Thread by @labour_history

#OTD 1964. The Herald becomes The Sun newspaper

It declares support for Labour: ‘How could a new and radical newspaper back a party headed by the 14th Earl of Home’

It's defined as a 'newspaper with a social conscience, ready to praise or criticise without preconceived bias’

But it warned that it would be ‘independent’ and ‘designed to serve and inform all those whose lives are changing, improving, expanding’.

The Daily Herald was first printed in 1911 by the London print unions to support their industrial dispute.

In its formative years the Daily Herald came in to conflict with the Daily Citizen in the battle to be the top Labour paper. But while the Citizen espoused the Labour party line, the Herald established itself as a platform for radical dissent.

It failed to achieve a mass circulation until Ernie Bevin revived it in the 1930s adapting to the demands of the modern reader, promising ‘more sport, more news and more pictures’ – and giveaways.

It became the most popular newspaper in the world and the first to claims sales of two million per day.

However, in the 1940s, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express with its greater focus on scandal became the paper of the manual worker. The Herald continued to fall throughout the 1960s until it was rebranded as The Sun

The Sun launched itself with a huge advertising campaign aimed at a younger middle class audience

Although retaining many of the Herald columnists, it offered new features such as television listings on the back page which were not offered by other papers.

In response, the editor of the Daily Mail declared it a disappointment: ‘I am amazed because I can find nothing new in the entire paper’