COMRADES, for the second consecutive week, my postbag runneth over!

“The bank has just cut the interest on my account,” wrote a Merseyside reader. 

“Well fuck the bank. I’m banking on the Morning Star!” he concluded, enclosing a cheque for ten grand! 

This big donation helped drive this week’s total to an impressive £16,754 and put us within touching distance of our £90,000 target.

But remember, it’s the hundreds of ordinary supporters sending in small donations who will get us over the line.

People like the “Brampton reader near Barnsley” who sends a £5 postal order each and every week. Or the woman from Salisbury who sent me £30, explaining that she was not a regular reader but valued an “independent press and committed journalism.” 

To be honest, though, not all our readers buy the paper because they value our fact-based journalism or want to keep our red star flying high. Some have more unusual motivations.

When I was a teenager, I used to sell the Morning Star outside Camden Town Tube station.

One Saturday morning, just as we were about to pack up, a posh lady approached and asked how many copies we had left unsold. 

“13,” I replied.

“I’ll take them all,” she said crisply.

Clutching her bundle of papers, she strode off, only to turn around and shout: “Now that will stop anyone else from buying them!” 

Do you have any right-wing friends or relatives who could be persuaded to stop the spread of socialism by bulk-buying unsold copies of the Morning Star? Let me know and I’ll ask our circulation manager to arrange a special delivery. 

Money for the Pedal4Progress event continues to flow into my coffers like a well-organised peloton streaming into the Champs-Elysees for the final stage of the Tour de France. 

I raise my bidon to the National Clarion Cycling club for their generous £100, tip my helmet to the reader from Sheffield who sent a fiver, and say niolchiadau to the Welsh Communist Party in appreciation of their 50 quid (and their challenging hills). 

Elsewhere, a West Yorkshire reader who recalls his father taking him to collect the Daily Worker from the railway station in 1937, sent me £50. 

Another £50 arrived from “two very elderly pre-Blair/Starmer socialists.” 

And the Birmingham Mental Health Branch of Unison donated £100 for “backing the workers on the front line.”

Comrades, we have just 23 days left to raise 19 grand to keep your socialist daily paper alive and kicking. 

There is no time to waste. Please send me whatever you can afford.

Calvin Tucker is Morning Star campaigns manager.

Please make cheques made payable to: The People’s Press Printing Society and post to: The Morning Star appeal, William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, London E3 2NS.

Bank transfer to Payee: The People’s Press Printing Society Account, Bank: The Co-operative Bank PLC Bank Branch: Islington Sort Code: 089033 Account Number: 50505115, Reference: Appeal (Or P4P8 if the donation is for the Pedal for Progress event raising money for this appeal)

Or to donate online visit morningstaronline.co.uk/page/your-paper-needs-you.