15.12.1994

Back to the Party

THE CPGB is very pleased to welcome two new supporters back to the Party. Vic Turner, one of the Pentonville five dockers who was locked up by Edward Heath and released by the mass movement in 1972, and Frank Shilling, leader of the Tilbury dockers’ dispute and one of the sacked shop stewards fighting against union derecognition in 1989. Both have become supporters of the CPGB this week.

Vic and Frank have both been long-term members of the CPGB but, as Vic told me, “I really felt the lack of the Party when the old leadership liquidated it. I felt a sense of personal loss as well as a loss for the whole working class movement. I felt myself in a political void”. Frank added that “the disintegration of the Party has left a huge gap in working class politics”.

Having refused to accept the liquidation of our Party, they are now welcomed back to a Leninist organisation rather than the opportunist one that left them.

Frank said: “I have always taken copies of the Weekly Worker and circulated it. I’ve formalised my support now because I think there is a great need for a paper that counters the lies in the popular press. I hope the Weekly Worker will keep up the good work.”

Since being sacked from the docks, Frank has remained as chairman of the Tilbury TGWU branch. Vic is now a Labour Party councillor in Newham.

In becoming a supporter Vic has become our organisation’s first communist Labour councillor, but not the first for our Party which had both communist Labour councillors and MPs right from the 1920s.

We do not want Vic to resign his position, but to use it to the full to agitate for working class demands. Vic told me: “The Communist Party is key in linking workers up to discuss the real issues in society and being able to change it.  I am glad to be able to join again and be part of the reforging of the Party. We really have to start from scratch and there is a lot of work to do. All those links have to be rebuilt. Organisation is the one thing that gives us strength. Without it we are nothing, just individuals. Organisation has to be built in all fields and I will be doing my bit as a councillor, using my position as a platform to talk class politics to workers.”

Lee-Anne Bates