SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how six MPs enjoyed £400-£600 hospitality at Ditchley Park for Google’s ‘AI parliamentary scheme’ — supposedly to develop ‘effective scrutiny’ of artificial intelligence, but actually funded by the increasingly unsavoury tech giant itself
We need to rebuild Morning Star sales after the pandemic – and we need your help
This weekend the Morning Star will be in its element promoting protests over the cost of living and the drive to war. But we must build regular sales to be able to keep doing this, says circulation manager BERNADETTE KEAVENEY
Caroline Darian, daughter of Gisele Pelicot, took part in a conversation with Afua Hirsch at London’s Royal Geographical Society. LYNNE WALSH reports
As the regime in Iran continues to face international pressure to reduce its nuclear programme, workers continue to struggle for wages they can live on despite harsh repression of trade unionists, reports JAMSHID AHMADI
JEAN SILVAN EVANS pays tribute to the social campaigner who sang the Welsh national anthem to Khrushchev in Moscow and became Rhondda’s communist mayor in 1979
As summer nears, TOM HARDY explains how unions are organising heat strikes and cool stations while calling for legal maximum workplace temperatures — because employers currently have no duty to protect workers from dangerous heat
European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde sees Trump’s many disruptions as an opportunity to challenge the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ — but greater Euro assertiveness will also mean greater warmongering and militarism, warns NICK WRIGHT
KEITH BARLOW examines the 1975 referendum that saw Britain vote to stay in the EEC, revealing how Tony Benn understood that EU free-market principles and capital movement rules would tie the hands of any government putting people’s interests before corporate profits
TODAY’S edition has been provided for distribution at two critical protests — that over the cost-of-living crisis on Saturday and the global day of action to stop the war on Sunday.
Additionally the paper is available at the Scottish Labour Party conference and during the week has been on several picket lines.
Our paper is usually available for sale or distribution at key events ensuring that our progressive viewpoint reaches a wide an audience as possible.
Our work shouldn’t stop when the edition goes to press, the website is updated and the pdf becomes available.
This is when we need to get everyone pushing out on social media, talking at the bus stop in union meetings about the content and relevance of the stories in the paper.
Every day we need to reach out to a new audience and importantly encourage those who occasionally read the paper to become regular readers.
To continue our work we need all our readers, readers and supporters’ groups and trade union branches to play their part.
There is no secret that the finances of the paper aren’t strong — we rely on the generosity of our readers to raise £216,000 a year for the fighting fund and we are still left with a shortfall.
Our largest income stream is the sale of the paper whichever platform our readers use: print, website access or pdf subscription.
Yet sales have been hit hard during the pandemic, and they must be rebuilt if the Morning Star is to survive.
Our target is to increase our sales by £200,000 a year, and the Morning Star will be launching a campaign around this in coming weeks.
The figures speak for themselves.
1,000 new readers buying every day would bring in £234,000
2,000 new readers buying the paper three time a week: £234,000
1,000 new readers buying full website access: £199,000
3,333 new readers buying the basic subscription package of £5 a month: £199,980
We now have a readership who do a mixture of the above so will be looking at the income streams to measure our success in winning new readers. We will keep you, our readers, updated.
What we cannot do is sit back and hope for a miracle. We need to revisit the work of the readers and supporters’ groups (RSGs) and encourage everyone to put sales front and centre of their work.
This weekend’s distribution would not have been possible without the assistance of the RSGs, Communist Party nations and districts and others in the movement.
This is a start but we have ideas that we will roll out in the weeks ahead.
Our small team here will work with the trade union movement to ensure that we publicise the various methods of buying the paper. We will work with our trading partners in wholesale and retail to promote the paper.
The task ahead isn’t easy but we need to start. Looking back into the circulation archive the message from the Daily Worker and the Morning Star the message today is the same as it was in 1930 and the 1980s.
Read the Star yourself every day. Recommend it to your workmates, neighbours, family and friends. Sell it in your union meetings, shopping centres and housing estates. Discuss its importance in your local labour movement.
Read it. Buy it. Sell it.
Please contact campaigns@peoples-press.com and circulation@peoples-press.com for more information on our sales campaign.
More from this author
With a host of labour movement events coming up, you can put a smile on the face of Morning Star circulation manager BERNADETTE KEAVENEY by taking out a bulk order
Star circulation manager BERNADETTE KEAVENEY thanks those who are out and about supporting the Morning Star today – including one reader who’s trekking across the Pennine Way. Do donate if you can!
A dauntless reader is walking 268 miles across the glorious landscape of the Pennine Way to fundraise for the people’s paper. Why not help him on his way with a donation, says circulation manager BERNADETTE KEAVENEY
