The General Strike, 1926
Ben Chacko
THE ROLE of the revolutionary paper has been key to conceptions of the “party of a new type” since the very start; it forms the theme of Lenin’s ‘Where to Begin?’, first published in Iskra in 1901.
Most are familiar with a line from it: “Without a political organ, a political movement deserving that name is inconceivable in the Europe of today.” Lenin argues that a revolutionary paper is “the main thread … [enabling] us steadily to develop, deepen, and extend” [the party of a new type] and that “without it we cannot conduct that systematic, all-round propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of Social Democracy in general.”
Three core tasks of the revolutionary paper
Technology has moved on since 1901, and the media formats appropriate to revolutionary propaganda are more diverse. Yet the role Lenin ascribes to a revolutionary paper – which should be “capable of uniting all forces and guiding the movement in actual practice” and “ready at any time to support every protest and every outbreak” – is as necessary as ever.
Those three tasks sum up the mission of the Morning Star – it is there to support (not just report) workers’ struggles in the forms of strikes, protests and campaigns; it is there to provide guidance, or political leadership, to the labour movement; it is there to build unity.
For the purposes of this article we shall use the term “revolutionary paper” as a shorthand for the media entity as a whole – the Morning Star, like almost all modern newspapers, is also a website, publishes video as well as written materials, has a YouTube channel, is looking at starting podcasts, and so on. Most of the case for the “revolutionary paper” refers to the Morning Star as a whole publication and not simply to its printed daily edition.
The Morning Star’s dual character as a broad left paper and as a Communist paper is not some compromise between ideology and wider circulation, or a price paid for access to the trade union movement. It is the only political model which allows it to carry out those three key functions: promote unity across the left, provide political clarity and leadership, and play an active role in strikes, campaigns and protests.
The Morning Star has significant reach across the trade union movement. It has 13 national trade unions and a trade union region as full shareholders, with seats on its management committee. These links give the Morning Star a status no other left outlet has: it is distributed at union conferences, demonstrations and on picket lines with union support, and is taken in many union offices. The links are essential both to the broad left character of the paper and to its role as the labour movement’s ‘paper of record’.
The Morning Star will often carry content reflecting the positions of these 13 unions and they may be at odds with positions of the Communist Party. But a paper in which multiple viewpoints can be expressed is a strength, not a weakness, and Communists should be confident of winning people to our position through engagement in the battle of ideas.
The daily editorial, written in line with the Party’s programme Britain’s Road to Socialism, is a key part of that, being the most regular commentary on events that reflects Party policy. It helps “guide the movement in actual practice.” The late RMT leader Bob Crow used to say he made sure to read the Morning Star editorial first thing, because it could be relied upon for a political steer on developments of all kinds and was a useful source of topical themes for meetings he addressed.
The same principle applies beyond the unions. We work with and through the broad fronts of the left, whether these are the major anti-war, anti-racist, anti-austerity or other campaigns. This means publishing a range of views but also enables us to promote the Communist viewpoint through these movements. And that process in itself is part of how the revolutionary party engages with the wider labour and social movements. It is a ready-made arena for dialogue and the public exchange of views and discussion of strategy and tactics.
These discussions happen in lots of other forums of course – Communist cadres will engage in discussions at conferences and in committee right across our movement. But these discussions are specific to circumstance and not always public.
The paper as a force for internal cohesion
Lenin draws attention to the role of the revolutionary paper in turning the local into the national:
“Our movement suffers in the first place, ideologically, as well as in practical and organisational respects, from its state of fragmentation, from the almost complete immersion of the overwhelming majority of [cadres] in local work, which narrows their outlook, the scope of their activities ….”
Having an organ whose daily coverage of national and international issues puts activity in context, for nations, districts, branches and individual comrades, is not just important to avoid a narrow local outlook in the geographical sense. It applies to siloed work more generally: particular cadres will often have a focus on one area of activity because they have relevant responsibilities or have been assigned to it – it could be peace work, organising in a particular union, Cuba solidarity ….
Healthy engagement through the branch and other structures of the Party should ensure that no cadre becomes so immersed in one field that they lose sight of the Party’s wider agenda and priorities; and the Party’s internal communications will also keep members briefed. But the revolutionary paper is crucial so that cadres stay in touch with developments – as well as currents of opinion and live debates – across the movement.
The revolutionary paper in the online age
At one time, the internet was seen as a means of democratising communication – allowing anyone to publicise their views, and hugely reducing the capital investment required to have a platform for them (it’s cheaper to set up a website than a printing press and distribution network). A few decades on, the ownership and control of online space is more concentrated than the ownership of traditional media ever was, with a handful of gigantic, US-owned corporations completely dominating the internet.
Monopolisation is also an ongoing process in the newspaper industry, with local papers increasingly merged and bought up, and even major national titles belonging to larger companies like Reach and News UK (a wholly owned subsidiary of the US NewsCorp).
Besides the dominance of corporate and tycoon-owned media, we also face censorship. One form of this, which has become much more widespread since the start of the Ukraine war, is direct political censorship, usually justified as restricting access to ‘fake news’ or ‘disinformation’ from foreign states. This has resulted in the removal of thousands of accounts from platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter/X, as well as the removal of broadcast licences from foreign state media companies CGTN and RT. The suspension or removal of individuals’ accounts for political reasons is also on the increase in Britain, having previously been deployed by both Facebook and Twitter on a large scale in Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, to sway perceptions of public opinion and silence left voices.
The march of censorship does pose a threat to more traditional revolutionary media, and the ongoing persecution of Junge Welt in Germany – where it has been dubbed “extremist” by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, with consequences including advertising restrictions and restricted access at public institutions such as libraries and universities – is not something we can rule out for the Morning Star.
In Lenin’s day, of course, the starting assumption was that the revolutionary paper would be illegal. Currently, the prospect of a direct ban on our revolutionary media might seem remote, though increased police readiness to seize literature at protests and the normalisation of outlawing opinion via the proscription of Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation, which has facilitated the mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators for holding up signs carrying banned messages, means it is a more realistic prospect than a decade ago.
At the same time the established position of the Morning Star as one of the oldest newspapers in the national press, and its co-ownership by much of the trade union movement, make banning it a far tougher prospect politically than is true for online blogs and websites which can be arbitrarily removed. It would also mean that another increasingly common repressive tactic, designed to avoid legal challenges – ‘de-banking’, or the summary closure of a journalist’s or organisation’s bank accounts – would be easier to resist.
The Morning Star therefore remains a more resilient vehicle for promoting Communist politics than other media, and its character as a broad left paper again demonstrates its usefulness, anchoring the Party within the wider movement and making it harder to suppress its message.
Social media makes Lenin’s concept of the revolutionary paper more, not less, relevant
For millions, social media has replaced the newspaper on the doormat as the main source of information about the world. The shift is not as extreme as that sentence might imply – much of the news accessed on social media is still from traditional media outlets, whether the Guardian, BBC or Mail Online. But social media has concentrated the risk that Lenin identified, that cadres risk immersion in one particular aspect of work at the cost of engagement with the Party’s whole programme.
The big communications platforms skew the information we see, without informing us, limiting the reach of certain types of content and promoting others. Even when express political decisions are absent, algorithms will promote content similar to that already viewed, creating a telescoping effect.
In this landscape a specific revolutionary newspaper like the Morning Star is essential. If most news even online is from recognised newspapers, then a socialist movement needs its own authoritative voice competing in that field.
The process of monopolisation has the effect of standardising news stories across newspapers; and labour movement news in particular has been squeezed out, as the strength of the trade union movement has declined since the 1980s. The dramatic decline of local titles has also shrunk the space for coverage of local disputes and the ability of organisations without significant money and lobbying clout to get their voices heard. The Morning Star remedies this: its industrial focus means it regularly reports on trade union struggles on every scale.
For Communists, a go-to daily source of accurate information and socialist analysis, whether accessed via a print copy, its website or social media, counteracts the bias of the social media platforms on which stories and narratives are given prominence.
As a means of accessing information, the algorithmic model deployed by social media platforms makes people less likely to get an overview of national and international news, instead encouraging those who have engaged more with posts about Palestine to view more posts about Palestine, those who have engaged more with posts about nuclear weapons to see more of those, and so on.
An online space where so many pick and choose their own sources of information has had major social effects, entrenching tribalistic identities and culture-war factions to a degree unusual when more political debate was face-to-face.
It poses particular problems for a revolutionary party as well. Self-appointed experts and plausible-sounding but not necessarily reliable reports on what’s ‘really happening’ in a particular country, party or union can draw people in and develop followings outwith the democratic centralist structures of the party. This increases the risk of factional behaviour or, at a less deliberate level, cadres who adopt the positions of a preferred blog or guru rather than the agreed positions of the party. That is different from allowing a variety of viewpoints within a revolutionary paper that upholds, in its editorials and news coverage, the party line; and the paper that does so is an important counterweight to individualist, pick’n’mix communism.
The old injunction to all Communist Party members to “buy, read and sell the Morning Star” counters this because it is a recommendation to pay attention to the whole of the paper. In that sense the Morning Star is a radicalising tool: a reader brought in through the paper’s strike coverage or support for Palestinian liberation or nuclear disarmament should be brought into contact with the politics of system change and socialist revolution.
This is why the media platform that is the Morning Star is still required, despite the existence of Party communications on other channels. Its forms – primarily, website and printed paper – are secondary, in that Party members can engage with it equally well in either form.
The maintenance of a daily print edition is important for the Morning Star – its unique status as the only English-language socialist daily in the world is a major selling point, and its physical distribution at appropriate occasions remains a key promotional tool. Not only is this significant at conferences and marches, but the sales pitch is a means of overcoming the entrenched allegiances of online audiences and beginning to lay down a marker and begin conversations in local areas.
But these are tactical considerations that may change. At its core, it is the Morning Star as a Communist news and analysis platform which is still crucial to the political strategy of the revolutionary party. The revolutionary paper should be accessible, informative and engaging – but engagement with it is also a matter of democratic centralist discipline, not simply because ‘the Party says you have to’ but because it helps develop and maintain unity.
The revolutionary paper and the united front
That unifying mission applies beyond the immediate revolutionary party. Building a united front against capitalism and war is a key plank of Party strategy. The Morning Star is a unique asset here. Like the Party, it consistently opposes sectarianism on the left and works to build alliances on common ground, rather than exaggerating divisions and points of difference on secondary issues. It provides a space in which differences can be debated in a comradely way, without the denunciations and no-platformings common on the left.
It does this not just through content, but by being itself an organising tool. Highlighting the revolutionary paper’s role as a “collective organiser”, Lenin begins by comparing it to the scaffolding around a building being constructed, noting its role in linking people working on different parts of the building and to “view[ing] the common results achieved by their organised labour.”
Properly utilised, the revolutionary paper should be a reliable source of information for party members on what the party is doing nationally and in other parts of the country: this requires greater two-way engagement between party organisations and the paper if it is to be effective.
The significance of what Lenin describes as “technical” tasks both in reporting activity to the paper, and in organising its distribution – in developing cadres who maintain constant contact with each other and the national organisation, and with the wider movement, is just as true in 2026 as in 1901. But Lenin also states:
“With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organisation will naturally take shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence these events.”
Some might argue that Lenin is writing about an embryonic party: here, the paper is seen as a means of allowing a “permanent organisation […to] take shape.” For the Communist Party, that permanent organisation has taken shape. But in fact ‘Where to Begin’ sees the paper’s role as much more continuous, as suggested earlier with Lenin’s reference to its task being to “develop, deepen and extend” party work.
The Morning Star exemplifies the united front at macro-level in the movement: it runs content from across the left and the unions, providing space for debate and an outlet that non-sectarian socialists know welcomes their engagement and their views.
At British and national level, its conferences bring together a wider range of trade union and left activist currents than any other organisation in Britain – not just from all major unions but from across the peace, women’s, anti-racist and environmental movements, as well as activists for causes regularly promoted in the paper, from housing to workers’ rights to clean water.
But these conferences are themselves simply the national expression of the local-level united front work of the revolutionary paper, through its readers’ and supporters’ groups (RSGs). RSGs are vehicles to hold meetings on topical issues which should bring together local trade unionists and left activists of all the kinds of campaigns mentioned above. They can attract broader ranges of speakers and audiences than Party meetings.
The paper is an umbrella to bring local movements together and under which Communists can make contacts and strengthen united front work, while ensuring a Communist perspective is heard.
RSGs form a wider hinterland around the revolutionary party: ensuring it is constantly engaged with the wider movement. They have an essential practical purpose in widening support for the Morning Star, not just as a platform but through encouraging labour movement activists to read and write for the paper; and a fully functioning RSG will aim to raise money for the paper directly through fundraising, and to convert meeting attendees into regular subscribers and buyers of the paper.
But that environment is also one in which the Party’s reach within the movement is extended, and people who regularly engage with the revolutionary paper are also likelier to be potential recruits to Party membership.
Throughout its history, the Morning Star, and its predecessor title the Daily Worker, has been a direct organiser of struggle – the Daily Worker was a major mobiliser for the Battle of Cable Street, whose 90th anniversary we mark this year – and an alliance-building vehicle for the Party, with supporter structures serving as homes for those who may agree with much of the Party’s programme but not all, or who for other reasons are not prepared for membership.
The revolutionary paper remains an integral part of the revolutionary party’s work, and essential to its growth. In aspects of that work the existing relationship is not strong enough: not all Party structures make fundraising, promotion and distribution of the Morning Star a regular part of their activity, not all ensure their members are engaged with the content of the paper, and relatively few contribute to it. But both Party and paper would be significantly strengthened if we changed that.
The revolutionary paper is a political concept which is key to the Leninist party: its relevance has not changed because of changes in media technology. All Party members should be using it in their work.
