IT IS with some trepidation that I, our circulation manager Bernadette Keaveney, our retiring company secretary Tony Briscoe and our editor Richard Bagley are about to embark on a thousand-mile-plus round trip across three nations in four days. 

It’s time for the People’s Press Printing Society (PPPS) AGMs — a chance for all our shareholders to have their say on our paper’s future.

It’s a tiring journey but I also find it exhilarating and inspiring to meet our “heroes” — the readers, supporters and owners of the Morning Star.

I have nothing but total respect for them all, but real emotion runs through my veins seeing comrades who turn up with original share cards and top up their holdings each year.

Their commitment and class analysis of the need for a co-operatively owned paper is stronger today than it has ever been. 

They are heroes who have struggled all their lives to serve working men and women and to advance the cause for peace and socialism. 

As our paper approaches its 85th birthday, after last week’s dismal election results, never has our need been more profound. 

With than less than a year to the general election our voice is vital.

While our forerunner the Daily Worker was first published by the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1930, the PPPS was established as a co-operative and took over ownership of the paper in 1945. 

We changed our name to the Morning Star in 1966.

The management committee of the PPPS has the legal responsibility to manage the business. 

Its role is principally one of governance rather than “hands-on” management, which it delegates to a team of managers led by the editor. The management committee sets and monitors an annual budget and gives strategic direction to the management of the paper, reflecting our shareholders concerns and any issues they raise. 

We respect editorial integrity and independence. We do not tell the editor what to put in the pages of the paper.

Media ownership now is critical and we are unique. 

Billionaires or oligarchs do not own us, nor are we in hock to big business. Our readers, both as trade union branches and as individuals, own us. 

Every reader can become a shareholder in the paper, getting involved locally with other readers and supporters to help shape the direction, content and running of the paper. 

The management committee is an open and inclusive body, accountable to our shareholders officially at our five sectional annual meetings each year. However, regional and national conferences of readers and supporters are always important opportunities to hear in more detail what really matters to you.

Trade unions are an essential and integral part of our support and currently we have 10 directly elected trade union representatives on the management committee. 

I believe this is because we are the only daily newspaper that consistently supports trade unions in their fightback against this government and its attacks on working people in the private and public sector, its imposition of mass austerity and assault on workers’ employment rights. 

When Unite general secretary Len McCluskey says: “The Morning Star is an invaluable weapon that supports the trade union movement and one that I would like all activists in the union to read,” he does so because he knows the paper is a weapon in the hands of every Unite member, daily helping educate and organise workers to achieve a better world.

That’s the essence of why our readers are heroes. 

Not just because they buy the paper and raise much-needed money for our continued existence but because they use the paper in the daily fight for peace and socialism. 

On the bus, in workplaces, on courses, at home, at the pub, in the bookies, at events and wherever the opportunity arises — wherever there is a chance of putting forward hope and a vision of an alternative not based on greed and inhumanity.

The tremendous sacrifice of comrades over the last 85 years to do that against great odds must inspire us and light our way for now but also for generations to come. 

As I said last year at the AGMs: “If the Morning Star did not exist someone would have to invent us.”

Let’s ensure no-one ever needs to.

We have some fantastic and dedicated management committee members and I want to thank all those who will be continuing their hard work, but also those retiring this year — especially our company secretary Tony Briscoe — and those joining us for the first time.

But most of all it is your daily efforts and dedication that I salute and I am really looking forward to seeing as many of you as I can at the AGMs over the next few days.

Bob Oram is chair of the PPPS management committee.