Morning Star circulation manager IVAN BEAVIS explains how we can all help take our favourite paper to the next level.

BEING the circulation manager for the Morning Star is an incredibly frustrating experience. Independent research and the frequent warm words for us right across the spectrum of progressive politics tell me that there is a much bigger market for our paper than current sales suggest, but making this a reality is really tough.

I am aware also of your frustration at the all-too-frequent occasions when the Morning Star fails to turn up at your favourite shop. These failures are almost entirely due to the difficulties that we face in getting the paper from the printers to all over the country using the ailing British road network.

There are so many links in the distribution chain that it is inevitable that road accidents, traffic jams, roadworks and bad weather will conspire each day to bring about a failure to get your favourite paper to the shops on time somewhere or other.

You can blame the aged Rupert Murdoch for this as, when he was smashing up the print unions at Wapping, he was also destroying the egalitarian rail distribution network for newspapers that meant that all papers were delivered together at the same time to the same places.

That, together with the destruction of a state rail network, has prevented me from considering this option in trying to overcome our difficulties. All power therefore to the immediate return of the railways to public ownership.

Another difficulty for your paper is the monopoly of newspaper wholesaling into three multinational companies - Smiths News, Menzies and Dawsons. This concentration of power, together with the ruthless staff cuts being implemented in this part of the trade, has seen the centralisation of systems that allocate newspapers to retailers. I have lost that close local relationship in the various areas of Britain that enabled my department to make the Morning Star much more widely available than before.

It is all done by computer these days and continuing availability is governed by actual sales. If it ain't bought in a shop one week, it ain't there next week and that is why so many of you question why the paper is not available where you have seen it in the past.

Well, so what, you cry. This is the Morning Star we are talking about! We cock a snook at the problems caused by the running dogs of capitalism. We have survived for 78 years, so, Ivan, tell us what to do. OK. We need to double our circulation. Impossible, they tell me - rubbish, I say! If every daily reader now was to convince one other person to buy the paper every day, our circulation would double overnight.

So I want each and every one of you to approach a colleague and seek to persuade them to start taking their own copy every day. Where do I buy it, comrade? The answer is that any retailer that sells newspapers can get you a copy. The problem is that they are not convinced that anyone will buy it unless you ask for it. So, when you have persuaded that closet revolutionary next to you to buy it, get them to hand in the tear-off slip at the end of this piece to their favourite newsagent to get a copy of the Morning Star every day.

Having problems? Get on to me, tell me where you want it and the combined might of the circulation department will descend on any retailer causing trouble to ensure that your paper is there when you want it. Morning Star readers do not sit about. They are at meetings, they are at trade union branches and a lot of them are making trouble for the latest new Labour twaddlespeak project. So, take a few Stars to flog at any communal gathering. We can arrange special delivery to you for the bigger ones and shops love it when you order extra copies. Or, if you see a Star on the shelves on your way to your latest subversive activity, buy it to sell on to that comrade that you have been meaning to persuade to get the paper regularly.

In this way, the existence of our paper is advertised far and wide so that, when we launch a drive to widen the availability of the Morning Star, people who know about us will buy it. Many trade unions are already doing their bit, but much more can be done. The redoubtable RMT buys a copy for every delegate to every gathering that they have. Unite is investing heavily in making the paper available in its offices and on every training course. ASLEF staff collect regularly for our Fighting Fund and Unite T&G has had a policy of outright support for the Morning Star for 40 years or more. UNISON and the rest place adverts regularly in the paper, which gives us some financial stability.

But what about your union, at every level? Can it buy bulk copies or can you make the paper available at every meeting? Can we build support for the paper via a policy motion? Talk to me about what you think can be done and, by Lenin, we will do it!

As you know, the Star has opened its pages to the whole spectrum of the left and progressive movement. We have got the CPB, Respect, the Greens and the left of the Labour Party - it exists - and almost every shade of opinion from those in struggle in our pages each and every day. What I want to see from all of these organisations is some commitment from them to encourage their activists and supporters to buy the Morning Star regularly.

I yearn for the day when I do not get requests from people to send them a copy of the paper that they are in because they are already buying the only daily paper that supports their cause. The survival of the Morning Star is essential in the struggle for socialism. No other paper fulfils our role.

If you have read the disgraceful attack on Cuba carried recently in the Guardian, you will know that that paper cares nothing for the emancipation of humanity.

Look at the crude smear campaign against Ken Livingstone in the rest of the media and you will appreciate that we need a paper that cares nothing for vested interest but wants to change the world. Buy it and we survive. Tell me it is lovely but do nothing and we go under.

Comrades, it is up to us. I know you will not let me down!