JOURNALISM AND POLITICS
Series One: The Papers of C P Scott, 1846-1932, from the John Rylands University Library of Manchester

Part 1: C P Scott's General Correspondence, c.1870-1934,
and Political Diaries, 1911-1928

C P Scott remains one of the giants of world journalism. When he died in 1932, after 58 years as Editor of the Manchester Guardian, tributes like those below poured in from around the world.

"For more than half a century a leading figure - perhaps the Leader - in the journalism of the world"
Christian Science Monitor, 4 January 1932

"He was the noblest figure in modern journalism. His was always a most potent appeal to the conscience of the world."
David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, 1916-1922

Gandhi, Cosgrove and Sokolnikov recorded official tributes on behalf of the Indian, Irish and Russian peoples who acknowledged Scott's importance in their struggles for independence. For Scott had sought out the truth behind the conflict and propaganda which was otherwise all pervasive. He lifted The Guardian from being one of many national papers in Britain to being a major moral force in world politics.

From Scott's earliest days as Editor, when he promoted Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, he turned The Guardian into a forthright, campaigning paper. He gathered news himself from his many friends and contacts who included Gladstone, Lloyd George, John Dillon, the Fawcetts and Pankhursts, Kerensky, Arthur Henderson, Chaim Weizmann, Jan Smuts and Rabindranath Tagore. He encouraged his reporters to probe the official accounts of the news and to write with candour.

Despite his rise to fame and the fact that he had meticulously recorded his many meetings as well as carrying out a correspondence with statesmen worldwide, C P Scott left no memoirs and never wrote a book of reminiscences.

He did, however, leave his political diary, which spans the years 1911-1928, and general correspondence files for the period 1870-1932. Both are now published here for the first time. 

His complete general correspondence amounts to nearly 4,000 letters with the list of correspondents reading like a who's who of late nineteenth and early twentieth century politics. It includes:

The Earl of Aberdeen, Herbert Asquith, Lady Astor, A J Balfour, Baron Beaverbrook, H N Brailsford, George Cadbury, Sir Roger Casement, Winston Churchill, William Cosgrave, Charles Dilke, John Dillon, Sir Robert Ensor, Millicent Fawcett, J L Garvin, Margaret Gaskell, Herbert and W E Gladstone, Viscount Haldane, James Keir Hardie, Leonard Hobhouse, J A Hobson, H M Hyndmann, John Maynard Keynes, W Labouchere, Wilfrid Laurier, David Lloyd-George, James Ramsay MacDonald, Alfred Marshall, John Masefield, E D Morel, Henry Wood Nevinson, Florence Nightingale, William OBrien, Christabel, Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst, V N Polovtsev, John Redmond, George W E Russell, Sir Michael Sadler, Anatole Sax, George Bernard Shaw, Kay Shuttleworth, Jan Smuts, W T Stead, Rabindranath Tagore, John Edward Taylor, Arnold Toynbee, Sidney Webb, Chaim Weizmann and Woodrow Wilson.

The substance and the quality of the correspondence will strike anyone who works with the archive. For instance, exchanges with John Dillon discuss the inherent dangers of armed revolution. Correspondence with Polovtsev, Smuts, Tagore and Weizmann discuss worldwide struggles for freedom. Extensive correspondence with both David Lloyd George and James Ramsay MacDonald discuss the politicians constant battle to avoid sacrificing principles for the sake of political power. The rise of the Labour Party is charted, as is the demise of the Liberal Party. In a letter dated 4 December 1922 to Bonar Law, Scott bemoans: "I am greatly concerned for the future of the Liberal Party which stands in imminent danger of extinction as a Parliamentary force. I dont think you, or any Conservative statesman, can wish that to happen".

Womens suffrage is a much discussed issue. In a letter of 22 August 1910, Mrs Pankhurst asked Scott to use his influence to clarify misrepresentations of the Conciliation Bill: "Mr Lloyd George's speech was made important by the wide publicity given to it in the Press. It contained a very grave misrepresentation of the scope of the Conciliation Bill which it was most important to have corrected. As you know it is exceedingly difficult for Suffragists to get their contradictions and corrections of such errors and misrepresentations published in the daily papers, but we have come to look upon the Manchester Guardian as less unfair in this respect than other newspapers".

Equally, on 21 November 1911, the Home Secretary Reginald McKenna confided to Scott: "There is a difficulty in the way of arresting the suffragette demonstrators and then discharging them as they have to come before the Magistrates who, in our experience, dislike this procedure. I quite agree that the arrests should be made quickly and the demonstrators denied, as far as possible, the opportunity of martyrdom".

Issues which are particularly well documented include:

- The Russian Revolution
- Political and military struggles in South Africa
- The Great War, 1914-1918
- Irish Independence
- Womens suffrage
- Zionism
- The rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberals
- Movements for colonial freedom

These issues are also treated at length in his contemporary notes of meetings with the leading figures, published here as part of his political diaries. For instance, there are lengthy notes of his discussions with Sir John Simon and Lloyd George when the First World War broke out as well as inside stories concerning the South African Settlement, the Indian Independence movement, and the Czarina, Rasputin and the Bolsheviks. 

Trevor Wilson's edited version of The Political Diaries of C P Scott (Collins, London, 1970) has already provided a foretaste of the richness of this source. As he says, "...the value of a journal like this lies less in its startling revelations than in the cumulative effect of dozens of tiny incidents which it records." Only the complete publication of the diaries enables this full cumulative impact to strike home. In fact, it often seems as though Scott had more one-to-one meetings with Lloyd George, for instance, than many Cabinet Ministers. These events are captured with a journalistic eye for detail and bring to life many great historical events.

He met frequently with John Dillon in 1914 to discuss Irish Nationalism. On February 7, 1914 the entry reads, "Lunched with Dillon at Bath Club and had two hours with him he argued strongly and persistently against any statement by the PM at this stage of the particular concessions he was prepared to offer to Ulster To do so, he said, would be to create an impossible parliamentary position". A little later on April 26 he met with Dillon again: "Dillon called on me at my house, having been at the meeting in Manchester previous evening. We spoke of landing arms and other illegalities in Ulster on previous day. I said we had perhaps made mistake in not checking volunteer movement sooner. He dissented, and strongly deprecated any action even now which might lead to actual conflict between army and volunteers fearing effect on future of Ireland"

On the outbreak of the First World War, C P Scott was summoned to see Sir John Simon and Lloyd George. He recorded the following remarkable testimony: "Up to last Sunday only two members of the Cabinet had been in favour of our intervention in the War, but the violation of Belgian territory had completely altered the situation He had gone so far, however, as to urge that if Germany would consent to limit her occupation of Belgian territory to the extreme southerly point of Belgium the sort of nose of land running out by Luxembourg he would resign rather than make this a causus belli Presumably therefore some such offer was made to Germany and declined Apart from that it would have been impossible to draw us into war now".

Similar frank testimonies concern Lord Fisher on Jutland, vivid accounts from Arthur Henderson about the Bolsheviks, Primrose on Palestine, Jan Smuts on the peace in South Africa ("we had fought persistently for a better settlement and failed") and the Webbs on the repeal of the Trades Union Act.

A further interesting extract of 6 February 1914, documents McKenna's views on the Navy Estimates: "Saw McKenna, primarily about the Press Competitions Bill. Then he opened up on subject of the Naval Estimates taking it up at the point where we had left it on the Sunday week previous at Walton Heath Reminded me that he had at last been actually rude to Lloyd George, on the subject of his ridiculously inadequate proposal to be satisfied with the promise and not even the promise, but the hope of reductions in 1915-16, without any serious attempt to secure reduction in 1914-15, and how, thus goaded, Lloyd George had proposed a meeting next day at the Treasury of the party of economy in the Cabinet the meeting was held, but instead of any improvement in Lloyd Georges attitude, it was as bad as ever, or worse so much so that after the meeting was over McKenna wrote and told him that he could not undertake to follow his lead in the Cabinet"

A final example is the following record of his meeting with Lloyd George on 17 October 1915 to discuss the war situation and the question of conscription: "He was doubting whether to bring matters to a crisis at the Cabinet next day. Said conditions in Russia were far worse than supposed. Government had received a telegram to say that total losses of Russian Armies were 6 million (2 million prisoners) and they had left only 700,000 fighting menHe asked me what I, C P Scott, would do if I were Lloyd George I replied that the question wasnt an easy one, but that I believed the voluntary system if pressed to its furthest point would give nearly as good a return of men as compulsion and that the difference which might remain would not be worth splitting the nation for in any case I thought the nation was totally unprepared for a break up of the Government on the issue of compulsion and for a possible general election as a consequence."

Scott's notes in the typescript diaries and some items of correspondence show that subtle and less subtle pressures were applied to release and suppress the news.

Students of Journalism and all those studying modern history will find a wealth of untapped material to consider. The role of The Guardian in changing society and attitudes can be contrasted with the role of key political events and allegiances in making The Guardian.

The guide which accompanies this project is available in its entirety on this website. Included are detailed contents of reels listings and a complete list of correspondents, all of which can be viewed by following the above link.