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Goodbye Fish Island, hello Ruskin House

The Star's CALVIN TUCKER writes on the paper's office move from East to South London

PASTED onto one of the tatty brick buildings earmarked by developers for demolition, a pink and black poster provides a witty social commentary on the gentrification of Fish Island: “It’s out with the hippies – in with the yuppies.”

Bordered by the River Lea, the Hertford Union Canal and the A12, the hidden hipster “island” in London’s Hackney Wick has for the last 19 years also been home to the Morning Star.

Our staff may hold divergent views on artisanal coffee, craft beer and coiffured Victorian beards, but most would agree that our time on Fish Island has been nothing if not interesting.

Over the years, we’ve thrown open the doors of William Rust House to an eclectic mix of personalities, including Jeremy Corbyn, Blade Nzimande of the South African Communist Party, Rene Gonzalez of the Cuban 5, and… cough… Michael Portillo!

But this Sunday, we’ll be waving goodbye to the gleaming new million-pound apartments and the last of the besieged hipsters and setting sail for the sunny uplands of “Sarf London.”

Students of labour movement history will be pleased to know that we’ll be taking with us Harry Pollitt’s desk, the name of our old building, and of course our class politics.

Our new home will be Ruskin House in Croydon. Opened in 1967 by the then Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, fittingly it has been the base for many local trade union and campaigning organisations.

With the option of home working now available to all our staff, we are confident that the smaller office space will help put the paper on a more stable financial footing without compromising the quality of our journalism.

For our loyal readers, nothing will change except our postal address. Our website, emails, land lines and mobiles remain the same.

You can rest assured that we will, as always, be alongside you in the struggle for peace and socialism, reporting the news the capitalist papers decline to print.

Calvin Tucker is the Morning Star’s campaigns manager.

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