Information for Social Change (Sep 1995)
A Star That Never Sets: the Early Years of the Morning Star
Abstract
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the People's Press Printing Society, the cooperative society which owns the Morning Star, previously the Daily Worker. At a packed conference in the Shoreditch Town Hall in 1945, delegates representing two million trade unionists voted unanimously that: "This conference expresses its agreement with the reports of the editorial board and pledges full support for the plans to develop the Daily Worker as a frontline national newspaper in which the policies of the labour, trade union and democratic movement generally will be popularly expanded." The confidence in the future, revealed in that resolution, matched the popular mood of 1945. Fascism had been defeated. A Labour victory at the polls seemed to promise a fast, bold change in society in favour of working people. The United Nations was established, as it said in its charter, to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind." The atmosphere was right for the launch of a paper, which would articulate the aspirations of the British people in the post-war period - a paper which would campaign for a change to socialism, a paper which would campaign for peace.
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