Communications Policy and Social Change: Raymond Williams, the Left and Thinking about the Media

This article discusses Raymond Williams’s contribution to communications policy, particularly press and broadcasting reform, in the context of the history of socialist engagement with the media and communications. It outlines his involvement with Labour movement thinking about the media and critically examines his proposals for reform. It argues that his policy proposals were not novel and were weakened by insufficient economic analysis and the stress placed on the importance of producer controlled media. Nonetheless, the framework within which he discussed policy was important because it linked the media with wider cultural and political processes. His interventions gave importance to questions of policy, influencing educationalists, media workers and activists; and his lifelong engagement with the issues testified to the need to think about how to change the media in order to create a more just, integrated, balanced, socialist society.