09.08.2006
Last push
Howard Roak is tickled pink - or perhaps an even deeper crimson hue - that others on the left are launching 'Summer Offensives' of their own. Well, sort of
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so, as we draw to the close of this year's two-month Summer Offensive, our annual fundraising drive, comrades will be amused to learn that the Young Communist League - youth group of the Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain - has "launched plans for the largest programme of activity that [it] has undertaken in its recent history" - a veritable "national Summer Offensive", in fact.
An integral part of this 'SO' will be an "appeal" for £3,000 to help the YCL "entrench our position as Britain's largest revolutionary youth organisation", says general secretary Gawain Little (www.communist-party.org.uk).
A pretty modest target for Britain's premier "revolutionary youth organisation", you would have thought. But then, this organisation has a lot to be modest about. Essentially, the group's claim to represent continuity with the youth organisation of the revolutionary CPGB is as bogus as its parent body's own claimed lineage. It is the largely inactive youth section of a largely deceased 'official communist' rump whose meagre ranks are now riven with factional tension, political paralysis and decay. The YCL was "re-established" in May 1991 as the "culmination of three years of work" by the youth section of the CPB and announced its first priority as "greater public work" (Morning Star May 28 1991).
Have any of our readers even noticed its formal existence, let alone stumbled across its fresh-faced young cadre engaged in terribly r-r-revolutionary "public work" in the intervening decade and a half? Nope, me neither "¦
Opportunist politics breeds lazy, complacent practice - and this same fundamental truth will hold as true for the YCL's 'SO' as for its decrepit parent. As I noted a few weeks ago in relation to the CPB's own "financial appeal" (financial whimper, more like), an organisation that claims a membership of between 850 and 900 set itself a target of just £20,000. Or, put another way, just over 20 quid per (claimed) member. To donate to the youth organisation of an organisation that does not have a future is to throw good money after bad.
While the 'official communists' might try to nick the labels of some of our campaigns to give their own sloppy and lacklustre initiatives a little revolutionary élan, the contents of the two are fundamentally different.
Our Summer Offensives - with all their strengths and weaknesses - are staged annually to provide the sinews of war for this paper's fight for genuine communist unity, around a revolutionary programme. Not the tired and discredited reformist nostrums of the CPB's British road to socialism.
The first day of our annual school - the Communist University - is also the last day of the SO 2006. Thus, I confidently expect that a last-minute flurry of cheques will flutter down to take our total very close to the overall £30,000 target.
In the meantime, with just a few days to go, £2,380 has made its way into my sweaty little paws since last week's column, taking our running total to £19,788. Well done to comrade MM for his very useful £450, to the stalwarts who raised some £690 via party businesses in the past seven days and to those who worked hard on the August 5 Lebanon demo in London - their collective efforts added over £50 to our total via book and paper sales.
Thanks also to comrade TF for her £20 donation made online using PayPal. Despite the fact that we now have thousands of regular internet readers (last week there were 18,254 in all), this is still a very underused facility.
One last push, comrades!