"There have been 50 000 issues of what was then called the Manchester Guardian published since John Taylor founded it in 1821. Commemorating that anniversary current editor Alan Rusbridger has been talking about the paper's radical record, since it first championed the victims of the Peterloo Massacre.
What the Guardian forgot to say was that Taylor launched his paper to undermine the working class leaders of the reform movement; or that Taylor refused to use either word 'Peterloo' or 'Massacre', thinking them too inflammatory (see 1. The Guardian and the Peterloo Massacre, below).
In fact the Guardian has never been all that radical a newspaper anyway, generally steering a middle course between popular opposition and establishment reaction. Recently critical of Tony Blair's administration, the paper was his first and greatest cheer-leader (see 2. The Guardian and Radical Opinion, below).
Over the years, much of the newspaper's venom has been reserved for opposition movements. The Guardian had a particular contempt for anti-imperialist movement, pouring scorn on Third World nationalists like Lumumba and Nasser, advocating military intervention across the globe (see 3. The Guardian and imperialism, below).
In particular, the Guardian was violently opposed to Ireland's freedom fighters, supporting the occupation by British troops in 1969, internment without trial, and blaming the Civil Rights movement for the deaths on Bloody Sunday (see 4. The Guardian and the Fenians, below).
When Women Suffragettes fought for the vote, Guardian editor C.P. Scott denounced them as fanatics, just as the Manchester Guardian opposed giving the working classes the vote before (See 5. The Guardian and the Vote, below).
And when Abraham Lincoln fought a Civil War against slavery, the Manchester Guardian rallied to defend the southern Slave-Owners (See 6. The Guardian and the American Civil War, below).
Though it has become, in the words of one regular columnist, the newspaper of the New Establishment, the Guardian has always been the paper of the Middle Class (see 7. A Middle Class Newspaper, below).
The Guardian has been deeply hostile to the working class, especially when they have taken matters into their own hands (See 8. The Guardian and the Working Class, below)
That is all ancient history now, but it is interesting to reflect how in more recent times the Guardian succeeded in becoming the agenda-setting paper it is today. Its radical reputation today stems largely from the collapse of political opposition in the 1990s. As the political parties moved closer to the centre ground, the Guardian had grand ideas of becoming itself the focus of a new opposition. Above all, it was the campaign for military intervention in the former Yugoslavia that found the Guardian setting the political agenda. Reporting the civil war there, the Guardian honed the arguments for 'humanitarian intervention': demonising the enemy, talking up the humanitarian crisis, and pushing for military action. (see 9. The Guardian's war against the Serbs, below).
Though it has balked at this government's attacks on civil liberties, the Guardian pioneered New Labour's caring authoritarianism. It was the Guardian that first made the case for greater government control of our private lives and opinions (see 10. The Guardian and Civil Liberties, below)."
Continues at http://neo-jacobins.blogspot.com/