26.07.2006

Initiative lacking

Howard Roak reports on the latest development in the party's fundraising drive

Meeting last weekend, the leaders of our organisation took the decision to extend this year's Summer Offensive, our annual fundraising drive, by two weeks to the start of the Communist University on August 12. Undoubtedly, this is the correct decision. For instance, this week has seen £2,141 come in to swell the overall total to £13, 956.95. In the five days until the August 1, I'm sure we will have a flurry that will take us over halfway towards our £30k target. But this is not good enough, clearly.

Stretching the SO by a fortnight should provide a significant boost to the final total. As I have reported in previous columns, this year's SO has been notable for the way that a number of party businesses have perked up considerably during this campaign and that considerable amounts of money are starting to be generated - £850 this week alone, with much more to come later on.

In its way, this has actually been one of the problems of the campaign. It has meant that - given the slow pace of the fundraising of the organisation in general - some comrades have effectively been pushed towards becoming party business people. Meanwhile, there has been very little in the way of political initiative and, in truth, the SO has probably acted to fragment the party a little rather than increase its political cohesion over this two-month period.

We will be discussing the SO at more length at the CPGB's next aggregate in September and we will also feature some discussion of it in the pages of the Weekly Worker. In the meantime, comrades and readers are urged to get the cash in the post. The two-week extension of the campaign is hardly an excuse to slacken off - we need a real effort from comrades to give this year's SO a reasonable final total!

And that includes you readers out in cyberspace. Last week we had 16,160 hits, but not a single SO donation.