The Morning Star is a left-wing British daily newspaper with a focus on social, political and trade union issues. Originally founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), ownership was transferred from the CPGB to an independent readers' co-operative, the People's Press Printing Society, in 1945 and later renamed the Morning Star in 1966. The paper describes its editorial stance as in line with Britain's Road to Socialism, the programme of the Communist Party of Britain."Britain's Road to Socialism, the Communist Party of Britain programme ... underlies our paper's editorial stance." People's Press Printing Society Annual Report 2009. It has been called "Britain's last communist newspaper."
The Daily Worker initially opposed the Second World War and its London edition was banned in Britain between 1941 and 1942. After the Soviet Union joined the Allies, the paper enthusiastically backed the war effort. During the Cold War, the paper provided a platform for critics of the US and its allies. This included whistleblowers who provided evidence that the British military were allowing their forces to collect severed heads during the Malayan Emergency, and exposing the mass graves of civilians killed by the South Korean government.
The paper prints contributions by writers from a variety of left-wing political perspectives. Contributors include Jeremy Corbyn, Virginia Woolf, Angela Davis, Billy Strachan, Len Johnson, Wilfred Burchett, Claudia Jones, Jean Ross, and Harry Pollitt. Correspondent Alan Winnington had his British passport revoked in 1954 for his reporting on massacres in the Korean War, and favourable representation of North Korean prisoner-of-war camps. Some non-political topics covered by the paper have included arts reviews, sports, gardening, book reviews, and cooking.
The Daily Worker (1930–1966)
Early years
The Morning Star was founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker, the paper representing the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and was immediately preceded by and grew out of the Weekly Worker (10 Feb 1923 – 21 January 1927) and Workers Life (28 Jan 1927 – 20 December 1929) newspapers."The Papers of the Communist Party of Great Britain", The Archive hub, University of Manchester The first edition was produced on 1 January 1930"Help for Researchers: Concise History of the British Newspaper in the Twentieth Century", British Library website from the offices of the newspaper in Tabernacle Street, London, after a meeting the day before by nine British communists, including Willie Gallacher, Kay Beauchamp, Tom Wintringham, Walter Holmes, and Robert Page Arnot.
In the first few decades of its existence, the Daily Worker contained cartoons for children. The Daily Worker's first issue contained a children's cartoon titled "Micky Mongrel the Class Conscious Cur", drawn by artist Gladys Keable, which would become a staple of the early paper. The paper's first editor was journalist William Rust, while the paper's assistant editor and manager was Tom Wintringham, and was printed at Wintringham's Unity Press. In January 1934, the Daily Worker offices moved to Cayton Street, off City Road. The first eight-page Daily Worker was produced on 1 October 1935.
Second World War On 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke to the nation on the BBC, at which time he announced the formal declaration of war between Britain and Nazi Germany. Daily Worker editor J. R. Campbell, backed by his political ally, Party General Secretary Harry Pollitt, sought to portray the conflict against Hitler as a continuation of the anti-fascist fight.James Eaton and David Renton, The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920, Basingstoke: Pallgrave, 2002, pp. 69–70. This contradicted the position of the Comintern in the aftermath of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (which became CPGB policy on 3 October) that the war was a struggle between rival imperialist powers, and Campbell was removed as editor as a result, being replaced by William Rust.Bill Jones, The Russia complex: the British Labour Party and the Soviet Union. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977, p. 38. .
The paper accused the British government's policies of being "not to rescue Europe from fascism, but to impose British imperialist peace on Germany" before attacking the Soviet Union. The newspaper responded to the assassination of Leon Trotsky by a Soviet agent with an article on 23 August 1940, entitled "A Counter Revolutionary Gangster Passes", written by former editor Campbell.
The paper criticised Sir Walter Citrine after his meeting in Paris with French Labour Minister Charles Pomaret in December 1939. Time said of the events following the meeting, "Minister Pomaret clamped down on French labour with a set of drastic wage-&-hour decrees and Sir Walter Citrine agreed to a proposal by Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon that pay rises in Britain be stopped". Citrine sued the Daily Worker for libel after it accused him and his associates of "plotting with the French Citrines to bring millions of Anglo-French Trade Unionists behind the Anglo-French imperialist war machine"; the publisher pleaded the British press equivalent of "fair comment". Citrine alleged, in response to his lawyer's questioning, that the Daily Worker received £2,000 per month from "Moscow", and that Moscow directed the paper to print anti-war stories.
During this period, when the Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Germany, the Daily Worker ceased to attack Nazi Germany.Editorial "The 'Daily Worker", Manchester Guardian, 22 January 1941, reprint on The Guardian website. On 21 January 1941, publication of the newspaper was suppressed by the Home Secretary in the wartime coalition, Herbert Morrison (a Labour Party MP). It had repeatedly ignored a July 1940 warning that its pacifist line contravened Defence Regulation 2D, which made it an offence to 'systematically to publish matter calculated to foment opposition to the prosecution of the war'. A Scottish edition of the Daily Worker was produced from its plant in Glasgow from 11 November 1940. On 16 April 1941, the Daily Worker offices at Cayton Street were totally destroyed by fire during the Blitz. The paper moved temporarily in 1942 to the former Caledonian Press offices in Swinton Street (whence the old Communist Party Sunday Worker, edited by William Paul and Tom Wintringham, had been published from 15 March 1925 until 1929). New offices were acquired in 1945, at a former brush-makers' warehouse at 75 Farringdon Road, for the sum of £48,000.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the situation changed; British Communists became fervent supporters of the war. For the rest of the war, the paper was a strong supporter of the British war effort, and campaigned to organise a "Second Front" in Europe to assist the Soviet Union.Andrew Thorpe, The British Communist Party and Moscow, 1920–43, Manchester University Press, 2000. , p. 268. The government's ban on the Daily Worker was lifted in September 1942, following a campaign supported by Hewlett Johnson, the Dean of Canterbury, and Professor J. B. S. Haldane. A "Lift the ban" conference at Central Hall, Westminster on 21 March 1942 was attended by over 2,000 delegates. A key part of the campaign was to secure Labour Party support (Herbert Morrison was a fierce opponent of the Daily Worker). On 26 May 1942, after a heated debate, the Labour Party carried a resolution declaring the government must lift the ban on the Daily Worker.
The Daily Worker welcomed the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, editorialising "The employment of the new weapon on a substantial scale should expedite the surrender of Japan".Lawrence S. Wittner, The Struggle Against The Bomb: Volume One, One World Or None. Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, p. 172. David Widgery, The Left in Britain, 1956–68, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976, p. 100. The paper also applauded the bombing of Nagasaki, and called for the use of additional atomic bombs against the Japanese.
The People's Press Printing Society was formed just after the war in 1945. The society's purpose was to raise money for the paper under a co-operative ownership model, and it quickly attracted support from the labour movement. By January 1946 it had 10,000 individual members, as well as organisational membership from 186 trade union bodies and 17 other co-operatives. One month later, in February 1946, a large rally was organised at the Royal Albert Hall, the Daily Worker which was then owned by Keable Press Ltd on behalf of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was sold to the People's Press Printing Society for a single shilling.
Postwar The Daily Worker reached its peak circulation after the war, although precise circulation figures are disputed – from 100,000 to 122,000 to 140,000Obituary: Mary Rosser-Hicks, Daily Telegraph 10 January 2011 and even 500,000.
The Daily Worker campaigns against the colour bar in Britain inspired British middleweight champion boxer Len Johnson to join the Communist Party of Great Britain, and write a boxing column for the Daily Worker.
The Daily Worker was fully supportive of the show trials in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria in the late 1940s, as well as the split with Tito and Yugoslavia in 1948.
In 1950 Daily Worker foreign correspondent Alan Winnington published the pamphlet, I Saw the Truth in Korea, which provided evidence of mass graves containing thousands of corpses belonging to civilians executed by the South Korean government during the Korean War. The paper published alleged evidence of America's use of biological weapons during the Korean War. In response to Winnington's Korea reporting, Clement Attlee's cabinet discussed having Winnington executed by charging him with treason. However, it was instead decided to make him stateless by refusing to renew his passport. Phillip Knightley described Winnington as one of the most trustworthy voices of the war.
In April 1952, the Daily Worker published photographs of a Royal Marine commando in the middle of a British military base posing with the severed human head believed to have belonged to a member of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). The article also included eyewitness testimonies from British personnel in Malaya alleging that it was common for British troops to behead people. An Admiralty spokesman accused the photographs of being forgeries and a "communist trick", though Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton later confirmed to Parliament that the images were genuine. Lyttleton noted the decapitations were conducted by Iban headhunters by the British. The Daily Worker then published several more photographs of MNLA guerrillas decapitated by Ibans, including photographs of an Iban wearing a Royal Marine beret while preparing a scalp above a basket of human limbs.
In 1956, the Daily Worker suppressed correspondent Peter Fryer's reports from the Hungarian revolution, which were favourable to the uprising. The paper denounced the attempted revolution as a "white terror", invoking the Horthy regime and earlier 1919–1921 period.
By the late 1950s the paper was down to just one sheet of four pages. The last edition of the Daily Worker was published on Saturday 23 April 1966. An editorial in that final issue declared:
In February every year between 1950 and 1954, the Daily Worker held a rally at Harringay Arena in Harringay, north London,"Archive of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)". Retrieved on 5 December 2015. attended by about 10,000 people. Guests were entertained by tableaux set to music, including a performance by Paul Robeson in 1950 with a related recording on Topic Records.
Morning Star (1966–present)
History