‘Power without responsibility’, or power without realizing? Reappraising the Empire Crusade

Abstract The Empire Crusade campaign, centred on the policy of Empire Free Trade, awaits a comprehensive overview and has often been understood in an overly narrow manner. Launched by Lord Beaverbrook in 1929 and intermittently backed by Lord Rothermere, it is commonly portrayed as paradigmatic of the limits of press power. Previously overlooked archival and digitized newspaper materials necessitate a reassessment of the crusade’s strategy, its place in a longer history of press campaigns for protectionism, its social movement elements and its impact. The crusade utilized an eclectic range of methods, drawing upon historic and contemporary sources of inspiration, and it serves as an important case study in how political campaigns were waged in the Britain’s new era of mass democracy and mass media in the early twentieth century.