17.08.1995

Red but not dead

BBC Radio 4 has not quite got its finger on the pulse of history. In the programme Old Reds on August 8 the commentator claimed, “In November 1991 the Communist Party of Great Britain closed itself down. Fewer than 2,000 members joined a new group, the Democratic Left. The party had lasted 71 years,” but now it is dead.

As readers will know, the Party is not dead. The liquidators liquidated themselves but the revolutionaries remained to carry out the task of reforging the CPGB as the party of the working class.

The old majority in the Party looked not to the working class to liberate humankind but relied on Soviet foreign policy. Though they belatedly came to see the anti-democratic nature of the Soviet regime they never noticed how anti-democratic their own organisation had become.

For the BBC’s ‘old reds’ the CPGB was indeed closed down. But it is not for anti-communists to decide the future of our Party, that is a revolutionary task, not a bureaucratic one.

Phil Kent