11.07.2007
Seven long days
Howard Roak has a few positive developments to report on this year's fundraising campaign
What a week it's been! Only seven days ago, I was looking forward to raising funds for the Summer Offensive at the Socialist Workers Party's annual Marxism school, hoping to "report some good news" in terms of selling books, papers and badges.
Things turned out rather differently! Our efforts to politically engage with the comrades were sadly sidetracked by the attack on our member, comrade Simon. So Communist Party activists quickly had to divert their energies to writing, publishing and distributing a leaflet, urging SWP members to condemn the cowardly attack by SWP national organiser Martin Smith.
Our stalls were certainly busier than in the last couple of years - but not because SWP members were keen to purchase the Weekly Worker, CPGB books and so on. The 2,000 leaflets we printed were certainly snapped up, even if some of them were chucked back at our stall. But news made the rounds quickly and we had plenty of Marxism-goers who specifically came to our stall to get one of those "shitty leaflets", as one woman put it.
For a couple of hours, we even had a group of very young SWP members positioning themselves as a kind of picket opposite our stall, shouting at potential punters not to come near and not to take our leaflet, which was "a pack of lies".
Actually, they turned out to be quite sweet and one of them even admitted in the end that comrade Smith's actions weren't all that clever.
Despite all this, the CPGB stall took just over £120 and we sold about 40 copies of the Weekly Worker.
Better news, though, came in the mail. Our Summer Offensive has received a much needed boost from long-standing supporter MM, who sent us a cheque for a whopping £360. Not only that, he also writes that this is "my first cheque for the campaign. I hope to contribute a further £500 next month. Good luck and thank you for producing our Weekly Worker every week." Well, thank you, comrade, for helping us to produce it by contributing so generously!
Then there is £50 gift from RB, who writes: "Another donation to help your evolution towards Kautskyism ..." I think we better take this as a humorous contribution to our campaign. Together with donations from PB (£10), another PB (£5), SB (£3), CC (£5), as well as a number of regular standing orders, this takes our running total to just under £6,000.
We're expecting a few more cheques this week from comrades who are paying for their tickets for the Communist University (August 11-18). Remember, every paper sold, every CU ticket purchased, every party book sold counts towards our important fundraising drive.
And don't forget you can contribute online, using our PayPal facility. Our web readership seems to have settled at just under 50,000 a week - over the last seven days we have had 47,389 visits - and we could do with a few more of them chipping in.
Party members certainly form the backbone of the campaign. But without the help of our readers (whether of the web or paper version), supporters and sympathisers, we will never raise the £25,000 we need to be able to keep producing the Weekly Worker - or the occasional emergency leaflet, for that matter!