In October 1906, he founded the Forward Printing and Publishing Company with the support of the Glasgow branch of the Fabian Society, although most of the shares were owned by Johnston and Roland Muirhead.
[1] The first issue of the newspaper appeared on 13 October 1906, and while committed to socialism and temperance, the paper otherwise welcomed diverse views, regular contributors including John Maclean, James Connolly and the anti-German Stirling Robertson, who was the only writer to support the First World War.
[1] Alongside the newspaper, the company published a range of socialist literature, including Johnston's own work promoting women's suffrage, and Our Scots Noble Families, an anti-aristocratic book which sold more than 100,000 copies.
He took a pacifist position in the Second World War, which led him to break with Johnston, and much of the rest of the Labour movement; during the conflict, almost all the articles in the paper were written by Hughes.
Muirhead was bitterly disappointed by this, and in 1950 founded Forward Scotland, a rival paper which acted as the voice of the Scottish National Congress, published until his death in 1964.