07.06.2000

Peoples Press Printing Society AGM 2000

Business as usual

A call for "a rejuvenated, revolutionary Morning Star newspaper", opened up to a "broader socialist and communist audience", gained less than 20 votes out of the 170 or so shareholders attending the annual general meeting of the Peoples Press Printing Society, the cooperative which owns the Morning Star. The AGM was convened in four venues - Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff and London - between June 2 and 4. A little over 100 attended the London meeting, with around two dozen at each of the other venues.

The motion, submitted by Mervyn Drage of Manchester, had initially been disallowed under a rule adopted, on the initiative of Mary Rosser and Ken Gill, at the 1994 AGM, limiting motions to a maximum of 200 words and allowing each shareholder to submit only one. However, on being challenged by comrade Drage, the rule turned out never to have been "registered" and consequently invalid - despite having been enforced during the intervening years.

Comrade Drage's left unity motion pointed out that despite its masthead slogan - "daily paper of the left" - in the Greater London Assembly elections the Star only reported Communist Party of Britain votes, although both the London Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Labour Party received substantially more. The Star "should not selectively report political affairs in favour of the CPB, and should not exclude other left and socialist parties". The Star's current editorial policy was "guided by the British road to socialism, which is the policy of the CPB". Opening the paper up to the rest of the left would increase its sales and influence, said the motion.

The Star was "perceived as the domain of the CPB", argued comrade Drage, moving the motion at the London meeting. This was the way to raise daily sales from the present 4,300 to the 6,000 needed to break even financially and the 17,000 which the management committee considers necessary to make a political impact.

The seconder in the London meeting, comrade Ivor Kenna, asked how the CPB could exercise its supposed 'leading role' in relation to the left when it knew so little about it, because the Star did not report it. The Euro election results never even got into the Star, he said.

Comrade Stan Keable spoke of the appalling ignorance about the left among those Star readers who are so loyal that they do not read other papers. Announcing next Saturday's London Socialist Alliance conference, he displayed the current Weekly Worker, pointing out that the LSA was going nationwide and would be fielding at least 50 candidates in the approaching general election. If the Morning Star were really the "daily paper of the left", carrying real discussion between the different viewpoints which exist, and campaigning for a united left electoral challenge, it would be a very powerful weapon.

Opposing the motion, Star editor John Haylett accepted that there was "room for criticism" of the Star's election coverage. Pointing out that members of a range of political organisations, not only CPB members, write in the Star, he saw the paper as "a forum for political discussion, not a forum for competition between political organisations putting forward their own particular stance". With this dull formula comrade Haylett outlaws the supposed 'sectarianism' of revolutionaries, but in fact imposes his own dead hand of censorship on the 'daily paper of the left'.

Comrade Haylett characterised the Star as "the daily paper of the broad left within the labour movement". It fought for trades unions to retain their affiliation to the Labour Party, not just to pay their dues, but to "play a role, to assert themselves" against Blair's attempts to transform Labour into a bourgeois party.

Far from promoting left unity, of course, this Labour-loyal formula ensures that revolutionaries who fight for a mass Communist Party to replace Labour as the natural party of the working class are kept out of the pages of the Star.

The AGM was embarrassed by, but overwhelmingly rejected, a rule change submitted by comrade Jack Dywien, and moved in London by veteran supporter comrade Len Aldis. Comrade Aldis was unable to withdraw the £5,000 he invested long ago in PPPS shares - "for legal reasons", he had been told. "Something must be done" to release money desperately needed by many elderly shareholders, "before some of us pass over to the other side, upstairs or downstairs", he begged. Seconder John Esterton, 91 years old and claiming to possess the oldest sharecard in the room, also pleaded his case for the £1,000 he had been refused last year. "How can the management committee members sleep easy in their beds?"

Under rule 6, loans have to be repaid before share capital, explained PPPS secretary Richard Maybin, who opposed deleting the rule because the banks and other creditors would immediately withdraw their loans.

Comrade Maybin told how the accounts for 1999 showed a deficit of £1,523,140, but this was a "historical debt" - in other words, not the fault of the present management committee - which had been disposed of by liquidating the Morning Star Cooperative Society Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the PPPS, and selling the Ardleigh Road building. The society now had "less liabilities, less assets and greater liquidity".

It was left to comrade Ivor Kenna, that inveterate watchdog of the Star's finances, to explain from the floor the true meaning of the accounts for shareholders. The balance sheet shows 1998 assets of £1,867,535. These are slashed to £121,210 for 1999. This balance is arrived at by adding the £536,325 held in shares to the £298,544 in loan capital (which must be repaid, or serviced with interest payments). But the negative "reserves and funds" - to the tune of £713,659! - must be deducted from this. As comrade Kenna so nicely put it, "The £536,000 share capital has disappeared. There is not a snowball's chance in hell of it ever being paid back."

Showing a breathtaking penchant for official optimism, comrade Maybin claimed the Star was "a better paper than ever before" (a view disputed from the floor by veteran John Esterton, who remembered much better times). Circulation had risen to an average of 4,300 for the first quarter of 2000 - surpassing at last the level before the 1998 strike - and reached 4,600 in April. The circulation figure of "about 7,000", repeated every year by Mary Rosser, was "untrue". The management committee had set target increases of 500 by December 31, 1,000 by the next AGM and 1,500 by the end of 2001. Every 500 extra sales brings £50,000 revenue, and the achievement of 6,000 daily sales would enable the Star to break even financially, he said.

It is worth noting that the bulk of the Star's £150,000 special appeal last year had been raised "not by trade unions, but by individuals" and by the 50 or so Readers and Supporters Groups" (Morning Star Newsletter May). The management committee, Ivan Beavis as circulation manager, and the network of active supporters groups, are achieving some results in raising circulation and are feeling a little over-optimistic about the survival prospects of the Morning Star at a time when Blair and co are removing all credibility from the CPB's 'socialism through Labour' project.