The Guardian (until 1959, The Manchester Guardian ) is a British daily newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. Founded in 1821, it is unique among major British newspapers in being owned by a foundation (the Scott Trust, via the Guardian Media Group).
The Guardian Weekly , which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers. It contains articles from The Guardian and its Sunday, sister paper The Observer , as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post and articles translated from Le Monde .
The Guardian had a certified average daily circulation of 358,844 copies in January 2009, behind The Daily Telegraph and The Times , but ahead of The Independent . The Guardian' s website, guardian.co.uk, is one of the highest-traffic English-language news websites.
Stance and editorial opinion
Founded by textile traders and merchants, The Guardian had a reputation as "an organ of the middle class", or in the words of C.P. Scott's son Ted "a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last". "I write for the Guardian ," said Sir Max Hastings in 2005, "because it is read by the new establishment", reflecting the paper's growing influence.
Editorial articles in The Guardian are generally to the left of the political spectrum. This is reflected in the paper's readership: a MORI poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80% of Guardian readers were Labour Party voters; according to another MORI poll taken in 2005, 48% of Guardian readers were Labour voters and 34% Liberal Democrat voters. The newspaper's reputation as a platform for liberal and left-wing opinions has led to the use of the phrase "Guardian reader" as a label for people holding such opinions.
Guardian features editor Ian Katz stated in 2004 that "it is no secret we are a centre-left newspaper". In 2008, Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley claimed that editorial contributors were a mix of "right-of-centre libertarians, greens, Blairites, Brownites, Labourite but less enthusiastic Brownites, etc" and that the newspaper was "clearly left of centre and vaguely progressive". She also said that "you can be absolutely certain that come the next general election, The Guardian' s stance will not be dictated by the editor, still less any foreign proprietor (it helps that there isn't one) but will be the result of vigorous debate within the paper." The paper's comment and opinion pages, though dominated by centre-left writers and academics like Polly Toynbee, allow some space for right-of-centre voices such as Max Hastings, and Michael Gove.
History
1821 to 1959
Early years
The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by a group of non-conformist businessmen headed by John Edward Taylor, who took advantage of the closure of the more radical Manchester Observer , the paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo protesters. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing:
they have appealed not to the reason but the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence. “The do not toil, nether do they spin,” but they live better than those that do.And when the government closed down the Manchester Observer , the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand. The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty ... warmly advocate the cause of Reform ... endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and ... support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures".
The working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called the Manchester Guardian "the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners".
The Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labour's claims. Of the 1832 Ten Hours Bill the paper doubted whether in view of the foreign competition ‘the framing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture would be a much less rational procedure’. The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators - "if an accommodation can be effected the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. They live on strife."
The Manchester Guardian was hostile to the Unionist cause in the American Civil War, writing on the news that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated "of his rule, we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty".
C. P. Scott
Its most famous editor, C. P. Scott, made the newspaper nationally recognised. He was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought the paper from the estate of Taylor's son in 1907. Under Scott the paper's moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting Gladstone when the Liberals split in 1886, and opposing the Second Boer War against popular opinion. Scott supported the movement for women's suffrage, but was critical of any tactics by the Suffragettes that involved direct action: "The really ludicrous position is that Mr Lloyd George is fighting to enfranchise seven million women and the militants are smashing unoffending people's windows and breaking up benevolent societies' meetings in a desperate effort to prevent him". Scott thought the Suffragettes' "courage and devotion" was "worthy of a better cause and saner leadership". It has been argued that Scott's criticism reflected a widespread disdain, at the time, for those women who "transgressed the gender expectations of Edwardian society".
Scott's friendship with Chaim Weizmann played a role in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and in 1948 The Guardian was a supporter of the State of Israel. Daphna Baram tells the story of The Guardian' s relationship with the Zionist movement and Israel in the book " Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel ". In June 1936, ownership of the paper passed to the Scott Trust (named after the last owner, John Russell Scott, who was the first chairman of the Trust). This move ensured the paper's independence.
Spanish Civil War
Traditionally affiliated with the centrist Liberal Party, and with a northern, non-conformist circulation base, the paper earned a national reputation and the respect of the left during the Spanish Civil War. With the pro-Liberal News Chronicle , the Labour-supporting Daily Herald , the Communist Party's Daily Worker and several Sunday and weekly papers, it supported the 'Republican' government against General Francisco Franco's insurgent 'nationalists'.
Post-war
The paper so loathed Labour's left wing champion Aneurin Bevan "and the hate-gospellers of his entourage" that it called for Attlee's post-war Labour government to be voted out of office. Its anti-establishment stance fell short of opposing military intervention during the 1956 Suez Crisis: "The government is right to be prepared for military action at Suez", because Egyptian control of the canal would be "commercially damaging for the West and perhaps part of a plan for creating a new Arab Empire based on the Nile".
1959 to 2000
Northern Ireland
When 14 civil rights demonstrators were killed on Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972, in Northern Ireland, The Guardian blamed the protesters: "The organisers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield." ( Guardian , 1 February 1972). Some Irish Nationalists believed that Lord Widgery's enquiry into the killings was a whitewash, but The Guardian declared that "Lord Widgery's report is not one-sided" (20 April 1972). The paper also supported internment without trial in Northern Ireland: "Internment without trial is hateful, repressive and undemocratic. In the existing Irish situation, most regrettably, it is also inevitable. ... To remove the ringleaders, in the hope that the atmosphere might calm down, is a step to which there is no obvious alternative." ( Guardian leader, 10 August 1971) And before then, The Guardian had called for British troops to be sent to the region: British soldiers could "present a more disinterested face of law and order" (leader, 15 August 1969), but only on condition that "Britain takes charge" (leader, 4 August 1969).
Social Democratic Party and New Labour
Three of The Guardian' s four leader writers joined the Social Democratic Party on its foundation in 1981, but the paper was enthusiastic in its support for Tony Blair in his bid to lead the Labour Party, and to become Prime Minister.
Sarah Tisdall
In 1983, the paper was at the centre of a controversy surrounding documents regarding the stationing of cruise missiles in Britain that were leaked to The Guardian by civi