ABSTRACT

As has already been argued at some length (in Chapters 2 and 3) news coverage arises from the interactions between the news media and their sources. This chapter and the following two are dedicated to exploring many of the questions those earlier chapters spoke to by empirically examining the interactions between locally based anti-war groups and the local news media. Chapter 7 concentrates on the media’s side of those engagements. The next chapter looks at matters from the perspective of the locally based anti-war groups by exploring the reasons why they purposely pursued local coverage, the extent to which they prioritised this objective, and (in so far as this question applies) how the groups organised themselves in order to be able to engage with the media in an effective manner. Yet in order to fully understand the media relations of the local anti-war groups, we need to know more about the groups themselves. That is where this chapter comes in. It sketches out the numerous political tendencies and tensions across the British anti-war movement and how those involved worked to try to maintain a notional sense of unity by forging a series of compromises between different factions and viewpoints. The first part of this chapter works its way through an enquiry into the

distinguishing features of social movements, before considering why the anti-war movement is indeed a movement, why it re-emerged after 9/11, and how a number of previously established social movements fed into it. The second part of the chapter explores the formation of, and tensions within, locally based anti-war groups.