Labour in grassroots plea for cash boost

Labour is appealing to grass-roots activists to double their cash contributions to the party, in an attempt to keep pace with the Conservatives' pre-election propaganda blitz.

The two big parties are engaged in a bitterly fought fund-raising war to finance the country's most expensive election campaign, with all stops being pulled out on poster sites and extensive telephone canvassing of floating voters in the country's key marginals, the 40 seats where the election will be won and lost.

While Labour alleges that the Tories are funded by foreign millionaires, Conservatives argue that the unions are "paying the piper and calling Labour's tune".

Writing to party contributors, who already make payments of about pounds 350,000 a month, Labour's general secretary, Tom Sawyer, says: "Will you help Labour win this election, by increasing your standing-order donation this month?

"In fact, would you be willing to double the amount you're currently giving?"

Mr Sawyer says that while the Conservatives spent pounds 2m in the run-up to the 1992 election, they are "projected" to spend pounds 6.5m in the run-up to this year's poll. He says Labour's total election budget is pounds 10.1m, compared with an estimated Conservative war chest of pounds 20m.

In a by-election speech to Labour activists last week, John Prescott said the Conservatives had turned round a deficit of pounds 17m to a pounds 24m surplus.

"Now, how they did that is a big question," Labour's deputy leader said. "All the sleazy corruption they deal in no doubt helped them in certain areas to get their money."

In a letter received by Labour activists on Friday, Tony Blair stepped up the pressure with a warning that all the work that had been done since 1995 could "go to waste" because of a shortage of money. "The Tories have two important advantages," the Labour Party leader wrote. "One: they know exactly when the election will be announced. Two: overseas millionaires are at this moment swelling their funds with cash."

A Conservative spokesman said Mr Prescott's figures were as accurate as anything else he said. He would not provide alternative estimates for the old deficit or the new surplus. All figures were dismissed as "speculative". He said the party was abiding by rules laid down in a Commons select committee report: that no money should be accepted from unknown or illegal sources or from foreign governments, and that no strings should be attached to any donations.

Mr Prescott said last week that the Conservatives had not paid back the illegal Polly Peck funds they received from Asil Nadir before he fled to Cyprus.

The Conservatives say they are getting large-scale, unspecified contributions from their mail-shots to about 100,000 contributors. They have recently targeted people who bought shares in privatised industries, with a warning about the consequences of Labour's proposed windfall tax. The indiscriminate nature of Torymail-shots was shown last week when Ben Chapman, Labour candidate in the Wirral South by-election, received a personalised appeal from the Tory party chairman Brian Mawhinney.

Dr Mawhinney wrote: "A pounds 20 donation goes straight towards communicating to 4,000 people ... Unlike Labour, who can expect heavy support from the trade unions, we have to rely on donations from individuals - people who recognise that a Conservative government is best for Britain."

A Labour spokesman said last night that regular monthly payments from individual party members were now a bedrock of party finance, having risen from about pounds 350,000 a year in 1989 to about pounds 4m this year.

In his fund-raising letter, Mr Sawyer alleges that Mr Major has authorised spending of over pounds 1.5m a month on advertising before the election has even been called. "The Tories have already booked some 3,000 poster sites across Britain for activity over the next couple of months," he says.

Labour suspects that with "an almost bottomless pit" of financial support, the Tories are trying to tempt Labour "to make us run out of funds before we even get to the election".

If Labour wins the election, it has promised to force all the parties to publish accounts and declare the source of all donations above pounds 5,000.