Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Lifting the ban on the Daily Worker
In the middle of WWII, the forerunner to the Morning Star was banned by the state for calling for colonial freedom, campaigning against profiteering, for union rights and for a better life for the workers amid the Blitz, explains JOHN ELLISON

THE Daily Worker, in being and in action since 1930, became the Morning Star 1966. Under whichever name, the paper was and is the only daily in Britain focused on exposing the mechanics of capitalism and challenging its management on behalf of working people.

But in January 1941 the Daily Worker was suppressed by the Winston Churchill government and did not reappear until September 7 1942, 80 years ago today. Popular pressure compelled the government to lift the ban.

Herbert Morrison, then the home secretary for Labour, took the lead in imposing the ban. His memorandum to the Cabinet on December 23 1940 claimed that the paper had “striven to create in the reader a state of mind in which he will be unlikely to be keen to assist the war effort.”

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Tom Mooney Company from the Lincoln Battalion, during the Spanish Civil War, Jarama, Spain, 1937
History / 24 February 2026
24 February 2026

CJ ATKINS commemorates one of the most dramatic moments in working-class history

A new epoch v ‘the main stronghold of modern colonialism’
Features / 23 September 2025
23 September 2025

In a speech to the 12th Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, SEVIM DAGDELEN warns of a growing historical revisionism to whitewash Germany and Japan’s role in WWII as part of a return to a cold war strategy from the West — but multipolarity will win out

Prime Minister Clement Attlee addresses the West Lewisham Labour Party meeting in Forest Hill, London, January 26, 1951
Features / 19 July 2025
19 July 2025

The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON

THE OTHER UKRAINE: The Saur-Mogila Soviet memorial near the city of Snizhne in Donetsk Oblast has been massively expanded in Soviet style, while in other parts of the country, Soviet statues were torn down
War / 13 May 2025
13 May 2025

As Britain marks 80 years since defeating fascism, it finds itself in a proxy war against Russia over Ukraine — DANIEL POWELL examines Churchill’s secret plan to attack our Soviet allies in 1945 and traces how Nato expansion, a Western-backed coup and neo-nazi activism contributed to todays' devastating conflict