Sunday 27 November 2011

Report of Sylvia Pankhurst Event


Preparation started back in early June. First we got available dates from the Plough. Then we got in touch with Mary and Liz for dates that would fit them.

Really from then on it was not too difficult. The Plough put the event in its programmes. We got some A4 posters from the film producers, stuck a notice on the bottom and circulated them.

Elijah designed flyers for the event and a preview featured on the North Devon Journal's cinema page.

I wrote a letter to be given to each cinema goer which I enclose.

Forty-six people attended. Women outnumbered men. For a North Devon Communist Party event that is excellent. We had a literature stall which was well received. Free issues of the latest copy of Liberation, invitations to the next Liberation event and copies of the Country Standard were given out.


Many were surprised that there was still a Communist Party and that the Morning Star was still going. There was a great deal of interest shown in the party.

Had the local Green Party not been holding a wind farm meeting in Barnstaple that night I believe the attendance would have been higher. The Plough's publicity helped us enormously and the North Devon Journal's article brought some people in.

It was made quite clear that this was a Communist Party event. The audience was not 'the usual suspects' by any means. It was the branch's first public event outside of  Barnstaple. There is a stereotypical image of the Party or of what the Party does. It has been moulded by the mass media but events such as this destroy that image.

So it was both a political and a financial success and I am dead chuffed.

Gerrard Sables
Branch Secretary

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