11.07.2014

We're off!

Our annual Summer Offensive is off on the right foot, reports Mark Fischer

We are off at a cracking pace in this year’s Summer Offensive, the annual fundraising drive of the Communist Party. As we go to press, the money in hand is an impressive £5,564 - something like £3k ahead of where we were at a comparable stage last year. Particular thanks go to DG for his £500 in cash, handed in on the very first day of the campaign (June 28), to the comrades responsible for £100 in badges sales and the numerous smaller contributions from the likes of FK (£20), SM (£20), GD (£25) and NW (£20).

This is our 29th Summer Offensive - which makes those of us who have participated in all of them feel particularly decrepit. Our first campaign in 1985 was inspired above all by the miners’ Great Strike. This demanded that every political trend worth its salt upped its game, politically and organisationally. Few passed the test. Indeed, the miners’ fight exposed everything that was hollow and unserious in the movement and directly brought about the demise of some groups (for example, the weird, but relatively substantial organisation of Gerry Healy, Vanessa Redgrave and co - the laughably misnamed Workers Revolutionary Party - imploded soon after the strike).

Apart from the faction around The Leninist (the forerunner of today’s Weekly Worker), other trends in the CPGB proved themselves to be useless to the struggle - although, to be fair, the Stalinite left of the party was supportive of the miners’ fight, in its own myopic, left-Labour reformist way, while the rightwing Eurocommunists were poison and more or less explicitly opposed to the ‘macho’ struggle.

The Leninist transformed itself from a quarterly theoretical journal (actually, more like three times a year, once we’d agonised over each issue) into a monthly newspaper that, by the end of the strike, had won itself a not inconsiderable readership amongst an important layer of the very best militants of the National Union of Mineworkers. So in 1985, we needed to consolidate these advances and push ahead - and, for that, cash was vital.

Other sources of inspiration were our comrades from Turkey around the İşçinin Sesi newspaper that organised a hugely impressive annual campaign, but also the funding initiatives of the Bolsheviks and newspapers edited by Marx. So, the Summer Offensive was born - and (we are proud to say in hindsight) actually caused a small split in our ranks at the moment of its inception.

Thus, the antecedents of today’s SO stretch back much further than 1985. It is a campaign we are immensely proud of and - given the continuing decay of so much of the left that surrounds us - it is extremely encouraging that it has got off to such good start. Members and closer supporters of the party have so far pledged an impressive £22,850. However, to hit our target of £30k by August 23 - the last day of our annual school, Communist University - we need sympathisers, regular readers and all those who value the role of this paper and its ‘Augean stables’ project in our movement to help us over the finishing line.

No donation is too small, comrades. Nor, it goes without saying, too large!

Mark Fischer