|
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volume 50 Number 9, March 14, 2020 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
Meeting on the 35th anniversary of RCPB(ML) "What
the Times are calling for: Building the Party in the 21st
century"
March 16 marks the 41st anniversary of the founding of our Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), which was established on this day in 1979. Over these 41 years, the Party has built itself in the course of providing solutions to the problems of society.
John Buckle, Founding General Secretary of
RCPB(ML)
This anniversary is occurring in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and an unfolding financial crisis, not to mention the ongoing crises of war, migration and the natural environment that continue to develop. The burning need to take up our social responsibility is particularly sharp at this time. Particularly with regard to the health of the population, the British government stands exposed for its reduction of everything to an individual matter, with its twin consequences of complacency and hysteria, while preparing the conditions for indefinite rule by exception and overt police powers.
Our anniversary is a time when we also pay respect to our dearest friend, our mentor and guide, Comrade Hardial Bains, whom we lost in 1997. Under his leadership, The Internationalists was founded at the University of British Columbia, Canada, on March 13, 1963. The founding of the RCPB(ML) in 1979 was part of the direct legacy of the achievements of The Internationalists, to whom we pay tribute.
A characteristic feature of this unbroken motion initiated by The Internationalists and inherited by out Party is to put consciousness at the centre of activity. In this respect, it is part of the Party's raison d'être at this time to nurture that modern democratic personality that is so crucially lacking expression. The modern democratic personality, the personality of all speaking in their own name, requires new democratic forms and arrangements to become established as a fact and made actual.
Hardial Bains at the historic 1989 meeting of the
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in Chertsey, Canada
As was said six years ago at the seminar marking the RCPB(ML)'s 35th anniversary, "One of the crucial issues that faces the working class and people today is the issue of their empowerment [...] It is a class struggle that is going on; it is a power struggle. [...] And ultimately it is a question of who has decision-making power in the country, whether it is the financial oligarchy, the ruling elite, whether the decisions are made by monopolies elsewhere in the world."
And today, as the Party said in its New Year statement: "The new decade brings with it the necessity for working people to take up their individual and collective social responsibility to oppose imperialism. This means in practice to speak out and act in one's own name individually and collectively on the issues and problems facing the people, economy and society; it requires the people to advance the organised movement for democratic renewal and their empowerment."
In the present situation, the government stands condemned for its anti-human, anti-conscious outlook that brazenly declares that people prepare to "lose loved ones before their time". We do not accept that nothing can be done and that there is no way out of the crisis. The Party upholds the human factor/social consciousness, consciousness that is synonymous with social change. The times call for the Party to be built in the course of unleashing the human power and initiative of the working class and people.
RCPB(ML) congratulates all activists and friends who have taken up this cause and built the Party over the past 41 years.