home 
|
| contact
|
| action
|
| weekly worker
|
| respect
the unity coalition |
| european social forum
|
| theory
|
| resources
|
| what we fight
for |
| programme
|
| join |
| search
|
| communist university
|
| links
|
| our history
|
Weekly Worker 597 Thursday October 20 2005
Catching upWeekly Worker 596 must be one of the best yet,” writes comrade DR. “It managed to cover debates on the British left and the most pressing international issues, as well as giving us a useful interview and some fascinating theoretical insight.” Wow! Well, I know last week’s paper was pretty good, but don’t go overboard, comrade - we’re aiming for a lot better yet! Anyway, not only did DR shower us with kind words - she also backed it up with a very handy cheque for £50 - and that certainly added to the width of my grin. Another comrade to send me a big’un was ES, who came up with £30, while PB (£20), FH and SS (£10 each) all played their part in swelling our coffers last week. And I must mention the fact that we also received two donations via our website - £20 from LV and £15 from TJ. Thanks, comrades, I’m glad to see our PayPal facility is still working after a few weeks of falling into disuse! Compared to nothing at all over previous weeks, two online donations in one week is definitely something to crow about. But, before I get carried away, once more it falls upon me to point out that this is actually a pretty poor return, considering we had 15,720 web readers over the last seven days. But let’s not go on about it too much. After all, £155 in a single week is not bad at all. However, after the very slow start to our October fund we still have some catching up to do. Our total is £280, leaving us £220 to raise in just 10 days if we are to make our £500 monthly target. It’s in your hands, comrades. Robbie Rix
|
Stop press
The Socialist Workers Party is again trying to run from debate by not accepting our motions to Respect conference
As this issue of the Weekly Worker was going to press, we received a phone call from Ghada Razuki, an SWP member who works in the Respect office. She informed us that she had decided - after consultation, we presume - not to accept the two motions for the forthcoming Respect conference sponsored by the CPGB and submitted with the signatures of 20 Respect members. (One sought to commit Respect to opposition to the Blair government’s religious hatred legislation, the other to make opposition to immigration controls policy).
We were informed that is because these resolutions arrived at the Respect office on October 15. In fact, they had been emailed from the CPGB office on October 14 - the official deadline - but had bounced back. They were re-submitted the next day with a note requesting a phone call “if there is any problem”. It took a full six days for that call to come; our motions are rejected, apparently.
CPGB national organiser, Mark Fischer, comments:
“Of course, this has nothing to do with deadlines. This is politics.
“The leaders of the SWP are travelling to the right at a breathtaking speed. Rather than justify this openly, they prefer to silence or intimidate left critics and censor principled motions. And that’s not surprising. They should be ashamed of the fact that they vote down calls to abolish inhuman immigration laws; they should be deeply embarrassed about supporting Blair’s attacks on free speech.
“The odd thing is that the SWP appears to think that this sort of incondite, toy-town Stalinism actually works. I can assure them that CPGBers will be making a great deal of noise about this crude censorship - and the cowardly opportunism that prompts it. If John Rees and his comrades seriously believe that this sort of nonsense will kill the debate, then they are being very foolish. It actually draws attention to it, comrades.
“The obvious truth is that if the SWP felt confident about the political implications of the Respect project, then it would have no problem debating the politics of our motions. The attempt to bureaucratically circumvent that debate underlines just how politically vulnerable SWPers are - from the very top of the organisation, down to the local branches.”
The CPGB will not accept this diktat. We campaigned against the Respect
office’s crude attempt to deny the right of 20 members to submit resolutions
to conference and - as conceded by comrade Razuki in her terse phone call
this morning - we won (Weekly Worker September 8).
Send letters of protest to the Respect office, if you can in time
for the next executive committee meeting on Saturday, October 22.
Send protests to office@respectcoalition.org
and don’t forget to pass us a copy at office@cpgb.org.uk.
Form a Respect left opposition
Conference fringe meeting
Saturday November 19
6pm, Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1all welcome, lots of time for debate
