01.08.2013

Urgent call out

Mark Fischer appeals to all of our readers and supporters to help our Summer Offensive

This is the time Interestingly, the financial reports of registered political parties came out this week. Along with the gratifying news that the British National Party remains - ironically - deep in the red (£356,000 worth of liabilities) and that the Liberal Democrats’ income has plummeted from £10 million in 2010 (the ephemeral days of Cleggmania) to £6.4 million today, we learned that last year’s income for the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain was a surprisingly slim £123k - a puny budget for an organisation that touts itself as having a membership of around 1,000, some influence at the top of the trade union movement and ‘fraternal’ relations with Stalinist organisations around the world, not least in China and South Africa.

In contrast, the Weekly Worker and its predecessor, The Leninist, together with the organisation that has sustained these publications, have raised relatively huge amounts to maintain the quality, frequency and, above all, the political independence of our publications. Our hard-won financial freedom has facilitated our ability to tell the truth as we see it, whether or not it has won us easy friends amongst trade union bureaucrats, not to mention the rulers of the so-called ‘socialist’ countries.We’re in hock to no-one - a quality that has won us commitment and dedicated support not simply from our comparatively small membership, but also from the wider periphery.

The Summer Offensive - the annual money-raising campaign of the CPGB - is a vital part of this, an essential boost to ensure this political project continues to operate at its present level: ie, shoestring. So we have to tell readers that, as we head into the final two weeks of this year’s campaign, the SO is in dire need of a shot in the arm. This week saw £1,432 of new money come in, bringing the running total to a solid, but unspectacular £12,741. Special thanks to comrades FM for his £250, MM and JT with, respectively, £110 and £75 to the Weekly Worker and RC (£12), RL (£10), AR (£10) and CC (£5).

All good, useful stuff - but not enough of it, comrades! Compare this to the same point in last year’s fund drive. In the Weekly Worker of August 9 2012, I was able to report that we had “just shy of £15,000” in the bag. The scale of the problem comes into focus when we also remember that this year comrades have set themselves a SO collective target of £30,000, £5k higher than last year’s. To have a realistic chance of this, we need a pretty spectacular coming week with a small blizzard of substantial donations.

The Offensive ends on August 18, the last day of Communist University, and the week of our annual school traditionally adds between £5-7k to the SO, what with in-house meals and booze, literature tables, comrades stumping up fees, etc. But that does underline the scale of the task we have over the coming seven days.

So an urgent call-out this week to those consistent online readers (there were 10,799 of you faceless ‘fans’ last week) who keep meaning to donate, but haven’t quite managed it yet; to those comrades who have been contacted, have actually pledged a donation, but haven’t quite found the time to sit down to write out the cheque or use our site’s PayPal button; and how about those comrades who already make regular donations to keep the paper rolling off the press/popping up online every Thursday? This is the time of the year when we need a little extra from you, comrades! Just over two weeks to find over £17,000!