09.10.1997

Fighting fund

Linda Addison reports on the Weekly Worker fighting fund

Maybe the naive among you imagined that one of our comrades had won the lottery or that we had amassed a vast profit during our campaign in Scotland. I doubt it. The sole reason for the absence of my weekly reminder has been my own absence from the Weekly Worker offices for a few weeks.

Despite that we are still in great need of our readers’ support. Our vigorous campaign in Scotland has been a major contributory factor bleeding centre dry. Though comrades in Scotland did do the vast bulk of the fundraising for the referendum campaign, Party centre has been starved, so to speak, of both personnel and ‘spare’ cash to ensure that the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination had the maximum effect in the short amount of time we had for the referendum campaign.

Fortunately fundraising continues to be exemplary in Scotland. Blair’s honeymoon is a contradictory phenomenon throughout the UK. Blair received a resounding mandate for his sop parliament in Scotland, for his attacks on the working class from the Labour Party conference, and continues to hold media and public opinion behind him.

Yet the working class instinctively knows that it is in the firing line. Though people still want to give New Labour a chance no one wants to be on the hard edge.

Readers will no doubt be following the debates that are taking place as a result of that campaign in Scotland and its aftermath.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all comrades that helped to make the campaign a success. Of course if you weren’t able to get involved, you could still provide us with much needed financial support to enable us to make plans for our future tasks. In the course of the next month we will be beginning discussion on our perspectives for 1998.

Again, as subscribers will have read, the Weekly Worker sees the next period as opening up extraordinary political developments. New Labour’s emerging project to reconstitute the UK state and stabilise its rule under the hegemony of its new liberalism is not something communists should take lightly.

The reforging of communist organisation has always been central to the agenda of this paper, as readers and supporters will know. Unfortunately much of the left is still caught in its old routine and, having welcomed New Labour’s victory, has been unable to assess its new political project.

The New Labour government will provide the backdrop for our perspectives discussions which must again focus on our organisation, rapprochement and the opportunities for communist propaganda under Blair’s new Britain.

Much depends on the support of our readership, so rush cheques to the CPGB now. Why not make out a standing order to the Weekly Worker? Write to us now for a form. Thanks this week to VD and TR.

Linda Addison