ABSTRACT
The Labour party won a landslide election in 1945, committed to the nationalisation of key industries and with the express intention of looking after the interests of its citizens ‘from the cradle to the grave’. Such sentiments chimed with popular feeling. War had demonstrated the feasibility of central planning and control, and in the immediate post-war years this was widely seen as a permanent change, exemplified by state control of most essential services, the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) and the ‘Welfare State’. So, Labour’s landslide election success reflected a changing ideological environment in which greater control of the press could be considered.
