09.07.1998

Fast finish

Summer Offensive ’98

During the last few days before the celebration meal on Saturday July 11 to mark the end of the CPGB’s 15th Summer Offensive fundraising drive, money is coming in faster than ever. A late start has become a fast finish. As anticipated, £20,000 is proving to be a tough target, but this kind of money is a necessity, not a luxury, if we are to develop our organisation and its open, independent press. The Weekly Worker can only play its invaluable role in fighting to shape a new, unifying culture of openness if the money is found to sustain it. Who pays the piper calls the tune, and our independent communist finance is the guarantee of our freedom to express independent working class politics.

The results so far are very varied. Some comrades have doubled their original pledge, and then exceeded the new one. A number of Party sympathisers have shown their approval of our political work with handsome donations, some for the first time. A few comrades have barely begun, while most are struggling to complete or exceed their pledge by the time of the meal.

If you have made a pledge, the most important question is to complete it, even if personal circumstances dictate that this takes extra time. Completing your pledge should be regarded as a matter of honour - as a duty towards all the other comrades participating in the campaign, but not least as a duty to yourself. Shouldering personal responsibility for financing the Party and its paper is a key factor in making you into a real communist: a communist in practice, not just in words. For those readers who understand the worth of the Weekly Worker but have not yet contributed, perhaps it is time to recognise that this understanding carries responsibility with it.

A magnificent £2,551 raised in week nine, the best week so far, brings the total to £13,067 (65%). A few more substantial contributions would push us past our £20,000 target.

Stan Kelsey