Collective Culture as Dynamic Record: The Daily Worker, 1940–43

Abstract

In a speech to the House of Commons on 20 August 1940 Winston Churchill emphasised the reality of Total War: ‘The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children.’ As the First World War had shown, the Home Front was crucial to the modern war effort and in the 1939–45 conflict, ‘the engineers’ war’ (Croucher: 1982, ix), manufacturing was essential. In this struggle, fought out on the factory floor, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) made an impact far beyond its small membership in encouraging production and efficiency and discouraging labour conflict. At a time of ‘total war’, the party whose creed was that of ‘producer’ (Morgan et al.: 2003, 144) came into its own, but how did this emerge in its main comic strip?