Fighting fund helps pay for leaflets and other campaigning material photo Samantha Smith (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)
Ken Douglas, Socialist Party national treasurer
Socialist Party members raised a magnificent £30,772 between July and September, breaking the record for this period of the year. The quarterly fighting fund target had been increased to £30,000 at the beginning of July, a challenging total but one that we were determined to reach.
Liverpool branch raised the highest total of £2,677 followed by Wirral, two of the four branches that raised over £1,000, from a combination of campaigning stalls, asking supporters for a donation to help our work and fundraising.
The Socialist Party has no rich backers, the fighting fund is vital to help maintain our profile and ensure our ideas and analysis reach as wide an audience as possible.
Resolute
Our members were resolute that nothing would stop them from hitting the new target and came up with many and varied ways to supplement the day-to-day campaigning stalls, including running marathons, giving up chocolate, car boot sales, curry nights, baking birthday cakes and selling plants at local festivals.
At the same time the weekly sales of the Socialist also hit a five-year high. There were big sales at Jeremy Corbyn’s election rallies, as those attending agreed with our demand to kick out the Blairites and let socialists join, and on hundreds of local protests and demonstrations.
First time readers of the Socialist also took advantage of the new direct debit facility on our website (www.socialistparty.org.uk/subscribe) to make sure that they get their copy every week.
Trevor Hall, a new member in Cornwall, guaranteed that his branch smashed its fighting fund and paper targets, by taking the Socialist on tour and selling in towns around the county and finding new audiences for socialist ideas.
Could you, like Trevor, become a seller of the Socialist? You don’t have to be a member, contact us to arrange a supply of papers on a sale or return basis. Or can you help by raising funds for us or making a one-off or regular donation to the fighting fund?
