11.08.2019

Concentric circles

Update on the CPGB's Summer Offensive for 2019

At the start of this year’s Summer Offensive, our annual fundraising drive, we put together a small team of CPGB comrades. Each was allocated a list of contacts - people we know who either sympathise with our party’s programmatic project to varying degrees or at least appreciate the democratic, genuinely partyist culture that informs the work of our group and for which we campaign across the sect-ridden left.

This contact work has produced good results and the comrades who have undertaken these detailed tasks are to be congratulated for the results. There has been a reasonably steady flow of small to medium-sized donations generated by their work on the phone and keyboard. Of course, members and close supporters have stumped up the lion’s share of our total so far. However, we greatly appreciate these contributions from comrades on our more distant periphery. Not only do they make a quantifiable difference to our fight to achieve the ambitious target we have set ourselves (a minimum of £30k by August 24 - the final day of our 2019 Communist University): they are a material manifestation of the political influence and impact of our work. Given where they come from, we regard these more modest donations as political gold.

In the coming days, direct appeals will be sent out to this sympathising periphery of comrades to donate if they haven’t already; or to squeeze a little extra out of the bank account, even if they have stumped up already. We are asking a little more than that, however …

We are in sporadic contact with a relatively large number of sympathising comrades - many of whom we have never actually met! They read our material, sympathise with aspects of our work, contribute to our fund drives, etc. We also know that these comrades are often in turn engaging politically with hundreds more in concentric circles of political discussion, comradeship and common work - sometimes in political organisations of one sort or another; often comrades with a past in the organised left.

So we will soon be prompting you once more for a donation to this year’s CPGB Summer Offensive. But, more than that, if you know of comrades who find our work of value on today’s politically bewildered left, why don’t you ask them for a donation on our behalf? You could be pleasantly surprised by the response!

As I have reported in previous updates, the SO moved along at a cracking pace from its launch on June 15 and the week just gone has been no exception. There were donations from DI, TM, SM, PM and YI amongst others. PM - already a big donor - contributed another £250, while a welcome £50 cheque from long-time supporter GD helped bump the total in the right direction.

In all, we clawed in £1,524 of new money, easily reaching what I dubbed last week “that significant £20k landmark”.

The sum raised so far now stands at £20,735, comrades! Let’s keep up that pace!

Cheques: Make payable to CPGB and send to: BCM Box 928,
London WC1N 3XX.

PayPal: Go to the CPGB website: www.cpgb.org.uk.

Bank transfer: Pay ‘CPGB’
sort code 08-92-99, account 65109991.