21.12.1995

Rapprochement paper

Readers of the Weekly Worker will be pleased to know that plans for an expanded paper are now well advanced. We are using this special Christmas issue as a pilot for a regular eight-pager early in the New Year. Therefore your comments and contributions will be very welcome.

Regular readers will know that our paper both as a one-page broadsheet and a four-pager imposed restrictions on space which became increasingly painful. The Weekly Worker has built on the gains of our theoretical journal The Leninist and the more agitational Daily Worker of 1992-93. It has taken a lead in the tentative beginnings of the rapprochement process, both with other organisations and with movements of the class itself.

The strength of the working class is in its organisation. To make ourselves into a ruling class we must struggle to come to the truth about the whole of life. About economic struggle, about democracy, Party programme, revolution and reform, as well as art, science and philosophy.

The paper therefore must allow these debates to be fought out in print. That is why we believe, as Lenin wrote in What is to be done, that a national newspaper is so important. All readers must become journalists for the paper. In that way all struggles are reflected in the paper, rather than in local leaflets, so the lessons of these struggles teach the whole class, not just the few involved. This is the way to ‘Unite the struggles’, as we printed on our Daily Worker masthead during the 1992-3 miners’ dispute.

That is why it was so important for us to publish Scargill’s proposed constitution for the SLP in full. To make it the property of the whole class, not just those who were lucky enough to be given a copy.

And that is why we think it is vital to publish openly all the debates taking place in left and workers’ organisations, including of course our own. The future of the working class is not a private matter.

In order that our paper is able to begin to play this role we know it must expand as quickly as possible. An eight-pager is the first step. Already four pages is clearly inadequate to take debate, and therefore rapprochement, forward with the Revolutionary Democratic Group, the Republican Worker Tendency and Open Polemic and the many other organisations which have attended our meetings or contributed to the paper. Four pages is clearly inadequate to take rapprochement forward around a potential SLP.

So these are the central roles we think our paper should play - to agitate, educate and organise. It has many different audiences, tasks and writers. That is why we think the design and style of the paper are so important to incorporate, achieve and develop all these tasks.

The major elements of the paper are firstly debate or features. These are carried at the back of the paper and allow other organisations or individuals or factions in our organisation to express their views and to have them argued through. We also have polemic columns, again for factions or individuals such as the Bob Smith of ‘For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee’ column.

Like debate and viewpoints, all articles are signed. This is to enable debate to be carried on all questions. Articles represent an individuals view, but not an isolated one - they are the result of collective discussion, which is the strength of communist organisation. Each week the Provisional Central Committee presents a political report which is debated at seminars in London and in branch meetings where we can. It is of course open to debate to anyone in the paper. Signed articles should present the highest analysis we can as a result of all the history of open debate and discussion in our organisation. Resolutions, PCC statements, individual viewpoints should be distinguished as such. The front page addresses the major issue that week and is edited by myself.

The Party Notes column is a long overdue addition to the paper. Written by the national organiser, it specifically addresses key Party organisational and political questions.

All this is aimed at achieving the highest clarity on all questions, to mould a world view that can take the working class to a ruling class and as such arm it with the programme and science necessary to liberate all of humanity.

And down to the nitty gritty. The success of the paper demands the input of all readers. We need everyone to become journalists and ambassadors for the paper - selling it and drawing others into the debates - and of course financers for the paper. The ability of our paper to function independently depends on it being financed by the hard work and commitment of all its supporters.

Send your comments in over Christmas, with a cheque, so we can be in a position to move to an eight-pager as early as possible in the New Year.

Lee-Anne Bates
editor