Saturday, January 09, 2010

Daily Worker - a celebration? We don't think so

It has come to the attention of SOYMB that the Morning Star has been indulging in some narcissitic self homage to itself . Apparently , it is 80 years since the Daily Worker / Morning Star was founded . Forgive us , if SOYMB pukes .

The Morning Star was not owned by the Communist Party. Its forerunner, the Daily Worker was founded as an independent co-operative, the People’s Press Printing Society, set up to avoid accusations that the paper was simply a mouthpiece for Communist Party policy. That strategy rebounded with a vengeance during the death throes of the CP .

The group around the Morning Star had been in conflict with the CPGB since 1981 when the conference criticised the paper for failing to give sufficient prominence to the 1977 programme. This group saw the traditional emphasis on the working class and industrial strength in the trade unions as the correct way forward. Eurocommunism was seen as a liberal fad which should be dropped.In 1983 the 38th congress of the CPGB voted to dismiss Tony Chater, the editor and David Whitfield, the assistant editor. They refused to relinquish their posts. In June of the following year the paper’s shareholders voted to support Chater and Whitfield in defiance of the Eurocommunist leadership. It is rather surprising that with all the purges and demoralisation the Morning Star group did not break away and form the Communist Party of Britain until 1988. This party is centred around the Morning Star.

The Daily Worker/ Morning Star has stood for every shabby compromise, has misled generations of sincere workers, has been vanguardist, conspiratorial, undemocratic and dishonest. It has purported to oppose capitalism whilst supporting state capitalism. It has criticised imperialism whilst condoning and defending Russian imperialism. It has supported nationalism and at times even xenophobia. And, worst of all, by posing as Marxist it set back the cause of socialism by several decades.

In the opinion of SOYMB not worth commemorating

5 comments:

aberfoyle said...

Ah!well they will have plenty to santise after this weekend, as they sift through the dross of the S.W.P. confrence,seeking a stiring vangaurdist headline, in the hope that it does not contain pitchfork and torches.

Darrell said...

What happened to the original CPGB?

aberfoyle said...

Darrell,what has become of them is what becomes of all Leninist Trotsky parties, they deminish with their internal arguement witch hunts and vangaurdist eliteism.Although their followers are ardent and stedfast in their belief of the Leninist Trotsky vangaurism, that history has shown to be nothing less than totalitarian and later Stalinist despotism is for all intent and purpose capitalism or more identifiable state capitalism,and for followers of the Marx Engels socialist philosophy to be avoided.

Not a very socialist view yet one of harsh reality.Without doubt SOYMB,will have a more detailed record in their archive of the machiavellian machinations of the once proud British Communist Party.

Darrell said...

Do the SPGB regard the Weekly Worker group as the continuing CPGB? I don't think they're officially Trotskyist, I think they're Leninist.

Mondialiste said...

The Continuity CPGB is the Communist Party of Britain not those who run the Weekly Worker. This is the party which has the same policies as the old CPGB, many of its former members and which more or less controls the Morning Star which has been celebrating 80 years of the Daily Worker. Those who run the Weekly Worker are politically dishonest in calling themselves the "CPGB" in the same sort of way that Militant is for trying to call itself the "Socialist Party". They are some sort of obscure Leninist sect.