The scope and quality of the Chronicle’s reporting secured its popularity. It was the first Fleet Street paper to report industrial disputes systematically. This echoed the paper’s political stance, but it also met readers’ need to know about what was a new legal regime at the time – freedom to join a trade union and picket workplaces. The paper followed the London County Council and its first election in 1889, and covered religion and the affairs of the church. In the 1880s, it created a special section for colonial news under the title "Greater Britain Day by Day". It also led the way in using specialist correspondents. Ample space was made available for books, literary extracts and the theatre. Politically the paper was left of centre. It supported the radical wing of the Liberal Party but it might well have supported the Labour Party, had that existed in 1877. From 1892, it supported Irish home rule. John O'Connor Power, Irish MP and powerful orator, was one of its liveliest leader writers. The Chronicle’s appearance coincided with the expansion of the London suburbs and the commuting by train that went with it. It competed with the Telegraph for that market and for those who felt that elite papers like the Times were not for them. The breadth of its news coverage was welcomed by many because it deliberately ranged far and wide – far beyond the Westminster affairs that dominated Fleet Street at the time. Middle years During Lloyd's lifetime, the editor was a literary Irish journalist, Robert Boyle, who had helped Lloyd with the conversion of the paper. He maintained the local news coverage inherited from the Clerkenwell paper, but this was later dropped. He died in February 1890, two months before Lloyd. The next editor, Alfred Fletcher, had been assistant to Boyle and had a more pronounced left-wing approach. After he left the Chronicle, he stood as a Liberal candidate for Parliament twice but was not elected. Many of his later writings were on education. In 1894, Henry Massingham was appointed editor. Generally recognised as one of the leading journalists of the day, with influence in the corridors of power, he was able to build up a newspaper that he valued highly. Although he worked for the Chronicle for a decade, Massingham was editor for just five years. On foreign policy, he was a great believer in the power