We start the new year as we ended the last, with the Conservatives cheerfully leading a fresh assault on working-class people, whether it be those with a disability or children whose household claims benefits.
The onslaught on pensions, public and private, continues.
The massive handover of the state and its workforces from democratic control to the private sector goes on relentlessly.
Wage cuts, long-term unemployment, particularly among our youth, who should be looking forward to their life ahead with excited anticipation but instead face destitution and despair, are the defining features of our age.
And all the while we know that worse is yet to come.
The Great Depression of the last century and the knee-jerk response of the ruling classes, who tried to use it to maintain and extend their own extravagant lifestyles at the expense of the vast majority of the population, ended in widespread deprivation and despair.
Only investment in growth and development - and a strategy which takes responsibility for the economy out of the financial institutions whose greed and profligacy brought the world to its knees - will spur the necessary economic recovery required to ease the rapidly rising suffering felt by the mass of people.
Instead we are witnessing the opposite.
What a time for our paper, which was founded in 1930 in order to turn Britain to socialism in an era increasingly similar to our own, to be facing its own economic crisis.
In some ways this paper's crisis reflects some of the recent problems within the traditional left and labour movement.
Much of the wider population has become used to being on the back foot, brainwashed into defeatism or scepticism or lured in by the capitalist cul-de-sac of individualism and consumerism. The scale of the current Tory onslaught and new Labour's despicable failure to stem the Thatcherite tide when it had the chance have combined into a political tsunami which has exposed elements of weakness in our mass organisation.
Yet it has also proven people's willingness to fight back - from the occupation of closure-threatened libraries by local communities to the million-strong TUC march last spring and the general public-sector strike in November.
Groups such as UK Uncut have highlighted the power of new media to aid our struggle. But new ways of organising and communicating cannot replace the need for a working political analysis of the situation which we face and the need for our stories to be exchanged, heard and learnt from.
That is this newspaper's role.
|ts role, too, is to relay the national campaigns waged by unions such as the fight for pensions at Unilever, of communities against cuts and privatisation, or the battle to defend terms and conditions by construction workers.
And it is there for local activists organised in community campaigns and trades councils, many of them already readers of this paper, who are involved in fights over bread-and-butter issues locally.
I met some of them last week at a Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils meeting specifically about the links between the paper and trades councils.
It was good to hear people's willingness to contribute ideas and honest criticism of the paper, some of which could only be resolved with greater resources but some which must not just be heard but acted upon.
Whether in the workplace, our communities or nationally our struggles are inextricably linked - they are all different fronts in the battle against disaster capitalism in its different guises.
The solution is the same. Education, agitation and organisation in order to win economic power from the corporations, financiers and their political allies and channel it to the benefit of the many.
And no amount of new technology can change the fact that, just as in 1930, it is people acting together in common cause that brings about the big changes in our society.
Many of you will be acutely aware of our last-ditch Save the Paper Lifeline Appeal last year.
We are just as acutely aware of the overwhelming response which within days ensured our continuing survival in the months to come.
We also know that it would be hard to repeat this massive feat, yet our running losses remain.
In the short term, faced with rising costs for print, paper, distribution and every other bill that we must pay, the paper's management felt that a price rise by 20 pence from Monday to Friday was required.
And so it is that from Monday January 30 we will be asking you to dig that little bit deeper to assist us as we plan a future of growth rather than crisis.
In truth I'd rather be telling you of our plans to increase pages, scope and circulation. That article will have to wait until another day.
For now, we must bridge our running shortfall. The price rise will help with some of it. But the answer lies in mobilisation around the paper to wage a guerilla war for the paper in a sector ravaged by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the march of asset-stripping local newspaper firms. We want to win thousands more daily readers.
So in weeks to come we will be inviting you to take part in charting our way forward. We will be contacting those already organised in Readers and Supporters groups to share and build our strategy. We will be researching the possibility of bold initiatives to bring better, broader coverage of the struggles in your areas. And we will be inviting you to attend a national conference on March 31 which will discuss some of the political issues our class faces as well as the practical ones around the paper.
Although we cannot increase the size of the Morning Star next week in return for your extra 20p, we will be bringing in one or two changes designed to show that our intention is to move forward and to forge a closer relationship between you and the paper.
The Morning Star exists to help build the movement desperately required to unite working-class people against the powerful vested interests ranged against them.
With your help we can do precisely that.
Readers and shareholders often want more information on the workings of the paper and its publisher the People's Press Printing Press Printing Society. We asked company secretary Tony Briscoe to spill the beans and here's the lowdown.
Distribution
Morning Star supporters in north-east England have long been mobilised to hand out sponsored complimentary copies at the Durham Miners Gala.
At the TUC March for the Alternative on March 26 last year, trade union support made a new kind of mass initiative made possible.
As workers at the Star's offices beavered away to produce what was then our biggest edition in the paper's history, supporters up and down Britain mobilised to ensure that 30,000 sponsored copies were distributed free in their areas. All in all 53,000 papers were printed that day - our biggest run in decades.
A similar initiative saw far fewer but no less essential copies distributed for free at last year's Derby demonstration in support of train-building at Bombardier.
However it was on November 30, with the biggest and most geographically widespread strike action in generation over public-sector pensions, that the underlying weakness of our current situation was rammed home.
Orders for special deliveries totalling 18,000 extra copies were made in the run-up to the walkout. But on the day the road-based distribution network on which we rely collapsed.
Scotland, Nottingham, Newcastle and Shrewsbury were just a few of the areas where the paper never turned up.
The central problem is that the national rail network which once carried all newspapers the length and breadth of the land was smashed up by one Rupert Murdoch.
Replacement networks have proved rickety at best.
The Morning Star could solve these problems overnight, through an integrated printing and distribution package that is on offer. But we are still a long way from being able to afford the accompanying price tag of nearly £150,000 a year more than our current spending. And that's on top of our current loss.
But all is not lost.
Attempts were made to strangle the Daily Worker at birth when wholesalers refused outright to handle the title.
It was the organisations of labour and the tens of thousands of people who give them life and strength that also gave succour to this new voice of the working class.
It is with imagination, boldness and ambition that we will again succeed in gaining the momentum to promote the concerns or ordinary people at a time when the rest of the media stands shoulder to shoulder with austerity, whether or not it's delivered with a human face.
History & management
In the People's Paper in the 1800s socialist Ernest Jones wrote that "a movement that has not the mighty organ of the press at its command is but half a movement - it is a disenfranchised cause, dependent on others ... for the expression of its opinions."
Many progressive journals, such as the Red Republican, the Northern Star, the Labour Elector, the Clarion and the Daily Herald, have since fallen by the wayside. Yet the Morning Star survives.
We were first published in January 1930 as the Daily Worker - the official organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
In 1945 the People's Press Printing Society Limited (PPPS) was founded as a co-operative and took over the Daily Worker from the CPGB. The paper became the Morning Star (incorporating the Daily Worker) in 1966.
The PPPS management committee, the paper's national board, long consisted of 15 individuals elected on a rolling basis by shareholders at annual general meetings each summer. Its members were often drawn from the ranks of leading union figures, working and retired.
A rule change six years ago enabled reserved seats on the board for a body - national, regional or branch - of any TUC-affiliated trade union that commits to a shareholding of ?20,000. An escalator clause was built in in order to maintain the society's democratic character. As the union component grows, so does the number of individuals to be elected.
Eight trade union bodies, seven national and one regional, currently have a seat on our board: Community, FBU, GMB, NUM, POA, RMT, Unite, and the North East Area NUM.
The paper is talking to other unions too to encourage them to join up.
At last year's PPPS AGM our shareholders agreed that the Morning Star has a vital role to play in communicating, educating, agitating and organising, and that local Morning Star Readers & Supporters Groups are one tool to engage with communities about politics.
Local trade union branches, trade union councils and constituency Labour parties were encouraged to take out shares in the PPPS, and to support, launch, facilitate and resource local Readers and Supporters Groups.
PPPS members also asked the society to discuss with shareholders, Morning Star readers and other key players such as trade unions, international solidarity groups and anti-cuts campaigns, how to boost readership of the paper among their members.
Your bigger and brigher paper
In June 2009, thanks to a cash injection, the Morning Star was able to grow in size from 12 to 16 pages on Mondays to Fridays and from 16 to 20 pages in a new weekend edition.
We went from black and white to partial colour and introduced a redesign and a fresh approach to news.
However this alone wasn't enough to bridge our financial shortfall.
In January 2011 we reluctantly put the price up for the first time in eight years to from 60p to 80p Monday to Friday and from 60p to a £1 for a newly enlarged 24-page weekend paper.
We have held our own in terms of circulation while many other papers have been losing readers thick and fast.
The paper is better than ever before, but its future is still not guaranteed.
To do this we must sell a lot more papers.
A number of unions have agreed to run sales campaigns to encourage their branches and activists to place firm local orders for the paper.
Alongside this "demand-driven" expansion campaign we are to look at our business model from top to bottom to see if we can build a more effective one.
But we need to go even wider than that, which is where you come into the picture.
You are involved in a wide range of organisations and we need you to engage with them to get the message out.
Over coming weeks and months we will be launching a range of initiatives aimed at assisting you to do just that. Email campaigns@peoples-press.com to register your interest or keep reading the paper every day to get involved.
How you can help
The Fighting Fund is a vital lifeline but paper sales are the key to our stabilisation and growth.
We need to reach those of you who buy the paper irregularly and get you to buy it more regularly - preferably every day.
We need people to speak to others and discover why people don't buy the paper.
We need you to keep in contact with our campaigns and distribution teams to help them tailor their job to your needs on behalf of the paper. If you have an event in your area, get in touch with Bernadette Keaveney on berniemorstar@aol.com to order a special drop or to get extra papers in your nearest newsagent.
In effect in the months to come we shall be urging you to take part in a kind of guerilla struggle for the paper's future.
Email Oliver Hopkins at campaigns@peoples-press.com to pledge your support.
We're going to be asking you to share your stories and experience with readers who want to join the battle.
So next week we'll be launching a new regular strand in the paper which will help share your activities and advice, and allow us to explain what we need you to be doing for us.
No challenge is insurmountable. And ours, whose ultimate aim is to shift politics back on track to a socialist society with working-class people's interests at its heart, can sometimes appear daunting.
But people acting together are the lifeblood of mighty movements.
And that is precisely what we intend to grow.
Finances
The Morning Star faced a critical financial crisis last year. It survived due to your magnificent response to our Lifeline Appeal.
This did't cure the underlying fragility of our finances or transform our fortunes for the long term, but it has given us a breathing space to plan the way forward.
Our budgeted spend is more than £1.4 million a year.
However, unlike the rest of the media, which relies on advertising and bankrolling by the Alexander Lebedevs and Rupert Murdochs of this world, our biggest single source of income is from paper sales. Second comes advertising and then the Fighting Fund, which sees hundreds of readers each month top up our coffers in order to ensure the paper's publication. The Fund has been a defining feature of the paper since its founding as the Daily Worker way back in 1930.
Our finances are also often boosted by the many loyal readers who have expressed their affection towards the paper by leaving it money in their wills.
But our income does not stay steady month by month. May Day and New Year are good times for advertising. We pay some bills weekly, such as wages and printing, but others are monthly, quarterly or even annual.
One problem is the cycle of cash flow - when the income is out of sync with the expenditure, difficulties arise. But the problems are compounded when in absolute terms not enough money comes in.
Above you'll see a summary of where your cash each day goes to - and the amount that we have to find from the Fighting Fund and advertising to bridge the gap. It underlines how important those of you who raise funds for the Fund really are to our existence.
And it shows the urgent need to increase our biggest income - paper sales.
That's where you and we can work together in the months to come.
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