Daily Worker / Morning Star and the PPPS

Catalogue record

Notes

Series CP/PPPS: The CPGB was nothing if not a massive publishing enterprise. Overshadowed by the Labour Party when it came to votes or members, the communists in many periods maintained a more vigorous or publishing activity, whether directly or through such bodies as the Left Book Club. This series, along with CP/CENT/PUB, contains materials relating to a range of other publishing activities, including materials relating to the monthly Marxism Today through which the party's modernising wing enjoyed a considerable succès d'estime under the editorship of Martin Jacques in the 1980s. By this time, the communist newspaper, the Morning star, was falling out of the Party's control as a result of factional conflicts between the modernising (or 'Eurocommunist') wing associated with Marxism Today, and the traditionalist or 'hard-line' elements sometimes referred to as 'tankies'. Established as the Daily worker on 1 January 1930, the paper had been transferred to the ownership of the People's Press Printing Society in the 1940s, when the CPGB's division into warring factions could hardly even have been imagined. Other important materials relating to the paper can be found in the personal deposits of Allen Hutt and Ernie Pountney.