The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015.[9][10] Since 2018, the paper's main newsprint sections have been published in tabloid format. As of July 2021[update], its print edition had a daily circulation of 105,134.[3] The newspaper has an online edition, TheGuardian.com, as well as three international websites, Guardian Australia (founded in 2013) Guardian New Zealand (founded in 2019) and Guardian US (founded in 2011). The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion,[11][12] and the term "Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of a person with liberal, left-wing or "politically correct" views.[13] Frequent typographical errors during the age of manual typesetting led Private Eye magazine to dub the paper the "Grauniad" in the 1970s, a nickname still occasionally used by the editors for self-mockery.[14][15]
The newspaper opposed slavery and supported free trade. An 1823 leading article on the continuing "cruelty and injustice" to slaves in the West Indies long after the abolition of the slave trade with the Slave Trade Act 1807 wanted fairness to the interests and claims both of the planters and of their oppressed slaves.[34] It welcomed the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and accepted the "increased compensation" to the planters as the "guilt of slavery attaches far more to the nation" rather than individuals. Success of the Act would encourage emancipation in other slave-owning nations to avoid "imminent risk of a violent and bloody termination."[35] However, the newspaper argued against restricting trade with countries which had not yet abolished slavery.[36]
Complex tensions developed in the United States.[37] When the abolitionist George Thompson toured, the newspaper said that "[s]lavery is a monstrous evil, but civil war is not a less one; and we would not seek the abolition even of the former through the imminent hazard of the latter". It suggested that the United States should compensate slave-owners for freeing slaves[38] and called on President Franklin Pierce to resolve the 1856 "civil war", the Sacking of Lawrence due to pro-slavery laws imposed by Congress.[39]
In 1860, The Observer quoted a report that the newly elected president Abraham Lincoln was opposed to abolition of slavery.[40] On 13 May 1861, shortly after the start of the American Civil War, the Manchester Guardian portrayed the Northern states as primarily imposing a burdensome trade monopoly on the Confederate States, arguing that if the South was freed to have direct trade with Europe, "the day would not be distant when slavery itself would cease". Therefore, the newspaper asked "Why should the South be prevented from freeing itself from slavery?"[41] This hopeful view was also held by the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone.[42]
There was division in Britain over the Civil War, even within political parties. The Manchester Guardian had also been conflicted. It had supported other independence movements and felt it should also support the rights of the Confederacy to self-determination. It criticised Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation for not freeing all American slaves.[42] On 10 October 1862, it wrote: "It is impossible to cast any reflections upon a man so evidently sincere and well-intentioned as Mr Lincoln but it is also impossible not to feel that it was an evil day both for America and the world, when he was chosen President of the United States".[43] By then, the Union blockade was causing suffering in British towns. Some including Liverpool supported the Confederacy as did "current opinion in all classes" in London. On 31 December 1862, cotton workers held a meeting at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester which resolved "its detestation of negro slavery in America, and of the attempt of the rebellious Southern slave-holders to organise on the great American continent a nation having slavery as its basis". There was a comment that "an effort had been made in a leading article of the Manchester Guardian to deter the working men from assembling together for such a purpose". The newspaper reported all this and published their letter to President Lincoln[44] while complaining that "the chief occupation, if not the chief object of the meeting, seems to have been to abuse the Manchester Guardian".[43] Lincoln replied to the letter thanking the workers for their "sublime Christian heroism" and American ships delivered relief supplies to Britain.[44]
The newspaper reported the shock to the community of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, concluding that "[t]he parting of his family with the dying President is too sad for description",[45] but in what from today's perspective looks an ill-judged editorial wrote that "[o]f his rule we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty", adding "it is doubtless to be regretted that he had not the opportunity of vindicating his good intentions".[42]
C. P. Scott made the newspaper nationally recognised. He was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought the paper from the estate of Taylor's son in 1907. Under Scott, the paper's moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting William Gladstone when the Liberals split in 1886, and opposing the Second Boer War against popular opinion.[47] Scott supported the movement for women's suffrage, but was critical of any tactics by the Suffragettes that involved direct action:[48] "The really ludicrous position is that Mr Lloyd George is fighting to enfranchise seven million women and the militants are smashing unoffending people's windows and breaking up benevolent societies' meetings in a desperate effort to prevent him." Scott thought the Suffragettes' "courage and devotion" was "worthy of a better cause and saner leadership".[49] It has been argued that Scott's criticism reflected a widespread disdain, at the time, for those women who "transgressed the gender expectations of Edwardian society".[48]
From 1930 to 1967, a special archival copy of all the daily newspapers was preserved in 700 zinc cases. These were found in 1988 whilst the newspaper's archives were deposited at the University of Manchester's John Rylands University Library, on the Oxford Road campus. The first case was opened and found to contain the newspapers issued in August 1930 in pristine condition. The zinc cases had been made each month by the newspaper's plumber and stored for posterity. The other 699 cases were not opened and were all returned to storage at The Guardian's garage, owing to shortage of space at the library.[52]
The paper's then editor, A. P. Wadsworth, so loathed Labour's left-wing champion Aneurin Bevan, who had made a reference to getting rid of "Tory Vermin" in a speech "and the hate-gospellers of his entourage" that it encouraged readers to vote Conservative in the 1951 general election and remove Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government.[55] The newspaper opposed the creation of the National Health Service as it feared the state provision of healthcare would "eliminate selective elimination" and lead to an increase of congenitally deformed and feckless people.[56]
On 24 August 1959, The Manchester Guardian changed its name to The Guardian. This change reflected the growing prominence of national and international affairs in the newspaper.[59] In September 1961, The Guardian, which had previously only been published in Manchester, began to be printed in London.[60] Nesta Roberts was appointed as the newspaper's first news editor there, becoming the first woman to hold such a position on a British national newspaper.[61]
In the early 2000s, The Guardian challenged the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Treason Felony Act 1848.[83][84] In October 2004, The Guardian published a humorous column by Charlie Brooker in its entertainment guide, the final sentence of which was viewed by some as a call for violence against U.S. President George W. Bush; after a controversy, Brooker and the paper issued an apology, saying the "closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action."[85] Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, The Guardian published an article on its comment pages by Dilpazier Aslam, a 27-year-old British Muslim and journalism trainee from Yorkshire.[86] Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group, and had published a number of articles on their website. According to the newspaper, it did not know that Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir when he applied to become a trainee, though several staff members were informed of this once he started at the paper.[87] The Home Office said that the group's "ultimate aim is the establishment of an Islamic state (Caliphate), according to Hizb ut-Tahrir via non-violent means". The Guardian asked Aslam to resign his membership of the group and, when he did not do so, terminated his employment.[88]
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