Record donations show the hunger for socialist ideas, photo TaxRebate.org.uk (Creative Commons)

Record donations show the hunger for socialist ideas, photo TaxRebate.org.uk (Creative Commons)   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Ken Douglas, Socialist Party national treasurer

Socialist Party members raised an outstanding £35,264 in the April to June quarter of 2017. This broke the record for the second quarter, which itself had only been set in 2016 – £7,300 was paid in over the last ten days alone.

This money was raised in the course of campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn in the general election, from countless protests and demonstrations against Tory austerity and from the many fundraising efforts of the branches.

No rich backers

The Socialist Party has no rich backers, we rely on support from ordinary people – and they have responded to our programme for building opposition to the Tories and transforming the Labour Party.

Five branches raised over £1,000 with Liverpool topping the charts having raised £1,712 and Southampton hitting those heights for the first time, with a new fighting fund organiser.

There were very successful appeals at public meetings during the general election and after – £1,000 raised at PCS conference, £2,000 at Unison conference, £1,500 at the London book launch of From Militant to the Socialist Party, £400 in Leeds and £314 in Cardiff. Lancashire branch raised £109 with an appeal at their post-election public meeting, a real success for a small branch. Coventry East and West branches raised £620 at a joint public meeting.

Branches also found time among all the campaigning to ensure that they smashed their target. Including car boot sales, ‘quiz and curry nights’ and selling rock cakes, record collections and t-shirts.

Dave Gorton, to ensure that Chesterfield branch hit their target, donated an extra 79p – a small donation but he said: “Well I could spend it trying to get Liar Liar to number one as a gimmick or I could put it into the fighting fund to pay for a few leaflets that may make a real difference.”

This underlines that the fighting fund enables us to produce the leaflets, pamphlets, placards and posters that raise the profile of the Socialist Party and the relevance of a socialist alternative.

At the same time, the sales of the Socialist have soared over the past few months, surpassing the record sales of 2016 and showing increasing interest in and support for socialist ideas.