29.08.2013

Summer Offensive: One of the best

Mark Fischer gives a final report on the CPGB's annual fundraiser

Speaking at the August 17 celebration meal to mark the end of this year’s Summer Offensive - our organisation’s annual fund drive - comrade Jack Conrad told the audience that he was pleasantly surprised to be able to announce that we had achieved a little over £26,600. By the time of the SO’s formal end 24 hours later (as well as late pledges that came in up to today), we have crept up to a shade under £27k. This is an impressive achievement, given the difficult political context of this year’s campaign and that a number of comrades - including myself, to be honest - thought we would struggle far more. So, although the final total is £3k shy of our ambitious £30,000 collective target, the leadership of our organisation is very pleased to congratulate all comrades who took part in this year’s successful campaign, either as full participants or one-off donors.

A successful SO is a vital boost to the annual finances of the organisation - like any political group worth its salt, the CPGB runs a deficit budget for most of the year. Come the SO, we pay off expensive loans, generally get ourselves back to somewhere close to the black and then start ‘overspending’ all over again. Comrades who have contributed this year can rest assured that every pound donated will, one way or another, be thrown into a fight that has become synonymous with this paper and the organisation that sustains it - for the principled, democratic unity of the revolutionary left on the basis of Marxism. And encouragingly - as comrade Conrad also highlighted in his speech - over the past 12 months or so our opportunities to engage others on the left in debate and clarification around this project have become far more concrete.

The recurrent waves of crisis and opposition in the Socialist Workers Party have produced considerable fluidity. While many have been propelled towards rightist despair and/or the swamp by the whole mess, the fact that comrades from the International Socialist Network attended Communist University (see p5) - and that a degree of mutual understanding seemed to emerge both in the sessions and in more informal exchanges - is a (small) step forward. (Incredibly, the ISN’s informal leadership initially rejected discussions with our organisation and could not agree to even send speakers to CU!) Similarly, our support for the Socialist Platform in the Left Unity project seems to be opening a space for fruitful debate with comrades on questions of programme and method - again, nothing dramatic, but generally moving in the right direction.

In this context, a not dissimilar trend showed itself in the pattern of donations to this year’s SO. A small team at our centre made a determined effort this year to directly contact far more comrades in our reading and sympathising periphery for support. The work was instructive in two ways. Predictably, we encountered many comrades who had lost their job or faced the prospect of redundancy in the near future; others who - though still employed - were hard pressed for spare cash to donate to even the most worthy of political causes. Not surprising, of course. But, interestingly, under considerable pressure though such comrades were, it was striking just how many of them did bring themselves to actually make a donation, despite their financial woes.

There are some useful lessons in this. First and foremost is the need for us to raise our heads from the grind of political work and be aware that some new opportunities are opening. If we are being honest with ourselves, we have to say that our annual fund campaign has become a little bit of a chore for many comrades and that there was little in the way of innovation this year. (An honourable exception are those comrades who organised an eBay clothes auction for Hands Off the People of Iran - £300-plus was raised from a slightly eccentric mixture of elegant Italian designer items and retro punk/new wave clobber.)

The response of the comrades around us who contributed to the campaign when directly approached should tell us that - while full members of the party will no doubt remain the main source of our regular funds - there are literally hundreds of others out there who can be drawn into practical and financial support for the project. (Put another, more modest, way, a relatively small percentage of the 24,860 comrades who have accessed the party’s site since the last paper appeared on August 8, just before our three-week break around Communist University.)

So, it’s obvious from this success that the core tasks of fundraising and drawing wider layers of comrades into contributing to the work of the CPGB must become a year-round activity for our organisation as a whole, not simply the aforementioned “small team” of comrades. A tweak in our political culture rather than a revolution, comrades - but the results could be quite impressive!

Again, congratulations to all comrades in and around the CPGB who have contributed to making this Summer Offensive one of our best for a number of years.