19.07.2012

Painstaking

The latest update on the CPGB's Summer Offensive from Mark Fischer

Our annual fund drive - the Summer Offensive - this week clawed in another outstanding haul of £2,805, taking our running total to £7,516. From past experience, I know that this is an extremely healthy pot to have three weeks in and bodes well for the campaign’s target of £25k.

Comrades who deserve special mention are that old stalwart, TM, for his fantastic £800 and MM for a whopping £1k - brilliant! Then there is AL, a comrade from the days of The Leninist (predecessor of the Weekly Worker), who waded in with a sturdy £250 donation, and LW who stumped up a tidy £50.

A number of these comrades were among those prompted to donate by the party’s e-bulletin, Notes for Action, plopping into their inboxes this week. Notes for Action has had a fitful sort of existence for some years now, but the Summer Offensive is always an opportunity not simply to innovate with the brand spanking new, but to buff up the old. A good £500-plus of this week’s total was a direct result of the first two mailings of NfA. We will be expanding the list of recipients, as this campaign unfolds.

There is a connection to the past here. One of the many pleasures associated with the launch of the new party website has been that that we have been able to make The Leninist available to a wider audience. I wrote last year that this factional journal was a “thumping good read”, despite our occasional youthful absurdities. The sooner we get the TL archive up on the website, the better, I thought. The comrades who helped make this happen are to be roundly congratulated.

The CPGB faction around The Leninist produced not simply a paper, but also internal bulletins like ‘Party Notes’, ‘Build the Party’, resolutions from conferences, etc - all instructive publications and all, from my memory, distributed before the days of email via the painstaking manual process of stamp-licking and envelope-stuffing. But no more, thankfully ...

We intend to put the vast bulk of this material online. The money generated by the Summer Offensive - an intense period of fundraising for the work or the party in all its spheres - will be vital for this.