Thursday 7th November 2013 marked the 96th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, and this little introductory video is just to give you a flavour of the celebration that was held by the CPGB-ML at a packed meeting in Saklatvala hall, Southall on Saturday 9th November 2013.
Great speeches from the representatives of Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea, as well a Katt Cremer from the Party and Angela and Dan from Red Youth.
This video explains why we celebrate, what we are trying to achieve and why we have every reason to be optimistic about the future.
Comrades and friends assembled in Saklatvala Hall on Saturday and celebrated both the defeat of US imperialism in the Korean war and the attacks on the Moncada barracks led by Fidel Castro which heralded the beginning of the Cuban revolution.
Members of the Kim il Sung Socialist Youth League performed revolutionary songs and cpgb-ml artists performed classics such as Joe Hill with everybody finishing with the Internationale.
A history of the communist movement in Britain has now been uploaded to our youtube and can be seen here presented by cpgb-ml member -and former CPGB and NCP member- Steve Cook:
A video of the Internationale performance is here.
All the good intentions in the world can’t cure hunger and illiteracy. Numerous reports and scientific discoveries by NGO’s and Charities prove quite clearly that capitalism is bad for your health, sanity, education and all round wellbeing! The latest report from Save the Children reaffirms what we already knew – but if we’re serious about ending hunger and illiteracy then we need to end the system which creates these evils; monopoly capitalism viz. Imperialism!The following has been written by a Red Youth and Communist Party activist as comment on the news story reported by the BBC here.
Last year, in May 2012, Save the Children declared in their pamphlet “Nutrition in the First 1,000 Days” that “The focus is on the 171 million children globally who do not have the opportunity to reach their full potential due to the physical and mental effects of poor nutrition in the earliest months of life.” A year on, Save The Children has issued a new report indicating a direct link between malnutrition and illiteracy and has vowed to take their message, with the backing of some recognized big-wig authors, to London on June 8 for the G8 “summit on global nutrition”. Leading campaigner Julia Donaldson has declared, “Leaders attending this summit have a golden opportunity to stop this. They must invest more funding to tackle malnutrition if we are to stop a global literacy famine.” (BBC, Authors back ‘malnutrition hits literacy’ study – 28/5/13)
All socialists and progressives will be quick to agree with both the general findings of the report and condemn the scourge of hunger and illiteracy. Indeed we commend and salute the authors for bringing such crimes against humanity to the attention of the world’s media. But what must be understood is that this “golden opportunity” perceived by Save the Children, Ms. Donaldson and many supporters, is doomed to abject failure and is nothing but badly misguided good faith on their part. We expect absolutely nothing more than bureaucratic blubber and crocodile tears from the leaders of the G8; for malnourishment and illiteracy are not mere unfortunate side effects of imperialism’s worldwide operation, they are in fact the integral and logical results of monopoly capital’s drive for maximum profit and the inevitable product of a system that protects the private individual accumulation of wealth, a wealth that has been created through hard work of millions of workers in the fields, farms and factories, a wealth stolen and concentrated in the hands of the few.
Illiteracy & imperialism
Illiteracy has historically been one of capitalism’s primary tools in the suppression of class struggle and their ongoing monopoly on knowledge and technology. In the imperialist epoch this process has taken on the form of the technological enslavement of developing nations to their imperialist master’s. No phone networks without Vodafone, no electricity grid without Siemen’s, no medicine without Glaxo Smith-Kline etc etc. No wonder the technological developments that occur in China, Iran, DPR Korea and other independent nations bring the fury of the western governments and their media; incredulous at developing technology in these countries, particularly annoyed by the increasing technical development of the military in these countries, enabling them to defend their sovereignty and independence against imperialist aggression. Does the west really worry that China is ‘exploiting’ Africa? The same west that colonised Africa, stole the land from her people’s and enslaved and transported millions! Worries about their exploitation by China?! Perhaps they are more concerned that Chinese phone networks, Chinese mines, Chinese technicians and engineers are delivering the kind of technological improvements to Africa that will enable her people’s to stand on their own two feet, free of the IMF and World Bank!
Illiteracy & Culture
The indoctrination of British youth, the promotion of materialistic, self-obsessive behavior has driven the working class into blind and submissive moral acceptance of the domination of the idea’s, norms and behavior of the ruling class, helped along by the powerful privately-owned corporate media working in the interests of capital it has become cool to champion “The Apprentice” and decidedly uncool to go against the grain. Empathy with one another and our common struggle has been contaminated with selfish greed, alienating humans from their natural empathy towards one another, our common struggle and our desire to cooperate in a social environment to fix common problems. These natural instincts are replaced by senseless competition and mutual distrust, a pitting of one against another in a battle for survival and a race to the bottom.
The seemingly endless cycle of exploitation of working-class families will continue for as long as the working-class allows itself to be subjected to the orders of the exploitative class. The daily grind and increasing hardships create a no win situation for imperialism. To increase profits to the maximum it must impoverish and drive down the living standards of the masses of people – but in so doing it creates it’s own gravediggers. The only way to put an end to the poverty and neglect facing the 170 million + children talked about in the report, as well as their families, is to put control of production into their hands – into the hands of the working-class. The working class must seize state power and wield it in its own interests.
Socialism and class politics points the way
Take the example of the Cuban revolution. To this day, Cuba is labeled a third world country, despite boasting average literacy attainment far higher than that of its former oppressor, the USA, and maintaining the welfare of the people despite an endless list of items embargoed by the imperialists, banned from entering the country by US imperialism and it’s allies! Against imperialism, against the odds, Cuba has defied what capitalism says is possible and proven that an organised, disciplined and clearly defined working-class agenda is the only way to put an end to the demons of hunger, destitution, illiteracy and cultural oppression that haunt the world’s working class and the oppressed nations.
If Save the Children imagine that their discovery of c+h=i [children+hunger=illiteracy] is new they should look to the example of the Black Panther Party (BPP), who introduced food before school programmes in the 1960’s! Thousands of poor children in their community, who were suffering terrible poverty and malnutrition, and who would normally go to school without a meal were fed by the BPP programmes. The Panthers realised way back in 1960’s America that a hungry child can’t concentrate properly in school, that hunger prevented them from learning and developing, that an empty tummy inevitably led to illiteracy and unemployment! It’s not rocket science.
The way forward
Only the direct actions of the working-class can change the world. No amount of charitable donations and hand-me-downs from the G8 leaders will ever free children from the slavery they face at the hands of imperialism. Only a scientific, socialist approach to running society, a system and state run by the workers themselves can execute the demands of working-class.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win!
We reproduce here the greetings sent by the CPGB-ML to the celebrations for Africa Liberation Day arranged by the AAPRP and Ajamu in London.
“Dear Cde Maxine, comrades of the AAPRP, AJAMU and participants in the celebration of Africa Liberation Day.
I’m sorry I cannot be with you in person today.
Allow me, none the less, to wish you success for the meeting and please pass on our warm fraternal greetings and firm proletarian solidarity from the communist party on this 65th anniversary of African Liberation Day.
Obama’s formation of an Africa Corps, and the renewed determination of the NATO imperialist powers to dominate the continent of Africa, remind us how important it is to mark this occasion, and renew our struggle to rid the world of the scourge of imperialism – the enemy of all working and oppressed people.
At this moment, African workers, like all the oppressed masses of humanity, struggle against aggressive imperialist plunder – whether against the policies of economic domination, IMF ‘restructuring’ and slow starvation, or against policies of political destabilisation and direct military intervention, where the path of independence has been boldly taken.
NATOs genocidal campaign against anti-imperialist Libya, and recent imperialist interventions in Cote D’Ivoire, Mali, and Sierra Leone, and ongoing intrigue and manipulation in other states – Uganda, Rwanda, Egypt, Tunisia, etc. remind us of the truth if these words.
As imperialism’s economic, diplomatic and military might falls on the brave and independent people of Syria, where in the media do we read of USA’s ongoing genocidal proxy war for the plunder of COLTAN (without which silicone valley, the computer and mobile phone industries would grind to a halt) from the long-suffering Congolese people?
These 5 million victims apparently warrant no moral outrage; they are the everyday sacrifice made on the high alter of capitalist profit and highlighting their plight does not serve the imperial strategic agenda.
Imperialism seeks domination, not democracy! Let us never forget it.
Lenin said that the struggle against imperialism would be a sham and a fraud unless inseparably bound up with the struggles for national liberation of the toiling millions of ‘colonial salves’.
In our allegedly post-colonial era, following the fall of the Soviet Union and the renewed aggression and arrogance of Anglo-American imperialism in particular, the pressure of imperialism on its former colonies is greater than ever.
Let us then remember the words of Amilcar Cabral, founder of the PAIGC:
“I should just like to make one last point about solidarity between the international working class movement and our national liberation struggle. There are two alternatives: either we admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism which interests everybody, or we deny it. If, as would seem from all the evidence, imperialism exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate the working class in all the advanced countries and smother the national liberation movements in all the underdeveloped countries, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then I think the main aspect of our solidarity is extremely simple: it is to fight.”
Let us resolve to build unity in our struggle against capitalist imperialism, against neocolonialism, and admit that if a better world is possible, it is OUR duty to forge the means for bringing it into being.
Workers of all countries unite – we have nothing to loose but our chains! We have a world to win!
Today – 9 May 2012 – marks the 67th Anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi German Fascism; when the red flag was raised over the Reichstag by the victorious Red Army, while Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin.
These are achievements of Socialism that we can and should all celebrate. Achievements that still show us that workers can vanquish the darkest armies of imperialism and build a bright socialist future based upon cooperation, and ending forever the exploitation of man by man and nation by nation.
Socialism has never been more relevant and urgently needed by the workers of all countries, as the recession plunges ever deeper into profound slump and economic crisis of overproduction, and engulfs ever more nations into war – the capitalists’ ‘final solution’ for their economic woes, unless workers can avert the crisis by overturning this bankrupt system once and for all.
Of one thing we can be assured, the financiers in the city of London and Wall Street will try once again to sacrifice tens and hundreds of millions of us at the high alter capitalist profit.
“At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
This is what they have written on a roundabout in Stockwell, not far from where the SO19 armed police gunned down Jean Charles de Menezes in cold blood. Shot in the head in the “war on terror” – and Brazilian plumbers who we may or may not confuse with Pakistanis. What a farce, are our ‘freedoms’ in this UK police state.
But 100 million were sacrificed in the last century to the capitalists’ insatiable god of mammon. And which of our ‘elected representatives’ remembers and understands the nature of capitalism today, as we slide into the next great world conflagration. Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Yugoslavia, Libya… How similar to the Nazi quest for lebensraum; the preliminary acts leading to the world wars.
Joseph Stalin, who stood at the helm of the international struggle against imperialism and for socialism for three decades (and who, consequently, is the favourite prey of the paper tigers of bourgeois history), was a thousand times right when he said: “Either eke out a miserable existence and sink lower and lower, or adopt a new weapon. That is the choice imperialism puts before the working class. Imperialism brings the proletariat to revolution.”
Another world is possible! Fight imperialism! Build Socialism!
Join us to lay a wreath in honor of the 27 million Soviet citizens who laid down their lives to save the world from fascism at the Soviet war memorial in Kennington, south London this morning at 10.30 am. Location of the Soviet War Memorial:
Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, on land donated by the London Borough of Southwark, adjacent to the
Imperial War Museum
Lambeth Road
London
SE1 6HZ
United Kingdom
Watch: a former Nazi soldier reflects on lessons of the war for workers of all countries and particularly in Britain and a America today:
Why did 100 million die in WW1 and WW2?
Significance of the Soviet Union to our generation:
Real History of WW2 – fascism and communism are opposites!
Hitler and Stalin – historical enemies representing the dark past (Hitler) and the bright future (Stalin), so why are we encouraged to treat them as if they were ‘the same’?
Here’s a few pics from May Day celebrations in Manchester and Leeds which were held on Saturday 4 May,
Red Youth and the party on Manchester May DayManchester May DayComrades marching towards Friends Meeting House for the Manchester RallyComrade Ranjeet delivers a talk at Friends Meeting House, Manchester post May Day Rally on the topic of the DPR Korea and Proletarian internationalism
Demonstrations have taken place across Britain this weekend in opposition to the hated “Bedroom Tax”.
Blaming the poor for poverty
When the Bedroom Tax comes into force on 1 April, 14 percent will be cut from housing benefit for households with one ‘spare’ bedroom and 25 percent from those with two or more.
An estimated 660,000 working-age social tenants across the country will be hit, losing an average of £14-16 per week, and facing the stark choice of moving home or being forced into even deeper poverty. Evictions and debt levels will skyrocket.
Bedroom Tax demo in Leeds
In order to justify this move, politicians and journalists have been spinning a fairy tale of housing ‘shortages’, but it is actually one- and two-bed flats that are in short supply, so where are people supposed to ‘downsize’ to?
If our rulers really want to do something about the affordable housing shortage, why not set rent controls in the private sector, build lots of new social homes and requisition all those empty ‘deluxe’ flats?
It’s a classic privatisation strategy – first reduce the amount and quality of a service, then blame the service users for the problem and use it to justify the next privatisation move! How many times have we been told that our NHS is under threat because poor people are suffering from diet- or smoking-related ailments, or that burdensome pensioners are ‘bed-blocking’?
The answer? Instead of creating new hospital wards and putting more nurses and doctors into them, more outsourcing to dodgy profiteers and more cuts in bed and frontline staff numbers to pay more PFI debts!
In reality, this tax has nothing to do with ‘freeing up social housing’; it is a callous scapegoating of Britain’s poorest people – after all, only those who are claiming benefits will have to pay, even though many of them are already impoverished to the point of malnutrition.
Disabled people, single parents who are not designated as the ‘main carer’ for their children, couples sleeping apart owing to medical conditions … all will be hit. Children of the same sex will be required to share a room until they reach 16, and of the opposite sex until the age of 10.
Demonstrations against the bedroom tax are on the rise
Labour party hypocrisy
Grassroots campaigns to oppose the tax have been launched by workers all over Britain. But a dangerous pattern is emerging as these campaigns take shape – their hijacking by Labour’s so-called ‘left’ wing and the exclusion and silencing of all non-Labour-affiliated organisations and individuals.
Many supposedly ‘non-aligned’ events have been seized and monopolised by a ‘committee’ that has censored anyone who tries to tell the truth about Labour’s support for and implementation of the capitalists’ cuts. Non-Labour people have been systematically blocked from Facebook event and campaign pages all over the country.
Demonstrators in Birmingham in April
The hypocrisy is staggering. Labour, far from building new homes, recently oversaw 13 years of sell-offs and privatisation that massively accelerated the ghettoisation of Britain’s remaining social tenants, while ‘Red Ed’ Miliband, in whom we are asked to put our hopes of a ‘worker-friendly’ capitalist government next time around, has actually endorsed the bedroom tax.
When it comes to cuts, privatisation, and all other attacks on working people’s living standards, the Tories, Labour and LibDems are all as bad as each other, because they all serve the same capitalist interests. The ‘debate’ that they distract us with is only about how soon or how fast to make the cuts that capitalists demand – or who to blame, and where to wield the knife first.
What they are all agreed on is that British imperialism must at all costs be saved from the current crisis, which is the deepest ever seen – even worse than the fabled Great Depression of the 1930s, which led to WW2 and the deaths of millions of poor people all over the world.
Let us recall that the $20bn cuts ‘required’ to be made to our health service were first announced by the Labour government – and that all the parties agreed with them. They also all agreed that £1bn on bombing Libya’s hard-won infrastructure – health, education, housing, industry, electricity and water – into the dust was money well spent.
Desperate to stop workers drawing the obvious conclusion that no capitalist party can serve their interests, Labour has been working hard to rebrand itself as the ‘anti-cuts’ opposition. Glossy leaflets and online campaigns abound, but the concerted effort to remove all other voices from the bedroom tax campaign is proof that the party is not interested in uniting the opposition and defeating the tax, but only in getting a bit of free advertising. Labour’s fake ‘opposition’ to cuts is just a cynical PR exercise.
If more proof is still needed of this, let us look at the case of Newcastle’s Michael McDonald. As an anti-cuts organiser, he must be a thorn in the side of the Labour-led council that is busy implementing drastic cuts in the city.
Following an anti-cuts demo in February, where Mr McDonald told council-leader Nick Forbes what he thought about these attacks on Newcastle’s poorest, this Labour scoundrel sent police to drag McDonald out of his bed and charge him with a ‘public order’ offence!
The Labour party’s true role as policeman of the workers’ movement could not have been more clearly illustrated!
To injure one is to injure us all
We need to understand that no representative of a capitalist party is on the side of the workers, however much (s)he may pretend to be. Nor is anyone who tries to incite us to blame each other for the poverty in which we find ourselves.
It is not immigrants, fat people, poor people, smokers, benefit claimers, council-house tenants, hoodies or pensioners who are ‘bleeding the country dry’ but the free-market-fundamentalist gangsters who rampage all over the globe in search of profit, profit and more profit.
Today, our forces are divided, not only by the racism and scapegoating that we are encouraged to indulge in, but by the pigeon-holing of struggles as ‘separate’ issues, each one of which is presented as being relevant only to a small minority of people.
We have lost sight of the fact that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’, and so our forces are dispersed and our attention is diverted by every new media-created distraction.
If we unite, however, we can use our collective power to sabotage all attempts to make us pay for the capitalists’ crisis. A real tenants’ movement, instead of Almo-led eviction organisations, is needed to defend our homes.
If we join together we can refuse to be resettled or moved. We can patrol our estates and stop bailiffs from evicting our fellow tenants. We must defend ourselves – and our neighbours – from the thugs and hired servants of the rich.
And we must refuse to let our campaign groups be hijacked by Labour politicians who do nothing to defend the working class from the assaults of capitalist bloodsuckers. They are helping the state to rob the poor to pay the rich – kick them out of our communities!
Red Youth sheds no tears at the death of Margaret Thatcher today. Thatcher caused immense harm to British youth throughout the 1980’s, enacting a number of reactionary Employment Acts which helped destroy job security for young people and laid the basis for the reactionary policies pursued by John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in subsequent years. In 2013 the number of young people out of work, with no opportunity to study or build a future is a direct result of the anti-working class agenda she forced upon the British people with the aid of a servile trade union movement which was firmly tied to social democracy and which betrayed the working class by its refusal to stand with Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers during their heroic stand 1984/5. The job today, as it was then, is to break the link between social democracy and the workers movement, to forge a strong and disciplined Communist Party capable of leading the working class out of the abyss and towards a bright socialist future. We publish below one of the finest and most dignified statements made today, that of comrade Gerry Adams:
“Margaret Thatcher did great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British Prime Minister. Working class communities were devastated in Britain because of her policies.
Her role in international affairs was equally belligerent whether in support of the Chilean dictator Pinochet, her opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa; and her support for the Khmer Rouge. Here in Ireland her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering. She embraced censorship, collusion and the killing of citizens by covert operations, including the targeting of solicitors like Pat Finucane, alongside more open military operations and refused to recognise the rights of citizens to vote for parties of their choice.
Her failed efforts to criminalise the republican struggle and the political prisoners is part of her legacy. It should be noted that in complete contradiction of her public posturing, she authorised a back channel of communications with the Sinn Féin leadership but failed to act on the logic of this.
Unfortunately she was faced with weak Irish governments who failed to oppose her securocrat agenda or to enlist international support in defence of citizens in the north.
Margaret Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and ’81.
Two delegates from Red Youth have returned from the 8 Congress of the CJC (Collective of Young Communists in Spain). The CJC is the militant youth wing of the PCPE. Red Youth were delighted to be able to deliver a message of solidarity to the comrades.
Our comrades arrived in Spain last Thursday and attended the Congress proceedings from Saturday – Monday. As well as Red Youth there were young communists and revolutionaries present from a number of other countries including Sweden, Turkey, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus.
As well as following the Congress proceedings and holding meetings with other revolutionary youth, the comrades were taken on a tour of Madrid, specifically to sites associated with the Republican defence of Madrid from fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War.
The militancy, discipline and devotion to Marxist Leninist principles were on display for all to see at the Congress. In the fight against opportunism in Spain, the CJC and PCPE go from strength to strength; they are building a monolithic party of proletarian revolutionaries!
