My take on Socialist party congress 2012

Having just returned home from socialist party congress 2012 I am completely shattered but more inspired and ready for the coming period than ever before. Having spent 3 solid long days in the sunny surroundings of Clacton on sea in Essex I can safely say I have experienced the most democratic political fighting conference I have ever been to.

This is no exaggeration attending my first congress I witnessed some amazing contributions from new and elder comrades. All contributed effectively and made a big difference to the discussions.

I arrived on the Friday night not really knowing what to expect but eager to find out. But come tonight I have been blown away with the sacrifice and dedication comrades show to the party and the fight for a transformation of society towards socialism.

Hearing some fantastic speeches was not the only thing that happened this weekend. Lots of fighting programmes and tactics discussed and debated and this effectively sets our perspectives for the coming year as a party.

Hearing such inspiration speakers warms your heart but also shows how much comrades do and are involved in. Hearing from comrades slogging it out in the trade unions keeping our presence strong in the left unions including PCS and RMT and the NUT to name just a few.

There was a terrific campaign for subs appeal for comrades to pledge further funds to the party to help us campaign producing leaflets banners and material for promoting our party and various struggles we are likely to need.

The difference with our party is we have no rich donors and union backing in terms of funds its all funded by the membership and every pound or penny we get is very appreciated and put straight back into campaigning for working people.
No comrade who takes a responsibility or a full time position in the party gains any financial reward for it. They don’t join the party for that reason and certainly don’t take on positions such as leadership to gain from it at all. The only benefit they do have is that they can make more sacrifice than others dedicating far more time and resources to the struggle.
The party building and organisational points and discussion over the weekend was excellent and further improvements to our paper – the Socialist will be happening with us hopefully going to a full 16 page colour edition very soon if we can continue improving our sales figures.
Much was made of the paper being the lifeline of the party our calling card on protests and street sales if you like. Many comrades do well selling the paper but we can always do more of course. But overall we are progressing well in terms of subs payments and fighting fund raising. It is some testament to the comrades that we are increasing our monthly subs yet many are seeing pay frozen, cut or loosing jobs or mixture of the lot. It shows that our comrades have confidence in our party and our ideas to invest further money in it and redoubling their efforts.
We had a international report from the CWI and its various 45 sections across the world where we are involved in big struggles in some very challenging environments too sometimes too i found this part especially fascinating given my interest in international matters affecting the world working class.

I myself did make a contribution on the second day getting up on stage in front of 200-300 comrades and visitors to speak on the growing region that is eastern region that we are in. I felt very good after I spoke and was so glad I got up to do it. Talking on my role in the party and how far I’ve com already in my political education and the fact I’ve been elected as Harlow branch secretary already I feel so proud to be given the opportunity to develop even further still.

The ideas of Marx, Lenin, Engel’s, Lenin and Trotsky have not gone away and our party looks to apply the ideas of Marxism to today’s struggles and provide a programme for workers to take up. We feel we have the right programme and our aim now is to convince new layers of the working class to sympathise with our ideas and hopefully one day join our party and help join and make a big contributions in helping changing society into a fairer equal socialist society that benefit the 99% using the wealth of the 1% and planning society based on needs of people.