HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

The Last Gig of the ‘red’ Punk Rocker

by Andrija Filipović

Thomas “Mensi” Mensforth, the singer and frontman of the famous British punk rock band Angelic Upstarts, died after a losing battle with Covid on Friday 10th December at the age of 65.
    Back in 1977, Mensi, a former miner from South Shields, with his friends Ray Cowie (Mond) on guitar, Steve Forsten on bass guitar and Derek "Decca" Wade on drums, founded the Angelic Upstarts. They released 12 studio albums from 1979–2015 and their frontman was the only original member of the band left standing.
    Inspired by the music of punk legends, The Clash, Mensi, a committed communist, has been positioning Angelic Upstarts as a leftist and anti-fascist band from the very beginning.
    Angelic Upstarts, in the musical sense, became one of the first bands of the Oi! sub-genre of punk rock, which is characterised by social themes, criticism of class oppression and the struggle for the existential interests of the working class.
    After the influence of neo-Nazi and racist elements in the skinhead movement in Britain, which sees Oi! music as its own, most bands of the first wave of that sub-genre stopped working or started playing other types of music. On the other hand, Angelic Upstarts, led by Mensi, refused to leave the scene to neo-Nazi skinheads, initially from the White Noize Club of the National Front and later Blood & Honour. In that period, they stood out with their uncompromising leftist and anti-fascist orientation.
    Mensi was one of the founding members of Anti-Fascist Action in 1985. an organisation that opposed the propaganda of the British far-right both on the street and through its music wing Cable Street Beat on the Oi! scene.
    Prior to the founding of AFA, Mensi, in co-operation with the left-wing Red Action group, organised a series of concerts called Oi! Against Racism. Under the influence of Mensi, a large number of leftist and anti-fascist Oi! bands were formed in Britain and around the world, and Angelic Upstarts became their inspiration and role-model.
    Due to their uncompromising anti-fascist orientation, Angelic Upstarts concerts were a frequent target of attacks by neo-Nazi skinheads from the ranks of Blood & Honour, but Mensi and his comrades never wavered.
    They were never afraid of the fascists. On the contrary, they defended their gigs and their audience from these attacks and continued their leftist and anti-fascist engagement with even greater devotion.
    The band's songs, composed by Mensi, such as 2,000,000 Voices (against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's anti-union policies), Last Night Another Soldier (against British imperialist military interventions), Kids On the Streets (about unity of the working-class youth), I Don't Wanna Fight The Soviet (against anti-Soviet propaganda during the Cold War and Anti-Nazi (against neo-Nazi propaganda on the Oi scene) are just some of the songs that clearly point to the progressive engagement of the Angelic Upstarts.
    The song Solidarity became the punk workers' anthem, although Mensi later said that he was wrong to dedicate it in 1983 to the Polish Solidarność trade union, which proved to be on the side of the anti-communist reactionaries and against the interests of the proletariat. After he saw that, he sang that song as a tribute to the struggle of the world proletariat and not the Polish "Solidarity" movement.
    After it was released in 2002, the promotion of the Angelic Upstarts album Sons of Spartacus was promoted by the New Worker. Mensi considered the New Communist Party (NCP) "a genuine Marxist-Leninist party in Britain”.

Rest in Peace Comrade Mensi!

Remembering a great Korean leader

 by New Worker correspondent

Andy Brooks paid tribute to Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who died at his post in December 2011. Speaking at a meeting in central London last weekend called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), the NCP leader spoke about Kim Jong Il’s life-long service to the communist movement and the Korean people – from his early days in guiding art and culture, especially the cinema, to steering The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea through a difficult period that followed the passing of great leader Kim Il Sung in 1994.
    Kim Jong Il led the Workers’ Party of Korea that mobilised the masses in the socialist north of the Korean peninsula to overcome natural disasters and imperialist blockade, and counter American threats by developing an independent nuclear deterrent.
    KFA Chair Dermot Hudson stressed the importance of commemorating the life of Kim Jong Il who led the Korean people to defend and advance socialism, together with other speakers including Michael Chant, the leader of the RCPB (ML), and Shaun Pickford from the Staffordshire KFA.
    A DPRK documentary was shown at the Marchmont Centre in Bloomsbury, a regular venue for Korean solidarity activists before the lockdown, called Turning Sorrow into Strength. Of that there can be no doubt, with the Korean people following the footsteps of the revolutionary leaders of the past to build the future with Kim Jong Un at the helm.

A tragedy for Labour

Not a day goes by, it seems, without someone’s expulsion from the Labour Party. Most people have lost track of the Corbynistas who’ve been suspended these days. It began with trumped-up charges of “anti-Semitism”. Now it been extended to “auto-exclude” anyone associated with Socialist Appeal, the Labour in Exile Network, Labour Against the Witchhunt and Resist. And it’s being applied retrospectively to condemn Labour members for taking part in events with members of banned groups in the past, even though they weren’t banned at the time.
    Taken to its logical conclusion, the Blairites should now move to expel any dead members they don’t like on the same grounds. Tony Benn would top the list. Sir Keir Starmer QC, the great “forensic” silk, could easily find some sort of legal precedent for posthumous expulsion. He could point to the precedent set by Charles II, who had the remains of Oliver Cromwell and the other dead “regicides” dug up and ceremonially hanged in public when the monarchy was restored in 1660.
    But Starmer beware. The Pharaohs and Caesars did this sort of thing big time to those they deemed traitors or blasphemers and look what happened to them…

British forces out of Ukraine and the Black Sea!

by New Worker correspondent

Anti-fascist campaigners were back in Whitehall last weekend, defying sub-zero temperatures to stand by the Donbas people’s republics and protest against the British government’s support for the puppet regime in Ukraine. British military advisers are training Ukrainian army units and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has recently given the go-ahead to an arms deal to boost Ukraine's naval capabilities in the Black Sea.
    NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other anti-fascist activists on Saturday demanding Britain pull its military and naval forces out of Ukraine and the Black Sea after evidence emerged that Canadian, and possibly also British, forces are training members of Ukrainian Nazi battalions.
    London comrades joined the picketers, which included members of Socialist Fight and the Consistent Democrats and British Posadists, opposite the Prime Minister’s home in Downing Street. Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU), International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity and other labour movement organisations also took part in the protest.
    Members of the Centuria battalion, who use Nazi salutes and praise Nazi German SS units, brag about “co-operation with foreign colleagues”. Ukraine’s fascist militias played an important part in the coup that overthrew the legitimate government in 2014 and were incorporated into Ukraine's National Guard the following year, and the fact that Centuria gunmen are now serving as Ukrainian army officers suggests they are being increasingly integrated into the regular armed forces.
    Amidst Western mass media hysteria about a planned "Russian invasion", with senior US and British officials claiming Vladimir Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine, the Kiev regime has deployed weapons banned under the Minsk-2 agreement including attack drones, tanks, heavy artillery and rocket systems, against the anti-fascist Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics that drove the fascists out of the Donbas in 2014.
    The Russians have dismissed talk of a Russian invasion as “baseless” and "absurd". But sending NATO military advisers to Ukraine could potentially lead to an escalation of tension across the “line of contact” or ceasefire line between the Donbas republics and Ukraine.
    Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov said: "We are deeply concerned about the provocative actions of the Ukrainian armed forces on the line of contact and preparations for a possible military solution, an attempt to resolve the Donbas problem by force," adding that nothing provocative has been done by the Donbas republics in the region.
    Meanwhile Alexei Reznikov, who says the Donbas rebels are "a cancerous tumour on Ukraine's body which needs to be surgically removed”, has been appointed as Ukraine's Defence Minister. His top adviser is the notorious Dmitry Yarosh, the former leader of the neo-Nazi ‘Right Sector’ militia that led the armed coup in Ukraine in February 2014 and is modelled on the Ukrainian collaborators who served the Nazis during the German occupation during the Second World War.
    The truth is that Ukraine has become the world epicentre of fascism and white supremacy, with networks across Europe and North America. The western mass media – and sadly many on the international left – turn their blind eye to this glaring reality. Shame on them!

• Report in the Donbas communist media

Socialism, the Choice of the Chinese People

Ambassador Zheng Zeguang opens the seminar

On 23rd November, the Chinese Embassy in London held an online symposium on the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee, where Ambassador Zheng Zeguang delivered a keynote speech. Andy Brooks, General Secretary of the New Communist Party of Britain, Robert Griffiths, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, Ella Rule, Chair of the CPGB (ML), Martin Jacques, a renowned expert on China, and Stephen Perry, Chair of the 48 Group Club, spoke at the event.

    Also present were Professor Martin Albrow, a fellow at the Academy of Social Sciences in London; Sir Martin Davidson, Chair of the Great Britain-China Centre; and representatives of various other political parties, experts, scholars and representatives from the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party. This is Andy Brooks’ contribution to the discussion.

First of all, I would like to thank the organisers for allowing me to say a few words at this seminar focusing on the major achievements and historical experience of the Communist Party of China (CPC) over the last 100 years of its existence.
    For a communist party to have survived for 100 years is, in itself, something to celebrate. To have led the Chinese people to victory is another. To raise the millions upon millions of the Chinese people out of poverty to build the modern socialist society that we see today is a third. And this is only the beginning of the march of progress in the 21st century.
    Feudal China was once the workshop of the world. When the people’s government was established in 1949 China had the lowest standard of living in the world. Today China can now not only feed, clothe and educate its people, but also provide consumer goods and living standards for working people unimaginable before liberation. China has a modern expanding economy that has withstood the current global capitalist crisis to once again become the workshop of the world and is sharing its prosperity through the Belt and Road Initiative that spans the globe.
    One-hundred years have passed since the foundation of the CPC on 23rd July 1921. China has risen from being a weak semi-feudal, semi-colonial country to become a force for peace in the global arena with the second largest economy in the world.
    In the past China’s wealth was the preserve of a ruthless, feudal ruling class. These days China’s wealth is being used to finally eradicate the last vestiges of poverty, raise the standard of living of everyone in the people’s republic, and help the development of the Third World through genuine fair trade and economic assistance.
    This is the glorious achievement of the CPC which led the resistance that defeated the Japanese imperialists and the reactionary Chinese warlords and politicians in the pay of American imperialism, to establish the people’s government on 1st October 1949.
    Discussion is a luxury communists can afford and as we join our Chinese comrades in celebrating their hundred years of victory, we can ask ourselves many questions.
    The collapse of the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies in eastern Europe led to calls in some communist quarters for a new communist international – calls that are still made from time to time in some parts of the movement. But we cannot restore what has gone before us without first understanding why it failed in the first place. And that understanding cannot come from reading books or simply trying to transpose one experience to another.
    Chinese communists always stress that socialism with Chinese characteristics cannot be exported and that their revolution is not a model for others to copy slavishly. But we very rarely, at least in Western Europe, ask ourselves why?
    The answer in part is based on the struggle of the Chinese communists to overcome dogmatism and sectarianism to eventually build a people’s democracy in their own way, to serve the needs of the working people of China.
    Commenting on the rise of the bourgeoisie in France, Marx famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Communists too can make mistakes, but unlike the bourgeoisie we consciously try to learn from past mistakes in order to avoid future ones.
    In Europe, the mistake was clearly to elevate slavishly what was believed to be the ‘Soviet model’, even though few Western communists even really understood what the Soviet Union actually was. The Soviet Union wasn’t a ‘people’s democracy’ in the sense we understand it now. It was a unique state based on Soviet power, and whilst its economic structures could be imitated – as they were after a fashion in eastern Europe – the Soviet political system could not.
    Following the Soviet victory in the Second World War, the revolutionary upsurge that followed led to the establishment of people’s democracies throughout Eastern Europe on the same basis as the people’s democratic dictatorship was established in China in 1949. The question was how long would this transition take?
    In the beginning, people’s democracy was seen as a lengthy process. Initially it was believed that the length of the road to socialism would depend upon the development of social and economic factors in each individual country. But Cold War tensions led to the rapid incorporation of most of the European people’s democracies into a Soviet economic and military bloc, which later proved incapable of withstanding the counter-revolutionary pressures of the 1980s. The Chinese communists clearly believe that the transitional period, at least as far as their immense country is concerned, will be a lengthy process. But it is a socialist process.
    Any hopes that imperialists held that China was ‘going down the capitalist road’ were dealt a severe blow at the 2019 Congress of the CPC, where Xi Jinping reminded delegates that: “Socialism with Chinese characteristics is socialism, not any other ‘ism’. Both history and our present reality tell us that only socialism can save China – and only socialism with Chinese characteristics can develop China. This is the conclusion of history, the choice of our people.”