Daily Worker banned 
The TUC met in Southport in 1940, but denied the Daily Worker press credentials. This encouraged the government to act against the only voice in the press that was critical of is role. Party member John Mason was interned without charge as a warning to all. Police raids on homes were stepped up. Requests were made by police to employers to sack known activists. 

The party leadership encouraged a revolutionary perspective on the question of legality. It was to be enjoyed and used for as long as it lasted. On January 21 1941, just nine days after the People's Convention, the Daily Worker was suppressed by long-time adversary Labour Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, using defence regulation 2D, which made it illegal “systematically to publish matter calculated to foment opposition to the prosecution of the war.” The party challenged the ban in the High Court. Ironically the High Court lifted the suppression on the movement of its machinery, but the decision came five days after the presses were destroyed in a bombing inferno.

At the defence factory Napiers in north west London, workers clocked in an hour late in protest at suppression of their paper. In its place Daily Worker Leagues appeared, which published a regular Industrial and General Information Bulletin, staffed by former employees of the Daily Worker. The Fighting Fund was kept going. Communists could not be outlawed so easily.

The end of the Left Book Club
The Communist Party had taken measures as early as 1938 to enable it to continue to communicate in the event of just such a ban. On February 15, the New York Nation printed a front page feature by Labour leader Harold Laski entitled “How British Communists Work for Hitler.” Half the members of the Left Book club resigned as its editorial selectors began to attack the Communist Party. 

Labour Monthly steps in
At this point the Labour Monthly, under the editorship of Palme Dutt stepped in, calling a widely representative conference and continuing to publish articles such as, “War Aims – Lessons Of 1914-18” and “An Outline Of The Second Imperialist War” by Mao Tse-Tung. In March 1941, it produced a special edition to challenge the attacks on press freedom, with contributions from Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, SO Davies, Lord Ponsonby and the Dean of Canterbury. 

Legality under threat
Cabinet minutes show that the security services proposed the outlawing of the Communist Party itself, with limited internment for the party leadership. The party had already taken a series of measures to protect itself in such a circumstance. Communist Frances Moore recalls spending “a whole evening with Bill Rust burning documents.” Elsewhere, many party organisations stopped minuting their meetings. 

The party continued to describe the war as inter-imperialist, but with an anti-fascist element within it. The Daily Worker praised the defenders of Yugoslavia when Germany invaded in April 1941, and similarly when Greece was attacked in the same month. 

Soviet Union attacked
On June 22 1941 Germany launched a lightning war on the USSR. That night, Churchill broadcast by radio. His words “We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime...It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and to the Russian people,” brought about a radical change in Communist Party policy. Some right-wing Labourites taunted the party that it had changed its line. To them the party replied: so too had Churchill, and Labour needed to as well. The vindictive Morrison continued the ban on the Daily Worker however. Communist shop stewards from engineering firm Swift Scales, then on trial for calling strikes, were released by the judge and told to return to work, “as it is your war now.”

Soon Harry Pollitt was re-elected as general secretary of the party. As early as June 26 he spoke at a giant rally in Montague Place where he used the prophetic words, it was the main task, “to develop the resources, leadership and strategy necessary to wipe fascism from the face of the earth.”

Daily Worker ban lifted
Morrison knew that a vote of censure awaited him at the 1942 TUC congress and so, on August 26 1942, the ban was lifted. Fifty thousand pounds was collected in three months by party activists, to purchase a Goss rotary press and new premises.

The act of banning was political. So too was the unbanning. It was a sharp setback for the Munichites, who would now be on the receiving end of some searching questions. The date for the reopening was September 7, the opening date of the TUC congress in Blackpool. The headline read, “Blackout is over.” The wholesalers’ stifling ban on distribution was lifted. The Daily Worker struggled to restore its editorial team with one in the RAF, two in the navy and another as a paratrooper. Its editor was to be William Rust.

By the end of the war, the party was at its strongest ever. Unions were growing.

It was a time for bold decisions. The Daily Worker issued plans to shift ownership of the paper as a co-operative. 

This article is an edited extract from Phil Katz’s chapter on the Communist Party’s war record for a forthcoming volume for the party’s centenary.