27.04.1995

Revolutionary greetings

I am pleased that my previous interview with the Weekly Worker gave rise to such discussion - debate is always healthy.

Here in South Africa we have reached the end of the road. The Party leadership has collapsed and is tailing behind the bourgeoisie and the national movement. It does not even seriously discuss socialism. It attacks the populace and praises the ‘transformation’.

The SACP of the bureaucracy is dying - it is tied to the apron strings of the ANC. We must start a new road: we must go to the factories, to the youth - then the Party will not die.

Harry Gwala
SACP, personal capacity

Greetings to workers of all countries struggling for freedom and socialism. True internationalism is firstly to overthrow the main enemy - that enemy is the UK state. Our weapon is the unity of revolutionary workers in their Communist Party. Manchester branch of the CPGB has developed since standing in the local elections in 1994. This year we are standing two candidates in the local elections - on May 4 -taking the question of the need to reforge our Party to the working class throughout Manchester. Workers in Manchester need an alternative to the Labour Party of Blair and Prescott. We dedicate ourselves to building that alternative.

Roger Harper
Manchester CPGB

The CPGB’s Weekly Worker committee sends its greetings to workers in the United Kingdom and across the world this May Day. The communist paper is a weapon in the class struggle. In its 92 editions our paper has won a proud reputation for combining militancy, combativity and internationalism. The Weekly Worker not only reports workers’ struggles, it seeks to organise those struggles, crucially by bringing to the fore what is general, what interests unite all workers. In Britain the main question is fighting for a revolutionary alternative to Blair’s Labourism. That means reforging the Communist Party of Great Britain and building it into the mass working class Party our class so desperately needs. Without their Communist Party the working class is nothing. With it the working class is everything.

CPGB Weekly Worker committee

The acid test of proletarian internationalism in Britain is and remains Ireland. Hands off Ireland does not join the pro-Labour left in celebrating the return to ‘normality’ in the Six Counties. Imperialism is imposing its peace on Ireland. The revolutionary situation, sustained on the basis of the masses’ courage and self-sacrifice for over two decades, is being resolved in the negative. But the struggle for Irish freedom is not over: only its form has changed. Revolutionaries in the Six Counties face the task of continuing the struggle for liberation under new conditions. The best way to secure self-determination for the Irish nation is by uniting with workers in Britain for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist government in Westminster - be it Tory or Labour - and establishing the power of the workers throughout Britain. Only the working class can guarantee the national rights of the Irish people. Only the working class has no interest in national oppression.

Anne Murphy
HOI

Since I became president of the Unemployed Workers Charter last year, harassment and attacks on unemployed workers’ living standards have increased as the Job Seekers allowance begins to take force. Unemployed workers like all others need to be united to fight for their right to a decent life. This fight must be taken up by the trade union movement, but above all the working class will have to take control of society and free it from the stranglehold of the bosses’ profits. Only then can we build a society that provides for everybody’s needs.

Vic Turner
UWC president

Greetings to the CPGB on International Workers’ Day. Halfway into the decade of the ‘end of history’ workers everywhere are making history in preparation for its major overhaul. Without true, unselfish solidarity of working peoples everywhere, this great history will be stillborn.

M Kia
On behalf of the Organisation of the Revolutionary Workers of Iran

May Day greetings to all comrades from CPGB supporters in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Recently communists in Stevenage have amongst other things actively supported the signal workers’ strike and are currently working hard for the CPGB election campaign in Luton. We must now organise consistent communist work and establish a solid branch. Good luck to all CPGB candidates on May 4. Forward to the reforged CPGB.

Gary Salisbury
Stevenage CPGB supporters

Scotland is virtually a Tory-free zone. Unfortunately it is not yet a liberated zone for the working class. Both the Labour Party and SNPers are committed to the system for profit which means unemployment, insecurity and wage slavery for our class. The workers need their own party. The CPGB is that Party. English and Welsh workers are not our enemies - capitalism is our enemy. Workers’ unity our weapon. By standing in elections (local and European) the Dundee branch of the CPGB has built a network of supporters and Weekly Worker readers. We are leading the campaign to save Dundee Royal Infirmary and we are beginning to dig real roots in the class. Comrades want to thank everyone who has helped to get the branch started. We must spread that work throughout Scotland. Forward to the reforged CPGB in Scotland.

Dundee CPGB committee

The Brent CPGB branch sends greetings to workers of all nationalities and nations. The liberation of the working class is international in content and increasingly must be international in form. The working class in Britain is made up of many nationalities, many different peoples. But to be effective we must unite as one. Our branch of the CPGB has supporters who have come to Britain - to work, study, or just to find some sort of life - from many different countries. The reforged CPGB must be the Party of all workers in Britain. On May 1 1995 we say: One class, one enemy, one Party. Forward to the reforged CPGB.

Brent CPGB committee

CPGB work in Hackney has shown that the desire for real change, for socialism, did not die with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In our street work and election work we have consistently placed revolutionary ideas before the class. The strength of those ideas has won us support and we are well on the way to re-establishing the Party in the borough.

While Labour’s surrender to the bosses draws much of the left in its wake, we have not wavered in our determination to reforge our Party and smash capitalism.

Hackney CPGB committee sends May Day greetings to comrades the world over. Reforge the CPGB!

Hackney CPGB committee

This May Day Britain’s media will be working overtime, building up enthusiasm for a nationalistic celebration of ‘victory’ in Europe. But for Britain World War II was an imperialist war and workers were used to beat a rival imperialism, not fascism. Now that capitalism is in trouble again, the fascist beast is raising its head. To beat it we need more than anti-fascism. We need to get rid of the system that breeds it - capitalism. We need the reforged CPGB. Workers have no interest in Tony Blair’s Tory Party. We must unite together in a revolutionary party.

Phil Railston
CPGB candidate, Strood, Kent

The Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain sends its warm greetings to all revolutionaries, all partisans of the struggle of the working class internationally. The triumphalism of capitalism in the aftermath of the collapse of Eastern Europe and the USSR proved to be short-lived. World imperialism offers nothing to the people of our planet other than war, famine, poverty and oppression. Despite the defeats of the past period, the future belongs to the working class, to communism. May Day is international workers’ day. We take this opportunity to pledge our solidarity with comrades around the world fighting for revolutionary change. We will make our greatest contribution to their struggle - to the struggle for the world revolution - by reforging a mass, revolutionary Communist Party in Britain. This is the true essence of proletarian internationalism.

Long live May Day!

Long live the world revolution!

Forward to a reforged Communist Party of Great Britain, component part of a reforged world party of revolution!

Provisional Central Committee CPGB

Revolutionary greetings to celebrate May Day are extended to all members, supportes and sympathisers of the CPGB and to all partisans of the working class from the Party printshop. The setting up of the printshop marks a qualitative development in the struggle to reforge the CPGB, facilitating the printing of a wide range of Party publications. Being able to print our own paper has been a vital component of our struggle to reforge the Party. In this period of reaction we hope that all revolutionaries will rally to the question of reforging the Party and join us in developing our printshop, our paper and our Party into the weapons the working class needs.

CPGB printshop committee

Standing in the local elections in Luton has highlighted many of the tasks that face comrades of the CPGB. Communism is not alien to Luton. The Party is well known here and many people have been won to support it through its years of struggle. But we have much work to do in reforging a mass, revolutionary Communist Party, purged of its opportunist past under the old leadership, and dedicated to the internationalist tasks of May Day. Our election campaign is part of that work in Luton. Forward to a reforged communist movement worldwide.

Tom May
Communist candidate in Luton