‘The Magnetic Pull of the Metropolis’: The Manchester Guardian, The Provincial Press and Ideas of the North

Abstract

The newspaper globally known as the Guardian began its life in Manchester as the Manchester Guardian. This paper examines the reactions of readers of the newspaper in the context of the decision to remove the word ‘Manchester’ from the its title in 1959. It uses 251 letters on the subject sent to the newspaper to assess the usefulness of Anthony Cohen’s idea of readers as a symbolic community. This approach defines community in terms of a shared symbol whose meaning may be interpreted differently by individuals. The study concludes that there were two aspects to the readers’ relationship with the newspaper – they were attached to ideas about the symbolic nature of Manchester and the north of England more generally but the meaning they ascribed to being part of a community of readers differed in a nuanced way and according to individual interpretations. The newspaper’s determination to re-brand as a national rather than a provincial paper caused its readers to try to redefine their identities as members of the symbolic community of the Manchester Guardian.