18.06.2008
Financing our communist work
Howard Roak writes about the launch of this year's Summer Offensive
This year’s Summer Offensive - our annual fundraising drive - starts on Saturday June 21 with a launch meeting in London. We have a minimum target this year of £30,000 and eight weeks in which to raise it. The campaign will reach its high point during the week of our annual school, the Communist University.
Last year’s campaign was one of best for many years, with our £25k target busted through and a final total of £29,170 raised. Trends that I wrote about last year that facilitated this success have continued over the last 12 months and promise an even better result this year. As illustrated by our successful standing order campaign for the Weekly Worker, our periphery of sympathising readers has continued to expand. Central to this has been our role in Communist Students, Hands Off the People of Iran and the Campaign for a Marxist Party - initiatives allowing the organisation to speak to and influence wider numbers of comrades.
The recent affiliations to Hopi of the civil servants union, the PCS, and that of the train drivers, Aslef, underlines that the brand of politics that this organisation supports is perfectly capable of winning a mass audience, even in these testing times for the left.
And this is really the key not simply to hitting our £30k target, but to pushing this important annual event on to a qualitatively higher level. Our comrades need to take the opportunity of the coming two months to up the campaign to build these initiatives and - crucially - link this process to our week-long Communist University starting on August 9.
Through our work - in any arena in the movement - we struggle to convince contacts not simply of the worthiness of this or that campaign, or the merit of this or that industrial dispute. We are fighting to make new Marxistsand the annual CU is an absolutely indispensable weapon in this struggle. Publicity materials for this year’s school will be available soon and a (more or less) final timetable up online early next week.
In the meantime, here are some ground rules for comrades who may be thinking about taking the SO plunge and making a pledge for the first time.
- While members and candidate members have a set minimum target to raise, other comrades can take part at whatever level they feel they can manage. We welcome each and every contribution during this period. If you can simply make a small, one-off donation to the general drive for funds, it will be much appreciated, comrades.
- That said, standing orders are preferable, of course. If you were thinking of setting up a regular donation to the party during the recent push, don’t let the SO put you off. The drive will continue during these two months and money raised in this way will count to the final total - although, of course, all money donated to the Weekly Worker will be used specifically for the paper.
- Ben Lewis - the SO winner last year - is threatening to give up alcohol for the duration. Other comrades are being urged to turn their back on tobacco and yet others badgered to get their hair cut - a sponsored prune, of course. Many comrades will raise the bulk of the cash through cutting back on items of personal expenditure, but there are other cunning schemes.
- A car boot sale finally beckons for that crap at the back of the garage, surely?
- Some of our comrades take second jobs or work longer shifts. However, it is important to underline that we don’t actually want our people to disappear for the whole stretch of the SO, work all hours under the sun to hit their targets, then reappear at the end of the campaign pasty-faced and depoliticised.
- Politics is key, comrades. Our Offensive is a political high point each year. Every paper or book sold, every Weekly Worker subscription won, every £1 that comes over party stalls for badges, t-shirts, or in the way of donations or payment for events is counted towards the total. For example, June and July this year is chocker with events where comrades can politically intervene and do their SO total some good at the same time. I’ll keep comrades up to speed with these in this weekly column, but be aware that on the very first day of the campaign we have the Unite Against Fascism march in central London (see ‘Action’ column and contact the CPGB office if you can help on the day).
On Friday August 15, a celebration meal to mark the end of the Summer Offensive will be hosted by CU. Tickets will be on sale for this soon and the cost will include a donation to the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign. Again, whatever is raised - including the donation to this important solidarity campaign - will count towards the Summer Offensive.
Each SO gives us a picture of the state of our organisation and how we are squaring up to our tasks. Alongside that, it is an absolutely vital annual fillip to the party’s accounts, which run perilously close to the red during the rest of the year. It allows us to plan, kill off expensive debts and press ahead politically for the coming 12 months.
Many readers of the Weekly Worker will be contacted personally about the fund drive - but, as always, don’t wait to be asked! You can send donations now to help ensure we get off to a good start over the opening weekend of June 21-22. Make cheques and postal orders out to ‘CPGB’, marking the back ‘SO 2008’. Or use the PayPal facility on our site - again, make sure you tell us what the money is coming in for.
So £30,000 in eight weeks comrades! And that’s £30k as a minimum, remember!
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