When the Portuguese Government closed down the worker-controlled newspaper Republica just before Christmas, few workers in Britain can have fully understood the loss this represented for their brothers and sisters in Portugal. But British workers once had their own paper in the same tradition - the early Daily Herald, founded 65 years ago this month.
The Daily Herald of January 1911, like the Renublica of Julv 1975, was born directly out of workers' struggles. *Trades Union officials (to the Boy-Who Would-Grow-Up): "Here, I say, think of us. This Growth has got to stop." (Dedicated to the Officials at Unity House and their pathetic attempts to check this modern tendency on the part of the Rank and File to outgrow Institutions.) The London Society of Compositors were locked out after demanding a 48hour week. the capitalist press, not surprisingly, gave little coverage - and that hostile - to the dispute. So these printing workers hit on the idea of using their skills to put out their own strike paper giving tner side or the story On 25 January the first issue of the Daily Herald appeared and sold 13,000 copies. So warmly was it received that when the LSC dispute was resolved it was decided to continue the Herald as a fully fledged working class paper.
Never was a paper which supported the working class so badly needed. DockEarly Daily Herald cartoon ers, railwaymen and miners were among the big battalions moving into bitter struggle with the employers and the Government in the years 1911-14. But they could not rely on the TUC and Labour Party leaders. Instead, as Raymond Postgate described in his Life of George Lansbury, they often found what they were looking for in the Herald:
Its columns are full of reports, resolutions and articles which are effectively the rebels' communications with each other. The records of tnese years show many instances in which union executives adjure their members not to come out on strike, or to retrain trom "black' goods, and in which the Daily Herald urges them to do the opposite and they often follow the paper's advice and not that of their leaders.
Albert Hall unconditionally - its industrial reports appeared under the heading 'The War That Really Matters'. Parliament, howHouse of Pretence' was the title of the column in which its proceedings were reported.
or issues tacing ine working class move ment: a whole page was devoted in each issue to the fight for women's suffrage, consistent and sympathetic coverage.
its pages open to every tendency in the labour and socialist movement, thus acting as a vital forum for discussion of all the key questions facing the working class at that time.
The hysterical chauvinism which accompanied the outbreak of war in a pacifist viewpoint, but later on a class and-file militancy. This position was renelping tneir telows by retusing to nandie The Herald supported every strike ever, got rather different treatment: The The paper also highlighted other majwhile the Irish national struggle received Most importantly, the Herald threw 1914 forced the Herald to go weekly for a time. It opposed the War - at first from basis under the impact of a growing rankRed Weekly