Man behind magazine that changed journalism in post-war Britain

THERE is a splendid new landmark in Cardiff. Part of the still-developing Central Square complex, the huge mural dominates the skyline and marks the new home of Cardiff University’s world-leading School of Journalism, Media and Culture.

It features the face of Sir Tom Hopkinson, the man who edited the legendary magazine Picture Post that had such a powerful effect on the election of the post-war Labour government, and then went on to become the founding director of the university’s original Centre for Journalism Studies in 1970.

It shows one of his famous quotes on the significance of the press as a mirror on government in a free society: “A free press is the most watchful sentry of the state. A ‘yes’ press is fatal to good government.”

The wartime Picture Post wielded an incredible influence and was key to the landslide election of the 1945 Labour government, much of whose revolutionary legislation had already been featured in Picture Post campaigns. The Cardiff journalism centre was the first postgraduate centre of journalism in the whole of Europe.

Seeing the magnificent tribute to the man who changed the face of magazines in the UK, then initiated university journalism education in the UK and Europe, took me back to the many conversations I had with him.

I got to know Sir Tom when I joined the centre in 1985 to launch the periodical journalism course and he was still teaching regularly – though already aged 80. He was a fascinating talker and the students loved him. I often enjoyed sitting in on his lectures.

Recalling Picture Post’s influence on the election and programme of the post-war Labour government, I well remember him telling me of an irate opponent saying angrily: “This is all the fault of the bloody Picture Post!’”

In his usual calm voice, he said he answered: “I don’t know. I think the bloody Daily Mirror had something to do with it, too.”

A famous Sir Tom story concerns the Picture Post coverage of Dunkirk, when British forces trapped on the French beach were rescued in an inspired operation by the Navy, the RAF and the famous flotilla of civilian boats of all shapes and sizes that set out to bring some 336,000 troops back across the Channel.

Just after the evacuation in early June 1940, Sir Tom told me that minister for war Anthony Eden sent for him. The minister laid bare the desperate state in which the country stood, its forces ravaged, its air spaces vulnerable to the German Luftwaffe – Britain was facing total defeat. He could report that and inform Hitler, or not.

It was a story Sir Tom must have told many times and in many different ways.

I remember the man who devoted his life to telling the truth through honest and fearless journalism told me: “At that moment, I found a greater truth!”

Picture Post presented Dunkirk not as a catastrophe with Britain on the brink of ruin, but as an inspiring rescue that focused on the triumph of bringing the troops back.

Picture Post was Stefan Lorant’s conception, insisted Sir Tom, although he was with him in the project from the start. It revolutionised magazine publishing in this country.

“Lorant saw pictures as text,” he said. Picture Post told its stories through pictures. It was the launch of photo-journalism.

Lorant had arrived from Germany, where he had both gained a reputation for photojournalism and been imprisoned by Hitler. Sir Tom and Lorant were former colleagues and had remained friends. One day, Lorant told him of his plan to start “a great magazine that will cover the country”.

Sir Tom was immediately interested. It took Lorant longer, but eventually he said: “OK. You can join me. I am in charge of the pictures. You are in charge of the text. We do it together.”

There were picture magazines before but they were mainly social. “They were for the well-to-do,” said Sir Tom. “The idea of a picture magazine for ordinary people was a revelation!”

When Picture Post came out in 1938, he said: “It went like a bomb!”

Sir Tom always highlighted the role of technology in driving magazines. The “bright ideas” came later. The technology that drove Picture Post – and the other great picture magazines of the period like Paris Match and Berliner Illustrierte – was, he said, the “single invention” of the Leica camera 35mm, or its equivalent.

When he started in Fleet Street, said Sir Tom, the “instrument” cameramen carried was a huge single-shot camera.

“The chief requirement of a photographer was the forearms of a merchant seaman to hold the thing up and keep it steady,” he said. It was “photography by permission”.

The Leica, or equivalent, camera was tiny, could easily be hidden, was virtually silent and could operate without flash. The new cameras made it possible to take photographs by cunning.

Already Dr Erich Salomon, who Sir Tom called the “great forefather of all this”, had taken a picture in a murder trial, where photographers were not allowed, with a camera hidden in a suitcase with a hole cut for the lens – it was published in the Berliner Illustrierte.

I still have a mind-picture of the lively way Sir Tom described how Lorant had designed the format of Picture Post. He said Lorant was playing with different ideas and rejecting them when suddenly he exclaimed in a moment of insight and inspiration that – of course! – it should fit the natural enlargement size of the all-important Leica camera!

Sir Tom had always thought of himself as writer and at that time had no great interest in photography.

“I set myself to learn from him how to handle pictures,” he said.

But World War II soon saw Lorant, who had been “caught up with by Hitler once before”, leave for America.

He recalled Lorant’s somewhat bitter words: “Hitler take every country. He take this country, too. Hitler cannot hang 50 million Englishmen on lampposts but he can hang 50,000 bloody foreigners on lampposts. And he will.

And you won’t stop him when he does!”

It was when Sir Tom became editor that the legendary Picture Post of the war and post-war years was born. Sir Tom had a deep interest in social progress. His father was a clergyman in a poor area in Lancashire, where everyone else left for the mill at 5.30 in the morning.

“So,” he said. “My feeling was always of being one of the people.”

Picture Post – which had covered the whole of life, including humour and celebrity – became especially known for its social conscience and liberal stance.

It focused its penetrating lens on the major social and political issues of the period and seared them into the national consciousness.

Sir Tom’s vision for the country was first published as early as January 1941 in the edition of Picture Post called “Plan for Britain”. It had contributions from leading thinkers of the day on what a post-war Labour government could do and what Britain could be, with articles on health and education.

Towards the end of the conflict, articles were published about what things could and should be like “after the war”. It was a vision based in part on the hundreds of letters from soldiers saying they were prepared to put up with conditions during the war – but they wanted to come back to something different, not three million unemployed and a life in the slums!

But it led to some conflict with the government. Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not want to talk about “war aims”. He had to keep his Cabinet – made up of different parties – in line and talk of “after the war” would send them all off in different directions.

He had one war aim – to defeat Hitler. But Sir Tom felt that was not good enough for the men fighting the war and continued to publish pungent articles on what Britain should look like in the post-war period. Picture Post raised the expectations of a nation and gave the people of Britain hope.