by New Worker
correspondent
On 1st October 1942, an American submarine sank a Japanese troop ship off Shanghai. Some 700 Japanese soldiers scrambled to safety when the Lisbon Maru went down. The 1,800-odd British POWs on board the ship were not so lucky. Many died trapped in the holds that had been sealed by the Japanese soldiers. Others managed to break through the hatches to take their chances in the water. Some were picked up by Japanese craft. Others, 384 in all, were rescued by local Chinese fishermen.
And on 26 August, Chinese Ambassador Zheng Zeguang called on Denise Wynne, the daughter of one of the survivors, at her home in Chalford, Gloucestershire to deliver a letter from President Xi Jinping.
Mrs Wynne had written to the leader of the People’s Republic of China to thank him for mentioning this part of history during his visit to Britain in 2015 and to express the firm support of the families of the survivors of Lisbon Maru for the friendship between the Chinese and British peoples from generation to generation.
In his reply the Chinese President said the rescue of the POWs was an important testimony to China and the UK fighting shoulder to shoulder as allies against fascist aggression during the Second World War. It is also a historical episode epitomising the profound friendship forged between the people of our two countries. The President wrote that he knew the episode well and made a point of bringing up the story during his visit to the UK in 2015.
President Xi stressed that this year marks the 50th anniversary of ambassadorial-level diplomatic relations between China and the UK. Over the past half a century, and owing to the hard work and dedication of numerous friendly personnel from both countries, China-UK bilateral relationship has kept moving forward. The President hopes that the families of the survivors of the Lisbon Maru will continue to work for the advancement of friendship between our two countries, and he looked forward to positive contributions from more British friends to the growth of China-UK relations.
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| Alexei Albu |
by New Worker correspondent
A very successful online meeting to mobilise international support for the Free the Kononovich Brothers campaign took place on Thursday 25th August, with 50 participants from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the USA, England and Scotland. Organised by the London-based International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign (IUAFS), the seminar called for the release of the Kononovich brothers and all Ukrainian political prisoners, and for the restoration of all political and media freedoms.
Chaired by Theo Russell, the key speakers were: Chris Williamson, former Labour MP; Alexey Albu from Borotba (Struggle), a survivor of the 2014 Odessa Trade Union House Fire massacre; Steve Sweeney, Moscow-based investigative journalist and former Morning Star international editor; John Parker from Solidarity with Donbass and Antifascists in Ukraine (joining from Los Angeles); Phil Wilayto, Odessa Solidarity Campaign (Virginia USA); and members of the Young Communist League of the Russian Federation and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Speakers from Ukraine and the Donbas were unable to take part due to interrupted internet connections.
Chris Williamson said that: "The imprisonment of the Kononovich brothers should have caused an outcry from the British left, but it has been met with a stony silence. We know the Zelensky regime is corrupt regime that came to power in a US-backed coup.” Speaking about the energy payments crisis currently shaking Britain, he commented that "most people aren’t making the connection between the sanctions on Russia and the soaring price of energy".
In a video message from Eastern Ukraine, Alexey Albu spoke of the large-scale persecution of dissidents in Ukraine and said "tens of thousands have been arrested by the SBU (Ukrainian secret service)”. He said that many were not as well-known as the Kononovich brothers, Alexander Matyushenko of the left Livitstya movement or the Vasily Volga of the Union of Left Forces, all of whom have been beaten and tortured by Nazis. He added that in newly liberated areas the graves of those murdered by Nazis since 2014 are being exhumed. He said: "I believe that we will win and that fascism will be defeated, but I would be very happy if you comrades could help us in this process. No Pasaran!"
Speaking from Moscow, Steve Sweeney spoke about the brutal crackdown on the opposition in Ukraine and said: "The entire Ukrainian left are either in prison, they’re dead or they’re in hiding.” He added that people in Moscow were "still reeling from the murder of Darya Dugina, who was killed in a cowardly attack" and compared the gloating in the western media over her assassination with their reaction to what they termed the "terrorist attack" on Salman Rushdie.
The IUAFS is a united front supported by the NCP, Socialist Fight, Consistent Democrats and the British Posadists as well as individual labour movement activists.Videos of the key speakers are now up on the new IUAFS YouTube Channel
In 1653 Cromwell became head of state, the Lord Protector. By then the republic Cromwell led included England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as well as colonies in New England and the Caribbean.
During its short life the Commonwealth became a force in Europe. Culturally it inspired the great poetry of John Milton and Andrew Marvell and other radical and pacifist religious movements such the Quakers who are still with us today. Oliver Cromwell was succeeded by his son Richard, who was neither a politician nor a soldier. Unable to reconcile republican generals with the demands of the rich merchants and landowners to curb the influence of the New Model Army, Richard Cromwell resigned the following year. The government collapsed. The monarchy was restored in 1660 and the New Model Army was dissolved.
These days most bourgeois historians simply dismiss Cromwell as an upstart general who made himself dictator through his command of the army. But Marxists have always recognised the historic role of Cromwell and the English Revolution.
It was, of course, a bourgeois revolution and one that by Cromwell’s terms failed. But the monarchy that came back wasn’t the autocracy Charles Stuart had imagined. The rich merchants and land-owners who wanted an oligarchy were the ultimate victors. They got their “mixed monarchy” when they dumped the last Stuart king in 1688 and put the House of Orange on the throne.
The English revolution clearly influenced the thinking of the leaders of the later American and French revolutions and the ideas of the Victorian co-operator, Robert Owen. But the question of the monarchy and the House of Lords remains unresolved.
Mikhail Gorbachev is dead. He was 91. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says “the world has lost a great world leader, committed to multilateralism, and a tireless defender of peace”. Imperialist leaders such as Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and the rest of the Western pack mourn the passing of an old friend. Sir Keir Starmer calls him a “great figure” who will “forever be remembered”.
In the West you’d think a saint had died – but on the Russian street Gorbachev is hated. He’s the traitor who restored capitalism and broke up the USSR for the benefit of the Western corporations and the black-marketeers who emerged from the shadows to become the oligarchs that plunder the country today. He achieved nothing apart from bringing unemployment and poverty back to what was once the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev didn’t come from nowhere. He wormed his way to the top of the Soviet Communist Party posing as a “reformer” to become the idol of the Eurocommunists in Britain and the rest of Western Europe.
In fact, the basis of post-war revisionism was laid down at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The vicious attack on Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev had two main effects within the world communist movement. In the West it opened the door to the fallacy of Trotskyism, which until then had been confined to small groups drawn from the middle strata and encouraged social-democratic illusions within the mass communist parties of Western Europe.
In the East, the loss of confidence in the masses led to the rejection of the concept of the leading role of the working class. This, in turn, created a climate of compromise and defeat and led to the conditions that counter-revolutionary traitors successfully exploited in the end.
Throughout the international communist movement it reinforced the drift towards social-democratic strategies and the abandonment of Marxist-Leninist thinking.
Some communists were confused by Gorbachev’s false promises and his watch-words of glasnost and perestroika that presented essentially social democratic, anti-communist ideas and policies as "new thinking" and a creative development of Marxism. In turn, that helped to create the conditions that allowed the revisionists, liquidators and outright agents of imperialism to strengthen their position organisationally at every level of the Soviet party.
The lack of a consistent and sustained attack on Eurocommunism by the CPSU leadership in the 1970s should have alerted the sound elements in the international communist movement to the pending danger emanating from the revisionist factions in the CPSU.
Instead, the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and his clique was the beginning of the counter-revolutionary offensive. It was a co-ordinated offensive masterminded by imperialists. It ended with the collapse of the USSR.
The bitter lesson of that defeat for communists, the working class and progressive humanity has to be taken to heart. Revisionism, if it is not defeated and rooted out, will inevitably give rise to the eventual liquidation of the party.
They say it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. But, as Russian communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said this week, that doesn’t apply to major politicians. “I believe that Gorbachev was one of those rulers in the thousand-year history of Russia, who brought not only the peoples of our country, but also all allies and friends, absolute misfortune, grief and misfortune,” he said. “I consider it a great tragedy that he came to the crucible of political power…”
