14.02.2008

Looking good

Partisans for the paper. Mary Godwin reports on the CPGB's February aggregate meeting

At the February 9 aggregate of CPGB members, comrade Peter Manson reported on the steps taken by the Provisional Central Committee in response to the emergency situation created by the irretrievable breakdown of the party’s Komori print machine. After a short debate, members unanimously voted to endorse the decisions taken by the PCC.

The party is now paying commercial printers to produce the Weekly Worker, which costs about £500 per month more than printing it ourselves. To cover this increase, we are in the midst of a drive to make up the monthly shortfall with extra standing orders.

Comrade Manson, editor of the Weekly Worker, reported that over £150 per month has already been raised in the form of new or increased standing orders - before we had begun to methodically approach readers and our members, supporters and sympathisers. We are endeavouring to secure a printing contract which will be both affordable and reliable. After six months the situation will be reviewed and the long-term way forward for the paper decided.

Comrade Manson spoke about the special nature of the Weekly Worker, its aims and methods. The Weekly Worker fights for the unity of the left on a principled basis, unlike rival publications, which combine claims that their own organisation alone is ‘the party’ along with the advocacy of halfway houses of one kind or another.

The Weekly Worker is also open and honest. Articles must be accurate with no unsupported allegations - unlike Socialist Worker, for example, which claimed there was no crisis in Respect, even as it was about to split, and did not tell its readers that the Socialist Workers Party’s version of Respect does not have the right to use the name in elections. The Weekly Worker abjures spin, official optimism and what amounts to barefaced lies. Thirdly, unlike the economistic left, the Weekly Worker emphasises democracy, in relation to both the state and our own working class organisations.

Our paper also differs from The Socialist and Socialist Worker in its target audience - leftwing political activists. Other papers are written as if aimed at a mass audience, and are dumbed down because of that. But in fact very few ‘ordinary workers’ read them.

The Weekly Worker aims to empower the most advanced section of the class in its struggle for the unity of Marxists. Comrade Manson said that probably only a minority of the total readership share this aim. Most read the paper for the information and analysis it contains about the left. Many of them were, and often still are, hostile to the CPGB, but comrade Manson was encouraged that this seems to be changing. A growing proportion are sympathetic: they appreciate the Weekly Worker as a vehicle for debate, clarification and unity. Some of these comrades have already responded to the financial appeal by taking out standing orders or making extra donations.

Comrade Manson concluded by saying he was confident that we would reach our £500 target.

A short debate followed his report. Comrade John Bridge admitted that being forced to give up our own printing press was a setback, but it was also an opportunity to improve the paper’s quality and appearance. With the expected success of our £500 financial appeal it would therefore be a case of one step back, but two steps forward.

Paper and web

After the unanimous vote to endorse the PCC actions to deal with the immediate crisis, comrade Mark Fischer opened up a related discussion, which is intended to continue over the next period, about the long-term future of the Weekly Worker and the CPGB website.

The design of the website has remained fundamentally unchanged for about a decade, and needs a better appearance. The content should be expanded and the links rationalised. Educational and archive material must be dramatically improved. This will take a lot of work. More comrades should be trained to update the content, and new elements should be added, such as voice files and podcasts. It should be tied in more closely to the paper, to act as a feeder resource, to promote the Weekly Worker and encourage readers to contribute to it.

On the question of future format and production of the paper itself, a number of suggestions have been made by comrades since the discussion at the previous aggregate (reported in Weekly Worker December 13 2007). All of these must be carefully evaluated for feasibility, cost, advantages and drawbacks before any final decision is made. Comrade Fischer outlined some of these options. Two that would be correctly seen as unwelcome retreats are switching to a fortnightly publication or the abandonment of a printed copy altogether and publishing electronically only.

The possibility of switching to an A4-sized publication with a colour front cover was raised by comrade Fischer, and discussed at length in the debate following his opening, although no decision for or against can be made until a careful investigation of the advantages and disadvantages of such a momentous step has taken place. Comrade Fischer declared himself in favour of it, and comrade Tina Becker circulated some A4-sized versions she had compiled of recent issues of the paper with colour front covers. She stated that reducing the size of the paper would result in considerable savings after the initial outlay for a good-quality digital printer, which could be housed in our office and operated by relatively unskilled comrades. It could also be used to produce leaflets and other materials.

Does the Weekly Worker really need to look like the Socialist Worker or The Socialist? How would a magazine-type publication go down on events such as demonstrations? More fundamentally, there is a close relationship between form and content and that would inevitably mean that changing to A4 would alter the nature of the Weekly Worker.

It was agreed by all comrades that a period of discussion and investigation of the options is required. The student comrades present, led by Ben Lewis, agreed with a suggestion that the next issue of Communist Student could be produced in A4 format as an experiment.

Other debates

After lunch comrade Mike Macnair introduced a discussion on communist work among students. He gave a brief outline of the attitude to student work of the revolutionary left in the post-war period, ranging from theories of the ‘red university’ to the dubbing of all students as petty bourgeois and the consequent ‘turn to industry’.

As regards the political activity of student unions, what we most often see there is actually little more than a mimicry of labour movement bureaucracy, but funded by the state. Those who are active in student union politics are in many cases merely engaged in preparing themselves for a career as party or trade union apparatchiks or as professional, mainstream politicians.

Comrade Macnair’s arguments are carried in his article on pp6-7 of this issue.

Speakers in the debate welcomed comrade Macnair’s speech as a useful contribution, although comrade Manson thought he had underestimated the importance of the working class background of most students. Comrade Bridge said the role of Communist Students, the CPGB-sponsored grouping, is to equip students with the ideas to change society. The left in student politics is part of the problem.

In the final hour of the aggregate comrade Bridge opened up a discussion on the nature of fascism and how the left should respond to it, based on his notes in Weekly Worker February 7. He spoke in favour of the motion that was published alongside it, although this was not put the vote. It was agreed that comrades with different views on the nature of fascism and the tactics to be adopted to defeat the far right should prepare articles for the Weekly Worker and if necessary written amendments to comrade Bridge’s motion, which will be debated more fully at a future aggregate.