Workers' Dreadnought was a communist newspaper based in London led by Sylvia Pankhurst that ran from 1914 to 1924. It was the official paper of the East London Federation of Suffragettes before being the official paper of the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International).
Contents
History
As The Woman's Dreadnought
The British suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst started the newspaper at the suggestion of American suffragette Zelie Emerson, after Pankhurst had been expelled from the Women's Social and Political Union by her mother and sister for branching off and forming the East London Federation of Suffragettes. The group differed from its parent organisation in being democratic and including men, such as George Lansbury. Pankhurst also wanted an explicitly socialist organisation tackling wider issues than women's suffrage, aligned with the Independent Labour Party, based among working class people in the East End of London. She wanted to focus on collective workers' action, not individual attacks on property. Provisionally titled Workers' Mate, "mate" being a familiar term of address in East London, the newspaper first appeared on 8 March 1914, as The Woman's Dreadnought, a title suggested by Mary Patterson. Its initial stated circulation was 20,000. In 1914, suffragettes would hawk the paper and hold meetings near the East End docks.
In August 1914, Pankhurst reported firsthand from Dublin about the Bachelor's Walk massacre, in which British troops had fired into a crowd of Irish people. The paper took a strong stance against the First World War, calling for Britain to begin peace negotiations, and speaking positively of Russia's exit from the war. The paper's first issue for October 1917 advocated for a peace referendum among the British Army, but before it could enter circulation the Metropolitan Police raided offices of Workers Dreadnought and destroyed the copies of the issue. When food shortages afflicted the country, the paper called for a No Rent Strike.
When Pankhurst was imprisoned, suffragette, photographer and socialist activist who had given money to the paper Norah Smyth alternated as acting editor with Jack O'Sullivan. For many years, Smyth had used her skills as a photographer to provide pictures for the newspaper of East End life, particularly of women and children living in poverty.
As Workers' Dreadnought
On 28 July 1917, the name was changed to Workers' Dreadnought, with a circulation of 10,000. Its slogan changed to "Socialism, Internationalism, Votes for All", and then in July 1918 to "For International Socialism", reflecting increasing opposition to Parliamentarism in the party. By 1918, Irish suffragette and communist May O'Callaghan was serving as the subeditor of the Workers' Dreadnought. In May 1919, in an effort to stem efforts at intervention in the Soviet Union, the paper republished Lenin's "Appeal to the Toiling Masses." That year, Pankhurst met Italian anarchist and writer Silvio Corio and allowed him to oversee the newspaper's publication.
In 1920, Workers' Dreadnought ran Clara Zetkin's The Life and Times of Rosa Luxemburg dictated to Pankhurst personally on one of her tours of communist circles in Europe. On 19 June 1920, the paper was adopted as the official weekly organ of the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International).
During the Post-war French occupation of the Rhineland, German communists attempted to retake the region. France employed the use of black colonial troops to halt them. Reporting on the events, the Daily Herald referred to the soldiers using terms such as "Black Scourge in Europe," and "Black Menace of 40,000 Troops". Jamaican writer Claude McKay considered the papers' focus on the Black soldiers to be illogical prejudice, and a distraction from the communists' efforts against French occupation. McKay wrote a letter addressed to the Daily Herald's editor George Lansbury expressing these concerns. Lansbury refused to print the response, while writing back privately claiming to not be personally prejudice against black people. Instead, he was encouraged by a friend to send it to Sylvia Pankhurst and have it printed in Workers' Dreadnought, and did so.
The paper warned of fascism in Italy, condemned the white labourism in South Africa's Rand Rebellion. It discoursed for the causes of Indian and Irish independence.
Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act for publishing articles "calculated and likely to cause sedition among His Majesty's forces, in the Navy, and among the civilian population". Claude McKay had his rooms searched. He is likely to have been the author of "The Yellow Peril and the Dockers" attributed to "Leon Lopez", which was one of the articles cited by the government in its case against Workers' Dreadnought.