Weekly Worker 701 Thursday December 13 2007 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

Ways forward for paper

Mary Godwin reports on the latest members' aggregate of the CPGB

The December 9 aggregate of CPGB members, held in London, discussed the growing technical difficulties encountered in producing the Weekly Worker and potential ways of overcoming problems.

Comrade John Bridge informed the aggregate that the Provisional Central Committee had planned to open a discussion on this issue at an aggregate early in 2008, but the difficulties comrades experienced while producing issue 700 on Thursday December 6 made them decide to bring it forward to this aggregate.

Comrade Bridge explained the background to the current situation. Until 1992 the CPGB’s Provisional Central Committee published a monthly newspaper, The Leninist, but in 1992 an upturn in the class struggle, sparked by the protests of the National Union of Mineworkers against the virtual shutdown of the coal mining industry in Britain, persuaded CPGB comrades that it was important to be able to produce a more frequent newspaper to report on and agitate around these struggles as they happened.

A great deal of financial and human resources went into the setting up of a printshop, where the Weekly Worker was produced - first as a single sheet, then as a four-page paper, growing to eight and finally 12 pages. The same print machine - already old when purchased second-hand - has been used ever since, operated by party volunteers.

Over the last 15 years the Weekly Worker has become an extraordinarily successful paper, valued by a wide range of revolutionary socialists and having an important role in reporting developments on the left. Often the Weekly Worker has been the only source of information on developments in their own organisation for members of, for example, the Socialist Workers Party and earlier the Socialist Labour Party. Although the recent crises in Respect and the SWP have resulted in the wide dissemination of such information via various blogs, this has not diminished the role of the Weekly Worker in providing Marxist analysis in addition to reportage. It has always been primarily a journal of comment, rather than a medium of breaking news.

For several years the cost of producing the Weekly Worker was partly offset by income from commercial printing run by CPGB members in our printshop, but due to the competitive nature of the print business this income has more or less dried up. While the print machine continued to function well, Weekly Worker subscriptions, party membership dues and other sources of income could nevertheless cover the cost of renting the printshop space where the machine, which is now over 40 years old, is used.

But now it is increasingly unreliable and prone to breakdown. In recent weeks the time taken to print the paper has increased massively, and the proportion of unusable pages has also multiplied. The quality of print is low, and time and paper is wasted in the production process. The machine is now too battered to be patched up for much longer, and could break down for good at any moment.

Given this situation, the party needs to decide how to move forward. Whatever option is chosen will involve extra expense, and it is essential that readers and supporters increase their contributions to the regular monthly fighting fund and support any special appeal we announce. We know that sympathetic readers value the paper enough to be willing to contribute towards keeping it going. Comrade Bridge estimated that paying for the Weekly Worker to be printed commercially instead of printing it ourselves would increase our costs by around £600 to £700 per month.

Comrades working with the CPGB print machine will strive to keep it operational in the short term, but sooner rather than later an alternative way to produce the paper will be needed. Accurate cost estimates are obviously required if party members are to be able to make an informed decision about which medium to long-term printing option to take. Therefore it was proposed that we should investigate what deals the party could get from different commercial contacts, and provide firm financial information and an analysis of the cost and benefits of different options.

Four options

Comrade Bridge outlined four possible solutions to the current predicament, which were then discussed by comrades. First, to cease altogether production of a print version of the Weekly Worker and become an entirely electronic publication. Although the vast majority of readers use computers to access the paper, this was unanimously rejected by all comrades who spoke. As comrade Mark Fischer said, the discipline of producing and distributing physical newspapers every week is valuable, and it is important to have a publication to sell to contacts and distribute on demonstrations.

The second option is to buy another second hand printer capable of producing A3-sized newspapers. This was regarded as unrealistic for a number of reasons. The cost of a usable machine would be high. With so much happening that the party is investing time and resources into, not least the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign, it was broadly agreed that it would be undesirable to hamper the work of comrades involved in these areas by diverting all available time and money into acquiring a new print machine. Also, operating and maintaining such machines is a highly skilled job. Our current printer is a volunteer. Like the machine he is not getting any younger, but for the moment we have no-one able to step into his shoes.

The third option, which is the one preferred by comrade Bridge himself, is to pay to have the Weekly Worker commercially printed. This would ensure a significantly higher quality of product and free up comrades’ time and energy for political rather than technical tasks. However, it would involve a concerted and ongoing drive to raise the extra substantial income necessary to finance it.

When this option was last discussed, at the January 2007 aggregate, several comrades expressed reservations about the potential loss of independence and flexibility (see Weekly Worker January 18). Similar concerns were voiced in the debate at the December 9 aggregate. Comrade Mike Macnair again raised the possibility that a print company might insist on the paper being libel-read, might refuse to print something libellous or might put pressure on our authors to tone down what they write. He said the letters page, for one, might have to be made a lot blander. Other comrades, however, felt that he was overestimating this danger, although many shared his desire to retain complete autonomy of printing if possible.

Another argument made against this third option is that our political enemies might try to portray it as a step backwards. Steve Cooke remembered the CPGB noting the organisational retreat implicit when the SWP stopped in-house printing and feared this might be “thrown back in our face”.

However, in comrade Bridge’s view the fourth option would be easier for our enemies to paint as a political step backwards - “because it is”, he said. This fourth option is to switch to producing the Weekly Worker on a laser printer, which could be run from an office but would only be able to produce an A4-sized newspaper/journal. If this option were adopted, the party would retain complete autonomy in the printing process, but the Weekly Worker would have to switch to a half-sized format. Comrade Bridge was against this option. In his view the CPGB is first and foremost in competition with the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party of Britain and the Socialist Party in England and Wales. Not groups that produce pint-size publications on the cheap.

Tina Becker has advocated such a format switch since the debate about the way forward for printing the Weekly Worker began when the current machine started to wear out. She said she is still in favour of going over to A4. Along with other comrades, she hotly contested comrade Bridge’s assertion that this would not match up to the quality of a commercially printed version of the Weekly Worker.

Another argument she made was that far more people download the pdf version of the paper onto their computer’s A4 printer at home than buy a printed copy. In other words, thousands of people are already reading the Weekly Worker in A4 size - with the difference that they must reduce its A3 pages by half. If the paper switched to an A4 format, with the layout redesigned accordingly, it would be much more accessible to the vast majority of our readers. According to comrade Phil Kent, switching to A4 laser printing would actually reduce overall costs compared to the current situation.

Support for this option grew during the debate. Most of the younger comrades originally came into contact with the CPGB via the internet, and many regard revamping and upgrading the website as more important than retaining what may seem like outdated printing technology. Comrade Fischer suggested the possibility of a more flexible approach - an A4 laser printer to produce copies for bookshops and subscribers who prefer a hard copy over the electronic version, combined with use of a commercial printer when a demonstration or other event made an A3-sized newspaper desirable. He stressed the central necessity of upgrading our website.

The PCC is to look again at the main options as a matter of urgency.

Hopi success

The aggregate also discussed the previous day’s launch conference of Hopi, reported elsewhere in this edition of the Weekly Worker. Comrades Yassamine Mather, a guest at the aggregate, and Mark Fischer led the debate. All agreed it had been a successful conference, providing a firm basis for the further growth and impact of Hopi.

Comrade Mather welcomed the political diversity of the newly elected committee, but warned that we must make it clear that the views of some of those elected - those who would welcome a ‘mullahs’ bomb’ on the one hand, and those who regard political islam as equivalent to imperialism on the other - are not the politics of the majority. There is, however, a range of views on the Iranian left, and several comrades requested a guide to the different Iranian left groups and their politics in order to intervene more effectively.

The very success of Hopi will make our political enemies more eager to attack it, and they may try to pretend that the views of minorities on the committee are our views. Therefore, comrades agreed, we must continue to try and win the argument inside Hopi. It is important that we make clear what we would say if there were an imperialist attack on Iran, and how we would respond if the imperialists succeeded in overthrowing the regime in a way which made it seem like the triumph of an internal movement for democracy.

Comrade Bridge said the success of the conference answers those CPGB members who believe the party should prioritise directly engaging with the SWP as our main area of work. Building Hopi is not an alternative to our stated method of going through the existing left: it is the best way of doing it.

Read on: CPGB Weekly Worker archive

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