The Fall of the "Labor Daily"

Abstract

At least from 1890 the Labour Movement in New South Wales was convinced that it ought to have its own newspapers in order to counteract the power of the capitalist press ranged against it.2 The first successful Labour daily in the State was Barrier Daily Truth (1908). Two years later with the establishment of Labor Papers Ltd. hopes ran high, and a Labour newspaper was about to begin at Sydney when war broke out in 1914. It was deferred, but in June 1921 the All-Australian Trades Union Congress endorsed a levy of ten shillings a head in order to finance a chain of Labour dailies. In fact little money was collected and the existing Labour press instead of expanding contracted. Labour dailies published at Adelaide and Hobart closed in 1924, and one at Brisbane in 1936. Melbourne never had a Labour daily. At Sydney there had been no Labour daily since the discontinuance of the ill-managed Daily Post in 1895. However, the penny Daily Mail which began publication on 6 January 1922 had strong associations with the Labour Movement. Its chief backer was 'Paddy' Minahan, a Labor M.L.A., a devout Catholic, and the wealthy 'Boot King' of Sydney. Most of its 3,000 shareholders were Labor supporters.3 The Daily Mail did not consistently support Labor policy. It declared that it was 'something a great deal bigger and better than an A.L.P. executive paper; it is a straight Australian paper'.4 By December 1923 the Daily Mail was about to succumb to the competition of Sydney's three morning papers. Its working capital was exhausted, it was running at a loss, and its circulation had fallen to 20,000. Its necessity turned to Labor's advantage, when Albert Willis, secretary of the Miners' Federation and president of the New South Wales branch of the A.L.P., formed the Labor Daily company to take over the Daily Mails assets and liabilities on favourable terms. The shareholders of the old company received shares that lacked voting rights; they were never refunded, nor did they ever receive any dividends, so their investment in effect was appropriated by the Labour Movement. Labour got a newspaper on the cheap. In 1929 the paid-up ordinary shares (excluding those of the Daily Mail shareholders) amounted to about ?40,000. This was very small compared with the market value (?630,000) of Samuel Bennett Ltd. that published the Daily Telegraph Pictorial or the ?575,000 paid by Associated Newspapers for the goodwill of the Daily Guardian and the Sunday Guardian. The essential sup plement to the heritage of the Daily Mail company was the assistance of the unions, particularly Willis's Miners' Federation. By the end of 1924 the miners had bought 10,000 shares in the new company, lent it the sum of ?11,080, and determined to levy each of their 22,000 members as