Summer Offensive
Still on course
Good, but no complacency, writes Howard Roake
This year’s Marxism - the annual school of the Socialist Workers Party - brought thousands of people into central London for five days of meetings, rallies and cultural events.
The organisers will have been pretty pleased with the whole thing. The general consensus was that the numbers were up on last year; there was a relatively high percentage of young people; the sun shone (mostly) and there were no punch-ups or other embarrassing incidents.
The school had an oddly timeless feel to it, however. The SWP clearly uses this event - the political high point of its year - essentially as a showcase for the organisation, an extended recruitment fair. So, while there are meetings of contemporary significance - a themed series on the economic crisis, for example - the gathering is not used to genuinely theorise the practice of the group, to deal with political problems and divisions that inevitably arise when an organisation that thinks does anything in the real world.
After all, the SWP has had a rather tumultuous year or so. There has been the messy break-up of Respect. There was the disaster of the Left Alternative and the demoralised retreat from electoral intervention. Then there was the explicit exclusion of the SWP from No2EU and the organisation’s open letter, proposing yet another ‘unity initiative’ to a profoundly distrustful left. Plenty of food for thought - and debate - there, one would have assumed.
But the whole culture of the SWP, like much of the rest of the left, precludes sharp and open clashes of opinion. The general level of the event as a whole suffers because of this and it creates the audience it deserves - passive, impatient with controversy and with a pronounced tendency to agree with party ‘orthodoxy’ rather than seek out political challenges from other trends in the movement.
Reflecting this, the CPGB stall did steady, but unspectacular trade on the three days it was pitched. Over £100 of literature was sold, mostly in the form of copies of the Weekly Worker. That is included in this week’s tally of £983 towards our annual fundraising drive, the Summer Offensive.
Our overall total is £9,562.50, as we hit the rough halfway point in this year’s campaign.
Particular thanks to comrade WD who has sent us another £10 - her third contribution to this year’s SO; likewise comrades MM and SM, who both provided us with £40 - for MM it was his third donation to this year’s campaign; comrade AL sends us a very useful £200 and there are quite a number of younger comrades whose smaller, but still important, donations came in via standing orders at the start of the month.
No donations via the website to report, though, despite the continuing recovery of our internet readership following the recent crashing of our site (we had 10,677 online visitors last week).
Nevertheless, not a bad week by any means. We are on course for a good total. But no complacency, comrades.
