'Propaganda for things as they are'? British newsreels in everyday life, c.1920-c.1939

British newsreels were short non-fiction films, issued twice-weekly as topical summaries of the news that were included in most commercial cinema programmes. Hitherto, inter-war newsreels have been viewed as a mass propaganda medium for political and social conservatism. This thesis aims to overturn this conceptualisation, by positing that newsreels were a relatively progressive medium, central to processes of political and cultural democratisation occurring in British society between c.1920 and c.1939. It achieves this by contextualising newsreels within the local civic cultures of towns and cities across Britain, where the medium was exhibited, marketed, and often produced. Indeed, newsreels were an everyday means by which local publics saw themselves represented and also a way that citizens participated in urban political cultures. The argument is therefore twofold. First, newsreels visually represented a new consumer-citizenry, helping cinemagoers to envision their role within a participatory democracy. The medium routinely projected the civic ethos of non-partisanship and an entitlement to participate in public life irrespective of class or gender. Second, the social practice of watching newsreels actively helped to create the consumer-citizenry that was in turn projected in newsreel content. Thus, this thesis foremost demonstrates that newsreels were the primary commercial civic medium in Britain between the wars.