GEORGE TAPP was a construction site electrician in north-west England, except that for most of his working life he was blacklisted for his trade union activities.

He found work mainly at small building sites run by local firms who were not part of the big employers’ notorious blacklisting system, organised first through the Economic League and then its successor body the Consulting Association. 

The association collected information on construction trade-union activists and, in return for a fee, supplied the workers’ names to building employers, who then blacklisted them. 

Workers could be blacklisted simply for raising issues of health and safety on construction sites.

The association’s activities were exposed following a raid on its offices by government officials. A campaign still continues to win compensation for thousands of victimised workers.

Tapp’s working life came to an end when he was deliberately run down by a car driver while handing out anti-blacklisting leaflets outside a construction site in Manchester. His legs were buckled backwards at the knee by the front of the car.

The blacklisting scandal, and Tapp’s own shocking experience, were reported and exposed in the Morning Star.

Tapp is still politically active in Manchester, along with his wife Ann.

He told us: “I read the Morning Star because it is the only national daily newspaper independent of the capitalist system. It tells the truth.

“What paper could have a better slogan than ‘for peace and socialism.’

“It reports stories worldwide, as well as locally.”

Paul Kelly is a mate of Tapp’s, and is also a regular reader.

He was a coalminer at Agecroft colliery in Lancashire, a modern pit which closed in 1991 as the Tories butchered Britain’s coalmining industry, and instead imported millions of tonnes of coal from countries which included Columbia, where child labour is still used to mine coal.

Throughout the year-long miners’ strike against pit closures in 1984-5 Kelly was loyal to his union, the National Union of Mineworkers, and to his principles, picketing his pit daily.

Today he runs the Irwell Valley Mining Project, an initiative to pass on the culture and history of the north-west’s coalmining industry to new generations.

Kelly told us: “My uncle Harold introduced me to the Star.

“He was a miner and worked with Jim Allen, the socialist playwright at Bradford colliery [in Lancashire]. Reading the paper gave me the best education in socialist politics.

“The people’s paper brightly shines and exposes the wretchedness of the capitalist system. I have read the paper avidly since the 1960s. 

“When I have finished with my copy I pass it on to a young person in the street, on the bus, or place it in the local library.”

Chris Butler is a retired general practitioner. He is an active trade unionist. He was national co-ordinator of the Medical Practitioners’ Union. 

Today he is a member of Unite Community, the section of general union Unite for people not in traditional workplaces such as factories or offices.

He says: “The disastrous defeat of Labour in the general election showed us the power of the right-wing press in forming opinion.

“They grossly distorted the facts and ran a devastating character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn. They pulled no punches.

“Middle-class Labour supporters will read the liberal Guardian which was no friend of a Corbyn-led Labour government. 

“The working class on which Labour depends does not read the Guardian. With any luck they will read the Daily Mirror but more likely the Sun.

“The only paper which supports and reports labour, peace and socialism is the Morning Star. Unless we can persuade people to read the Morning Star the same will happen again in subsequent elections. This must be a priority. We need the labour and trade union movement to get fully behind the Morning Star. Unless we do we are doomed to years more of right-wing reactionary governments.”

Morning Star support crosses generations.

Sixteen-year-old Isaac Hughes-Dennis, a gifted musician and song-writer in Yorkshire, has performed at Morning Star fundraising concerts and at trade union events.

“It’s the only truthful and reliable voice in the national daily press,” he says.

The Morning Star is also dependent on its local Readers’ and Supporters’ Groups (RSGs).

There are more than 40 of them, spread across the UK. From Belfast to Birmingham, Newcastle to Norfolk, Dumfries to Devon, Lanarkshire to Leeds, groups of Morning Star readers support and promote the paper.

The groups operate independently and their methods vary. There are regular street sales and fundraising activities such as benefit concerts and stalls at labour, trade-union and peace-movement events.

One supporter in Sheffield, Bryan Munsey, creates beautiful, wood-turned bowls and lamps on his lathe, selling them to raise funds for the paper.

At this time of year support groups are also organising Burns Night suppers in celebration of the radical Scottish poet and song-writer Robbie Burns.

Greater Manchester RSG will be staging one such event in Stockport’s Labour Club on January 25, complete with piper, haggis, neeps and tatties.

There are plans for extra fundraising events during the rest of this year, with a target of £90,000 to mark our paper’s 90th anniversary of its founding in 1930 as the Daily Worker.

The groups’ work is vital to keep alive the only socialist, daily, national voice of the labour and trade-union movement in Britain.