Knives out in Morning Star tussle Death agony of Stalinist daily?

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On the losing side, CP General Secretary Gordon McLennan Organiser, Mick Costello, more ically the rightward-moving WHO would you prefer to run the Morning Star: a team of Stalinist party hacks, or a combination of party hacks with Stakhist trade union bureaucrats?

This was the bewildering 'choice' on offer to the shareholders in the People's Press Printing Society (PPPS), whose final leg of their Annual General Meeting took place in London on Monday 13th. They chose the second option.

There were two rival slates for the three vacant seats on the PPPS management committee, to join editor Tony Chater, Derek Robinson, and Jenny Williams.

Bureaucrats

On the one hand, the outgoing committee recommended the election of three union bureaucrats: Ken Brett (AUEW), Terry Marsland (Tobacco Workers) and George Willoughby (SOGAT 82).

On the other, the Executive Committee of the Communist Party was lobbying hard for its own team of Party officials -George Matthews (a former Star editor), Dave Priscott, and Bert Pearce. There were two nominees who were not on either slate: but all bar one of those nominated were members of the CP. So why all the fuss?

The CP Executive argued that as the founders of the paper, and the only political party committed to the (unrewarding) task of selling the Star, the CP as a party should have a decisive voice on the management committee of the paper.

Clashes

The past year has seen a number of clashes between the "Eurocommunist' politics of the majority of the Executive and* the more traditional Stalinist solitics championed by Tony chater.

The Party's former Industrial inclined to Chater's politics, having been publicly rebuked by the Executive, resigned his Party post earlier this year -and shortly afterwards took on the position as Industrial Correspondent for the Star.

The paper had become a last bastion of the old line, fiercely defending this stance under the guise of 'editorial freedom' against the increasingly public attempts by the Executive to bring it into line.

And Costello and Chater turned for support to Costello's cultivated crew of cronies in the trade union bureaucracy.

In response to this, it is iron'Eurocommunist' majority of the CP (flirting with ideas such as wage controls and political alliances embracing the SDP) who through the Executive have sought to crack the whip of 'Bolshevik orthodoxy' and reestablish party control over what is - in all but name - a party paper.

Two-faced These are the same two-faced Stalinists who have stood firmly behind l Martin• Jacques, tne 'Eurocommunist' editor of Marxism Today magazine, as he has wrested it firmly from the