Magnificent

As I had hoped, Saturday’s brilliant demonstration gave scores of people the opportunity to donate to the Weekly Worker. Contributors varied from those who told our sellers to “keep the change” or “put the extra in the funds” to comrades like a teacher from London who handed over a £20 note in exchange for some back copies and comrade “Sally”, whose friend gave us a fiver on her behalf.

It is difficult to be sure exactly how much of the money we ended up with was made up by donations, since not all our sellers kept an exact record of how many papers they actually sold. But our estimate is around 600 copies (short of the 1,000 we were aiming to sell, admittedly) and a total of £448 has already come our way or is promised. So I’ll settle for £148 as a near enough accurate figure for donations from the demonstration.

In addition, the last seven days produced a total of £155 through the post (thank you, comrade HJ, for the magnificent £50 cheque) and £60 in standing orders. Which means that, with a week to go, we have already exceeded our £500 monthly target - we now have £523.

Comrades, in a period such as this, the Weekly Worker is more important than ever - as illustrated by the 6,860 individual sessions we had on our website last week. Ending February with, say, an extra £250 over and above our normal target would help us to fulfil our role all the better.

Robbie Rix

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

Weekly Worker 468 is available in pdf format as zipped (2.69MB) or unzipped (3.21MB) files

Number 468

Thursday February 20 2003

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.

Letters
AWL sect; Not perfect; Why bother?; CPGB franchises; Paedophilia; Irrational; Morality line; SA Independents; Hackney SA; Egalitarian; Drooling; Correction

Weakest link
Phil Hamilton takes a look at the website of the Welsh Socialist Alliance ... and is not impressed

Putting the alliance back on track
RMT train crew and shunting grades executive member Derek Goodliffe, writing in a personal capacity, looks ahead to the upcoming meeting of the Socialist Alliance’s rail caucus

Campaign for a workers' party
Marcus Strom reports on the weekend meeting of the Socialist Alliance executive committee

Anti-war movement is movement for democracy
Jack Conrad looks at the February 15 demonstration and the lessons for the left

In defence of the Socialist Alliance
Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance has long been bitterly divided. A series of disputes culminated in the demand that two former officers, Danny Thompson and Jane Clarke, be expelled from the SA. This, their - slightly shortened - submission to the SA appeals committee, is presented not only by comrades Thompson and Clarke themselves, but by the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance Democratic and Republican Platform. It is their reply to the submission, ‘Statement to the appeals committee of the Socialist Alliance by officers of the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance’

Stop the War popular front?
Ian Donovan debates the nature of an anti-war movement which stretches from the revolutionary left to the Liberal Democrats

New period, new tasks
Mary Godwin reports on the weekend meeting of Communist Party members

Things can only get bitter …
Mark Fischer spoke to George Galloway, the controversial Glasgow MP and key figure in the anti-war movement

Hyde Park strike call
Alan Stevens reports on the platform speeches at the end of the February 15 demonstration

World opposition to Bush-Blair
More than 30 million protested on February 15 in over 600 cities and towns, across more than 60 countries and on every continent. They marched to stop the impending war against Iraq - even at the McMurdo base in Antarctica. Tina Becker looks at how the left across the world has reported the events of the day

After Saddam
Though subject to severe repression under the Ba’ath regime, historically the Communist Party of Iraq has retained a mass base. Faced with the impending US-UK military onslaught, the party says it must fight on two fronts - against imperialism and against Saddam Hussein. Henning Böke spoke to Rashid Ghewielib, representative of the CPI in Germany, about the present situation and the prospects for the Iraqi opposition

Go-it-alone manifesto
Sarah McDonald looks forward to the February 22-23 annual conference of the Scottish Socialist Party