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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Tabloid |
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| Owner | People's Press Printing Society |
| Editor | John Haylett |
| Founded | 1930 |
| Political allegiance | Socialist, Communist |
| Headquarters | William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, Bow, London E3 2NS |
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| Website: www.morningstaronline.co.uk | |
- For other uses, see Morning Star.
The Morning Star is a left-wing, British, daily newspaper. The Morning Star was founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker, the official organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but since 1945 it has been owned and published by a readers' co-operative, the People's Press Printing Society. The paper was re-launched as the Morning Star in 1966.
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Editorial policies
The editor is John Haylett, who was part of the group that left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1988 to found the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), and successive annual general meetings of the People's Press Printing Society have agreed that the editorial policy of the paper is founded on the CPB's programme, Britain's Road to Socialism [1]. However, despite this special relationship with the CPB [1] the Morning Star is not a mouthpiece for any political party [2]: features are contributed by writers from a variety of socialist, social democratic, green, and even religious perspectives. The paper carries frequent contributions from campaigning journalists John Pilger and Uri Avnery, Green MEP Caroline Lucas, Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Alan Simpson, Respect MP George Galloway and Mayor of London Ken Livingstone.
- " ... We have articles from people that at one time we would never have given the time of day to - like the Welsh and Scottish Nationalists, the Greens, and regular contributions from church people ... [but] ... things that happened in the Soviet Union 70 years ago are still being used as a stick to beat the Morning Star" (John Haylett, editor)
Generally, the editorial line is in support of the ideals of peace and socialism. It was largely uncritical of the politics and actions of the Soviet Union. It is moderately Eurosceptic, though its reasons for such a stance are different from those of the Daily Mail or Rupert Murdoch's newspapers. It is critical of the upper or ruling classes. It defends peaceful protests and civil disobedience and industrial action by groups of workers to improve their working conditions and wages. The Morning Star is also concerned with environmental issues and supports several environment campaigning groups; it advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament. In elections the paper endorses the Communist Party of Britain; where the CPB is not standing, the paper (albeit with some reluctance) advocates a vote for the Labour Party – although not what it terms the New Labour faction. The paper was the only British daily to support the National Union of Mineworkers during the miners' strike of 1984-1985, and it still campaigns for the coal industry to be rebuilt. It adopts the phrase "clean coal" to emphasise that the environmental impact of mining must be taken into account. The 2006 energy review by the Tony Blair administration was criticised for not giving enough consideration to clean coal energy[3]. On international issues the paper generally advocates a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and calls for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories. It is also critical of the Republican Party of the United States. It was the only daily paper in Britain to take a serious stance against the Kosovo War, denouncing North Atlantic Treaty Organization military intervention, and the only paper to criticise the way that Slobodan Milošević was removed from office. It also opposed the Iraq War, but was much less eager to defend Saddam Hussein. On Northern Ireland the paper generally takes a pro-nationalist line. News reports from Northern Ireland are almost invariably described as being "from our foreign newsdesk".
Editorial history
In 1940, the paper, then the Daily Worker with an anti-war editorial policy during the Vyacheslav Molotov-Joachim von Ribbentrop Pact, accused Sir Walter Citrine, the General Secretary of Britain's Trade Union Congress, of "plotting with the French Citrines to bring millions of Anglo-French Trade Unionists behind the Anglo-French imperialist war machine." Citrine sued, and the case turned into a display of the Daily Worker's editorial position as being directed from the Soviet Union. [2] Because of its pro-Moscow position during the war, the Daily Worker was suppressed by Government order between January 21, 1941 and September 7 1942. The staff became known as "tankies" by other left-leaning journalists for supporting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring even though the society was separate from the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Finances and circulation
The paper carries very little commercial advertising, and does less to promote its rates [4]by telesales than other magazines such as The Big Issue do. Nor does it have the most cost effective way of subscribing online, or publish a free version to give to London commuters as the large commercial newspapers do. The 60p price does not cover print & distribution. Consequently the paper has always been heavily dependent on donations [5] made by activists within organisations such as trades unions, who may or may not be representative of those unions or have joined for the purpose of donating funds. Although at one time the paper also received some indirect subsidy from the Soviet Union, in the form of bulk orders, today it relies for its funding largely on donations to its perpetual "Star Fund" appeal (monthly target £16,000). Although this arrangement means that the Morning Star is likely to remain a relatively minor player in the world of newspaper publishing, it should guarantee that the paper is always a genuinely independent voice among political print-based newspapers. While reporters on all the other national dailies may at times have to strike a balance between the financial interests of their employers and the informational interests of their readers (for example by reporting in such a way as to avoid causing offence to a major corporate advertiser or a billionaire proprietor), with the Morning Star hobbyist committees are the proprietor, so in theory no such conflict can arise. Having said this, some socialist groups argue that the Star's reporting is often skewed by its close relationship with the major trade unions, who regularly take out full page advertisements, especially at conference time. Members of unions whose Human Resources workers have been hired from Morning Star adverts may question the breadth of this labour market and whether the applicants are as sharp and well trained as their employers' HR staff. Transport and General members who go to their branches to complain at lack of representation often have to wait for discussion of the latest £1,000 donation, usually followed by an excuse for diverting funds such as "a trade union is not about legal insurance but solidarity". As the Morning Star's accounts at the financial services authority (the registrar of friendly societies) cost £15 to see, few union members ever get to see receipts for these donations made in their name, if not in their knowledge. On Saturdays, the paper reserves advertising space for a list of "progressive websites", ranging from the usual unions and left-wing campaign groups to hiking and cycling groups.
According to the BBC, the Morning Star has a circulation of between 13,000 and 14,000. [6]
On-Line version
An on-line version of the paper was launched on 1 April 2004. Parts of the site (including the editorial "star comment") are free, but all the actual news reporting is subscription only.
Editors
- 19?? - present John Haylett
- 1974 - 1995 Tony Chater
- 1959 - 1974 George Matthews [7]
- 1930 - 1949 William Rust [8]
Notes
- ^ People's Press Printing Society Limited 61st Annual Report for Annual General Meeting June 2006, p. 4
- ^ Reds, Labor and the War. TIME (May 13, 1940).
References
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This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations. |
- Coughlan, Sean. Pressing On. BBC News Magazine. Monday, 21 March 2005. Retrieved 24 May 2005.
- Sanghera, Sathnam. A lifetime on the left Financial Times Friday 23 Apr 2005. Retrieved 1 October 2006.
- Deeson, Martin. Still flying the red flag: Despite the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Morning Star presses are still rolling. The Independent. Monday. 23 May 2005. Retrieved 24 May 2005.
- The Crisis at the Morning Star "What Next journal- 1998"
