18.06.1998

No maximum

Summer Offensive ’98

Another good week’s fundraising by comrades at the Weekly Worker offices brought in £499, almost half the £1,009 raised in week six of the CPGB’s two-month Summer Offensive fundraising drive. And £156 of this came from one comrade assisting with commercial jobs at the Party’s printshop. Time is running out, though, with two weeks to go and only £7,045 in - just 35% of our £20,000 target by June 29.

Pledges still stand at £14,100, but a number of individuals have indicated that they will be increasing their individual pledges when they have successfully surpassed their initial targets. As the figures show, a 50% increase in pledges is needed to break the target.

We can be proud that the fight for money by our comrades puts in the shade the “£12,000 appeal by July” of the so-called Communist Party of Britain, which has only achieved £4,000 (Morning Star June 13). It does after all have a more numerous paper membership. Not for nothing do we call our fundraising campaign an ‘offensive’. The CPB ‘appeal’ is an easy-going affair. Where they only give spare cash, we raise the money to do what is necessary - the difference between the dead husk of ‘official communism’, and the virulent seed of the future.

Speaking of dead husks, this column has gained a curious mention in Open Polemic Prospect No6 (April-May 1998). Readers may recall that the Open Polemic faction left the CPGB in the spring of 1996 rather than face our 13th Summer Offensive. Claiming “one law for the OP comrades and another law for those who do not have differences with the CPGB’s ‘leadership’ faction”, they want to believe now that they were treated unfairly. In fact it was their claim for special treatment which was rejected. The principle of equality was upheld.

As everyone who has participated in a Summer Offensive knows, our minimum membership pledge is set by majority vote. This was done in 1996. The OP faction voted in favour of the figure they are complaining about. It turned out subsequently that privately they wanted special dispensation to raise 50% less than the minimum. The OP comrades were not “disciplined” into accepting our minimum, as they allege. They voted for it. Nor would they have been expelled for not achieving their pledge. They “withdrew” from membership, purging themselves before the event.

Our two “low earning comrades” with “modest initial targets” cited in OP Prospect were, of course, not members, and not required to meet the agreed minimum pledge - sympathisers and supporters should follow their example and give whatever they can. On the other hand, the “initial cautious targets” of the Party printshop comrades were actually above the minimum, and only “cautious” in my opinion in relation to the much greater sums I am encouraging them, and others, to fight to raise.

We have a world to win, comrades - the Offensive has no maximum.

Stan Kelsey