By New Worker correspondent
 |
| Andy Brooks greets comrades |
The
meeting room at the AKEL Cypriot communist centre in north London was packed
for the Sunday lunch-time meeting called by the British Branch of the KKE to
mobilise their members in Britain to register at the Greek embassy and vote in
the forthcoming local and European Union elections in May.
Comrades
were greeted by New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks who summarised the NCP’s
role in the Initiative of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of Europe and the
NCP’s consistent stand against the European Union. This was followed by a
lengthy report from Kostas Papadakis, a member of the Central Committee of the KKE,
on the current situation in Greece and the struggle against the bourgeois
offensive throughout the EU.
Andy Brooks said
that the NCP had opposed the European Union and the Treaty of Rome from the
very beginning when the Party was founded in 1977 and that the Initiative was: “An
important first step towards building a common front amongst the genuine
communist forces of Europe to confront the ruling class offensive that is seeks
to impose the entire burden of the slump on the backs of working people.
“The Initiative
is also the first step in building a popular campaign to challenge the myth of
the ‘super-state’ that Franco-German imperialism and its supporters within the
British ruling class spread to popularise the anti-people and dictatorial
policies of the European Union and build the progressive platform needed to
launch the fight in all members states for the break-up of the EU.”
This was
followed by a far-ranging KKE briefing that began with an analysis of the Greek
political scene and the bogus choices offered by the mainstream conservative
New Democracy party, the old and new social-democracy of PASOK and Syriza, and
the fascist Golden Dawn. They all “trade in fear and dead-end hopes” while
“the consequences of the capitalist economic
crisis and the anti-people measures of the government-EU-IMF are becoming more
and more tangible, unbearable, even more suffocating for the workers,
unemployed, the poor farmers, the youth and the women from the popular strata,”
Kostas Papadakis said.
But there was a
way out of the crisis and that way was by mobilising and decisively
strengthening the KKE, Kostas declared.
“The workers,
the youth, the toiling self-employed, the poor farmers, must help so that a
dynamic labour-people’s opposition can be immediately revived in order to
contribute to the struggle, in order to halt the anti-people offensive, the
successive anti-people measures, in order to pave the way for the only path that
can ensure the satisfaction of the people’s needs.
“And this can
begin to happen with the participation in the battle of the EU parliamentary
elections and the municipal elections, decisively voting for the KKE and the
lists of the ‘People’s Rally’, which are supported nationwide by the party.
“The
strengthening of the KKE is a guarantee for the working class and people’s
interests. The KKE struggles, focused on the major and sharpening problems, for
the regroupment of the labour-people’s movement, the People’s Alliance, in
order to pave the way for an economy for the benefit of the people, with their
own power.”
The
Greek communist condemned those pseudo-communists who revolve around the
European Left Party and those like them who talk about winning office and
reforming the EU.
“The way out is
not to be found in ‘“Left governments’ on the terrain of capitalism” Kostas
said. “As the experience from the
participation of communist parties in governments of EU member states shows, like
the example of Cyprus, with the participation of AKEL in the government. This
experience is in our assessment characteristic of the utopian view that the
crisis can be halted or that there can be a pro-people management in the
framework of capitalism. The same is true of Brazil where the Communist Party
of Brazil participates in the government and manages capitalism with the people
protesting in the streets.
“There is no
room for the rationale of the ‘lesser evil’ which some people consider a
possible Syriza government to be. Whatever evil, more or lesser, is now
unbearable for the impoverished and lives of the workers deprived of rights.”
Meanwhile the
Communist Initiative provides the basis to build a people’s movement in Europe
against war, imperialism and capitalism.
Outlining the socialist
alternative Kostas said the KKE programme was realistic and above all in the
interests of the people and the service of the workers. “We have the power to
overturn the situation today,” he declared. “With a strong KKE there is hope –
there is a prospect.”
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