Message to 15th Congress of NCP, December 3, 2006

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Message of RCPB(ML) to 15th Congress of NCP

The 15th National Congress of the NCP

The New Communist Party of Britain held its 15th Congress on the weekend of December 2-3, 2006. Below we reproduce the message of RCPB(ML) to NCP’s Congress.

Comrades, fraternal delegates,

On behalf of the Central Committee of RCPB(ML), I bring the warmest greetings of our Party and its activists to this 15th National Congress of the New Communist Party of Britain. We are once again very happy to be participating in an important Congress of our comrades of the NCP.

            Since the onset of the retreat of revolution on a world scale in the early 1990s, our two parties have developed our close relations, discussing national and international developments, and working out how to co-operate on joint actions. The deepening of our relations has taken place with the overall perspective of fulfilling the historic task of realising communist unity so as to give reality to the guiding principle: “One Working Class, One Political Programme for the Class”. Such a programme has the strategic aim of socialism, and its elements are the demands of the working class which will bring closer this strategic aim.

            In particular, the context of our ongoing work on this front in recent years has been the warmongering and aggression of Anglo-US imperialism internationally. This imperialism has abandoned any politics worthy of the name, and espouses irrationalism and incoherence, motivated by revenge-seeking and the morbid preoccupation with defeat. Domestically the context of our ongoing work is the wrecking of society and of the intensification of an anti-social offensive to impose what the monopolies claim as their right to dictate to society. It is also the context of how to set the people in motion as a conscious force to combat and put an end to this programme of reaction and war.

            In our view, the activation of the working class and people as a conscious organised force is absolutely essential at this time. It is the decisive factor in putting an end to war, retrogression and devastation for the people. Internationally, the Blair government is advocating a foreign policy strategy based on the imposition of “universal values”, which means that the whole world should submit to the dictate of Anglo-US imperialism and serve the aims of the monopolies to enslave the world afresh by force, violence and anarchy. Domestically, it is using the criminalisation of ideology to attempt to divert and prevent the resistance of the people and their striving for an alternative, for socialism, and to fulfil their aspirations. Specifically it is targeting Islam in this regard, under the guise of combating extremism and fundamentalism, together with what Tony Blair has referred to as “revolutionary communism”, which the bourgeoisie also labels as an “extreme ideology”.

            Under these circumstances, it is an urgent task to defend the rights of all, and for the workers to uphold the dignity of labour together with the watchword that “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All”. It is a crucial task to provide the movements of the working class and people with that coherence which will enable the people to work out how to identify their interests and to sort out how to achieve their aims.

            We see the tasks of the communists as creating the subjective conditions for revolution within the heart of the movements of the people resisting reaction and retrogression and beginning to plant the alternative to the system of neo-liberal globalisation, fascism and war.

            There is no Chinese Wall, in our view, between the strategic aims of the working class and the aims of the movements of the working class and people to affirm their rights and defend their interests. Contrary to this, opportunism and revisionism insist that either the movement is everything and the end is nothing or vice versa that the movement is nothing and the end is everything. Both positions negate both the movement and the aim. The task of the communists is to make sure that the movement is given orientation, confidence and conviction in the justness and the final success and content of the cause. Only the communists can provide the vision, the perspective and guidance, the organisation and coherence, to bring the movement to success. They do so not by remaining aloof from the movements of the working class and people, but by taking up the tasks which society presents to them, the problems which are facing them, and mobilising them to provide themselves with solutions and to take control of their lives.

            Our two parties have sought to build communist unity in theory and in practice, as your Congress Resolution rightly points out. This has been our purpose, to discuss all matters pertaining to revolutionary strategy and tactics, theory and practice. Particularly over the past two years, we have discussed, to mention examples which come to mind, the tasks and aims of the anti-war movement and how the communists should participate; we have discussed issues pertaining to the electoral system, the question of what can be called “bourgeois democracy” – i.e. the anachronistic system of parliamentary or representative democracy – and what is the need for democratic renewal; we have put on the agenda the discussion of what kind of party, how to build the communist party in today’s conditions and the necessity to base our work on concrete conditions. Thus, our work has, in our opinion, gone beyond simply the exchange of views to actually taking up issues of the movement and discussing the way forward for their resolution. We are confident that this work will be intensified in the future too. It is work that we encourage all communist parties and individuals to participate in.

            We are thus very happy to hail your 15th Congress.   Our cause is one. It is the cause of building resistance and planting the alternative so that the working class and people will join their struggles both here and in conjunction with humanity worldwide in bringing into being a new world fit for human beings and bringing about socialist revolution here in Britain. It is the cause of commitment to and affirmation of the communist ideal.  In this respect, we hail your fraternal and proletarian internationalist spirit. Let us together organise the working class to take hold of what belongs to it, and to ensure that the people are the decision-makers in society.

 

Success to your Congress!

Workers of All Countries, Unite!

The following report is taken from The New Worker, weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain, 8 December, 2006

Delegates of the New Communist Party cells and districts, friends, supporters and fraternal delegates from other parties assembled last weekend in the historic Marx House at Clerkenwell Green in central London for the party’s 15th National Congress.

            The Congress was opened by NCP president Eric Trevett, who recalled the tremendous things that have happened nationally and internationally since the NCP was founded in July 1977.

            He spoke of the marginalisation and even liquidation of some communist parties, victims of the revisionist virus of “Euro-communism”, which paved the way for counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and other European socialist countries.

            In Britain in the 1980s the defeat of the heroic miners’ strike – betrayed by the leaderships of the Labour Party and the TUC who prevented effective solidarity support – which paved the way for first an onslaught on trade union rights and then on the wage and conditions of the working class.

            Those were dark days but now: “Resistance to reactionary policies is growing and among the positive developments we see is China emerging as a world power in politics and in the economic field,” Eric told the Congress.

            “In Latin America we see other countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua joining Cuba in opposing US imperialism.

            “In the Middle East the patriotic forces of Lebanon fought US-backed Israel to a standstill and Israel has been exposed to an unprecedented extent as an aggressor state and a puppet of US imperialism.

            “Here at home resistance is also growing as is evidenced by the massive demonstrations against the war on Iraq and the build up of local agitation in defence of the health service,” he added.

            He finished with a call for positive action to build the New Communist Party.

            Dozens of delegates made contributions, as amendments to the party’s main resolution and several other resolutions were debated. They brought to the debate personal experience of activity in a wide range of struggles.

            The illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were top concerns, along with recognition that the resistance in those countries is succeeding in fighting the imperialist invaders to a standstill, who are now desperately casting about for a feasible “exit strategy”.

            Concern over the future of the NHS was among the topics which attracted many speakers. In particular the shameful inadequacy of mental health services produced many passionate contributions from comrades who either worked in the field, were patients or close relatives of patients.

            Congress agreed that the stresses of living under advanced and declining capitalism have produced an epidemic of stress and depression, while the traditional community structures of the working class that supported the morale of workers in struggle have been under mined by consumerism, individualism and alienation.

            Other big concerns included opposition to the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system and the current attacks on civil liberties.

            Fraternal delegates from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Cyprus, Turkey, Germany, the African Liberation Support Committee and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) spoke to the Congress.

            All these comrades emphasised the recent changes in the world balance of power, as the United States has lost some of its power. This follows the strength of the resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan and the huge shift towards left-wing governments in Latin America, especially Venezuela, which the US is powerless to stop.

            Many mentioned the recent conference of communist and workers’ parties in Lisbon, where the mood among communists now is upbeat and positive. Parties are growing in strength as they successfully defeat the poison of revisionism and class collaboration.

            The Turkish comrades told a harrowing tale of violent oppression of their party – along with other parties, especially those who stand up for Kurdish civil rights and liberties. They have suffered raids and arrests and leading members are being held in jail. Their party is forced to work in conditions of illegality. The Congress passed an emergency solidarity motion in support of their struggle and calling for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Turkey.

            And the nuclear test by the DPRK was recognised by Congress as a positive step towards the peaceful stabilisation of that region – a real deterrent to US imperialist interference there.

            NCP general secretary Andy Brooks wound up the Congress by congratulating delegates for their hard work in producing a document that will chart the Party’s progress for the next three years. He praised the positive contribution the RCPB(ML) had made towards advancing communist unity through co-operation and dialogue with the NCP over the years.

            The one certainty in life, Andy said quoting Marx, was that the only alternative to socialism was barbarism – the barbarism we saw in Nazi Germany and what we see today in Iraq; the barbarism we see in the starvation and poverty of much of the Third World and the exploitation and oppression of working people throughout the world. But this was a Congress of hope and conviction in the supremacy of the communist ideal. The 21st century, he concluded, will certainly be the century of socialism.

            A collection raised over £450 and the last act of Congress, in accordance with NCP tradition, was the mass singing of the Internationale.