Talk:Morning Star (British newspaper)/Archive 2

Page protected
This is getting to the silly stage. I have protected the page to give time to discuss the matter and reach a conclusion as to what the text should read. If you want further input then use request for comment on the matter. Thanks Keith D (talk) 12:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think this is the first page protect that has effected me which I really appreciate in terms of avoiding 3RR. I think it's because there are only two of us editing at present. I generally don't like protects, but you did it on the existing consensus edit, which for me is the only approach (providing there is an exisiting-consensus edit of course). RFC is good advice, I'll take it up when I have time if Haldraper doesn't do it first. What is the time scale here? I've promised to collect evidence elsewhere this weekend, for another RFC. Matt Lewis (talk) 13:31, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No time scale on this, it is currently protected for a couple of weeks, though that will take us into the Christmas period so will extend protection if necessary. It is not really a highly volatile article so cannot see a problem. Keith D (talk) 19:08, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Willie Gallacher
Willie Gallacher's name is misspelt as "Gallagher". It should be linked, too. Algebraist 23:41, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Killiondude (talk) 23:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Explanation for the change of name?
I think it would be valuable if there was an account of the reason for the change from Daily Worker to Morning Star. Changing the name of an institution to which people are emotionally and historically bound must have been a big deal, and I find elsewhere on the web that this was controversial, was hotly debated - but no other info about the thinking behind it. For example I found in the article on Sid French (who would eventually break away from the CPGB to form a rival party) that he was 'firmly opposed' to the change of name, but no reason given there either. Anyone able to cast light on what must have been an important development in the paper's history?Asnac (talk) 14:09, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Wartime banning of the Daily Worker
The article has it that "Because of its pro-Soviet position during the war, the Daily Worker was suppressed by the wartime coalition's (Labour) Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, between 21 January 1941 and 7 September 1942…"

The reason the Daily Worker was suppressed in January 1941 was not its support for the Soviet Union (then in alliance with Nazi Germany) per se, but because it advocated policies that undermined the war effort at a time when Britain and its Commonwealth and Empire stood alone against the Nazi war machine. As the Manchester Guardian wrote in support of the ban:


 * The '"Daily Worker" began the war as a supporter of resistance to Hitler; it changed its tune when it found that Stalin wanted to be friends with Hitler. Day after day since it has vilified the British Government and its leaders to the exclusion of any condemnation of Hitler. Nothing that has happened in this country has been decent and right. Even when the United States increases its aid this is denounced not as something to be welcomed but as a malevolent exercise of wicked Yankee capitalism. More recently the paper has largely devoted its columns to derogatory accounts of Service conditions on the one hand and to the encouragement of agitation among munition workers on the other. This might be excusable if the motive were honest, if it were really desired to help the country in its struggle to keep democracy alive in Europe. But the "Daily Worker" did not believe either in the war or in democracy; its only aim was to confuse and weaken. We can well spare it.

Likewise Victor Gollancz wrote in 1941:
 * Can anyone carry self-delusion to the point of being able to read through the file of the Daily Worker and still believe that the motive was any other than to weaken the will to resist? When, at the same time, you tell people that this is an unjust war, fought for no purpose but to increase the profits of the rich: when you jeer at any comment about the morale and heroism of the public and call it ‘sunshine talk’; what possible purpose can you have but to stir up hatred of the government and hatred of the war, with the object of undermining the country’s determination to stand up to Hitler? (Betrayal of the Left: an Examination & Refutation of Communist Policy from October 1939 to January 1941, Left Book Club, 1941.

I shall amend the paragraph in question to read:

During the period early in World War II when the Soviet Union was in alliance with Germany the Daily Worker ceased to attack Nazi Germany and advocated policies that sought to undermine the war effort. For this reason in January 1941 the newspaper was suppressed by the wartime coalition's (Labour) Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison. It was lifted in September 1942 following a campaign…" Esterson (talk) 08:25, 31 March 2013 (UTC)


 * This Manchester Guardian link is an interesting one but it's worth bearing in mind that there had been considerable internecine conflict among the left from at least the time of the Spanish Civil War so these two anti-Communist left-wing sources (Gollancz and the Guardian) might be expected to rail against the Daily Worker if it was coming in strongly for Stalin at that stage. And if the Daily Worker called British home propaganda ‘sunshine talk' (as Gollancz' accusation has it), then the paper was close to the mark; George Orwell would certainly have seen it thus.


 * So I don't know that a wartime opinion from the Manchester Guardian is a great source for the actual reasons for the suppression of the Daily Worker, but it's a good source for the perception of the reasons. So I've accordingly made a small change to your edit. asnac (talk) 08:39, 1 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm happy to accept your amendment, though my original wording is backed up not just by the editorial in the Manchester Guardian, but also by the quotation from Victor Gollancz, previously a supporter of the Communist Party position on the Soviet Union:


 * Until the Nazi-Soviet Pact (and indeed for some time afterwards), the [Left Book] club's output included many authors who were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and it avoided any criticism of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union…


 * The book I cited above containing the quotation from Gollancz "included two essays by George Orwell, 'Fascism and Democracy' and 'Patriots and Revolutionaries' that condemned the Communist Party of Great Britain for backing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 and for taking a revolutionary defeatist position in the war against Nazi Germany." Esterson (talk) 11:00, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

A Daily Worker before 1930?
I don't know if it's a case of memory playing tricks, but I long thought the Daily Worker was being printed during the General Strike of 1926. I recall an episode on TV of Upstairs, Downstairs set through the strike period, called "The Nine Days Wonder", the butler Mr Hudson (Gordon Jackson), who had done duty as a Special Constable, catching a copy of the Daily Worker in the 'downstairs' and telling off the staff present that "this is printed by traitors" (which I understand referred to the Communists). The paper took an overt position in opposition to the Government's British Gazette. If it did not in fact exist then, then there is in anachronism in the programme.Cloptonson (talk) 06:56, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * There was a newspaper called the Weekly Worker which was published by the CPGB in the 1920s, so there might be some confusion with that? Extua (talk) 14:59, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Aha, found it, it was the Workers' Weekly, not the Weekly Worker. Extua (talk) 15:04, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Communist Party of Britain
Interested editors are invited to look at the infobox for this article, and the specific question of how closely linked the party and newspaper are. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:30, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

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