The new Revolutionary Communist Party was launched across the UK on Saturday, with events across the country including one on King’s Parade.
The launch included speakers, a discussion on British politics and building the party and the handing out of leaflets and newspapers to passers-by, and the reception was positive, says organiser Ruth Logan.
“The speakers were all party members, some experienced, others quite new, some are students and some are workers,” said Ruth after the event. “Our life experience is not remarkable compared to anyone else in Britain, we have simply drawn the same conclusions that millions of people are drawing, that capitalism is sending human progress into reverse and only revolution can stop this decline. “
She added: “Dozens of people stood alongside our members to hear our communist message.”
The use of the hammer and sickle on a lag may provoke mixed emotions for many, however it was originally a Communist symbol. It was adopted during the Russian Revolution at the end of World War I as a symbol of proletarian solidarity between agricultural and industrial workers, before being subsequently used by Stalin’s United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR).
“We are Communists in the same vein as the Russian Bolsheviks of 1917,” says Ruth. “We are nothing like the has-been British Left of Corbyn and Momentum. We do not want to tax the rich, which is impossible. We want these criminals expropriated and the economy unleashed by a working class government.”
The new political party has arrived in a city still, in some ways, trying to live down its part as the incubator for a previous generation’s treachery. The Cambridge Five - a Cold War (1947-1989) ring of spies recruited by Soviet intelligence during their time at Cambridge University in the 1930s - included Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Donald Maclean, who passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. However, while Soviet-style communism was Marxist-Leninist, the new party is different - up to a point.
“We stand in the Leninist tradition,” Ruth explains. “I suppose you could say our ideas are old school, but we think it is better to stand for good ideas than new ones.
”We denounce Stalinism but we also seek to learn the lessons of it and do not seek to repeat the old errors. The fact is though, the failures of capitalism and the establishment politicians that uphold it are doing the work of radicalising people for us. Cold War propaganda has lost its power, especially for the young people who have never known a time since 2008 when society wasn’t embroiled in some kind of crisis.”
The new party’s membership is growing fast, particularly among younger generations.
“Young workers are turning in growing numbers to Communism,” Ruth says. “One poll by the Fraser institute found that 29 per cent of Brits under 34 prefer Communism to capitalism, for example.”
But can the upsurge come front the trade union movement, as the group’s manifesto declares?
“It is true that traditional organisations like trade unions remain much weaker than they were in the 70s,” says Ruth, “but the strength of the workers is not determined by how many strikes it wins or union membership, it is determined by its ideas and the will to fight for a better future.”
