Ben Chacko | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1984 (age 41–42) |
| Education | Pate's Grammar School |
| Alma mater | St John's College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 2010–present |
| Known for | Editor of theMorning Star |
Ben Patrick Chacko (born 1984) is anEnglishjournalist who is the editor of theMorning Star. After joining the newspaper in 2010, he became editor in 2015.
Chacko was born inCamden,London. He was brought up inCheltenham, and educated at the localPate's Grammar School, andSt John's College, Oxford, where he studiedMandarin Chinese.[1][2]
His father, Francis Chacko, who came to Britain fromIndia at the age of eight, is anactuary,[2][a] while hisLancastrian mother Sarah (née Willcock) is asoftware engineer who studied for aDPhil at theUniversity of Oxford.[1] His brother is thetaxbarrister, Thomas Chacko, ofPump Court Tax Chambers.[1]
Chacko credits his conversion tocommunism to a recommendation from his mother when he was a teenager that he abandon theSocialist Worker newspaper, published by theSocialist Workers Party, for something more genuinely "leftie", such as theMorning Star.[1] Chacko found theStar "a real revelation".[1]
By the age of 15, Chacko was attending meetings of theYoung Communist League.[2] He editedChallenge, the journal of the Young Communist League and was a member of the student union council at Oxford.[3]
Chacko was appointed editor of theMorning Star in May 2015, the youngest editor of the paper since its founding editor,William Rust.[1][4] He joined the paper as a sub-editor in 2010, and was subsequently deputy features editor, assistant editor and deputy editor before being appointed acting editor in July 2014.[5] "The Star is the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media", said the Labour MPJeremy Corbyn at the time of Chacko's appointment in May 2015. "I look forward to working with Ben in promoting socialism and progress".[5]
After leaving university, Chacko lived in China for a few years. The country, according to him, is evidence that "you can run a society without surrendering to the idea that the market is always right".Post-Soviet Russia, on the other hand, he describes as "a gangster capitalist state run by oligarchs".[1]
In summer 2015, he told Josh Glancy ofThe Sunday Times: "We need a revolution in politics to overturn the power of private ownership... That doesn't mean you'd have people stormingBuckingham Palace. It could be a revolution that is enacted by people inparliament as a result of a mass movement for change".[1]