Workers Weekly

The Workers' Weekly was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, established in February 1923. The publication was succeeded by Workers' Life in January 1927 following a successful libel action against the paper. This was in turn replaced by The Daily Worker on the first day of January 1930.

Workers' Weekly had its origins in the earlier press of the British revolutionary socialist movement. With the founding of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in August 1920, the constituent parties such as the British Socialist Party (BSP) and the Workers' Socialist Federation (WSF) ceased to exist as did the BSP's paper weekly newspaper, The Call. A new publication was established for the new political party called The Communist.

The Communist began on 5 August 1920, just four days after the completion of the conference (the Congress of London) which founded the CPGB. The publication continued without interruption until its 131st issue, dated 3 February 1923. The paper was in many ways a direct continuation of The Call, retaining the same look and style, the same editor, and even continuing the serialization of articles begun in the earlier publication.

The first editor was Fred Willis, former editor of the BSP's weekly, assisted by Raymond Postgate. The paper maintained a circulation of between 8,000 and 9,000 during 1920, after which time the circulation began to rise rapidly due to improvements in the publication's design. Francis Meynell took over as editor around the first of 1921 and by 5 February 1921, circulation stood at 25,000. Sales continued to rise throughout the year, touching the 60,000 mark at the time of the raid on party offices in May 1921.

Towards the end of April 1921, Member of Parliament J. H. Thomas successfully sued The Communist for libel, naming its editors, printer, and publisher in the action. The pressure of this legal action and subsequent raid of party offices by the police had the effect of making production of the paper extraordinarily difficult. The Independent Labour Party's printing house abruptly stopped production of an issue of the paper in midstream after coming to an agreement with the Director of Public Prosecutions not to produce any more Communist material.

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