Taking economics to the masses: The 1970s inflation crisis and the Daily Mirror's Shopping Clock

This research explores how the Daily Mirror, Britain’s best read newspaper in the early 1970s presented inflation to its readers and the political impact of this. By examining the strengths of the Shopping Clock as popular journalism it attempts to assess the effect of the Shopping Clock on readers’ understanding of inflation. Three separate elements of the Shopping Clock’s role are assessed. First, the thesis investigates the Mirror’s role as an educator on inflation for its largely working class readership. Secondly, it shows how this unusually long standing feature survived because of the skills of its female compilers, the paper’s subeditors, the strengths of its design and its experimentation with format. This feature was thus able to transform from a housewife’s feature into a national news item by virtue of its relevance and accessibility. This was evidenced by regular appearances on the front page and the contribution of the Mirror’s male news journalists in the mid-1970s. Thirdly its role in pioneering consumer journalism for a mass readership is examined including the various spin-offs the Clock inspired and how their tone changed as inflation persisted during the 1970s. The political role of the Shopping Clock is explored by contrasting the Shopping Basket elections of 1970 and 1974, before and after the Shopping Clock was created. The Shopping Clock’s role as a tool of opposition and the recognition by the Conservative Government of its importance by 1973-4 is examined. Finally, the reporting in the Mirror of the performance of Labour’s Prices and Consumer ministers Shirley Williams and Roy Hattersley is considered. The thesis argues that the government’s emphasis shifted after 1975 from protecting consumers from the worst of food price rises to controlling the rate of inflation with little attention to the gender or prices issues that had seemed so important after the 1970 election result.