THE Morning Star, in the shape of its predecessor, the Daily Worker, is 90 years old this year.

It remains the only English-language socialist daily paper in the world and its longevity in itself is a considerable achievement. 

There are few magazines and papers very broadly of the left that have lasted longer.

However it’s fair to say that the Star’s politics has meant its fight for survival puts in a class of its own.

From the start the paper was subject to distribution and newsagent bans and prosecutions over news stories.

That has lessened somewhat in recent years because the bourgeoisie has found another, less high profile, method to keep the paper out of the public eye. It simply ignores it and refuses to acknowledge it.

That is most obvious when it comes to broadcast media coverage of the press. Reviews of the daily papers abound on BBC channels and Sky. Rarely, if ever, is the Star mentioned. 

An honourable exception that underlines the “rule” in some ways is that the BBC’s Tomorrow’s Papers Today team, an informal group of BBC journalists, does regularly tweet out the Star’s front page.

The reaction of the media, almost entirely the printed press then, to the appearance of the Daily Worker 90 years ago mirrored that of today.

The Telegraph ignored it entirely. The Guardian managed a sneer or two at the paper’s left-wing politics meanwhile. 

The Times, perhaps a more serious paper than it is now, printed a correspondence between peers about the paper, while the Daily Mail, true to form, carried a “red scare.”

After publication in January 1930, the Guardian’s labour correspondent noted that the £1,000 raised to fund the paper from subscribers and supporters hardly seemed sufficient and claimed that leading Communist Party members had not been in favour of publication after the earlier Weekly Worker and Sunday Worker papers had lost money. 

The journalist couldn’t grasp that the purpose of the paper was political, not to make money for a press baron.

In September 1930 the paper complained that a communist protest at that year’s TUC had been exaggerated in terms of the numbers involved by the Daily Worker report which it partially reprinted. It seems a like a familiar refrain even today.

Later in the year, in November 1930, The Times carried a letter from Lord Brentford. 

He had raised the question of the “communist propaganda sheet,” the Daily Worker, and been assured by a government minister that it had only ever been published on January 1 1930. 

Brentford had investigated and found that, on the contrary, the paper had been published “every day” since, with a circulation of several thousands. 

He offered to buy the government minister a subscription to the paper so he could be better informed in future.

The Daily Mail by contrast did not sneer or quibble about detail but was of course concerned, as ever, about “reds.” 

The Mail report was headed “Red Intrigue Scandal” and covered an adjournment debate in the Commons. 

The aim of the debate apparently was to “expose the full extent of Soviet propaganda in this country.”

The Mail noted that in an edition of Inprecor (International Press Correspondence) published in Berlin, Communist Party of Great Britain general secretary Albert Inkpin had noted the important work the Daily Worker had done in covering a strike of textile workers.

The paper was also concerned that the Daily Worker had carried a report about the activities of Indian communists and was concerned about the rise of Soviet propaganda across the British empire. Ninety years on, the song, with minor variations, remains the same.