THIS weekend, local demonstrations for Palestine will take place up and down the country.

At many of them you may see a supporter handing out Morning Stars. That tells you two things about our newspaper: that it is an agitational activist’s tool, providing those fighting for peace and socialism with the information and arguments to take to the movement; and that its promotion rests very heavily on its readers, who through readers’ and supporters’ groups nationwide help to sell, distribute and raise funds to keep the Daily Miracle going.

Other papers are handed out at demos — but the Morning Star is the only daily socialist newspaper in the English-speaking world. We will often do a free distribution at major events, but our survival relies on regular paying readers, both in print through shops (any newsagent will order it in for you if you ask, while home news delivery is increasingly available across Britain) and through online subscription. And we need more of them.

Our open support for the giant peace marches in solidarity with the Palestinian people stands out in a monopoly media landscape. Ninety per cent of British print media is owned by just three companies — Reach (the Mirror, Express, Daily Star, Daily Record …), NewsCorp subsidiary News UK (Times, Sun …) and DMG Media (Mail, Metro, the i …). The internet, originally seen as a means of challenging the monopoly control of the big players, has actually concentrated ownership and control of communication platforms even more narrowly, with a handful of US corporations dominating globally.

Their media — that is controlled by huge companies or press barons like Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere — doesn’t hold power to account, as the fond theories about a “free press” would have us believe. 

Its role as a propaganda weapon in the hands of the Establishment was made clear to millions through the concerted campaign of vilification that helped sink the biggest challenge British capitalism has confronted in some decades, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party from 2015-20. 

Since then, it has loyally taken up the priorities of our rulers whether that means misrepresenting workers engaged in the biggest strike wave since the 1980s, ramping up hostility to China as the world enters a new cold war, or slandering those rallying for peace and justice for the Palestinians as “hate marchers.”

An independent working-class movement needs to counter that with our media, a media that tells the stories of working people in struggle, that challenges imperialist propaganda and analyses what is happening in the world through a different lens. That is our job at the Morning Star. It could not be more important today, with war raging in Europe and the Middle East, and the imperialist camp preparing the ground for a still bigger conflict with China.

Founded as the Daily Worker by the Communist Party in 1930, it became a reader-owned co-op in 1946. Anyone can buy a share (currently £10) and however many shares you have you have a single vote at our annual general meeting. That meeting elects the management committee which appoints the editor and business manager and holds us to account. This unique model means readers have a direct say in the paper’s priorities and a chance to discuss these with its management every year.

It is a paper of and for the labour movement. Thirteen national trade unions and one trade union region have maximum shareholdings and a seat on our management committee, representing a majority of Britain’s organised workers. The only daily with a dedicated industrial reporter, no other publication devotes as much attention to the strikes and campaigns of our unions — something more important than ever during a cost-of-capitalism crisis and the militant union fightback it has provoked.

On this solid (and growing – three new unions have joined our board in the last four years) base rests a broad, daily paper of the left. Labelled by its opponents a communist newspaper, any reader will tell you the range of opinions and organisations published in its pages is wide. 

We run articles from MPs, trade union activists and officers, Welsh and Scottish nationalists, social justice and single-issue campaigners, environmentalists, feminists and a huge range of international voices. Often enough these don’t align with, or they may even argue against, our editorial line — which is a good thing, as the Morning Star should be a debating ground for the entire movement.

But there is a consistency here too, one that can be traced in our clear socialist and anti-imperialist stance maintained ever since the 1930s, when we entered the media scene with a bang — condemning the British government for gunning down strikers in India, championing the hunger marches and the National Unemployed Workers Movement and making a name as Britain’s foremost anti-fascist paper battling the Blackshirts.

The Communist Party has not owned the Morning Star since 1946, but our AGMs regularly affirm that the editorial line should be based on Britain’s Road to Socialism, the party’s programme. 

As our one vote per shareholder rule stops the Morning Star being bought or sold, so rooting our editorial approach in Britain’s Road to Socialism provides political clarity, allowing our paper to retain a sharp Marxist analysis and an uncompromising commitment not to mend capitalism, but to end it.

This combination is why the Morning Star stayed solid as a rock through turbulence like the Corbyn period, challenging the many smears and witch-hunts that much of the rest of the media, even on the left, indulged in. It also means taking unpopular positions sometimes: the paper was in a minority on the left over Brexit, but proved accurate in its warnings that a Remain position would end in electoral disaster.

It informs our view that Britain’s lurch towards authoritarianism forms part of a ruling-class strategy to shut down dissent after the Corbyn and Brexit upsets showed the extent of popular anger at the system. 

This is a cross-party strategy, expressed by the Tories in ever-more repressive policing laws and bans on strike action, and in Labour through its bans on free debate and purges of its socialist membership. 

It rests on a tacit recognition by Britain’s rulers that the system cannot satisfy popular expectations either on living standards or hopes for a sustainable future for our planet. It will only worsen as the drive to great power conflict accelerates.

This situation presents new challenges for our paper. Western states are ever quicker to seek to censor and ban opposition voices. As in the first cold war against the Soviet Union, we are also likely to see attempts to delegitimise communist voices in trade unions too.

Our task is to keep going, and keep growing, despite all that. It rests as always on our readers and supporters: ensuring the Morning Star is at demonstrations, on picket lines, at union conferences and events: making the case for the daily paper of the left at every level of the labour movement to keep our roots healthy and our support base wide. 

If you like what you’ve seen of the Morning Star in recent weeks, help keep it shining — become a regular reader!