The
Gerry Healy
Archive
The Daily News Line
NL
It is important to grasp the true nature of this extraordinary publication. Writing in the Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn in 1905, Lenin had this to say about working class, socialist, literature:
“It must become party literature. In contradistinction to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, ‘aristocratic anarchism’, and drive for profit, the socialist proletariat must put forward the principle of party literature, must develop this principle and put it into practice as fully and completely as possible.” (Page 45, Vol. 10, Lenin’s Collected Works)
Lenin saw the need for every different political tendency in the working class, including those with which he disagreed, to express its views and record its practice in literary form, most importantly in news-papers. Only through the open and public struggle of all such tendencies could the necessary revolutionary leadership win the allegiance of the working class. He went on:
“Literature must become a component of organised, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.” (Social-Democratic in the pre-1914, revolutionary meaning)
The News Line was such a publication. Printed in the Party print-shop, staffed by professional Workers Revolutionary Party members, financed and distributed through the Party branches, supporters and readers, it was entirely independent of any bourgeois influence. The print-shop was equipped with the latest technology and it was the first daily paper in Britain to be printed in colour. It was sold on factory gates, in the street, and in public houses and clubs, and it carried lengthy articles on science and philosophy at the highest level. In the hands of every Party member it became the practical means of building the Party.
The daily analysis of events and synthesis of new political theory engaged the Party in the class struggle more intensely than can be achieved by less frequent publications. It was this that placed the WRP on a higher political level than any other political organisation. It ceased publication following the state intervention in the WRP and the consequent splits of 1985 and 1986. As Lenin insists, such a publication is absolutely necessary to the working class struggle and it must be re-founded at the earliest possible date.