16.08.2012

Summer Offensive - On the fringe

Mark Fischer provides the latest news and asks for a last big push for the target

This has actually been the best seven days so far for our annual fund drive, the Summer Offensive. £3,228 has been added to our overall total, taking us to £17,422. We are well on the way to our £25k target, which we need to reach by August 26. But, still, no room for complacency, comrades.

Particular thanks are due this week to sterling supporter MM for his magnificent £880; JE for his £250; and MC for his hours on the badge-making coalface - hard work that added £80 to the comrade’s SO total. Meanwhile comrade CG added a £20 donation to his payment for next week’s Communist University.

A special shout needs to go out for SK. As a result of his patient political work in his trade union branch, the comrade has won over £200 in donations to Hands Off the People of Iran and the charity it supports, Workers Fund Iran. (All monies raised for campaigns and organisations the CPGB is closely involved in count towards our comrades’ individual targets and the overall total for the SO: it is a measure of the political work of our communist collective in a broad, inclusive way, not simply narrowly defined as the cash that we - as the CPGB - get in.)

This is the last SO column before this paper has a two-week break for Communist University. In our first paper after this, I’ll announce our final (hopefully triumphant) total. Comrades will see the more or less definitive (keep checking online) CU timetable in this issue of the paper. I have to say that, reading over it, I do get a little surge of what might be termed ‘party patriotism’.

The content of our school is ambitious, enquiring and challenging. More than that, comrades will be intrigued to hear that Communist University is beginning to generate its own fringe. A number of organisations have approached us directly to organise extracurricular meetings at this year’s event - specifically, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the London branch of the US Platypus group and the International Bolshevik Tendency.

It goes without saying that we do want to seriously engage with the ideas of such comrades - we have had some of them as lead speakers in previous years. Political priorities shift, of course. However, our commitment to make the CU fringe a success - to facilitate, promote and engage with other organisations - speaks not simply of our attitude to a particular educational event, but more importantly of the sort of party we are in the business to build.

These are small beginnings and - given the latent political strength of the message of the CPGB and of Marxism in general - comrades can sometimes be frustrated by the size and political impact of our schools. However, they are genuine festivals of ideas, unlike the market branding of other left groups! We need to be patient, but not complacent.

A vigorous and successful Summer Offensive will provide a springboard for our political work through the rest of the year. It will allow us to take the culture, the ideas, the insights and the controversies of CU and disseminate them more effectively and more widely throughout a contemporary left that desperately needs to hear them.

We need your help for that, comrades. Just over a week to go - just over £7.5k to raise!