19.06.1997

Summer Offensive reaches halfway mark

Party notes

Given the nature of the special seminar to mark the halfway stage of the Summer Offensive (see page 7), it was not really appropriate at this meeting either to take further pledges or to examine our performance so far in great detail. The internal bulletin will look at some specific features of this year’s campaign, but it is worthwhile reporting to comrades some facts, figures and general trends.

Pledges for the SO now stand at just over £15,000 towards our £25,000 target, with perhaps half of that guaranteed total raised. Generally, members this year have pledged on or around the minimum, reflecting both our comrades’ general standards of living - most of them are potless - and the restrictions on Party members’ activity at the moment. Again this year, comrades have been competent rather than inspired in their approach to the SO. I will continue to criticise this tendency to complacency, although I suppose generalised competence is at least better than a string of ignominious failures.

We have certainly partially addressed our continuing weakness to draw our periphery into the work of the Party, centrally the SO. Comrades will be pleased to hear that aside from pledges, through the special donations of Party supporters, sympathisers and the routine work of the Party during this period, another £1,500 or so has been raised and we are confident that this can be pushed to the region of £3,000 by the end of the campaign in July. This represents a step forward in overcoming the passivity of the sympathetic periphery of the Party, a nagging problem that has concerned us for a number of years now.

This success is only a qualified one, however. At the beginning of the SO we targeted some of our key areas of weakness and resolved to address them during the course of the campaign. Involving the periphery was certainly one of these and we should be pleased that something has been done about this. However, this ‘something’ has been accomplished largely through the work of a small team of comrades at Centre, not the efficient handling of contacts by all Party cells. With the partial exception of Scotland, most Party organisations have not really fought to draw comrades closer to the organisation through involvement in the SO. This reflects three continuing weaknesses of our organisation, I think.

One, poor delegation from Centre. Comrades have complained - correctly - that they often have not been kept informed of appeals for money in supporters’ bulletins that have been circulated by Centre. While these have had the pleasing effect of generating money and some enthusiasm from supporters, they have failed to involve the branches and thus done little to overcome our collective weakness. Poor delegation is an ongoing flaw in our organisation.

Second, having said that, it would be hard to claim that Centre comes under any real pressure from cells eager to be allocated contacts. There is what I have called a “pernicious general indifference” to new contacts around the Party, a negative feature shared equally at every level of our organisation. The second half of the SO should - belatedly - address this.

Third, given the period, the periphery itself is not generally characterised by an eagerness to throw themselves in at the deep end of Party work and commitment.

Comrades should now be thinking about upping their personal targets and about drawing others into the work. This SO - our l4th - looks set to be a relatively successful one. With extra effort and some grit, it could be one of our best.

Mark Fischer
national organiser