Scottish Communists

Never before has the Morning Star launched a more urgent appeal. Never before has the response been so overwhelming.

It was at a sombre November 15 meeting of the paper's business committee that editor Bill Benfield distributed a document that would become crucial to our survival.

Weeks of alarm about a worsening cash flow crunch had finally come to a head. Something drastic had to be done.

Within hours the full scale of the immediate financial crisis had been made public in the next day's edition. Bill's appeal article set out in stark terms the list of challenges that our £1.4 million-a-year operation faces. Financially crippling distribution problems created by our reliance on road, a Fighting Fund shortfall running into the thousands, and an effective advertising boycott.

The cash flow problem was so serious this time that Bill set a six-week expiry date for the paper after 82 years ploughing an often lonely furrow as a daily dose of political sanity. Our aim was to raise £50,000 on top of the £25,000 remaining Fund shortfall to year's end - a whopping £75,000 in all.

In truth in those first hours few believed that we could meet this massive Lifeline Appeal target in time for such a cruel deadline.

On that evening William Rust House fell silent as the last of the workers headed out into the darkness full of fear about the paper's future.

Little did they know that the scene had been set for one of the most triumphant chapters in our daily miracle's history.

Within hours you readers and supporters far and wide, across the world, had responded. And you responded in a way that left us speechless.

Via Twitter and Facebook, through union networks and the Communist Party, on the streets and in workplaces, word of the appeal spread.

A trickle became a torrent. And the torrent didn't stop for days. At times it left us struggling to keep up. Volunteers had to be drafted in to cope with the avalanche of mail and phones that rang red hot.

And on Friday November 25 - just over a week later - you had enabled us to declare our mission impossible a mission accomplished. An amazing £75,000 had already arrived.

But you didn't stop there.

Bill's upbeat thank you article that day stood in stark contrast to the original appeal, but it nevertheless sounded an important note of caution. Our immediate crisis had been averted, but the underlying problems would not go away.

So it was that the appeal continued in order to give us a fighting chance of breaking free of the chains that bind us.

The aim is clear - a distribution deal that will finally allow us to reach all corners of the land on the day of publication every day.

Our Achilles heel, which regularly flares, wipes out distribution to swathes of Britain - at the same time snuffing out the chances of winning new readers via big circulation drives. To grow to stability we must find a cure.

But that cure doesn't come cheap. The price tag of a print and distribution deal is approaching an extra £140,000 a year. And that on top of underlying problems that already exist.

So the fundraising went on in order to give us a fighting chance.

Today is the last day of this emergency appeal. But in the months to come we will need you to continue to contribute not just financially but in practical ways in your area and online to help us win our cat and mouse game to survive, continue and grow.

As Bill wrote last month, our ambitions are not for the paper, they're for the working class who deserve the best we can give them.

So happy new year to you all - and return to us in January prepared to join our own Olympic challenge in 2012.