Party Socials Inaugurate the Work for 2014

Michael Chant, General Secretary of RCPB(ML),
speaking on the character and work of the Party Regional branches of RCPB(ML) hosted a number of socials to inaugurate the Party’s work for 2014.

The London region social was held at the John Buckle Centre on January 4 in a spirit of unbounded confidence and optimism. As well as Party activists and sympathisers, there were guests from the New Communist Party and from the Embassy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, including Ambassador Hyong Hak Bong, and other friends of the Party.

A group of progressive singers had prepared a programme of communist and progressive music, including the revolutionary song, The Founding of the Party, sung in three-part harmony. This introduced the formal part of the evening, when National Leader Chris Coleman unveiled a bas-relief of John Buckle, sculpted by a long-time friend and comrade.

Chris Coleman spoke of the contribution of Comrade John, who joined the work of the forerunner organisations of RCPB(ML) when he was still a student. He came to prominence as an anti-fascist fighter and leader at the time in the 1970s when the state was trying to lend legitimacy to a party of fascism. This effort was smashed by mass actions in which John Buckle was a leader. John Buckle led the work to found RCPB(ML) in March 1979, and devoted his entire existence to the cause of the people and the revolutionary transformation of society. Today, when the monopolies and their
John Buckle speaking at the historic Conference against
Racism and Fascism, Conway Hall, London, June 7, 1981 political representatives are wrecking the economy and public services, committing acts of aggression, and storing up terrible tragedies for the people, the ruling circles are also ratcheting up their anti-communist rhetoric, including against the DPRK. As part of this, they are falsifying that very history which the Marxist-Leninists and the whole of the democratic forces created with their struggle and sacrifice. Our Party therefore thinks that it is crucial to uphold the memory of John Buckle and all those who joined the work that history was calling to be taken up. It is important to do so as an inspiration and guide to those who are today entering the fray, especially the youth. Chris Coleman proposed a toast to John Buckle and the cause to which he dedicated his life.

Michael Chant, General Secretary of RCPB(ML), then spoke of the character and work of the Party, and the tasks for 2014, calling on all to join in the work to open the path to progress. This address is posted below.

Hyong Hak Bong, Ambassador of the DPRK in London, spoke of the strengthening of the ties between the Workers’ Party of Korea and RCPB(ML), and of the importance of the friendship and solidarity between the communist and progressive forces in Britain and the DPRK. Under the difficult circumstances of the hostility of the US-led reactionary forces, the DPRK, under the leadership of the WPK and the respected Kim Jong Un, is holding fast to the revolutionary banner and making great advances, he said. In his New Year address, respected leader Kim Jong Un summarised the successes of the revolution, Ambassador Hyong said, and set the targets and objectives for 2014. Kim Jong Un particularly spoke of the political and ideological
Hyong Hak Bong, Ambassador of the DPRK in
London, spoke of the strengthening of the ties
between the Workers’ Party of Korea
and RCPB(ML)unity of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the Ambassador remarked, after the detection and purging of the factionalist clique that was trying to divert the DPRK from its chosen path, and obstruct its forward march. The whole Party, army and people are united around the revolutionary banner and are confident that the final victory will be theirs. Ambassador Hyong wished all those present good health and success in the work of the Party in 2014, and pledged to do everything to strengthen the fighting unity of all the progressive forces in the coming year.

The social continued with a cultural programme, marked by its internationalist character. Amongst others, there were progressive songs performed in the Welsh and Spanish languages. Even the food represented the many cultures resident in Britain. The discussions and conversations that took place also embodied the sense of social responsibility that unites those who are taking a stand for the alternative.

On January 10, New Year social of the Northern Region of RCPB(ML) was held. General Secretary Michael Chant gave the Party's important intervention on the new year and the Year of the Party. Roger Nettleship said on behalf of the region that he really valued the attendance of the Party activists and friends in the region, because even though this was a modest celebration, those who were there reflected the work of the Party in the region for more than ten years. This includes the work in the anti-war movement where the Party has fought for an anti-war government, and in the health service where it has fought to safeguard the future of the NHS. It includes the work in the Cuba friendship movement as well as the friendship movement with the DPRK. Overall, it represents the fight for a new direction for society where the Party has intervened in the political process to stand alternative candidates to the big parties to break the mould of the archaic Parliamentary system which is a block to progress. And all of those present reflected to some degree, directly and indirectly that work. Roger Nettleship said it was very fitting that we come together to look at and celebrate RCPB(ML), a modern communist party which has stood at the centre of this work but has no other interest but to achieve the aims and interests of the working class and people in Britain to bring their movements success. He said it was very fitting that the General Secretary of RCPB(ML) was there to give the intervention to outline the Party’s views and to further work we are undertaking at this time.

After the address and the toast to the work of 2014, serious discussion on the points raised continued late into the evening, concluding this important event in the Party's work in the Northern Region.

Our Party is a Party of modern communism, of contemporary Marxist-Leninist thought. It has its general line for this historical period, its programme for the working class and its vision of the new society. Overall, its line of march towards a socialist Britain in the 21st century was set out on the eve of the new millennium. It is an organic, living system, with its leaders and leading bodies, its members and basic organisations, its activists, supporters, friends and all its circles. It has the outlook of constantly renewing its thinking according to the world as it is in order to transform it into the world as it should be, analysing and taking action. It has the precept that action is primary and understanding is in its service, but that theory and theoretical work are constant preoccupations since they underpin and give guidelines to the work of the Party on all fronts. Without this theory and theoretical work, it could not harness the revolutionary energy of the whole working class and people’s movements, and empower them to find their bearings so as to cohere into one revolutionary movement. At the same time, without actively engaging in the working class and people’s movements, engaging in organising, building resistance to the anti-social onslaught, there could be no summing up of the movement and the theoretical work would atrophy and become dogmatism. The Party upholds that what is sound in theory must also be sound in practice, and in that sense its theory and practice are one.

In all its mobilising work, the Party is fighting for the alternative, the new. In other words, it is not fighting to regain some positions that society held in the past. The past is past, and society develops according to its own laws, it has its own objective motion. The Party upholds that what is decisive in changing society is the human factor in inseparable connection with its social consciousness. This means that it is not fighting for some utopia, but it raises among the working class and people that there are serious problems to be overcome since those who have power are blocking the release and flowering of this human factor/social consciousness to harness their energy and power, to harness science in favour of the whole of society, to inform themselves and society. Without being alarmist, the Party points out that the monopolies, the whole of the financial oligarchy who dictate whether industries and public services should or should not produce and be financed, are perpetrating and storing up ever greater tragedies for the working class and people. It is not alarmist, since it points out that the human power of the people as a whole knows no limits and if directed against the implementation and preparation of these tragedies can prevent and overcome them, and give rise to new arrangements, to new mechanisms, to a new consciousness, in which the monopolies and those who politically represent them will be strictly controlled and prepare the conditions for human history to really begin.

At the same time, these ruling elites in present conditions have immense power, which they must be deprived of. They do not even recognise that there are workers who have rights, and that a modern society must uphold the rights of all simply by virtue of their being human. From this springs the claims of all members on society, the right to health care, the right to education, the rights of collectives such as women, youth, by virtue of their objective position and claims on society. The people must be bold and say that No means No, that the rights of the producers must be recognised, and this includes all the public services of a modern society that are put in the service of production and the public good, and develop a militant programme of resistance based on laying the claims. The working class and people cannot accept that any view which is considered as trouble-making by those that have power from the top of society downwards is criminalised and made a law-and-order question, a question of rules and regulations, laws and Acts, to impose the agenda of the ruling elite and no other. The weapons of the working class in this endeavour include its outlook that an injury to one is an injury to all, or putting it in a more up-to-date way, that the fight is one of defending the rights of all. In contrast, the ruling elite seeks to atomise the conditions and experience of every person, to deny there is common ground, common concerns, a common fight for the public good, and that there is a right for all who are affected by decisions to be a decisive and integral part of that decision-making.

Thus the outlook and aspirations of the Party are the outlook and aspirations of the working class and people. It is passionately concerned with developing the practical politics that will open the door to progress, unblock the path to the future. In other words, RCPB(ML) does not think that to be a communist, a member of the communist party, is to uphold a set of beliefs. It does not think that the issue with the youth, for example, is to educate them in some catechism of communism. It participates in the objective movements of the workers and people with the aim of giving them direction, coherence, of enabling the movements as a whole to sum up their experience, to turn dissatisfaction into a conviction that there is a necessity for change. Last year in our New Year social, we gave a call for a change in the direction of society, in the direction of the economy. This has guided our work over the past year in the context of our overall line of march. We regarded with contempt the attempts of the monopoly-controlled media to equate Marxism-Leninism with cultism and sectarianism.

The whole issue is that the working class and people should find the way forward, find the way to overcome the retrogression, racism, and anti-communism imposed by the private interests of the monopolies and financial oligarchy. If the Party has a recruitment policy, it is this – that those who are participating in the struggles to find the way forward in their various fields, whether that be in the field of health care, education, culture, production, defending the rights of minorities and the vulnerable, should unite with the Party to assist in giving the movement as a whole coherence and direction. The Party does not recruit on the basis of someone agreeing with ideas or being a passive member, but on the basis of joining in the necessary work at some level to achieve this way forward. It is on the basis of what can be rendered as: Here is the rose, now dance! In other words, there are tasks which history sets and it is up to progressive forces to rise to the challenge and accomplish them, and develop their unity in action.

In this respect, it is one of accomplishing winning victories within the whole battle that history sets. It is a path that may have many zig-zags, but the objective is clear. It is not one of achieving some re-arrangement of society but leaving its aims unchanged and unchallenged. Another way of putting this is to say that the battles are overall for renewal – for renewal of the political process and institutions, for renewal based on the movement for enlightenment and sovereignty, for renewal based on the right to be, for the affirmation of the new human person that flowers within the new social consciousness. This is the essence of modern communism. It is not a set of beliefs, but the condition for the complete emancipation of the working class and all humanity. We put forward our slogans for 2014 consistent with the present fight for this new basis: Defend the Right of All! For an Anti-War Government! Fight for the Alternative!

The communist party is a party of the working class, as well as its allies. The working class faces a very complex situation, particularly as its role of the producer of added value is not recognised, that wages are considered a cost of production, and so on. So the Party has great responsibilities to work out appropriate strategy and tactics for organising the working class on the basis of the requirements of the times, and to combat the capital-centred thinking that the monopolies and their representatives sow within the working class movement. First and foremost, the task is to organise so that the working class takes up its historic role as the leader in rallying the people to fight for democratic renewal, to fight for an anti-war government, to fight for the public good. It is necessary to build the Party, paying attention also to fighting for the unity of the communist movement, in order to achieve this aim. One might say that in a sense there is no hiatus between “reform” and “revolution”, that as one leader of the international proletariat said, that in a sense “every little helps”. The issue is whether these are reforms that go against the organisation of the working class with a sense of its historic mission, or contribute to the fight for the alternative. A litmus test is that there can be no conciliation with monopoly dictate, with monopoly “right”. The issue is, what programme is going to open up a path for the future.

The Party makes no apology that we are proletarian internationalists. We pay tribute to our close fraternal party the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), and the work of Comrade Hardial Bains. We express our love also for our comrades from the Workers' Party of Korea (comrades from the DPRK embassy being present at the London region social) and express our internationalist unity with all the communist parties fighting for the emancipation of the working class and all humanity.

So this is a sketch of the character of the Party and its vision of the new, underlining to our mind the necessity to build and strengthen the Party as a whole system with its core activists as well as its circles and sympathisers.

2014 is the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Party. It was founded in March 1979 after the work done right from the 1960s, beginning with the youth and student movement, to prepare the conditions for the founding of RCPB(ML).

On behalf of the Central Committee, I would like to declare 2014 as the year of the Party. We will take up in an organised form the study, for example, of the work of John Buckle and the Party which he led. It is important to do this, among other reasons, to combat all the disinformation that the ruling circles churn out against communism, equating it with fascism, glorifying imperialism and the whole colonialist history of the British ruling class. In this respect, 2014 is the year of the centenary of the outbreak of the inter-imperialist conflict that was World War I, in which millions of working people were slaughtered. We wish to concentrate our target, not only on combating all the disinformation, for instance that this was a “just war”, but also on emphasising its lessons today, the importance of not conciliating with the warmongers, upholding the sovereignty of peoples and nations, and declaring all glory to the anti-war movement. We also will use the opportunity to prepare for celebrating the 70th anniversary in 2015 of the victory of the anti-fascist forces of progressive world humankind against Hitlerite fascism and using it to ensure that such and even greater tragedies do not befall the people. 2015 is also the year of the general election. The issue is to defeat the forces of the anti-social offensive, of the so-called “austerity” programme, and we will be going all out to prepare for the election on that basis.

So in conclusion, we raise a toast to 2014, the year of the Party, and to further victories in the struggle of the progressive forces in the coming year. We toast the movement to safeguard the future of the health service, which has shown optimism, self-reliance, mass political mobilisation and a determination to win decisive battles. We salute the movement for the people to have a say in the direction of the economy and society, including on the fronts of health and education. We look forward to further developments in the people’s culture, against degeneration and elitism, highlighting the movement for enlightenment. We work for the trade unions as defence organisations of the workers to become effective and to give rein to the numbers and power of the working class. We hail the movement to bring into being an anti-war government, which stayed the hand of the warmongers in regard to Syria, and defending the right of all countries to chart their own course without outside interference. And we especially toast the work to further build the Party as the decisive subjective factor in all these struggles of the working class and people, and to rising to the challenge of formulating the appropriate strategy and tactics. We salute the work of building the Party and its institutions, including the John Buckle Centre. We toast the work to further strengthen the unity of the communist movement, and to give the workers’ movement its own independent programme. We pledge to work for developing internationalist culture and to combat the disinformation of the ruling circles about the nature of communism so as to disorientate and ideologically disarm the workers and people’s movements. We emphasise the importance of all the democratic forces opposing the concentration of power in the hands of institutions such as the EU, and other illegitimate, monopoly directed and warmongering institutions of imperialism and reaction.

We encourage everyone to join with us in this work, in opening the path to progress, to doing our duty as a contingent of the international proletariat in Britain in advancing along the line of march to a new society, to a socialist Britain. This is a worthwhile life to dedicate one’s being to this historic cause. We are profoundly appreciative of everyone who has joined us in this celebration this evening, and let us march together also in 2014 and the coming years, so that the revolutionary movement finds its new adherents, gains in strength, overcomes the obstacles of the anti-social offensive and the imposition of monopoly right, and participates in building a society fit for human beings, in which the people are the sovereign decision-makers.

To the work of 2014!

February 22: Crisis in the NHS

Conference on the dangers of privatisation, organised by Birmingham Trades Union Council. A representative of the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign is among the confirmed speakers.

March 16: 35th Anniversary of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

A celebration and seminar will be held around or shortly after this date.

March 19: Budget 2014

This will be the penultimate budget before the next general election.

March 29: first same-sex marriages in England and Wales

From today, same-sex couples will be able to wed in civil marriage ceremonies in England and Wales. Scotland is due to pass similar legislation at some point during 2014.

April 1: NHS changes take effect

Everyone in the UK over the age of 75 and patients with complex conditions will be assigned a named, accountable GP, said to be aimed at reducing the number of people admitted to A&E. They will not be able to choose. NHS Direct (which operates in England) will close, in favour of the 111 phone line. The annual rise in prescription charges in England also takes effect today. Wales has enjoyed free prescriptions since 2007, the north of Ireland since 2010, and Scotland since 2011.

May 7: State Opening Of Parliament

The last Queen's speech of this parliament

May 22: European Parliament and local elections

Elections to the European Parliament are held across the EU’s 28 countries.

Seats in local elections are being contested in every London borough plus dozens of towns and cities across England. Elections to new councils in the north of Ireland are also taking place.

June: IER begins

Individual Electoral Registration (IER) is the voter registration system with which the Coalition Government plans to replace the current United Kingdom system, which involves householders being responsible for declaring the names of those entitled to vote. From summer 2014, each person will be required to register to vote individually, rather than by household. The system is provided for by the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 which passed into law on January 31, 2013. Under Individual Electoral Registration voters will need to provide “identifying information”, such as date of birth and national insurance number, when applying to register and the application will need to be verified before the elector is added to the register. Anyone unable to supply this information would be able to provide an alternative form of evidence of their identity. People who are on the electoral register but who have not registered to vote under the new system will still be able to cast a ballot in elections, including the 2015 general election under transitional arrangements.

Because of the introduction of fixed-term parliaments, polling day for the next general election has already been set for Thursday, May 7, 2015.

June 24-30: Battle of Bannockburn 700th Anniversary

In June 1314, King Edward II brought the largest English army ever to invade Scotland. Scottish king Robert the Bruce led his smaller force to a decisive victory at Bannockburn, near Stirling, and Edward narrowly escaped capture as he fled to Dunbar and the safety of a ship home. The victory consolidated Scottish independence and Bruce's kingship.

July 28: The 100th anniversary of the start of World War One

The centenary of the beginning of the 1914-18 war to redivide the world between the imperialist powers. July 28 was the date Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Britain declared war on Germany on August 4.

September 18: Scotland’s Independence Referendum

The Scottish independence referendum will be held on 18 September 2014. Voters will be asked the yes/no question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"

First Minister Alex Salmond called it "a historic day when the people will decide Scotland's future".

December 31: last British troops to leave Afghanistan

Over 470 British soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been killed in the country since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.