Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party

(Harvard University Press) The author traces the Labour Party’s rise as a movement for working-class men to its transformation into a national party that would win a convincing majority in 1945. Her focus throughout the book is on the media strategy used by the party to create a wide coalition of supporters. Labour’s leaders were savvy in their use of popular journalism, the BBC, and film, enabling them to more effectively and successfully spread their message to the public, thus transforming the political process in general. Beers is assistant professor of history at American University.