About Us – Who We Are

The Word newspaper first started in October of 2015 when some of us in Greater Manchester realised that to achieve a Labour Government that delivers a left wing agenda we needed a balanced media. We managed to print the first edition of The Word in July of 2016. This was crowdfunded and consists of the following ideals.

That we produce a newspaper which is a popular left of centre tabloid daily that is available in shops and is a readable and enjoyable by those of any political persuasion. That the prime function of the newspaper is to inform and to be unafraid of telling the truth.

There are many other places where political polemics and long boring diatribes are available and we who produce the Word already know the basics otherwise we would not been here.

We eventually want to work towards the goal of a share led newspaper where everyone who has contributed financially (from a nominal amount of £1 upwards) has an equal share in the voting on the paper’s direction. That these shares can never been inherited, bought, sold or traded and will be limited to 500,000.

The reason for this limit is to keep it to a left wing supporting paper and not allow it to ever become like the travesty of the Guardian. We want the project to be cooperative and democratic. Even the name, THE WORD, was chosen by an extensive debate and vote.

So far we have run the paper by sales, and crowd funder donations. We originally intended not to pay anyone for their work but have been paying a graphic designer. We also agreed at the outset that if we did get to the stage of needing to pay people all would receive equal pay for equal work no matter what their position on the project. We are still hopeful that eventually, as in the original idea, a small bit of work by a large number of people will see us through.

We have been attacked on several fronts since our inception. The deliberate mishandling of the distribution of the hard copy of the paper by the Smiths/Menzies cartel is a prime example. Our website was also destroyed by someone in the group who pretended to be a volunteer. Also twice in malicious attacks. This is the third version of it you are now looking at.

We have also been trolled on social media and otherwise by what can only be described by people not on our side. This has also happened in the real world and resulted in a lot of personal pain Most of it since we announced we would expose some hitherto hidden cover ups (if you have all been following the group you will know what I mean.

The witch hunt to remove left wingers from the Labour party has also left us with many of our comrades expelled and suspended. We feel that all these attempts to sabotage us must mean we are doing something right.

As well as this we seem to have a real problem with people not receiving the PDF version of the paper. As you will all realise once the paper is put together and designed it costs next to nothing to send out these PDF versions.

The Thatcher revulsion still seems to have left people with the idea of self and money and power as the only goals. The world has to be different. We need to learn to cooperate again with each other. It is easy to give ideas and criticism. Now is the time to help by actually working with us.

If you have a news story or want to contribute articles please contact us

Kind Regards

As William Shakespeare said “fear no more the heat of the sun.”