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Co-operation, compromise and confrontation: the Universal News, 1860–69

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Anthony McNicholas*
Affiliation:
Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster

Extract

The Universal News was published in London for nine years between December 1860 and December 1869. It originated as a co-operative effort between Irish and English Catholics to produce a newspaper which, though essentially secular, was to be imbued with a religious sensibility. The great majority of Catholics, however, were by this stage overwhelmingly Irish and wanted news of Ireland and Irish politics. This was not necessarily to the taste of all, so from the outset a balancing act was required between the wants and needs of English and Irish Catholics. This was not to be without its problems, for as the decade progressed and the struggle developed between a secular Irish nationalism and church and state, divisions deepened. The Universal News quickly became a paper for Irish Catholics, spanned a turbulent decade and mirrored in its own history both the internal and external struggles of the Irish in England. Furthermore, the history of the Universal News demonstrates the centrality, in Irish journalism in England, of the influence of the church, and the central question for the press of the migrants was how, in a hostile political environment, to produce and sustain newspapers that were at the same time secular but operated within a system of distribution particularly sensitive to clerical control.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2007

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References

1 Edwards, Owen Dudley and Storey, Patricia, ‘The Irish press in Victorian Britain’ in Swift, Roger and Gilley, Sheridan (eds), The Irish in the Victorian city (London, 1985), p. 161 Google Scholar.

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8 Edwards and Storey credit him with being the founder (ibid.), but he merely gave the paper his blessing.

9 Universal News, 29 Dec. 1860.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., 25 Dec. 1861.

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15 Ibid., 30 Mar. 1861.

16 Ibid.

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43 See McNicholas, ‘Faith, fatherland & the politics of exile’, pp 255–90.

44 Universal News, 20 July 1867 (letter dated 16 July).

45 Weekly Register, 27 Apr. 1867.

46 Ibid., 13 July 1867.

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