The Newsletter—by a Yorkshire Miner

The Newsletter, vol. 4 no. 136, 30 January 1960 · scan page 1

Title, extent and credit checked against the scan (17 October 2026, from the scan: page 1, headline 'THE NEWSLETTER—by a Yorkshire Miner' above the masthead; signed JOSEPH FITZGERALD, Scawthorpe, near Doncaster; the split had kept only the tail of the headline). The text is machine-read and not corrected: for anything you quote, read the scan.

IN the past the only papers one could find to read with any thought for the working class were the. Daily Herald and the Daily Worker. But to find ene with any hint of real socialism was virtually impossible.

The Daily Herald is too tied up with its capitalist friends, namely, the Right-wing of the Labour Party which is so near to the Tory camp that it might as well be in it © ae The Daily Worker is so busy paying lip service to the Soviet bureaucracy and to the so-called ‘communist’ trade union leaders, that it has very little space for the real problems of the workers, and no space to teach the workers what socialism is all about.

I have learned more about socialism in the few months I’ve been reading The Newsletter than I have in all the years I've been reading the Daily Hefald or the Daily Worker.

The service The Newsletter gives to workers in struggle has never been equalled in my lifetime. I only wish you could sell millions, so that all workers could benefit from its socialist contributions—but I think that is in the future.

Now to the organization behind the paper, namely, the Socialist Labour League. I don’t think you wil ever be in trouble about changing that name, I would say it covers the lot, not like the Labour Party which can’t make its mind up what to call itself. It is a very serious sin to mention the word socialist or socialism in the Labour Party today and now they are trying to figure out a new name for the Party. I suggest they call it ‘Labour and Conservative’, it just about fits them and their policy—retreat, retreat.

JOSEPH FITZGERALD. Scawthorpe, near Doncaster.

Weekly Journal of the Socialist Labour League Vol. 4, No 136 Threepence