E-lusive readers

Last week I reported how our website is going from strength to strength. This week we chalked up an impressive number of hits. 7,130 individual sessions accessed 23,457 pages. Our e-readership spans the globe. It ranges from USA (2,400 sessions) to Colombia (seven sessions).

On average, 2,000 pages are accessed each and every day of the year. Unfortunately, though, the growing army of e-readers has yet to make itself felt in terms of a significant contribution to the fund needed to produce our paper in the first place. In fact this week donations - from whatever source - have been rather elusive.

Nevertheless, thanks are due to comrades WT (£20), SU (£15) and FB (£5), who weighed in with £40. But this still leaves us a long, long way from our £450 monthly target. So, come on, all you e-readers: help ensure that we are able to continue making our weekly appearance in both print and electronic form.

Robbie Rix

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Weekly Worker 451 is available in pdf format as zipped (1.24MB) or unzipped (1.64MB) files

Number 451

Thursday October 10 2002

The Weekly Worker is available from bookshops across the United Kingdom or can be delivered direct to your door by completing our online subscription form.

Neither pound nor the euro, but active boycott
Ian Donovan calls on the Socialist Alliance to take a principled stand on the forthcoming euro referendum

Letters
Auto-SPD; Pro-unity AWL; Misleading; Platform; Inspire; Defending Iraq?; Lenin and defeatism; Gospel

Time to decide
Should the Socialist Alliance campaign for a ‘no’ vote in a referendum on the euro? Or should we insist on the independent working class stance of an active boycott? Communist University 2002 featured a lively debate between leading representatives of both positions: John Bridge from the CPGB and SA national secretary Rob Hoveman of the Socialist Workers Party

European Social Forum

• Workshops sidelined
  Workshops are the only platform available for honest political organisations - and a source of friction with the World Social Forum. Tina Becker reports
• Leadership needed
  In the build-up to Florence, November 6-10, Tina Becker and Anne Mc Shane report on last weekend’s final ESF preparatory meeting held in Barcelona
• Opposition to war
  Discussion over the ESF statement against war on Iraq revealed the poverty of the British SWP's politics
• Draft ESF statement: To all citizens of Europe

Stoke-on-Trent: Opposing BNP with lesser evil
The Socialist Party does not offer any advice when it comes to the October 17 mayoral elections. Phil Hamilton reports

Lewisham: SWP rebels defeat Hoveman
Members of the Socialist Workers Party in south east London refused to toe the party line

Mayoral contest: Hackney: building a base
Hackney Socialist Alliance chair, Will McMahon reports on the closing stages of the campaign

Thornett agonistes
Mark Fischer reviews Alan Thornett's The socialist case against the euro

Russian means and the dictatorship of the minority
In the fourth of his series of articles Jack Conrad examines the background to Lenin’s use of the word ‘dictatorship’ and the role played by the Mensheviks

Reid stages provocation
Jim Blackstock looks at the background to the British states pre-emptive move against Sinn Fein