In the past twenty years a “New Political History” has emerged. With it historians began to study the language of politics and embraced previously unconsidered forms of evidence. This historical new wave initially focused on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the study of banners, the platform, printed materials, and even architecture enhanced our understanding of the pre-reform period. Increasingly, however, this approach is being applied to twentieth-century politics, and the evidence provided by Mass Observation, posters, newspapers, and broadcasting is now casting new light on Britain in the age of mass democracy.

Laura Beers’s Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party is a vibrant addition to this New Political History. Beers combines detailed archival research with an analysis of the actual products Labour utilized to communicate to the voters. She charts Labour’s evolving attitude to media and communication in the first half of the twentieth century. The interwar period is the primary focus of study, and the book concludes with Labour’s 1945 parliamentary victory. Beers’s persuasive argument is that the party’s famous postwar victory occurred, at least in part, through a shift toward and acceptance of mass media politics. In addition, it was the party’s national leadership that instigated this change. Beers maps attitudinal shifts within the party toward using popular media against the dramatic societal changes of the interwar period. Female voting, an equal franchise, increased consumerism, and the homogenization of society meant that if Labour was to break the hegemony of the Conservative party, it had to appeal beyond the confines of the urban industrial worker. Beers does not dispute that the election victory of 1945 was in part a result of society’s realignment following two world wars and mass enfranchisement. She argues, however, that the party’s ability to harness this change was a direct consequence of its acceptance of the power of the media. Labour’s embrace of the politics of popular appeal had occurred in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1945 Labour was aiming its appeal beyond the working class. For by this time the party had a far greater understanding of the various methods used to mediate political communication. Consequently, the party was able to construct a more inclusive coalition of support by reaching outside the previously narrow confines of trade unionism or socialism.

Your Britain’s scope is wide and looks at not just election material but also the Railway and General Strikes of 1919 and 1926. The most persuasive sections of the book deal with the printed press and broadcast media. The attitude of the party toward its own newspaper, the commercial press, and its often strained associations with the BBC are expertly covered. The sections on the Daily Herald and relationships with the BBC, chapters 7 and 8, are particularly good. The author’s account of how the Daily Herald changed from a sectional labor-interest paper toward a two-million-selling popular daily is fascinating. The reader is left in little doubt that by the 1930s the Labour party leadership was wedded to the notion of mediated politics, perhaps even more so than the national government.

Beers’s book provides a new understanding of Labour’s relationship with the electorate. Your Britain deconstructs the dichotomy between educating socialists and selling socialism. The leadership may have adopted a policy that sought to build a coalition of voters, but the party was a broad church, and the traditions of the autodidact were still present after 1945. Labour was nothing if not a movement and accommodated many competing narratives. Beers also debunks oft-held assumptions regarding twentieth-century political campaigning. Too frequently, the Conservatives are blithely presumed to be the party of innovation. What Beers has demonstrated is that Labour, with its party literature, development of a partisan press, and its understanding of the electorate, was more than equal to its Conservative rival.

Any problems with Your Britain are minor. Despite highlighting the problematic nature of measuring the impact of Labour’s communication, Beers goes on to draw some thinly supported conclusions. Her assertion that the relatively small number of Labour’s posters produced before 1929 was “partially, if not wholly, offset by its emphasis on quality” (188) is questionable. How does she know? If people had not seen a Labour poster, how could they be persuaded by one? How could a voter recognize “quality”? This, however, is a minor point.

Political communication exists in a constantly shifting space between the party and the voter. The study of this communication is vital for a proper understanding of this crucial relationship. Your Britain is an important book. It is a vital read for anyone interested in the growth of Labour from minority to majority government while shedding important new light on the nature of political culture in the interwar period.