18.11.2010

Overwhelming case

The case for supporting the Weekly Worker is overwhelming, says Robbie Rix

Our November fund increased by £157 this week, taking our total to £612. But once again I am concerned by the sluggish pace. There are less than two weeks to go and we have another £640 to raise to reach our £1,250 target.

Thanks this week go to standing order regulars MM, GD, JD, DW, SP and MKS, together with CM, who gave us a handy £30 via PayPal, and GH, who added a fiver to his subscription. But CM was the only online reader who made a donation via our website. Last week we had 13,150 visits to cpgb.org.uk and, now that these figures are on the up again, I would have expected a proportional increase in PayPal gifts.

Of course, I know times are tough. For those at work no-one’s job seems safe, while students are now faced with £9,000 fees. But each individual turning inwards and protecting what they have is, obviously, not the answer, as readers of this paper are well aware. We need a collective, organised fightback, which means strengthening all the organisations of our movement - trade and student unions, but, most of all, the fighting political groups and publications of the working class.

But which groups and publications? Why is there a special case for prioritising the Weekly Worker? Because, unlike any of the others, we unceasingly call for the unity - on a principled Marxist basis - of all revolutionary socialists and communists. We do not dishonestly claim that we are “the only paper that opposes all cuts to jobs and services” (The Socialist November 4-10). Nor that the CPGB has all the answers. On the contrary, we insist that, if the working class is to resist the latest attacks, it needs not a whole range of competing far-left organisations, each claiming that they are the party or proto-party, but a united Communist Party.

If you agree, then the case for supporting the Weekly Worker financially when, as now, we are under pressure is overwhelming.