New Communist Party of Britain
by Andy Brooks

Dear Friends and Comrades,

The new Communist Party of Britain is very pleased to be
able to make a modest contribution to the discussion taking
place in Athens today. We meet at the opening of new
century, a time of reflection on the success and setbacks
of the world communist movement in the past, a time to look
forward to the advances which will certainly be made in the
years to come.

The Communist international

The Communist movement has been international from the
beginning when Marx and Engels made their stirring call in
the Communist Manifesto of 1848. The 1917 October
Revolution, which established the first socialist state,
and the revolutionary upsurge which swept Europe and led to
the end of the First World War in 1918, created the
conditions for the establishment of the Communist
International, the Comintern, in 1919. Communist Parties,
parties of a new type, inspired by the experience of the
Bolsheviks sprang up from the working class movement.

The Comintern was an international proletarian organisation
of a new type comprising of communist and workers parties
across the globe. The Comintern held seven congresses, the
first in 1919 and last in 1935. It was dissolved in 1943
during the Second World War. In 1947 the Communist
Information Bureau was established limited to the communist
and workers parties of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
together with those of France and Italy. Yugoslavia was
expelled in 1948 and the Cominform was dissolved in 1956.

Following the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the Krushchov's
bitter denunciation of Stalin revisionist forces gradually
increased their influence in the leadership of the Soviet
Party. This became apparent with its reluctance to wage a
committed and trenchant ideological attack on the
revisionist trend that became known as �Eurocommunism�.

After that date the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) under a succession of revisionist leaders, sponsored
a number of communist conferences designed to win support
for the foreign policy of the Soviet Union of the day and
backing for the CPSU's hostility to the Communist Party of
China. The divisive nature of these meetings, which
precluded the participation of many parties has led to the
problems in trying to build a new communist international
day.

As the right revisionist trend was increasingly
accommodated in the CPU leadership the way was paved for
liquidationist and counter-revolutionary forces to gain
control. During this period policies that alienated
decisive sections of the working class were pursued. These
included policies that undermined the economic development
of the Soviet Union.

The New World Order

In 1990 the counter-revolutions were unleashed, with the
capitulation to imperialism, the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, the annexation of the GDR by West Germany, the
partitioning of Czechoslovakia and the expansion of NATO
into eastern Europe. All this has been accompanied by a
catastrophic fall in the living standards and democratic
rights of the working people in those countries.

It has encouraged world imperialism, led by US imperialism,
to try and establish global political and economical
dominance in the name of the �new world order� and
�globalisation�. A NATO-led army tried to crush Iraq in
1991 and cruel blockade which still continuous has claimed
the lives of over a million and a half innocent Iraqi
civilians. Anglo-American imperialism today continues to
bomb Iraq in a barbarous secret war aimed at bringing this
defiant Arab state to its knees. Only last year British and
American imperialism brought the terror-bombing to the
Balkans in an attempt to crush Yugoslavia abandoning all
pretence of international law and asserting the old
imperialist claim to intervene in the internal affairs of
weaker states when it suits their interests. And only last
month British imperialism sent troops to Sierra Leone to
intervene in the civil war and restore the diamond mines to
the transnational monopolies.

Resistance

Wherever there is oppression there is always resistance and
the events of the last decade prove this. The people of
Iraq remain defiant, refusing to bow to the demands of
imperialism, determined to fight to preserve their
independence. The Yugoslav people remain defiant and
continue to stand up to the intrigues and plots of
imperialism in the Balkans. The Lebanese people, only last
month, scored a famous victory, forcing the last Israeli
soldiers to scuttle out of the last kilometres of southern
Lebanon under fire from the guns of the Lebanese
resistance.

In Asia socialism continues to be build in the People's
China, Democratic Korea, Vietnam and Laos. In Cuba the
people have rallied to defend their revolution in the face
of constant provocations from US imperialism. They prove to
us that socialism is a science which does emancipate the
working class and all other classes with it through
revolutionary change. They prove by their experience and
practice that socialism is the only solution to
exploitation, barbarism and war.

In the imperialist heartlands, the United States, Britain
and the rest of the European Union communists are at the
fore in the struggle for peace and the fight to defend
workers' living standards. In the former socialist
countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
communists are regrouping and campaigning for a new
revolutionary upsurge.

And in the developing countries a new wave of resistance to
imperialism is emerging. We saw it in Somalia, we see it in
Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone and we are confident we will see
it wherever people oppressed.

Rallying of communist forces

The communist movement has certainly recovered considerably
since 1990. It began with the initiative of the Workers'
Party of Korea led by Kim Il Sung in 1992 which sponsored
the conference in Pyongyang which adopted the resolution
�Let us defend and advance the socialist cause�. Our Party
took part in this meeting and signed the resolution known
as the Pyongyang Declaration which has now been endorsed by
over 240 parties and progressive movements around the
world.

Our Party has also backed other initiatives sponsored by
communist parties including the Belgian Workers' Party
international May Day Conferences, which since 1992 have
become a focus for exchanges of information and debate. We
also welcome and support the initiative of the Greek
Communist Party, whose international conferences have
succeeded in bringing together a large number of communist
and workers parties in fruitful discussion. Now we believe
that exchanges of views and experiences can only strengthen
the world movement but we also think that attempts to
launch a new communist international are premature. There
have been some moves over the past ten years to try and
revive the spirit of the Comintern but they have all failed
because they have been sponsored by small sectarian groups
unable and unwilling to reach out to the broad spectrum of
opinion which exists within the workers' movement at this
time.

The NCP believes that the first priority is to build
bilateral relations with communist parties around the world
built on exchanges of publications and messages and
delegations and common support of international and
regional communist meetings.

Our view is that a new international of the future must be
based on key principles and the first must be that it must
include and have support of the ruling parties of People's
China, Democratic Korea, Vietnam, Laos and China. It must
be based on Marxism-Leninism. It must be based on the
principle of equality of big and small parties. It must
recognise the principle of a collective secretariat or
presidium which reflects the views of the member parties
and not that of one big party. It must recognise that in
countries where there is more than one communist party -
the case in most countries today - the differences between
them are a matter for those parties alone to resolve.

We believe that we have a duty to make the classic works of
Marxism-Leninism available for this generation and the
generations to come. The classic works of Marx, Engels,
Lenin and Stalin along with those of Mao Zedong, Kim Il
Sung, Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro are not just part of our
heritage they contain important practical and theoretical
lessons for communists today.

Our immediate task must be to encourage regular exchanges
of views through bilateral exchanges and international
conferences. We welcome the increasing use of the Internet
to facilitate this - the efforts of the Greek comrades with
SolidNet and the American party's Rednet are examples of
how this can be done.

We need exchange views to explore the possibility of
establishing a common line on some issues. The question of
the European Union is one which is clearly uppermost in the
thinking of the parties in this continent and well as the
problem of how to combat social-democratic and revisionist
ideas while working to build the unity of the working class
around the vanguard party.

Making peace the issue

Finally we believe in the need to make peace the key issue
for all communists today. We are fighting to end the
partition of Ireland, Korea and Cyprus. We want a just
peace in the Middle East and the Balkans and an end to
imperialist interventions. We want to see the complete
prohibition and total destruction of all nuclear weapons -
a position which only People's China is calling for amongst
the nuclear club.

Only the ruling class can ever benefit from war, and even
within the exploiters ranks only the most reactionary and
aggressive elements at that. So it is possible to unite the
broadest number from all strata in society around the
demands for peace and disarmament. At the same time, we
must continue to work for working class leadership within
the peace campaign to strengthen its determination and
enable it to appeal to the masses in the struggles to come.
We would like to thank the Communist Party of Greece for
organising this event and inviting us to present some of
our views to our comrades from all over the world. We are
certain that this conference will take us further along the
road of proletarian internationalism and communist
co-operation.

Andy Brooks
General Secretary