We remember 1917!

Andy Brooks recalls Soviet triumphs

by New Worker correspondent

Friends and comrades gathered in London to celebrate the Great October Russian Revolution at the Party Centre last weekend. Millions of communists all over the world celebrate the epic days of 1917, and last Saturday comrades and friends joined them at the NCP’s annual tribute to the greatest event of the 20th century.

The print shop was, as usual, transformed into a bar and buffet for friends, old and new, who had come to honour the generations who fought and built the Soviet Union.

During the formal part of the proceedings, opened by Party Chair Alex Kempshall, Dermot Hudson from the UK Korea Friendship Association, Marie Lynam from the British Posadists and NCP leader Andy Brooks paid tribute to the revolutionary role of the Bolsheviks who established the world’s first workers’ and peasants’ republic in 1917.

Andy Brooks spoke about the Brexit victory, Labour’s revival under Jeremy Corbyn, and the need to build the revolutionary movement in Britain to build the resistance to austerity and the creeping fascism of the ruling class.

They all spoke of the inspiration that the Great October Revolution had given to people in struggle all around the world – that oppressed workers had not only been able to overthrow a mighty imperialist empire, but were then able to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat and start building socialism. In doing so they turned an economically backward country, barely emerging from feudalism in some parts, into a world power.

This was taken up by Daphne Liddle in a spirited appeal for the New Worker fighting fund, which raised £732 for our communist weekly!