Factory bulletins from the early communist movement: Workers' Liberty 3/3

Workers' Liberty 3/3: Factory bulletins in the 1920s and today

Workers' Liberty 3/3 (March 2006) reproduces many communist factory bulletins from the 1920s, and discussion from that era about how they should be produced. "Workers cannot write newspapers? Really? Just tell us some news about your factory". It also includes information on workplace bulletins produced by the AWL. Click here to download pdf .

Producing Tubeworker

By Sandra Marsh Tubeworker , on the London Underground, is the longest-running of the bulletins produced by Workers’ Liberty. It has been running for fifteen years now. It comes out once every three weeks, with occasional special issues in addition. The front page has one or two longer stories — at least one of them about general politics, outside the Underground — and the back page carries about a dozen short pieces of workplace news and comment. Each issue is prepared and designed by a meeting of Workers’ Liberty activists and sympathisers working on the Tube, but the bulletin quite often...

Leafleting on the Manchester Ship Canal*

This article was based on the experience of Workers Fight, from which AWL has developed and which worked inside the International Socialists (predecessor of the SWP) at the time. It was part of a drive to turn IS towards production of factory bulletins at the end of the 1960s. It has been abridged. It was written by Rachel Lever (Rachel Matgamna), Sean Matgamna and Harold Youd. Memory suggests that Rachel was the main author. SM. The “turn to the class” by IS is currently using the methods of factory leafleting. Presented here is a short report of the experience of using this method on the...

“Workers cannot write newspapers? Really? Just tell us some news about your factory”

Pieces from communists involved in producing factory newspapers. Taken from the Funke, the paper of the party workers of the Berlin-Brandenburg district of the German Communist Party. 6 August 1925 It was about three weeks before the Reichstag election. In our district we discussed how we could mobilise factory nuclei for the struggle and also how we could utilise the election campaign for the activation of our nucleus work. In this connection we naturally came to speak of nucleus newspapers. A big nucleus had just then started a newspaper for all the enterprises in our district, but we...

Factory bulletins are essential tools

Leon Trotsky discussed factory bulletins, and their place in the overall work of a revolutionary organisation, in a letter to his French comrades of January 1938. I received your large packet of factory newspapers and leaflets, etc. Indeed, this is the only suitable way for a weak organisation with a small paper to approach the least educated masses while not only maintaining but continually deepening its theoretical understanding. A certain type of “democratic centralism” is necessary in the organisation of written propaganda and agitation as well. You approach the workers with the simplest...

Extracts from a factory newspaper

Factory Inspection (called the Murder Commission) When there was a factory inspection a few weeks ago the foreman Figge surpassed himself. No work was allowed to be done from morning to midday, in order that there should be no smell of poison gas or any sign of dirt. Then the Social Democrat Jumpertz appeared on the scene. He looked around and found everything as it should be. Thereupon Figge went to the telephone and a few minutes later the murder commission arrived. The CG factory known for its dirty condition was now a marvel of cleanliness before the eyes of the murder commission — the...

A factory bulletin by Vladimir Lenin - Against our “benefactors”

This leaflet was written by Vladimir Lenin after November 7(19) 1895, in connection with a strike of about 500 weavers against bad conditions and new measures introduced by the factory management. The weavers, by their solid resistance to the employer’s pressure, have proved that at a difficult moment there are still people in our midst who can uphold our common interests as workers, that our worthy employers have not yet succeeded in turning us for all time into the miserable slaves of their bottomless purses. Let us, then, comrades, stand firm and steadfast and carry on to the very end, let...

“Factory newspapers riled the employers from the beginning”

Abridged from Inprecor, the bulletin of the Communist International, February 1925 Factory newspapers are an innovation in the life of the Communist Parties of the West. They had their origin on the revolutionary soil of the Soviet Union in the form of wall newspapers. During the last year they crossed the boundary which separates the proletarian European East from the capitalist West, assuming the form of cyclostyled factory newspapers and becoming a form of agitation, propaganda and organisation which is really gaining in importance. It cannot be sufficiently emphasised that factory...

Agitate, Educate, Organise!

“Is it necessary to recall that Marxism not only interprets the world but also teaches how to change it? The will is the motor force in the domain of knowledge too. The moment Marxism loses its will to transform in a revolutionary way political reality, at that moment it loses the ability to correctly understand political reality. A Marxist who, for one secondary consideration or another, does not draw his conclusions to the end betrays Marxism.” Leon Trotsky Socialism is not only a good idea, but a stark necessity for humankind. Yet, the ideas of socialism are everywhere under attack. They...

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