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Summer Offensive 
Kick in the shins
Clive Power (Letters, June 5) seems
to take real exception to my article introducing this year’s Summer
Offensive, the CPGB’s annual fundraising drive (Weekly Worker
May 30). Despite my assurances to readers that it is not a “gruesome”
ordeal for people, Clive sees it as evidence of the sect practice
of “periods of manic activity” that leave burned-out shells of
comrades in their wake.
I’m not sure what particular sect chewed
Clive up in the past, but it is instructive for our purpose that
he cites the example of a “slightly deranged socialist” of his
acquaintance in the 1980s who was active (very active,
it seems) in the Workers Revolutionary Party.
A good example, Clive. It illustrates my
point perfectly. The levels of activity of the old WRP were indeed
“manic” - precisely because the perspectives of this nasty little
sect were maniac perspectives. From the mid-1970s onwards,
the WRP decided that there was a revolutionary situation in Britain.
Its poor, pulverised dolts of members were kept at fever pitch
with talk of imminent military coups, the dark machinations of
MI5 in their ranks and a campaign for the TUC to call the general
strike - a full-blown assault on power. WRPers slept with their
boots on - when they slept at all.
In order to keep these mad ideas intact
internally, a regime was required that entailed systematic abuse
and intimidation. A member of ours recalls once seeing the leader
of the WRP - the nauseating bully, Gerry Healy - publicly kicking
some underling who had displeased him.
I don’t think even Clive would suggest
that our practice is remotely similar. Yes, we do ask for a level
of commitment from comrades that compares well with other sections
of the left. But its intensity must be linked to societal realities,
not to the sect fantasies of madmen.
This week, comrades and friends of the
Communist Party have raised £1,495, taking our total up to £2,247
- an excellent figure for this early stage of the campaign. And
all without the threat of a military clampdown or a kick in the
shins, comrade Power will be pleased to hear.
Mark Fischer
Send cheques, payable to CPGB, BCM
Box 928, London WC1N 3XX or donate online:
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