The Norwich district of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) has had a very good few weeks since the launch of the ‘Revolution Against the Billionaires’ recruitment campaign. We have recruited four new comrades across the three branches. This can be owed to two things.
Firstly, the patient building of our weekly ‘Coffee with the Communists’ meeting, where comrades discuss articles from the latest edition of The Communist.
Secondly, the desire amongst all comrades to recruit and build their party.
Coffee with the Communists
For many years the Norwich comrades have organised weekly district-wide paper sales, which have always been followed by political discussion on the contents of the paper. We realised, however, there was a lot more potential to develop these discussions, so the comrades decided to launch ‘Coffee with the Communists’.
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Sophia, the ‘Norwich City’ branch secretary, explains how they built for the meetings:
“Really importantly we started with posters and leaflets to get the word out, as well as social media posts.
“On sales we give the leaflet to most people who stop and have a positive conversation or buy the paper, emphasising that it’s a casual opportunity to discuss current events and ask questions.
“This is typically a lot less intimidating to people who aren’t fully sold yet or immediately ready for a big commitment.”
A new comrade, a school student who met us through the ‘Coffee with the Communists’, said that:
“After first becoming aware of the party through seeing the posters across the city, I decided to follow the work on social media. I later decided to come to ‘Coffee with the Communists’ as a way to see what the party was all about.”
After the meeting he then joined the rest of the comrades for the sale and quickly began to get involved with party activity. Within two weeks they had joined.
We recently restructured the ‘Coffee with Communist’ meetings to allow for more informal chats about the paper before discussing the articles together.
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This means that when newcomers attend we have time to talk to them about what brought them along and answer any initial questions before beginning the meeting in earnest.
These meetings now regularly attract around five newcomers to each meeting, with most of them joining the sale afterward.
Our party to build
Following the very inspiring National Congress earlier in May, the Norwich RCP District Committee met to discuss the ‘Revolution Against the Billionaires’ recruitment campaign.
The leading comrades emphasised the importance for each member in Norwich to take a personal responsibility to recruit. This tone has been brought into the three branches.
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On the back of this change in tone, the City branch have updated their approach to how we follow up with people who want to join the party (“contacts”). Sophia shared:
“Over the past month or two we have made the shift from a centralised active contact list for the branch to comrades keeping individual lists… We really emphasised the need for comrades to take their own initiative, and fulfil their personal responsibility to build the branch.
“If comrades consistently have no active contacts on their list, we ask them to question why, and to take action to change this. In the section of the agenda where we used to simply go through and get updates on every active contact, we now only report on very imminent recruits.
“It’s also a place not only to talk about contacts, but recruitment in general, so comrades can bring up any questions they have about following someone up.”
This has led to an increased number of contacts for the branch and a recent recruit.
The ‘Norwich over the Water’ branch is the newest and smallest branch and has recently been taking a variety of initiatives in the city, including the running of a Wellred Books stall, to boost the profile of the RCP’s publishing house and sell a wide variety of books.
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The comrades find this very useful on quieter days when people are moseying about in Norwich.
Many people come up to the stall, engaging in good conversations about Marxist theory. The branch has since recruited two new comrades in the last week and has two close contacts.
The leadership of the branch at the University of East Anglia has imbued comrade with a personal responsibility to build at the university.
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This means, despite the recent ending of the university term, the enthusiasm in the branch has led to a long-term contact agreeing to join. The new comrade said: “I have been waiting to be asked.”
The most recent recruit from ‘Norwich over the Water’ branch said something very similar. The lesson from this has been crystal clear. Make sure to just ask!
While the last two weeks have been a great confirmation of the hard work done by the Norwich comrades since the launch of the recruitment campaign, they feel this is just the beginning.
With the continuation of our weekly paper discussions, an increase in paper sales, and new initiatives such as building for an open meeting, we are confident we can continue to see strong recruitment in the branches, bringing us closer to 40 comrades in Norwich.
