The Press Union at the end of empire: Anglo-Australian perspectives,1946–65

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the post-war contexts in which the Empire Press Union (EPU) became the Commonwealth Press Union and offers an assessment of its changing leadership and regular five-yearly conferences over the period 1946 to 1965. In particular, it examines the extent to which its pre-war hierarchies and British influence were sustained or modified with the decline of empire and the advent of international bodies such as the United Nations. It assesses the impact over two critical decades of the politics of decolonization and the changing roles of both the Australian and British sections of the organization within the new information order. How did these post-war changes and the power blocks which emerged affect the Press Union and its member countries and shape the ethos of the newly named Commonwealth Press Union thereafter? The article argues that the issues of press freedom and censorship are central to understanding the changing character of the organization and its emerging international profile by the mid-1960s. At a time when the United Nations proclaimed freedom of information to be a fundamental human right, the Press Union’s own libertarian rhetoric in defence of a free media sought to acknowledge the realities of decolonization, while retaining pre-war cultural values.