Morning Star (British newspaper)
The Morning Star is a left-wing British daily newspaper with a focus on social, political and trade union issues.[3] 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.[4]
Not to be confused with the British tabloid the Daily Star.Type
1 January 1930
(as Daily Worker)
25 April 1966
(as Morning Star)
William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, Bow, London E3 2NS
10,000 (as of 2008)[2]
The Daily Worker initially opposed the Second World War and its London edition was banned in Britain between 1941 and 1942.[5] 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,[6] and exposing the mass graves of civilians killed by the South Korean government.[7]
The paper prints contributions by writers from a variety of left-wing political perspectives. Contributors include Jeremy Corbyn, Virginia Woolf,[8] Angela Davis,[9] Billy Strachan,[10] Len Johnson,[11]: 102 Wilfred Burchett,[12] Claudia Jones, Jean Ross, and Harry Pollitt.[13] 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.[14] Some non-political topics covered by the paper have included arts reviews, sports, gardening, book reviews, and cooking.
Morning Star (1966–present)[edit]
History[edit]
The first edition of the Morning Star appeared on Monday, 25 April 1966. South African exile Sarah Carneson worked for the newspaper in the late 1960s.[44]
Until 1974, the paper was subsidised by the Soviet government with direct cash contributions, and from 1974 onwards was indirectly supported by daily bulk orders from Moscow.[27] Its chief executive from 1975 was Mary Rosser.[45]
By the late 1970s, the paper and the CPGB were beginning to come into conflict with one another, as the Eurocommunist trend in the CPGB grew, while the Morning Star at the time retained a pro-Soviet stance and opposed Eurocommunism.[46] An editorial in The Guardian, however, reported in 1977 that the paper was giving coverage to dissidents in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in the Soviet bloc to the consternation of about a third of CPGB members who wanted a reversal to a strictly pro-Kremlin line. "The Morning Star is open for genuine debate about the future of the Left", it asserted.[47] A demonstration outside the East German embassy against the imprisonment of reformist Communist Rudolf Bahro was organised by the Morning Star that year.[48] Also in 1977, editor Tony Chater persuaded the Labour government to begin running advertisements in the newspaper, previously absent because of a lack of audited circulation figures.[49]
In December 1981, when the Polish Solidarity trade union movement was suppressed and martial law declared, the paper criticised the executive committee of the party for condemning the acts of the (then-Communist) Polish government.[50] In 1982, the Morning Star attacked the attitudes of Marxism Today, the party's monthly journal, which was controlled by the Eurocommunists.[51]: 186
The newspaper attracted some wider media attention in September 1981 when the BBC paid to place six advertisements for its Russian-language service in the Morning Star, which was one of the few English language newspapers that the USSR government allowed to be circulated in the country. Four of these advertisements were printed as agreed, but the last two of the six were not printed. A spokesman for the newspaper said that the advertising department had not properly consulted with other teams before making the agreement, and that the BBC's broadcasts were part of Cold War propaganda.[52] The paper supported the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the miners' strike of 1984–1985, but the party had become critical of NUM leader Arthur Scargill's strategy towards the end of the strike.[53]
Meanwhile, in March 1984, the CPGB Executive Committee (EC) issued a seven-page document which was heavily critical of editor Tony Chater, in particular because he had refused to print an article which commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Lenin.[49] The EC put forward candidates to challenge those loyal to Chater at the 1984 AGM of the PPPS and called for Chater's replacement. He was expelled from the CPGB in January 1985, along with the assistant editor, David Whitfield, reportedly because the attempts to remove him as editor had failed. A statement by the party's EC asserted that the paper was "being systematically used to attack and undermine congress policy, support factional activities in the party, and help sectarian minority groupings in their opposition to the party majority".[49][54][55] In June 1985, however, AGMs of the PPPS held in Glasgow, Manchester and London voted by about 60 to 40% for candidates backed by the management committee of the Morning Star.[51]: 187 Chater remained editor of the paper until 1995 when he retired.[56] Control of the newspaper passed from the Eurocommunist leadership of the CPGB to the newly established pro-Soviet Communist Party of Britain (CPB).
On the day before the Berlin Wall began to be demolished in 1989, under a headline reading "GDR unveils reforms package", the newspaper commented that "The German Democratic Republic is awakening", and quoting material supplied by East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party: "A revolutionary people's movement has set in motion a process of serious upheaval ... The aim is dynamically to give socialism more democracy"[30]
Soviet bulk orders ended abruptly in 1989 (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had still been buying 6,000 copies every day), and the termination of this order, with only a week's notice, was the cause of "huge financial disruption".[27]
In the 1990s, the publication's circulation fell to 7,000, following the end of the Soviet bulk sales. There were tensions between different CPB factions over control of the paper, and in particular over the successor of Tony Chater as editor. Chief Executive Mary Rosser favoured the news editor, Paul Corry (also her son-in-law); the staff and by the unions favoured Chater's deputy, John Haylett, who was installed in February 1995.[45] In 1998 many of its workers – then earning £10,500 a year and with no raise for 11 years – went on strike.[27] These strikes were provoked by the sacking by Rosser of Haylett for "gross misconduct".[57][58] During the protest a breakaway from the Morning Star, the Workers' Morning Star was formed, and published by a small group of journalists who worked for the Morning Star at the same time.[59] This paper was discontinued before the end of the decade. Haylett was eventually reinstated as editor and the protests stopped, as the circulation saw a moderate increase. "Our political relationship is still with the Communist Party of Britain", he said in 2005, pointing out that only about 10% of readers were members of the party, "but now we represent a broad movement".[27]
Although the paper is normally published from Monday to Saturday, an issue of the Morning Star was published on 13 September 2015, its first ever Sunday edition, to cover the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party.[60]
In December 2016, the newspaper was criticised by Labour MPs led by John Woodcock ("one of the fiercest critics of British government inaction over aid to the region", according to The Huffington Post) for its description of the imminent fall of Aleppo to Syrian government forces in a front-page headline as a "liberation". Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop tweeted: "Hard left joining with far right in welcoming dictators "liberating" Aleppo. Absolute disgrace".[61] Other Labour MPs joining in the criticism were Stephen Doughty, Angela Smith, Ian Austin, Mike Gapes, Jess Phillips,[61] Toby Perkins and Wes Streeting. Conservative MP George Osborne and Guardian writer Owen Jones also attacked the paper's headline.[62] However, the paper rejected the criticism,[63][64][65] stating that "from a purely technical point of view, when a sovereign government reclaims territory previously held by enemy forces, that's called "liberation" whether we like the outcome or not".[66] Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German,[62] and political commentator Peter Oborne[67] defended the Star's reporting of the issue, and questioned the dominant media narrative, respectively. Jeremy Corbyn said he "disagreed" with the headline, emphasising that he always advocated a ceasefire and "a political settlement in Syria". However, he refused to say he would never buy or read the paper again, saying; "Listen, I buy lots of newspapers. I frequently disagree profoundly with headlines, even in The Guardian, the Telegraph, the Mail, and so on. Does it mean I won't buy them, or read them? Of course not."[68]
During the late 2010s the Morning Star played a key role in helping historians uncover facts about pioneering black civil rights activist Billy Strachan.[69]
In June 2022, the paper published a statement by the Communist Party of Britain on the 'situation in Ukraine' that stated "the war between Russia and Ukraine is part of a wider conflict between capitalist powers, between Russia on one side and Ukraine and the expansionist NATO powers on the other." It went on to call NATO "an alliance of imperialist powers". It declared the Russian military actions unjustified and called for an immediate ceasefire, but opposed sanctions. [70]
Editorial line and contents[edit]
The newspaper describes itself as "a reader-owned co-operative and unique as a lone socialist voice in a sea of corporate media".[71] The paper attempts to speak to the working class a group its editor described in 2015 as around 80% to 90% of the British population who work for a wage rather than living off investments or assets.[30] Successive annual general meetings of the People's Press Printing Society have agreed that the policy of the paper is founded on Britain's Road to Socialism, the programme of the Communist Party of Britain.[72] A profile of the paper which was published in the centre-left New Statesman magazine in 2015 commented on its contents that:[30]
