B&W- PDF  version of the leaflet is available to download here.

Neither elite politicians nor bankers; oppose the crumbling British imperialist state!

As the reactionary politicians squabble for votes and the British economy continues to teeter on the brink of a double-dip recession, the day of international working class solidarity May 1^st gives us the opportunity to voice our collective disgust at the corrupt politicians and immoral financial barons that rule this country.

Expenses Scandal: Corruption of Politicians out in the open

In 2009 a major corruption scandal erupted from the Houses of Parliament. Although the political class has done its best to sweep the issue under the carpet, the people do not forget so easily. A stopgap parliamentary response was ushered through with no substance at all, and only four MPs face criminal investigation. But the total cost of MPs expenses added up to hundreds of millions of pounds, and the second home allowance and even more corrupt practices have allowed some MPs to amass huge wealth. Read the rest of this entry »

Question: In recent weeks one has seen statements by the Government of India and leaders of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) saying they are in favor of dialogue and talks but each side seems to lack seriousness. There has also been an element of drama or more precisely, theatre, with Kishenji and P. Chidambaram exchanging statements through the media. Our first question is whether Kishenji’s statements can be treated as authoritative pronouncements of the CPI (Maoist) central leadership in pursuance of a national strategy? Or are these tactical announcements by him keeping only the specifics of the Bengal situation in mind.

Azad: It is true our Party leadership has been issuing statements from time to time in response to the government’s dubious offer of talks. But to generalize that there is lack of seriousness on both sides does not correspond to reality. To an observer, exchanging statements through the media does sound a bit theatrical. And it is precisely such theatrical and sensational things the media relishes while more serious things are swept aside. Now the stark fact is lack of seriousness has been the hallmark of the government, particularly of the Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram. It is Mr. Chidambaram who has been enacting a drama in the past  four months, particularly ever since his amusing 72-hour-abjure-violence diktat to the CPI (Maoist) in the course of his interview with Tehelka Magazine some time last November. As regards Kishenji’s statements, they should be seen with a positive attitude, not with cynicism. Though our central committee has not discussed our specific strategy with regard to talks with the government at the current juncture, as a Polit Bureau member, comrade Kishenji had taken initiative and made a concrete proposal for a ceasefire. Whether comrade Kishenji’s statements are the official pronouncements of our Central Committee is not the point of debate here. What is important is the attitude of the government to such an offer in the first place. Our central committee has no objection to his proposal for a ceasefire. But as far as the issue of talks is concerned, our Party will pursue the guidelines given by our Unity Congress-9th Congress held in early 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

Racism is at the core of an unjust system – do not let an innocent man be executed

The PAN AFRIKAN VOICE and the Pan Afrikan Society Community Forum invites all Afrikan/Working Class and Progressive People to a campaigning public meeting to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

MUMIA ABU JAMAL IS INNOCENT – A POLITICAL PRISONER
ABOLISH THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY – FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW

Date & Time: 7 PM – WEDNESDAY 28^th APRIL 2010
Venue: KARIBU EDUCATION CENTRE, 7 GRESHAM ROAD, BRIXTON, LONDON SW9 7PH
(Third Right Street From Brixton Tube Station)

Organised by:

• George Jackson Socialist League
• Pan Afrikan Society Community Forum
• Democracy and Class Struggle
• Fight Racism Fight Imperialism
• World Peoples Resistance Movement (Britain)
• Global Afrikan Congress
• Co-ordination Committee of the Revolutionary Communists of Britain

Read the rest of this entry »

The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat. I’d been waiting for months to hear from them.

I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said: “Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas. Password: Namashkar Guruji.”

Namashkar Guruji. I wondered whether the Meeter and Greeter would be expecting a man. And whether I should get myself a moustache.

There are many ways to describe Dantewara. It’s an oxymoron. It’s a border town smack in the heart of India. It’s the epicenter of a war. It’s an upside down, inside out town.

In Dantewara the police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms. The jail-superintendant is in jail. The prisoners are free (three hundred of them escaped from the old town jail two years ago). Women who have been raped are in police custody. The rapists give speeches in the bazaar. Read the rest of this entry »

-By WPRM (Ireland)

‘The key to carrying out a new democratic revolution is the independent role of the proletariat and its ability, through its Marxist-Leninist party, to establish its hegemony in the revolutionary struggle. Experience has shown again and again that even when a section of the national bourgeoisie joins the revolutionary movement, it will not and cannot lead a new democratic revolution, to say nothing of carrying this revolution through to completion. Similarly, history demonstrates the bankruptcy of an “anti- imperialist front” (or similar “revolutionary front”) which is not led by a Marxist-Leninist party, even when such a front or forces within it adopt a “Marxist” (actually pseudo-Marxist) colouration. While such revolutionary formations have led heroic struggles and even delivered powerful blows to the imperialists they have been proven to be ideologically and organisationally incapable of resisting imperialist and bourgeois influences. Even where such forces have seized power they have been incapable of carrying through a thoroughgoing revolutionary transformation of society and end up, sooner or later, being overthrown by the imperialists or themselves becoming a new reactionary ruling power in league with imperialists.’ – Declaration of the RIM

Since the beginning of the first Provisional IRA ceasefire in 1994, the cause of a United Ireland, has gradually withdrawn from view as the revolutionary nationalist forces went into retreat. As defeat was delivered to the supporters of national liberation, with tailor-made platitudes by the Adams leadership, the republican movement was gradually led down the road of capitulation, cunningly disguised as victory. With the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the Provisional Republican movement became aligned to the stated positions of both the British and Irish governments that not until the majority of the northern population wished the reunification of the island, should it be acceptable. The debate within the Provisional movement itself was ultimately won behind closed doors by those aligned to Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly, the latter referring to the GFA as being a, ‘contract between political opponents’. As former OC of the Tyrone IRA and hunger striker, Tommy McKearney points out:

‘The Good Friday Agreement flowed logically, almost inevitably, from the decision by Sinn Fein in the late 1980s to negotiate a settlement within the framework of Northern Ireland. I remember the first ceasefire when people were encouraged to drive up and down the Falls claiming some kind of victory, I recalled a point made by Chou En Lai at the Paris negotiations during the Vietnam conflict – you never gain at the conference table what you did not take on the battlefield.’ Read the rest of this entry »

With Operation Green Hunt, the situation in India enters a new and vital stage. The struggle between the Indian state and the Maoist rebels and their adivasi allies is likely to attract the attention of many people who are unaware of the People’s War, which, with greater or lesser intensity, has been raging in India for more than forty years. Now at a time when the common view of India is of an emerging global superpower, the People’s War is also emerging as the greatest threat to the Indian ruling class. Here is a brief summary of the main events that have brought us to this point.

The People’s War in India began in 1967 in Naxalbari, West Bengal (hence the colloquial name for Maoist revolutionaries in India is Naxalite) and was initially led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). In the 1970s the Indian state all but crushed the Maoists. Under increasing repression the CPI (ML) splintered into numerous groupings often along regional rather than ideological divisions.

A series of mergers developed, most notably involving the Maoist Communist Centre of India, based mainly in Bihar, and the People’s War Group, mainly active in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa. The mergers culminated in 2004 with the creation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terroristoutfits/CPI_M.htm (hostile account).

Since then, the CPI (Maoist) has grown in support and advanced the struggle. The Maoist’s natural support base has been among the adivasis, the ‘tribals’, indigenous people who live in the forested areas of central and Eastern India. Numbering around 70 million people, the adivasis have been excluded from India’s so-called ‘economic miracle’ and moreover face the loss of their land and livelihood as capitalism’s insatiable appetite for resources pushes deeper into their forested homelands. The other main constituency for the Maoists are the dalits, the ‘untouchables’ located at the bottom of Hinduism’s traditional caste system. But the advances of the CPI (Maoist) are also attracting other supporters; intellectuals, students and urban workers are beginning to rally to the Naxalite banner. Read the rest of this entry »