Not too late

This week’s post brought us several cards expressing seasonal greetings, but precious little by way of hard cash.

This is unfortunate, since the current issue is the last edition of the Weekly Worker for three weeks and I am not in a position to predict with any confidence that we will even make our £450 monthly target, let alone eat into the £91 deficit accumulated over the year. The £80 in my mailbox this week takes us to £246, with £204 (plus £91) still to raise in less than two weeks.

Despite the Christmas shutdown, we can still make it - and, believe me, we need to. It is very likely that we will have to raise our monthly target in the new year. However, comrade SH has shown by his example that there is an extra source of support as yet largely untapped. He writes: “When I log on on Thursday evening, I always head straight for your website. Yes, I’m one of those freeloaders.”

Well, up to now, that is. Thanks for the £10 cheque, comrade. We need a few more like that. Last week 6,620 visitors (down substantially on previous weeks) to www.cpgb.org.uk did the same as SH and read us gratis. We also got another tenner from PL and a total of £60 in standing orders - another, more reliable way of easing my worries.

For the rest of you out there in readerland, it’s not too late to make my new year a happy one.

Robbie Rix

Ask for a bankers order form, or send cheques, payable to Weekly Worker, BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3XX

Weekly Worker 461 is available in pdf format as zipped (2.24MB) or unzipped (2.62MB) files

Number 461

Thursday December 19 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.

Fight war hysteria
With war against Iraq now looking inevitable Peter Manson outlines a working class antiwar programme

Letters
Rational, mature; Offensive; Socialism urgent; Vodka reds; Moving on; Bunkum Beds; Too careful; Global change; Scots mist; SW platform; Kurdish anger

From Bedfordshire to Zimbabwe and back
Dave Craig reports on latest developments in Beds Socialist Alliance

Learn from mistakes
Alan Stevens attended the Socialist Alliance national council meeting.

Functional at best
Phil Hamilton assesses the website of the Socialist Workers Party

Fight islamism, not islam
Martyn Hudson replies to Ian Donovan in the debate on the nature of the Muslim Association and united fronts

Separate and distinct from SWP
The steering committee of the Socialist Worker platform replies to the SSP's Allan Green

Sectarian amateurism and the complacent world of Sean Matgamna - part 4
Jack Conrad continues his reply to comrade Matgamna's rambling 'Critical notes'

Democracy, the state machine and working class power
The Paris Commune was the world’s first example of a workers’ state, albeit short-lived. Ian Donovan looks at the lessons for the 21st century

Effective consent or moralism
Ian Donovan responds to the furore over the letter published in Weekly Worker 459

Turning away from history
Martyn Hudson review Eric Hobsbawm's Interesting times: a 20th century life

Darwinism and Marxism
Mike Macnair reviews Stephen Jay Gould The structure of evolutionary theory

Politics needed
Firefighters must not simply campaign over pay, argues Mark Fischer