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BRITISH TRADE-UNIONS

The first British trade-unions were formed more than a century and a half ago for improving life conditions of workers. The history of the trade-union movement dates back to 1825 when trade unions became legal.

Every member of a trade-union pays a small sum of mon­ey each week. This covers the cost of organizing the union, and provides the fund to help its members when they are unable to work because of illness, or accidents at work, and when they become too old to continue working. From this fund members also receive help if they go on strike.

When the Labour Party started in 1906, Members of Parliament received no salaries. The larger trade-unions supported Labour members in Parliament and also the Labour Party itself. Trade-unions today are allowed to spend money for political purposes.

Every member of a union is free to join any political party he wishes, or no party at all.

At present trade-unions deal not only with problems of wages, working conditions, housing, pensions, etc., that is they regulate not only economic demands. Political questions are on the agenda as well.

NEWSPAPERS IN GREAT BRITAIN

The population of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is now over 56,000,000. About 30,000,000 newspapers are sold every day. The British people, therefore, are great readers of newspapers.

Daily papers are those that are published daily from Monday to Saturday. The morning papers are on sale ¹ early in the morning. The evening papers, such as the Evening News., the Star, the Evening Standard and others begin to appear during the morning, and new editions appear every two or three hours until the final edition comes out in the evening. They sell well ² because they print, throughout the day, the latest sports results.

Newspapers in Great Britain vary greatly in their ways of presenting news. There are serious newspapers and popu­lar newspapers.

The London newspaper that is best known outside Great Britain is probably the Times, the leading conservative newspaper. It began in 1785, and has a high reputation for reliable news and serious comment on the news.

The popular newspapers naturally have much larger circulation than the serious ones. The news that appears in the pages of the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch, for example, is not always the most important news. Their pages are filled with news of sport—football, boxing and racing, with stories of film stars, photographs of actors and actresses, etc.

In addition to London newspapers, there are other pa­pers, published in the provinces as, for example, the Man­chester Guardian, the Yorkshire Post (published in Leeds), and the Scotsman (Edinburgh). They sell throughout the whole country, in competition to ³ the London papers. Provincial newspapers give very full attention to local as well .as to national affairs.

A modern newspaper could not be sold at a profit without advertisements. A single copy costs more to pro­duce than the price paid by the reader. A newspaper with a large circulation may cost about £ 100,000 a week to produce. About a quarter of this sum is received from the business firms who advertise in its pages.

The central organ of the British Communist Party is the Morning Star—"the only newspaper owned by its readers." It began in 1930 as Daily Worker, and is popular among English workers and intelligentsia. Its circulation is growing every year. In its pages the Morning Star gives full support to peace movement in England, workers" struggle in defence of their interests. It leads the movement for the banning of nuclear weapons and against aggression in any part of the world. In its pages one can find the latest news from different countries, sport events, television and radio programmes.

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