17.11.2011

Star's financial crisis

Robbie Rix thinks it wholly undesirable that the paper should depend on an exploitative elite

Out of the blue Morning Star editor Bill Benfield has announced to the world that there are “Six weeks left to save the Star”. He warned earlier this week: “if you do not respond, and soon, there may well not be a paper to support” (November 15).

Comrade Benfield explained that for the last three years the Star has been failing by an average of £3,000 to raise its monthly £16,000 fighting fund target, which has produced “a shortfall of over £100,000”. As a result “the paper is once again on the brink of financial meltdown” and requires “an additional £50,000 before Christmas - and the sooner the better - or our paper will not survive”. In fact, although “we can pay the wages this week”, there is “no certainty about next week”.

Things are really serious then. Of course, unlike the Weekly Worker, the Star employs a team of full-time workers - our journalists, editorial, design and distribution comrades are all unpaid volunteers. It is true that the Star has “formal support ... from a solid majority of the organised trade union movement” (not to mention “an enthusiastic and successful readers and supporters group within parliament”). But its outgoings are vastly greater than the Weekly Worker’s and, to add to its woes, it recently lost its “one reliable commercial advertising stream” (ironically from a firm of “insolvency practitioners”) worth £45,000 a year.

It goes without saying that our paper has profound political differences with the Morning Star. Because the Star is reliant on “the organised trade union movement” - in reality the bureaucracy - its line on industrial questions reflects very closely, uncritically in fact, that of the union leaders (of both left and right). This does not result in a healthy, independent working class position, since the bureaucracy has a material interest in maintaining its intermediate role between labour and capital.

It is also a well known fact that the Star’s political line, particularly on international matters, is not determined solely by the interests of the proletariat. It has always had to reflect the needs of its international paymasters - the millions in “Moscow gold” were its reward in the past. Today, of course, the USSR no longer exists, but many strongly suspect that there is close connection between the paper’s obsequious reporting of “Chinese socialism” and the visits to Beijing of Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths and other senior CPB figures.

But we have no reason to doubt the severity of its financial crisis. It is, though, wholly undesirable that the paper should depend on an exploitative elite whose interests are inimicable to those of the international proletariat. Nevertheless, we want this thoroughly compromised voice to survive and hope it raises the extra cash it needs. Opportunist ideas are best fought in the open through the clash of different opinions.

As for the Weekly Worker, our funds come entirely from our readers and supporters. We need £1,250 every month (although in November I have raised this target by £100 to make up for the shortfall in October) and I expect our readers will come up with the goods, as they usually do.

But we are lagging behind. While, rest assured, we are not threatened with closure, we have received only £534 so far, with over half the month gone. We had 18,302 online readers this week, but only one made a donation via our website (thank you, KM). We also received a handy £50 in the post from FG, together with £10 from AC. Finally there was a total of £73 in standing orders. Thanks to all of you.