Part B: Introduction

How can historians work out what people in Britain thought of appeasement?

But how can an historian gauge public opinion from the past with any degree of accuracy?

The answer lies in going back to the sources.

  • Letters to newspapers are a well known way of measuring public opinion, though they cannot be taken as fully representative. Not everyone writes to a newspaper and even fewer actually have their letters selected for publication.
  • Governments or other organisations sometimes organise surveys or studies specifically to discover public opinion.
  • Sometimes a particular event, such as an election, reveals public opinion.