Daily Herald (United Kingdom)

In December 1910, the printers' union, the London Society of Compositors (LSC), became engaged in an industrial struggle to establish a 48-hour workweek and started a daily strike bulletin called The World.

The initial organising group included Tillett, T. E. Naylor of the LSC, George Lansbury, socialist politician, Robert Williams of the Transport Workers, W. N. Ewer and Francis Meynell.

Its politics were broadly syndicalist: it gave unconditional support to strikers and argued for a socialist revolution based on workers' self-organisation in trade unions.

The shortfall in production costs was guaranteed by wealthy friends of Lansbury, and Francis Meynell joined the board as their representative.

There were notable journalistic scoops, most famously its story in November 1917 on "How they starve at the Ritz", an exposé of conspicuous consumption by the rich at a time of national hardship.

[4][5] The Herald resumed daily publication in 1919, and again played a role propagandising for strikes and against armed intervention in Russia amid the social turmoil of 1919–21.

In August 1920, Lev Kamenev, a leading member of the Bolshevik regime visiting London as part of the negotiations that led to the March 1921 Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, sent a telegram addressed to Lenin in Moscow that was intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence.

[7] The Herald was the official organ of the Trade Union Congress from 1922, during which point the fledgling Labour Party brought in Hamilton Fyfe, who recruited prestigious journalists such as Douglas Cole (better known as G.D.H.

During his brief time as acting editor, Salusbury began to attract middle- and upper-class readership, although the publication was primarily marketed to tradesmen.

A promotion campaign ensued, and in 1933, the Herald became the world's best-selling daily newspaper, with certified net sales of 2 million.

In an editorial about the latter, the paper stated:Now finally Stalin's Russia sacrifices all claims to the respect of the working class movement...The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is dead.

[10][11]The Herald's sales were static or in decline during the post-war period, but a survey in 1958 suggested that it had the highest level of appreciation of any newspaper among its almost exclusively working class readership.

[16] Following a study commissioned from market researcher Mark Abrams, whose conclusions suggested reasons why the Herald was in decline, it was reborn as The Sun in 1964 under editor Sydney Jacobson.

The newspaper was sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Limited (the holding group for all of his interests at the time), and its format and (eventually) its politics were significantly altered.