The ''Workers' Weekly'' was the official newspaper of the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

, established in February 1923. The publication was succeeded by ''Workers' Life'' in January 1927 following a successful libel action against the paper. This was in turn replaced by '' The Daily Worker'' on the first day of January 1930.

History

Forerunners

''Workers' Weekly'' had its origins in the earlier press of the British

revolutionary socialist Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolu ...

movement. With the founding of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in August 1920, the constituent parties such as the

British Socialist Party The British Socialist Party (BSP) was a Marxist political organisation established in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of political faction, factional struggle, in 1916 the party's ...

(BSP) and the

Workers' Socialist Federation The Workers' Socialist Federation was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom, led by Sylvia Pankhurst. Under many different names, it gradually broadened its politics from a focus on women's suffrage to eventually become a left com ...

(WSF) ceased to exist as did the BSP's paper weekly newspaper, ''The Call''. A new publication was established for the new political party called ''The Communist''. ''The Communist'' began on 5 August 1920, just four days after the completion of the conference (the Congress of London) which founded the CPGB.Jane Ure-Smith, "The Establishment of a Bolshevik Newspaper in Britain in the 1920s." ''International Socialism'' (London), no. 18 (Winter 1983), pg. 33. The publication continued without interruption until its 131st issue, dated 3 February 1923. The paper was in many ways a direct continuation of ''The Call'', retaining the same look and style, the same editor, and even continuing the serialization of articles begun in the earlier publication. The first editor was Fred Willis, former editor of the BSP's weekly, assisted by Raymond Postgate. The paper maintained a circulation of between 8,000 and 9,000 during 1920, after which time the circulation began to rise rapidly due to improvements in the publication's design.Klugmann, ''History of the Communist Party of Great Britain,'' vol. 1, pg. 213.

Francis Meynell Sir Francis Meredith Wilfrid Meynell (12 May 1891 – 10 July 1975) was a British poet and printer at The Nonesuch Press. Early career He was the son of the journalist and publisher Wilfrid Meynell and the poet Alice Meynell, a suffragi ...

took over as editor around the first of 1921 and by 5 February 1921, circulation stood at 25,000. Sales continued to rise throughout the year, touching the 60,000 mark at the time of the raid on party offices in May 1921.Klugmann, ''History of the Communist Party of Great Britain,'' vol. 1, pg. 214. Towards the end of April 1921, Member of Parliament

J. H. Thomas James Henry Thomas (3 October 1874 – 21 January 1949) was a Welsh people, Welsh trade unionist and politician. He was involved in a British political scandals, political scandal involving budget leaks. Early career and trade union activiti ...

successfully sued ''The Communist'' for

libel Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...

, naming its editors, printer, and publisher in the action. The pressure of this legal action and subsequent raid of party offices by the police had the effect of making production of the paper extraordinarily difficult. The Independent Labour Party's printing house abruptly stopped production of an issue of the paper in midstream after coming to an agreement with the Director of Public Prosecutions not to produce any more Communist material. In July 1921, Postgate took over for Meynell as editor of ''The Communist''. He continued in that role until giving way in favor of T.A."Tommy" Jackson in May 1922.Klugmann, ''History of the Communist Party of Great Britain,'' vol. 1, pg. 215. By the autumn of 1922, the print run of ''The Communist'' had declined to around the 20,000 mark, with actual sales in the vicinity of just 8,000. It was clear to Communist Party leaders that a drastic makeover for the publication was due.

Establishment of ''Workers' Weekly''

In the spring of 1923, the Communist Party of Great Britain felt itself at low ebb. Leading theoretician Andrew Rothstein minced no words in an article in the party's monthly theoretical magazine:

"What is the position of our party today? Despite the terrifying pictures drawn by the ''
Morning Post ''The Morning Post'' was a conservative daily newspaper published in London from 1772 to 1937, when it was acquired by ''The Daily Telegraph''. History The paper was founded by John Bell. According to historian Robert Darnton, ''The Morning ...
'' and the British Empire Union, we in the party know to our cost, and do not conceal it...that our party numbers only some thousands of members, of whom perhaps half are "active," i.e., propagandists, agitators, organizers, literature-sellers, writers, etc. The party has not a great many more members than those organisations which were represented at the first and second unity congresses in August 1920 and January 1921.... We have some members active in the trade unions, less in the trades councils, and very few in the workshops.... The masses do not attend branch meetings. We shall find them where they are to be found daily — at the 'point of production': the workshop, pit, depot, stores, or office....

"How can we extend our influence in the workshops? By means of the ''Workers' Weekly:'' by making it interesting to those in the workshops; by reflecting in it the daily life of the workshops; by building it up, in short, around letters from the workships, because the constitute the first link in the chain, the first like that we must take hold of and hold on to with all our might, knowing that only in that way we shall arrive at what we desire."

The governing Executive Committee of the CPGB had decided to replace ''The Communist'' with a new publication called the ''Workers' Weekly.'' The first issue of the new paper was dated 10 February 1923. The change of name was to reflect a parallel change in the publication's approach, emphasizing the daily life and shop concerns of the working class as well as noteworthy events in the

Labour Movement The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considere ...

. In his article in the monthly theoretical magazine of the CPGB announcing the switch, Andrew Rothstein declared that the revamped publication was to mark a move away from being "a weekly journal for the orthodox Communist household" and towards becoming "a live reporter and interpreter of the working class life and struggle." R. Palme Dutt was editor of the revamped publication. Following the

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

's emphasis of the day, the new paper attached particular importance to letters from worker-correspondents, publishing over 2,500 letters and reports submitted from the

grassroots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or continent movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from volunteers at the local level to imp ...

in its first year. On 17 February 1923 the paper explicitly stated the change in direction:

"We want a paper made by the workers for the workers. Our news is working class news supplied by the workers on the spot. It may not be very wonderful news yet, but you can improve that for us by seeing that we get the news that you won't get in other papers. It is the news of the workers."

Circulation once again began to rise. The first issue of ''The Workers' Weekly'' had a press run of 19,000 and sold out within 24 hours of publication. By the end of March, the press run had increased considerably, to over 50,000 copies.

Dissolution

Circulation peaked at 80,000 copies in August 1926, in the aftermath of the 1926 General Strike.L.J. Macfarlane, ''The British Communist Party: Its Origins and Development until 1929.'' Worcester, England: Macgibbon and Kee, 1966; pg. 178. Trouble lay ahead, however, as at the end of January 1927 a successful legal action for

forced the publication into

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...

. A new party paper was established at that time called ''Workers' Life,'' a publication which attained a circulation of 60,000 copies a week by that summer. In London on 1 January 1930, under a banner headline reading "Workers of the World, Unite," a new daily newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain called '' The Daily Worker'' was born. It took the same name as the American Communist daily established in 1923. The editor of the paper was a 26-year-old named William Rust, whose editorial experience had included a brief stint at the helm of the paper of the Young Communist League.Branson, ''History of the Communist Party of Great Britain,'' pg. 53. With the appearance of the ''Daily Worker,'' its less frequent forerunner, ''The Workers' Weekly,'' ceased publication.

History

Forerunners

Establishment of ''Workers' Weekly''

Dissolution

Footnotes

See also