the newspaper, previously absent because of a lack of audited circulation figures. In December 1981, when the Polish Solidarity trade union movement was suppressed and martial law declared, the paper criticised the Executive Committee of the party for condemning the acts of the (then-Communist) Polish government. In 1982, the Morning Star attacked the attitudes of Marxism Today, the party's monthly journal, which was controlled by the Eurocommunists. The newspaper attracted some wider media attention in September 1981 when the BBC paid to place six advertisements for its Russian-language service in the Morning Star, which was one of the few English language newspapers that the USSR government allowed to be circulated in the country. Four of these advertisements were printed as agreed, but the last two of the six were not printed. A spokesman for the newspaper said that the advertising department had not properly consulted with other teams before making the agreement, and that the BBC's broadcasts were part of Cold War propaganda. The paper supported the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the miners' strike of 1984–1985, but the party had become critical of NUM leader Arthur Scargill's strategy towards the end of the strike. Meanwhile, in March 1984, the CPGB Executive Committee (EC) issued a seven-page document which was heavily critical of editor Tony Chater, in particular because he had refused to print an article which commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Lenin. The EC put forward candidates to challenge those loyal to Chater at the 1984 AGM of the PPPS and called for Chater's replacement. He was expelled from the CPGB in January 1985, along with the assistant editor, David Whitfield, reportedly because the attempts to remove him as editor had failed. A statement by the party's EC asserted that the paper was "being systematically used to attack and undermine congress policy, support factional activities in the party, and help sectarian minority groupings in their opposition to the party majority". In June 1985, however, AGMs of the PPPS held in Glasgow, Manchester and London voted by about 60 to 40% for candidates backed by the management committee of the Morning Star.Chater remained editor of the paper until 1995 when he retired. Control of the newspaper passed from the Eurocommunist leadership of the CPGB to the newly established pro-Soviet Communist Party of Britain (CPB). On the day before the Berlin Wall began to be demolished in