letterpress. Established national newspapers converted to electronic production and colour printing. ''Today'' ceased publication on 17 November 1995, the first long-running national newspaper title to close since the ''[[Daily Sketch]]'' in 1971.

By 1988, nearly all the national newspapers had abandoned Fleet Street to relocate in the Docklands, and had begun to change their printing practices to those being employed by News International. Even though the last major British news office, [[Reuters]], left in 2005, the term ''Fleet Street'' continues to be used as a [[metonym]] for the British national press.

''[[The Independent]]'' was first published on 7 October 1986. The paper was created at a time of fundamental change and attracted staff from the two Murdoch broadsheets who had chosen not to move to the new headquarters in Wapping. Launched with the advertising slogan "It is. Are you?", and challenging ''The Guardian'' for centre-left readers, and ''The Times'' as a newspaper of record, it reached a circulation of over 400,000 in 1989. Competing in a moribund market, ''The Independent'' sparked a general freshening of newspaper design as well as a price war.

''[[The European (newspaper)|The European]]'', billed as "''Europe's first national newspaper''", was a weekly newspaper founded by [[Robert Maxwell]]. It lasted from 11 May 1990 until December 1998. The circulation peaked at 180,000, over half of which was British. The [[David and Frederick Barclay|Barclay brothers]] bought the newspaper in 1992, investing an estimated $110 million and in 1996 transforming it into a high-end [[Tabloid (newspaper format)|tabloid]] format oriented at the business community edited by [[Andrew Neil]].

By the 1980s Robert Maxwell's various companies owned the ''Daily Mirror'', the ''[[Sunday Mirror]]'', the Scottish ''[[Daily Record (Scotland)|Daily Record]]'' and ''[[Sunday Mail (Scotland)|Sunday Mail]]'' and several other newspapers. Maxwell was litigious against those who would speak or write against him. The satirical magazine ''[[Private Eye]]'' lampooned him as "Cap'n Bob" and the "bouncing Czech", the latter nickname having originally been devised by Prime Minister [[Harold Wilson]] (under whom Maxwell was an MP). Maxwell took out several libel actions against ''Private Eye''. Maxwell's untimely death triggered a flood of instability with banks frantically calling in their massive loans, and his publishing empire collapsed. It emerged that, without adequate prior authorisation, Maxwell had used hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds to shore up the shares of the Mirror Group, to save his companies from bankruptcy.