ABSTRACT
While Labour’s complaints about a hostile press have littered the post-war period, it was only from the mid-1970s that there was a marked shift to the right in the politics of the popular press. This was first characterised by an intensification of the partisanship of the traditional Tory press, visible to some extent in the Mail and Express in the 1974 election, and to an even greater extent by the turn of 1979. By this time they were also joined by a powerful new propaganda ally, as the rapid commercial success of Rupert Murdoch’s new tabloid Sun newspaper was accompanied by its slower political transformation into a stance fiercely hostile to Labour. This meant that, by the time of their election defeat at the hands of Margaret Thatcher’s Tories, Labour was suffering a more hostile press than at any time in the post-war period. Such a position was, however, to some extent prefaced by the growing conflict that emerged between Wilson and the press from 1966 onwards.
