Red Youth give message of solidarity to RKU

This month Comrade Ed from Red Youth attended the Congress of the RKU (Revolutionary Communist Youth) and delivered the following fraternal address:

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Greetings Comrades, it is wonderful to be amongst fellow Marxist-Leninist youth!

First of all please let me extend my thanks to the executive committee of RKU for inviting Red Youth to this Congress and for the hospitality and ongoing friendship fostered between ourselves over the last five years.

Comrades, it was not so very long ago that the greatest catastrophe to befall civilisation took place – the dismemberment of the USSR and the collapse of a large number of the socialist countries. Although it was not so very long ago, many of us, myself included were just coming into the world. Our generation, a generation of post-Soviet youth, was born into an epoch of reaction, the weakening of the socialist movement and a period of great depression amongst the ranks of the revolutionaries. It has been a period of intensified imperialist aggression, a period whereby imperialism has looked to increase its stranglehold upon the planet, and enslave the youth of the oppressed countries. It was only natural that once our generation came to maturity, many of us would rebel against imperialism, and would seek answers to the problems which capitalism puts before the youth of the entire planet. The answers to our questions can only be found in the study of our society and its economic relations; the answers can only be uncovered through our application of science to the study of society, our method is Marxism-Leninism.

A sickness was able to gestate in the ranks of the revolutionaries in the years preceding our birth, even, unfortunately, in the once mighty Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the party of Lenin and Stalin. The onset of revisionism from the period of the twentieth party congress of the CPSU marked the beginning of a grim chapter in the history of the international working class. However, great parties like the KPMLr, the forerunner of today’s Communist Party in Sweden, were built upon the solid ideological foundations of Marxism-Leninism and irreconcilable struggle against opportunism in the Swedish labour movement. Not only can you members of the RKU be proud to struggle alongside such communists, I too am inspired by the history of the KPMLr and the RKU because they show me and my comrades in Red Youth that a principled revolutionary movement can be built up amongst the working class and youth in an imperialist country!

In Britain, revisionism, like trotskyism, suffocated and blindfolded the working class movement with hopes in social democracy. In Britain the revisionists hallmark is pacifism, this pacifism they put in the place of anti-imperialism, faith in social democracy rather than class struggle, parliamentarianism rather than revolution. Such opportunism in our ranks has castrated the labour movement and led many working class people and particularly the youth, to adopt positions of passivity, a disinterest in politics, a cynicism to all things deemed “political”. Since the betrayal by the Labour Party and the defeat of the British working class in the Great Miners Strike of 1984-5, our labour movement has suffered greatly. Whilst the process to re-establish a revolutionary Communist Party took longer than we would have liked, since it was accomplished in 2004, great strides have been made. The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) is on a sound footing, its cadres and organisers are overwhelmingly young and working class – my generation has stepped up and taken the baton from those revolutionaries who managed to pursue a Marxist-Leninist line during periods of great reaction and hostility. It is my pleasure to tell this Congress that our Party is going from strength to strength, and our youth section, Red Youth is attracting the best revolutionary youth from amongst the working class. Many, myself included, came into active political struggle whilst taking part in the student and youth riots of 2010-11. Many more teenagers and youth in their early twenties have come after having witnessed the criminal imperialist wars in Libya and Syria, wars which crowned our adolescence after a childhood spent witnessing the atrocities committed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine on television screens. Whilst we are still painfully weak and have many defects in our work, it is my belief that the CPGB-ML will grow into a strong and disciplined Communist Party, capable of carrying forward the historic task of the working class to bring about a socialist revolution!

Comrades, despite the best efforts of the revisionists and trotskyists in our recent national elections, the Labour Party was not returned to power. Instead the Conservative Party has come to power with a slim majority. Voter turnout in our general election was 66%, the Conservative party gained 51% of the seats with only 37% of the vote. Our electoral system, often referred to as “first past the post” has resulted in a party with 36% of the vote taking 51% of the seats, whilst another reactionary party which gained 13% of the vote takes only 1 seat! Such results clearly demonstrate to those who bothered to turn out to vote, the nature of our celebrated bourgeois democracy! Indeed not only have large sections of the working class in Britain abandoned their allegiance to the Labour Party, huge numbers amongst the youth have not even registered to vote.

Comrades, now more than ever, the crisis of capitalism through which we are living, presents us with the opportunity to organise amongst the working class, to educate a great mass of people in the ideals of socialism and the vision of a socialist future. The current crisis allows us to organise amongst the unemployed, to go lower and deeper, to the young people who have been proletarianised by this crisis and who have no future under capitalism.

I am very happy to be amongst you at this Congress. I hope to listen to your debates and learn from your experiences so that I can return to Britain with lessons learned which I can share back home. We value very much the friendship which exists between our organisations and I wish you all a happy and productive Congress!

Long live the friendship between RKU and Red Youth!

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