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Weekly Worker 607 Thursday January 12 2006
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Worker
Faith schools too hot for SWP
Don't be shy!
Communist Party members have been picking themselves up after the recent festival of pagan excess and slowly - a tad too slowly in the view of this columnist - easing back into political work. An important immediate task facing many of them is that of contacting sympathetic readers of our paper to ask them either to take out a standing order or up their existing one. Despite the inevitable indolence of the holiday period, I am pleased to report a reasonable start to the campaign. Standing orders have swelled by just under £100 per month. (For the purposes of the campaign, we are counting both those comrades who increase/initiate SOs direct to the Weekly Worker and those who are responding to the campaign by contributing regularly to the CPGB, the organisation that carries the main burden of sustaining this paper financially). In particular, thanks to Cardiff party supporter GD, for the very fine 150% increase in his quarterly contribution to the paper; to comrade JD for his extra £5; to the critically minded SWP comrade, TM, for showing his appreciation of the contribution our paper makes to his work with a new £15-per-quarter donation; to newcomer CM for his useful tenner and to BP - already one of our top hitters - for his stout £30 extra per month. Well done to all these comrades and to the others who, without being badgered, have taken the initiative to front up. Plenty more party members and closer sympathisers are making reassuring noises about increasing existing standing orders - as soon as the season of good will to all humans and GBH to all credit cards recedes. We are confident they will come through for us. But what will make the qualitative difference is a real increase in the number of sympathetic readers starting to make regular donations. As we are starting to engage with these comrades, we are noticing a degree of shyness. Comrades are actually a little reticent about taking standing orders for small regular amounts - it almost seems they believe they have to commit 50% of their gross income plus four pints of blood before we take them seriously. Our paper is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the advanced, organised section of our class in the UK. The overwhelming majority of the comrades who read our paper still disagree, perhaps strongly, with many of the programmatic positions of the CPGB. Yet they still appreciate our press’s openness and commitment to principle. They have to understand that they are precisely the type of comrades who can make a difference. They must start contributing. Trust me - there are enough of you out there to make a qualitative difference to this paper’s financial position if you all did your bit. If that happened, our paper’s ability to intervene, to be an effective organiser for what could be broadly called the revolutionary democratic trend in the workers’ movement, would be greatly enhanced. Naturally, alongside this special appeal to raise standing orders, we are running our nuts ’n’ bolts monthly fighting fund to keep the paper on the road. Special thanks go to comrade TD - a CPGB veteran of many years who is a constant source of inspiration - for his monthly £60. Also thanks to comrades NJ (£15) and CR (£10) for showing the way with donations via PayPal on the web (they were two among 13,289 e-readers last week). With their help, plus gifts from YF, BJ, CS and RT, our basic monthly fund now stands at £185 - slightly lagging behind the rate needed to meet our £600 target. More news and feedback on our standing order campaign
next week. In the meantime, don’t wait. There are SO forms available
to download from our website or to order from our box number. Don’t
hang around for our overworked cadre to phone you. Now’s not the
time to be shy - make a commitment today. Robbie Rix
|
Our
organisation needs to raise £1,000 extra per month in standing orders
by the end of February. This is to stabilise the finances of the
Weekly Worker and - crucially - to give us the opportunity
to enhance our paper’s print quality, content, associated web presence
and circulation.
The left must takes this issue seriously, says Michelle Euston. After all, faith schools are envisaged in the government’s white paper on education as a wedge to break up comprehensive education system
Twenty-four teachers attended the national Socialist Teachers Alliance (STA) meeting on January 7. Of them only a third wanted to see faith schools discussed at the National Union of Teachers annual conference at Easter. The Socialist Workers Party bloc in particular feared that the media would launch a damaging attack. Yet, regardless of what the SWP thinks, faith schools, along with company-sponsored trust schools, are envisaged in the government’s white paper on education as a wedge to break up comprehensive education system.
Not to debate faith schools at conference disarms the working class - not least when it comes to the white paper. The STA is the largest left grouping in the NUT. It surely has a responsibility to take a lead in the fight for a fully funded, secular, comprehensive education system. Failure leaves the initiative with the government and the revived Tory Party under David Cameron.
The left needs to be unequivocal on this question. Secular education is about the state having no say in the religious education of children. Secularism is about religion being a private matter. Outside schools and other state-run institutions, there should be freedom for all religious cults. There should also be freedom for atheistic propaganda. Outside schools and other state-run institutions, all religious organisations and individuals should have the right to propagate their ideas and seek to win converts. Equally, opponents of religion should have the same right.
This is important for socialists. It is a shameful of the SWP (the biggest ‘revolutionary’ group on the left) to try and sweep the debate under the carpet. Why they want to is not hard to fathom - the Respect popular front and pandering to muslim voters.
On faith schools, Kevin Ovenden argues in Socialist Review that “denying parents of minority groups equality with those of the established Church of England will be seen as lining up with an unjust status quo. It is only by making explicit the right of muslim parents to have state-supported muslim schools that it is possible to advocate not separation and the embrace of the government’s destructive proposals, but a common struggle for common comprehensive schools” (December 2005).
Communists have never lined up with the status quo on supporting faith schools of a particular denomination. We have always called for a complete separation of church and state and an end of all state subsidies for religious institutions. We support oppressed people. We support oppressed muslims, but we do not support faith schools of any description.
