Communist Party of Britain and Morning Star

Find out why trade unions should stop backing the Morning Star. Read our pamphlet Why trade unions should not support the Morning Star

The Morning Star, Ireland and Brexit

According to the front page of the Morning Star (8-9 April): “Unions are warning that stability in Ireland could be threatened if workers’ rights are ‘ripped up’ under the Retained EU Law Bill.” The piece continues: “The TUC and NIC-ICTU (Northern Ireland Committee in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions) issued a statement ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement ... warn(ing) that under the Bill workplace rights such as holiday pay, rest breaks, health and safety rules and protections from discrimination will disappear”. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak was quoted, saying...

Nick Wright, Qatar and "mal-information"

The so-called Qatargate scandal, involving corruption and influence-buying by Qatar and Morocco in the European Parliament has led to the arrest of several MEPs, an NGO secretary general and a union bureaucrat on charges of corruption, money-laundering and “participation in a criminal organisation”. The Morning Star has carried two lengthy reports by Communist Party of Britain member Nick Wright (who, being based in Italy, seems to be the paper’s de facto Europe correspondent), going into often fascinating detail about the inner workings of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the group to...

Carnival of reaction at the Morning Star

The Communist Party of Britain’s international secretary Kevan Nelson gave a report to the party’s political committee last month, published in the Morning Star of 25-26 February. Headed “Signs of Labour collusion with ruling-class attempts to sabotage Britain’s exit from the EU”, it was terrible, even by CPB- Morning Star standards. The statement opens by quoting James Connolly’s famous prediction that the partition of Ireland would mean a “carnival of reaction” and sought to apply it to Sunak’s attempt to ease friction on the British border in Ireland and to Ukraine’s military resistance to...

The "poetry and humanitarianism" of Roger Waters

On Wednesday 7 February, two people made speeches about Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Roger Waters. The Morning Star (editorial 10 February) had no doubt which it preferred. According to the paper, Zelenskyy’s visit to Britain was “to soften up public opinion for escalation of Nato’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine” and was “carefully choreographed”. It suggested “Zelenskyy may have got some tips from Boris Johnson” about something or other, which the paper didn’t bother to specify. The editorial quoted the Russian embassy in London, warning that “bloodshed and the next round of...

Ukraine, Israel and the left

Solidarity has long argued that sections of the left have fallen into particular form of antisemitism. Starting from ultra-hostility to Israel which goes beyond criticising the real misdeeds of its governments and into demonising it as the world’s hyper-imperialism and hyper-racism, they end up reflexively hostile to all “Zionists”, i.e. all Jews who have some default or instinctive affinity with Israel, however critical. Readers who wonder why should look at how the same sections of the left portray the war in Ukraine. In this portrayal of the conflict, Ukraine takes on many of the political...

The Morning Star's Jewish problem

It's happened too often to be written off as a momentary slip: the Morning Star and its political masters at the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) have a Jewish problem. The paper has consistently claimed that allegations of antisemitism within Labour have been overwhelmingly "manifestly untrue and malicious" and the work of "not only British and Israeli state actors but an unscrupulous assembly of reactionary forces of all kinds" (quotes from a Morning Star article by Nick Wright, 22 October 2020). When the Equality and Human Rights Commission published its highly critical report into...

The Tory that (some) lefties love

There is a section of the left that seems to love it when an avowed right-winger backs their cause. The Morning Star recently quoted, with approval, Henry Kissinger in support of their line that Ukraine should capitulate to Putin. But for a significant section of the left, the journalist Peter Oborne is the right-winger of choice. This can be explained by Oborne’s political evolution from being (in his own words) a “conventional Conservative” working for right-wing publications like the Spectator and the Daily Telegraph , to being transformed by the Iraq war into someone who (again, in his own...

Letter: Red-brown in Britain

Jim Denham’s column chronicling the despicable politics of modern day Stalinism continues to provide valuable ammunition to socialists who oppose tyranny in all its forms. The column in Solidarity 660 was particularly instructive, highlighting the drift of some leading people in Die Linke towards far right German nationalism. “Liberalism” is apparently the new “social fascism” for Stalinists today. He says that “no red-brown current of any significance yet exists in the UK”, and I’m not going to quibble over the word ‘significance’. However, the self-styled Workers Party, a project of the...

Morning Star and the red-browns in Germany

Sahra Wagenknecht The editor of the Morning Star , Ben Chacko, has been at a “Rosa Luxemburg Conference” in Berlin and hob-nobbing with the Die Linke (“The Left”) Bundestag member Sevim Dagdelen, whom he interviewed for the paper’s 20 January edition. Dagdelen rages against sanctions on Russia and claims that “The US wants to destroy the Russian-German relationship for good”. She adds that delivery of “more powerful” weapons (but she clearly means any weapons) to Ukraine must stop and warns of a “third world war” if Putin is not conciliated. She complains about Die Linke not opposing Leopard 2...

Returning to their Brexit vomit

“ As the dog returns to its vomit, so the fool returns to his folly” (Book of Proverbs) Support for Brexit is collapsing: in November of last year YouGov data was showing only 32% of the public saying it was right to have left the EU and 56% saying it was wrong. Even 19% of leave voters now believe they made a mistake. This plainly came as a serious blow to the fervent Brexiteers at the Communist Party of Britain and the Morning Star . Former Corbyn adviser Andrew Murray’s “Eyes Left” column of 30 November sounded the alarm: “Who will stand up for Brexit?” he cried, noting that his beloved...

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