Lee Brown explains how Ecuador’s election wasn’t free — and its people will pay the price under President Noboa
The war and the Daily Worker
During World War II, the Morning Star’s predecessor the Daily Worker was banned for its criticisms of the government. Here PHIL KATZ looks at the story of its ban – and how it was resisted and overturned
Daily Worker May 9
MARY ADOSSIDES of the London May Day Organising Committee calls on all to join the traditional march from Clerkenwell Green, which will bring together countless international workers’ organisations in a statement against the far right
Although Musk’s cuts left a massive funding hole for reactionary projects ranging from subversive TV stations to hip-hop music, NATASHA HICKMAN warns that the money tap to anti-Cuban agitators will never be shut off under Trump
Mountains of research show that online hardcore material harms children by direct exposure and often indirectly - by those men porn inspires. Yet there are still no simple measures like age and content regulation in place, writes JOHN GREEN
We face austerity, privatisation, and toxic influence. But we are growing, and cannot be beaten
Trump’s economic adviser has exposed the actual strategy: forcing other countries to provide financial support for US world hegemony
Activist Angie Zelter has been arrested more than a hundred times. She’s not stopping now, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Daily Worker banned
The TUC met in Southport in 1940, but denied the Daily Worker press credentials. This encouraged the government to act against the only voice in the press that was critical of is role. Party member John Mason was interned without charge as a warning to all. Police raids on homes were stepped up. Requests were made by police to employers to sack known activists.
The party leadership encouraged a revolutionary perspective on the question of legality. It was to be enjoyed and used for as long as it lasted. On January 21 1941, just nine days after the People's Convention, the Daily Worker was suppressed by long-time adversary Labour Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, using defence regulation 2D, which made it illegal “systematically to publish matter calculated to foment opposition to the prosecution of the war.” The party challenged the ban in the High Court. Ironically the High Court lifted the suppression on the movement of its machinery, but the decision came five days after the presses were destroyed in a bombing inferno.
At the defence factory Napiers in north west London, workers clocked in an hour late in protest at suppression of their paper. In its place Daily Worker Leagues appeared, which published a regular Industrial and General Information Bulletin, staffed by former employees of the Daily Worker. The Fighting Fund was kept going. Communists could not be outlawed so easily.
More from this author
From anti-apartheid work to uniting migrant workers, Sutton showed us how to build worker power, keeping socialism’s flame burning bright, and leaving London’s mighty May Day parade as his legacy, writes Phil Katz
In the last of a three-part series, PHIL KATZ explains how unions are best placed to present a positive, pro-worker, pro-public services alternative to the narrative of division, deregulation and greed peddled by Farage’s party
In the second of a three-part analysis, PHIL KATZ looks at areas where the labour movement should be able to demolish the new right-wing upstart party: its economic policies and attitude to the welfare state
Farage's party is a political machine deeply tied to the interests of US big business, writes PHIL KATZ in the first of a series of features on this growing force in British politics
