Talk: ‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’

I will be doing a talk on the former Co-operative Women’s Guild periodical Woman’s Outlook at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum next year (Thursday March 21), as part of a series of lectures on aspects of co-operative history, and would love to hear from anyone who has memories of reading the magazine between 1919 and 1967.

Working in close proximity to the National Co-operative Archive, I have developed a fascination with Outlook. For nearly five decades it was the voice of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, the campaigning organisation which worked to raise the status of women both in the co-operative movement and in society, and onetime editor Mary Stott later rose to prominence as a longstanding editor of the Guardian women’s page. From its origins in Manchester in 1919, Outlook provided an enticing mixture of articles encompassing both the personal and the political, combining fashion, fiction, features and recipes with advice for working women – not dissimilar to the content of women’s magazines today!

‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’ will explore some of the key issues addressed in Outlook, from suffrage and peace to maternity benefits, pensions and nursery education, and look at how the magazine encouraged women to get involved in campaigning for a better world – at the same time as helping prepare them to take on more prominent roles in co-operative societies.

Topics covered by Outlook such as female representation in parliament, equal pay and healthy eating remain highly relevant today, and the talk will end by evaluating whether the type of content provided by 21st century women’s lifestyle magazines has really changed much since the days of Outlook.

I would love to hear from any women who were members of the Women’s Guild in this period, especially those who remember reading Outlook or any other co-operative periodicals, as well as anyone who has any interest in the magazine. If you can help, or can put me in touch with anyone who might be able to help, please email Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com.

Newspapers on Film — visiting the North West Film Archive

I first became interested in films about newspapers after discovering Wakefield Express by the Free Cinema director Lindsay Anderson, a portrait of the town’s newspaper commissioned to mark the paper’s centenary in 1952, which places the Express at the heart of the Yorkshire community it serves. Lasting just over thirty minutes, it’s a snapshot of Wakefield life, and the city’s expansion, which the Express was there to record at every moment — as the narrator notes, ‘the Express has grown with Wakefield’. It was rescreened in the town last year during protests against the Wakefield Express leaving its town centre offices and moving to the outskirts of town.

Similarly, films in the North West Film Archive document Manchester’s history as the ‘second city of newspapers’, where both northern editions of the daily national papers were produced, as well as Greater Manchester's own regional daily paper the Manchester Evening News.

News Story is a twenty minute behind the scenes portrait of the Manchester Guardian made in 1960, four years before it moved to London (and a year after it dropped the ‘Manchester' part of its name), which traces the history of the paper from its foundation in 1821 following the Peterloo Massacre to its status as an international paper.

The NWFA also holds two documentaries about the Manchester Evening News (like the Wakefield Express, the Evening News, too, has now moved out of town — from Deansgate in the city centre to Chadderton, Oldham earlier this year): Here is the News, made to mark the paper’s centenary year in 1968 and The Voice of a Region, from 1970-2, which celebrate the Evening News’ role as ‘an important voice for a famous city’ and ‘a strong heart for the community it serves’.

Lingering on the city’s achievements and admiring its new modernist architecture, they’re modern and optimistic, talking admiringly of Manchester’s abundance of supermarkets and self-service stores, panning past glamorous shop fronts, showing celebrities such as George Best and exalting the young people of the city. In Here is the News, bright yellow Ford vans glide around the city's roads to a soundtrack of jaunty jazz, distributing newspapers like rolled up rays of sunshine.

Shown being read in a suburban home by members of the nuclear family, the Manchester Evening News is ‘the family newspaper that is indeed a member of the family’. It’s a ‘pleasure at the end of the working day’ that's ‘read by all types of people — men and women, young and old, rich and poor’, and is ‘full of the sorts of things that everyone is interested in’, from the stock market, football, dogs and horses to fashion pages, recipes and hints for housewives and nightclubs, cinemas and jobs for young people.

The films rush around the different departments that work towards the ‘daily miracle’ that is the production of a newspaper; from crime reporters at the scene of the crime to clattering typewriters with hands dancing over the keys, splashing chemicals in the darkroom, pipe-smoking men in waistcoats, girls chattering on telesales headsets, the sawing of metal plates and the rolling of printing presses that could turn out up to 38,000 papers an hour.

The Voice of a Region visits the Evening News’ then new premises, purpose-built by the architects Leach Rhodes Walker next to John Rylands Library on Deansgate (where Spinningfields is now), praising the ‘striking modern building’ surrounded by courtyards and squares where the public can relax, ‘soothed by the sight of flowers’. It concludes ‘as the city continues to grow, so will the newspaper’.

Unfortunately, though, within decades the old ways of newspaper production were becoming obsolete. In complete contrast to the confidence of the Evening News films, The Way It Was comprises of grainy, jerky footage shot in Thomson House (now the Printworks entertainment complex) on Withy Grove, base of the Mirror and Telegraph, which was once home to the largest composing room in Europe.

Filmed shortly before the printworks was taken over by the press baron Robert Maxwell in 1985, maudlin classical music accompanies images of the massive machinery which has come to rest, zooming in on contemporary headlines and hovering over the word ‘redundancies’. Another brief film, New Newspaper Premises, shows old staff who made been made redundant being shown the new computerised facilities which replaced them.

If you're interested in seeing archive footage relating to any aspect of local history, you can search the North West Film Archive's website and make an appointment to go in for a viewing. Also look out for public screenings of highlights from the collection.

The Shrieking Violet upcoming media special

Some time in the (hopefully near) future, there will be a media special of the Shrieking Violet fanzine. I have long been interested in Manchester's history as an alternative Fleet Street, producing northern editions of the daily newspapers, and the way the buildings of the old newspaper industry still shape the city, from the iconic Daily Express Building on Great Ancoats Street to the Printworks, formerly Withy Grove printing press. The Guardian famously started in Manchester as the Manchester Guardian, and the city also has a history of radical and alternative publications and journals, from socialist journal the Clarion to the Co-operative Women's Guild magazine Women's Outlook.

I would also like to cover good independent, alternative publications today and ask the question why do people still think it is important to produce print publications when it is so easy to publish online in an instant?

Although the Guardian Women's pages started in Manchester, something else I am interested in is whether, in the 21st century, these is still a role for specifically gendered 'men's' and 'women's' magazines, with particular focus on the slightly troubling Shortlist and Stylist magazines which are distributed for free in the city centre.

I have to admit I am feeling quite overwhelmed and have been suffering from writer's/mental block (for this reason, rather than writing anything I have been spending my time trying unsuccessfully to recreate the Daily Express building in lino cut form for inspiration). Therefore, if anyone would like to help me out or make any suggestions, please email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com.