WHO FUNDS THE MILL

How many of you knew that Joshi Herrmann took investment from Sir Mark Thompson for his Manchester Mill?

The same Sir Mark Thompson who was Director-General of the BBC in December 2011, when Newsnight shelved its investigation into Jimmy Savile.

I make no allegation against Thompson. I simply state the record. The man who sat at the top of the BBC when it buried the biggest child abuse story in its history is today an investor in a publication that lectures the rest of us about who can be trusted.

That might also help make sense of why Herrmann and his oat milk latte gang are so obsessed with coming after me.

WHO FUNDS ME

I am 100% community funded. Herrmann has investors. I have you.

His empire now operates across six cities. Mine operates out of the corner of my living room, fighting for space against my daughter's Lego collection. Every word I publish is free. No paywalls. No seed rounds. No cap table of media grandees. Nothing between my work and the people it is written for. Whether anyone chooses to fund that work is entirely up to them.

Most of those who do give the equivalent of £3 a month, or £30 for the year. They are not paying to unlock content. There is nothing to unlock. They fund this work because they believe in it, because they have watched what it has cost me, and because they know I am doing something they cannot do themselves.

In the main, the majority who support me are pensioners and working class folk finding 75p a week to keep me going. That is my funding model. It is night and day from Herrmann and his Mill.

WHAT THEY CALL A CONSPIRACY THEORY

Someone should ask the Mill which part they believe is the conspiracy theory.

• The convictions of networks of men, overwhelmingly of Pakistani heritage, for the industrial scale gang rape of White working class girls?
• The reviews that confirmed children were failed for decades?
• Or the clan bloc vote those same towns' politicians depend on to hold their seats?

And someone should ask them why they have a problem with working class communities lawfully organising against the politicians who looked away, and removing them at the ballot box. Because that is all we have ever done. Organised. Campaigned. Voted.

HALF WAY THERE

10 weeks ago I put out a call for 2,000 paid subscribers to fund Recusant Nine. A team of freelancers to strengthen the campaign and take the fight to the man who is now Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Perhaps that call, more than anything I have written, explains the timing of the Mill's latest attack.

I had not stopped to think what Recusant Nine must look like from where they sit. Not one man they can smear and exhaust. An organisation. Citizen led, community funded, answerable to no investor. A platform with the capability to speak against the corrupt establishment and keep speaking. Of course it terrifies them.

So I am pleased to confirm we have secured 1,000 paid subscribers. We are half way towards our target, Except...

THE NEW TARGET

Thanks to Joshi Herrmann and his kind, I am raising our sights. The aim now is to grow Red Wall and the Rabble to 100,000 supporters by the end of the year, and to take what we built in Oldham into towns and cities across the country.

Today we stand at 14,423. The majority on free subscriptions. Which is fine. More than anything, we need numbers. The sort of numbers that terrifies them.

Sign up here, free or paid, and add your name to the message they cannot ignore.

The record is that The Mill took Sir Mark Thompson's money and called the cover up of the industrial scale gang rape of our children a dark conspiracy theory. My verdict is that they attack us because they fear what we are becoming. I intend to give them good reason.

Sign Up Here and become one of the 100,000.

If you are already signed up, please forward this to more people who will do the same as you have.

We have got this far because we believed that we could make a difference. Help be that difference.

Thank You

Raja Miah MBE