(1) Henry Hamilton Fyfe became editor of the Daily Herald in 1922.

The Daily Herald had never emerged entirely from the first stage of its existence as a daily strike sheet a year or two before the war. While the war was on, it became a weekly with a bite to it. In 1919 it resumed appearance as a daily with so much of the old bite left that it gained ground slowly. Most supporters of Labour have Tory tastes. They dislike actual changes, however loudly they may demand future reforms. They were used to a certain type of daily newspaper; the Herald did not conform to type. Also it attacked most of the leaders whom Labour people had been taught to revere. Those leaders hated Lansbury, the founder of the paper, who had, with immense energy, collected funds for its rebirth. They did more to hinder than to help it on.

 

(2) In his autobiography, Looking Backwards - And Forwards, George Lansbury, explained the importance of Muriel De La Warr to the survival of the Daily Herald.

Of all the women, outside those belonging to my family and the working classes, whom I have known and worked with, none stands higher in my memory and esteem than Muriel, Countess De La Warr. I never heard her make a speech, though she must have attended hundreds of public meetings and many private gatherings of committees.

Over and over again she and her friends saved the Daily Herald from death in the old days when it was independent, and often it was her example and her work which helped women suffragists to hold on in the darkest days of defeat.

Her love for human rights and duties kept her very largely out of society. She spent her days almost secretly doing good. Many, many people like myself owe her a big debt of gratitude for the continuous help she gave to causes in which we worked.

 

(3) Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions (1969)

I found that the cost of upkeep of the farms was swallowing up the whole of the estate rents and more. Inflation of costs and prices had made deficits on landed estates inevitable. So I finally decided to sell half the farms on the Tibberton estate and use the money for the upkeep and improvement of the remaining farms and for house-building. Meanwhile, I gave a considerable sum, which had accumulated as dividends from the timber business, to the Daily Herald. For George Lansbury then required help to build the paper up and, being a paper of the Left, it had a hard struggle to make good in a country where the newspaper industry was commercialized. So I gave my brother Power of Attorney to pay to George Lansbury £15,000 to help the Daily Herald.

 

(4) When Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister he constantly complained to the editor of the Daily Herald, Hamilton Fyfe, about the way the newspaper sometimes criticised the leadership of the Labour Party. Eventually, Fyfe wrote MacDonald a reply.

I have had to do with so many Prime Ministers that I am not surprised by the petulant tone of your letter. Beginning with old Lord Salisbury, who was in office when I joined The Times, I have seen the same kind of complaint made by Arthur Balfour; by Cambell-Bannerman; by Asquith, and by Lloyd George.

The Herald is the organ, not of your Government, not of a Party, but of the Labour Movement. In that Movement there are many currents of opinion, ranging from the silly Communism, which thinks that whatever is Russian must be right, to the Liberalism which would still be where it was a few years ago if Asquith had not been such a ninny and Lloyd George such as a knave. It would be foolish to aim at making the policy of the Herald fit in with all these currents of opinion, but it is very important that no section should feel resentment at not being allowed to express its views in its own newspaper.

You forget, I believe, that the Herald belongs to some five million people; that it exists in order to represent what they think and feel; and that if I were to say to any section of them; "I will not publish your opinions because that would be unpleasant to the Prime Minister," there would be good reason to retort that I was setting the momentary interest of a Ministry above the permanent interest of the Movement, which is beyond question the greater of the two.

 

(5) Morgan Philips Price, Daily Herald (August, 1923)

The reactionary movements which flourish in Bavaria are at present not quite so formidable as appears on the surface. They are divided into various sections and they do not appear to agree well together. Nevertheless, here is a movement which may make trouble in the future. It is based on the old officers of the Prussian Army migrated to Bavaria and using the weakness of the peasant government in Munich to rally the impoverished middle classes and rentiers, ruined by the inflation, round the Pan-German Nationalist and anti-French flag. Their cry is "Down with the Socialist and Jewish towns of Northern Germany; Down with France." This philosophy is also the basis of the other forces of the Right in Bavaria, namely German Fascism. Herr Hitler has built up a force estimated at about 30,000 armed men, but he is keeping them in the background and is for the moment concentrating on trying to convert some of the less stable elements of the working classes in the Bavarian towns to his National Socialist programmes.

The Majority Social-Democrats in Munich with whom I have spoken tell me that they have to fight for their ordinary liberties and rights of propaganda just as under the Hohenzollem regime. Their newspapers are continually being suppressed by so-called police simply for publishing information about the illegal activities of Herr Hitler and his armed bands.

The Social-Democrats are, however, not without their means of defence. Not long before I was in Munich, there had been a parade of the Social-Democratic fighting organizations on the great Theresa meadow outside the town. Several thousand workers marched past with Red Flags. They were unarmed, but could defend themselves if need be. I had the impression that the industrial centres of Bavaria could, with the aid of the railwaymen, suppress a Hitler rising if they acted promptly.

 

(6) Tom Hopkinson, Of This Our Time (1982)

I was working for, though not on, a Labour newspaper, the Daily Herald, whose views I had started to assimilate. Back in 1926 at the time of the General Strike, I had readily come up from Oxford to act as a strikebreaker; in 1931 when the National Government came in, I had voted for it as a matter of course, but I now began to be appalled at its incompetence and complacency. There were other, more personal reasons. Our money troubles of the last few years had made me realize how differently life is organized for those who have and those who lack, and when in the company of rich people I found their callousness - particularly over the rising number of unemployed - as offensive as though it was some repellent disease.

 

(7) In his book, The Miracle of Fleet Street, George Lansbury commented on the cartoons of Will Dyson.

Dyson's cartoons were masterpieces of cynicism and sardonic humour. J. R. MacDonald, Philip Snowden, J. H. Thomas, the Webbs, Shaw and all the Fabian family were stripped bare, shorn of all their glory, and treated like ordinary, stupid, or, on occasion, rather cunning people.

 

Poor Men's Guardians

The Miracle of Fleet Street