Eagle-eyed followers and friends of The Archive will have noticed we have been quite quiet of late in publishing new newspaper pages to the site. This week, we are pleased to welcome new pages from the West Lancashire Evening Gazette to our collection, as we provide an update from the British Newspaper Archive HQ. Meanwhile, in all this week, we have added 5,396 brand new pages to our collection.

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An Update from The Archive

Here at The Archive we are committed to bringing you the best research experience, through the continuing addition of new newspaper pages and provision of our advanced search capabilities. As part of this commitment, in the last few weeks our teams behind the scenes have been undertaking some key maintenance work, so we can continue to bring you brand new newspaper content on a regular basis.

With our ever-growing newspaper collection, our team are working hard to bring a new set of storage servers online to store all of our data. The addition of new servers and the replacement of old ones are necessary to keep The Archive working. Meanwhile, our team is also in the process of improving our OCR (optical character recognition) tools. Since The Archive’s launch in 2011, technology has moved on apace, and through our improvement of OCR, we will make our newspaper search more useful than ever.

All in all, this work has meant that we have needed to temporarily pause our addition of new newspaper content to the British Newspaper Archive. Please rest assured that this pause is only a temporary one, and we remain committed to bringing fresh newspaper content, on a weekly basis, back to our Archive.

Whilst we do not have an exact end date for this maintenance work, our teams are working hard to complete the necessary improvements on our site, which means we can continue to add brand new pages to our collection. So watch out in the coming weeks for new pages and even some new newspaper titles, and thank you for your patience in the meantime.

Meanwhile, as a test, we have been able to publish new pages from the West Lancashire Evening Gazette. This title was founded in the seaside resort of Blackpool in 1929 to serve the towns and communities on Lancashire’s Fylde coast. The daily newspaper later became known as the Blackpool Gazette. Still published today, it is referred to fondly by locals as simply The Gazette.

‘TV invades the Commons’ – 21 November 1989

35 years ago this week something momentous happened in British politics, something we take for granted today. On 21 November 1989 television cameras were allowed in the House of Commons for the first time, as ‘MPs were beginning a new session of Parliament.’

This moment in history is vividly captured by our newspapers, with the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail on 21 November 1989 describing how ‘TV invades the Commons.’ Indeed, there was a sense of combat all over, as the newspaper predicted how the session ‘could be one of the most tumultuous…since Mrs Thatcher swept to power more than ten years ago.’

The television cameras were to capture the Queen’s Speech, which was set to outline ‘the Government’s programme for the next nine months,’ all the while featuring some ‘highly controversial’ new Bills.

Meanwhile, the Manchester Evening News on 21 November 1989 did not mince its words, with its headline ‘Maggie on trial by TV.’ Ian Craig, writing for the paper, reported how ‘on day one of Commons TV Mrs Thatcher produced her own blockbuster programme of new laws.’ Defying her critics, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ‘zoomed into a mini series of major debates, all of which will be televised for the first time.’

But who was behind the move to put the House of Commons on TV? The Wigan Evening Post on 21 November 1989 described how it was ‘spearheaded by Home Secretary and Lancashire MP David Waddington.’ Broadcast on Channel Four, the broadcaster had suspended ads during the so-called ‘Parliament Programme,’ but Waddington was ‘prepared to lift the ban on ads after complaints from Channel 4 who say comprehensive coverage will not be viable without them.’

So where could you catch the ‘Parliament Programme?’ The Daily Mirror on 21 November 1989 presented that day’s TV listings, where you could watch part one of the programme at noon, and part two, with ‘live coverage from the Commons of the first televised sitting,’ at 2.15 pm. In case you missed it, Iain Meekley for the Scarborough Evening News reported how BBC2 would be showing a special at 8.15 pm that evening, hosted by David Dimbleby, called ‘Commons in Camera.’

The Scarborough Evening News, as well as showcasing Dimbleby’s catch-up show, had a few questions surrounding ‘the effect of putting Parliament on TV.’ Meekley asked how:

Can the cameras – given the restrictions placed on them by Parliament, which reduce speakers to little more than talking heads – possibly tell the whole truth about Commons proceedings? And will TV turn the Mother of Parliaments into a circus? More importantly, is anyone going to want to watch?

Updated Titles

This week we have updated one of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a free sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation.

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.