The Chosen Men return!

 by Ben Soton

Sharpe’s Storm by Bernard Cornwell, Harper-Collins. Hbk: 2025, 368pp, rrp £22.00. Sbk: 2026, 368pp, rrp £9.99. Audio: 628 minutes, rrp £17.99.

This is Bernard Cornwell’s 24th novel in the Sharpe series – set in 1813, as the British army along with their Spanish and Portuguese allies advance into France during the Napoleonic wars. Most of the Sharpe novels are set during the war with France when Britain was aligned with the absolute monarchies of Prussia, Russia and Austria. So I wouldn’t imagine the Sharpe saga, with its glorification of war, especially a conflict where this country was arguably on the wrong side, to be especially popular on the left.           
What of the character Sharpe? Richard Sharpe was born around 1780 in poverty, becomes involved in crime.  In the television series, Sharpe, played by Sean Bean, is a Yorkshireman; in the original novels he is a Londoner.  He eventually joins the army and begins a successful military career.  So successful that he is given a commission by Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington.  This gives him both strength and vulnerability.  On the one hand he is Wellington’s man, giving him a degree of protection. But he lacks the wealthy connections of most other officers and therefore Wellington can easily break him as he could make him.  
For this reason Sharpe is often given dangerous missions; in the case of Sharpe’s Storm Admiral Sir Joel Chase.  has been tasked by Wellington to overview the river Ardour, check its bridges and examine the possibility of getting warships down it. This is made increasingly difficult as the events take place during a storm.  Although Sharpe is admired by the military top brass, he still manages to make enemies amongst junior officers from the ranks of the gentry. In this story Sir Nathaniel Peacock, a man who obviously bought his commission and with limited experience, is a liability.  Peacock continually reminds Sharpe of his social superiority; which Sharpe is able to brush off with a degree of humour and sarcasm.
The idea of Sharpe is based on the notion that the ruling class, which may contain a few bad apples (anyone who has watched the news recently knows that it is more than just a few), is fundamentally good, recognises talent and is willing to occasionally bring in new blood.  This positive view of the ruling class explains why the series is popular on the right.  Sharpe, although a fundamentally decent individual, has absolutely no concept of class loyalty. Meanwhile the character also has deep insecurities; which emanate from the knowledge that he may never be fully accepted.  Thus accepting the limitations of meritocracy. Sharpe is ultimately a mercenary for his own ruling class.

Stop the drift to war

It didn’t take long for Starmer to switch from blocking the Americans from using  British bases to attack Iran to permitting it and now actively collaborating with US imperialism and Zionist Israel in their onslaught against the Islamic Republic. He can count on the Faragists and Tories to back him while Tony Blair, who can barely show his face in public in Britain these days, thinks we should have gone in with Trump from the start.

This shouldn’t surprise us. Farage thinks he’s Trump’s mouth-piece in Britain while crawling to the Americans is almost compulsory for Tory and Labour leaders who drone on and on about “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. 
But on the street millions upon millions have seen through the lies of the bourgeois media. They want no part in Trump’s crusade. This is the message that must be heard throughout the labour movement as well. Stop the bombing! End the War!

Every cloud...

This week we saw a minor victory for free speech when the High Court ruled in favour of the Guardian journalist Owen Jones in the Raffi Berg libel case. Jones, best known for his book Chavs –The Demonising of the Working Class back in 2011, launched his career as a man of the left but soon gravitated to the centre to join the prominenti of the mainstream media. He did, however, attract the ire of the Zionists when he accused a BBC journalist of pro-Israeli bias in December 2024
.
Jones' article cited BBC journalists who accused BBC news online editor Raffi Berg of fostering a culture of 'systematic Israeli propaganda'.  But the court rejected Berg's lawyers' core argument that Jones' reporting presented him as "a rogue journalist and editor who deliberately disregards and breaches the duties of accuracy and impartiality".
Jones' piece in Drop Site News quoted BBC staffers saying Berg "reshapes everything from headlines, to story text, to images" and "repeatedly seeks to foreground the Israeli military perspective while stripping away Palestinian humanity". Jones said that "facts unfavourable to Israel have been stripped out of Berg’s reports" and that he played a "crucial role" in "conduct that imperils the integrity of the BBC".
Berg instructed Mark Lewis of Patron Law, previously a director of UK Lawyers for Israel, as his solicitor. His legal team says that Owen’s piece strikes "at the claimant’s professional reputation as a journalist and editor" and has led to "an onslaught of hatred, intimidation and threats", including death threats. 
Nevertheless the judges ruled that the article by Jones expressed an opinion, and indicated the basis for that opinion through examples of Berg's journalism and editorial role. The ruling is central to determining whether the case is to be pursued.
Berg will now need to show that Jones did not genuinely hold the opinion he expressed in his reporting, or demonstrate that the opinion is not one an honest person could hold on the basis of any fact that existed at the time of its publication. It will be interesting to see if Berg decides to take this any further...

The view from the Donbas

Boris Litvinov, Theo Russell & Andy Brooks

by Theo Russell

Members of the New Communist Party and International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity recently held an online meeting with Boris Litvinov, the Secretary of the Donetsk Region of theCommunist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). The meeting was also joined by Gedrius Gebrauskas, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania, who is currently living in exile in Moscow. We publish here a summary of the main points which were discussed.
Boris Litvinov, the Donetsk communist leader,  said that though recent initiatives have led to talks on the Ukraine conflict the war continues unabated. On the US-Russian peace talks there are currently plenty of delegations meeting in various places, creating the illusion that the Americans want peace. But while Trump says he won’t send troops to Ukraine, he’s happy for the Europeans to pay for weapons to send to Ukraine to continue the war.
The leading European states dream of endlessly prolonging the conflict, with the aim of doing away with Russia. The European media spreads the idea that Russia is preparing to invade Europe, and the EU representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, has made the ridiculous claim that in the past 100 years, Russia has attacked at least 19 countries, “some as many as three or four times”. 
We need to explain that Russia isn’t preparing to attack anyone. But Ukraine is our concern. It was part of the Soviet Union. It is our problem and we need to solve it. Let Europe solve their own problems with the United States!
We hope to convince the European countries to stop sending money and weapons for the war.
We still don’t understand why the European states blew up the Nord Stream pipeline and cut off Russian energy.
On Western claims of about a million Russian casualties let’s be clear. There are victims on both sides in any war. But when we return 1,000 body-bags to Ukraine, Ukraine sends us 80 in return, and this is the normal ratio in such exchanges. War is very complicated, now with modern systems such as drones, and inevitably the war will carry on. 
 Zelensky is a criminal. His latest demand is for 1.5 trillion US dollars to cover Ukraine’s budget for five years. If Europe continues to send money to ther Kiev regime, a global catastrophe, including the possibility of a nuclear conflict, becomes highly likely.
We want to see a just settlement of the Ukraine crisis. We also want conflicts elsewhere in the world to end in Palestine, Iran,  Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan. This is our main concern.
Andy Brooks, the NCP general secretary. said that the primary contradiction in the world today is between United States imperialism and the rest of the world it seeks to control and exploit. President Trump may not want world domination but he does want to divide the world into spheres on influence – with the lion’s share in American hands –  in line with the wishes of the dominant sections in the USA – manufacturing, big oil and the tech giants. As with Biden, the aim is still to control the world market in energy, and to challenge any country which tries to establish genuine economic independence.
Europe believed that Russia would lose quickly in 2022 and that the sanctions against Russia and against Russian oligarchs would create the possibility of a change of leadership in the Kremlin. This they believed would enable British and Franco-German imperialism to exploit Ukraine in partnership with the Americans. This did not happen.
Trump’s 22 point “peace plan” for Ukraine includes total American control of Ukraine’s mineral resources and the current US-Russian talks cover economic projects which completely exclude Europe. 
These talks are secret. Now we oppose secret diplomacy, which was banned by the UN after 1945, and we still don’t know what is happening in the US-Russian talks, which are by-passing the United Nations. What does seem clear is that Trump’s goal is to take 70 per cent of Ukrainia’s assets for himself leaving the 30 per cent of liberated territory for Russia and nothing for the Europeans.
For our part we hope that a future settlement will recognise the legitimate right of the people of the Donbas and southern Ukraine to join the Russian Federation and that the democratic forces in Ukraine will be given complete freedom of expression. 
Boris Litvinov said our mission is to help people to open their eyes. The capitalist part of our state wants to join the US dollar system, but there is another section which is patriotic. This section includes capitalists and left forces. We recognise that we need to protect our country’s national interests , even in alliance with capitalist forces.
Now Trump is hoping to impose a digital currency on the world. When this happens and a new international situation comes about, the European states need to choose what to do. If they decide to ally with Russia, China, India, Brazil and the other BRICS states, then there will be no space left for the Americans and the dollar will collapse.
We feel sorrow for the people of Ukraine. They are being used as cannon fodder to achieve the future aims of the United States. Many Ukrainians have fled to find a better life and there are not many people left to continue fighting. Now the Western countries are talking about sending troops to Ukraine. That means you too will have coffins returning – who will be responsible for this madness?

The Madness of King Trump

Rambling speeches, delusions of grandeur, unhinged threats to friend and foe alike,,,and now a demand for “unconditional surrender” as his offensive against Iran falters in the first week of open combat. The Iranians have crippled the American military network across the Middle East, cut off the Persian Gulf to all Western shipping while giving the Israelis a taste of their own medicine with daily drone and missile strikes on Tel Aviv and other cities across the Zionist entity. America and Israel’s “achievements” so far have been the killing of 165 school-kids in an air-raid last week and the sinking of an Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean.
Trump’s team initially believed that they could wipe out the Iranian leadership and force the Islamic Republic to beg for mercy in a matter of a few days. Their treacherous attack in the midst of negotiations to end the crisis neither shocked nor awed the Iranians. They killed some but not all the Iranian leaders. They destroyed some but not all of Iran’s stockpile of drones and missiles.
The Iranians, enraged at the death of their Supreme Leader and many others in the leadership vow to fight on no matter what the Americans or Israelis throw at them. Their Arab allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, north Yemen and the Palestinian resistance are joining in to help them. The Iranians have cut off the Persian Gulf and the Yemenis are blocking the Red Sea to all Western shipping. The spot oil price is soaring. The stock markets of the imperialist world are jittery amid fears that a massive hike in the price of oil on the open market will trigger another global slump. The longer the war goes on the more likely that will be, And even the Americans are now talking about a five or six week campaign.
In Britain the Tories and the Faragists are predictably rooting for a Trump triumph. So are Starmer & Co and the ageing Blairites he surrounds himself with. Jeremy Corbyn warns that “we cannot let Keir Starmer drag this country into another illegal war. That’s why I tabled a Bill to require Parliamentary approval for the foreign use of British bases” – a view supported by the Greens, the Bennite rump on the Labour back-benches and beyond.
Starmer’s bid to allow the Americans to use British bases for their war effort has been blocked by four Cabinet ministers, led by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.  
Starmer is still trying to appease The Donald and the feudal Arab oil princes who invest in Britain but depend on American guns to keep them on their thrones. But wiser counsel has prevailed in Europe. None of the members of the European Union, apart from the Baltic States which are little more than American protectorates, have shown any enthusiasm to join the Trump crusade against Iran. And Spain’s social-democratic government has taken a more principled position, refusing to allow the United States to use its military bases for attacks on Iran and condemning the strikes as unjustified and outside international law.
And this is what Britain must also do. The mass movement, the millions who’ve marched for Palestine are now demonstrating to stop any British involvement in imperialist aggression, stop the bombing and end the cycle of violence that threatens to plunge the entire world into flames. Stop bombing Iran! Stop Trump’s war!

The Shape of Things to Come

The Green victory in the Gorton & Denton by-election was a slap in the face for all the major parliamentary parties. Labour lost a seat it’s held for a hundred years. Reform came a poor second  and the Tories lost their deposit trailing behind just a few hundred votes above the Liberal Democrats, the Monster Raving Loonies and the other also-rans. 
Trumped by the Greens the Faragists put their failure down to the “Muslim vote” while the Starmer crowd blame left “extremists” for making the common course with the Greens that led to Labour’s downfall in Manchester. But at the end of the day Starmer & Co got the kicking they so richly deserved because voters were sick of the lies of the false prophets of all the mainstream bourgeois parties in Britain today.
Jeremy Corbyn, one of those “extremists” that Starmer doubtless had in mind, welcomed the Greens’ stunning victory and said his supporters “will work constructively with the Greens, because there is only one way we can bring about real change: together”.
On the other hand Richard Burgon, one of the few left social-democrats still in the Parliamentary Labour Party says the “blame for Labour’s defeat lies squarely with Keir Starmer and his clique”.
He says “they put factional interests over having the candidate best placed to win, Andy Burnham. If Labour is to be the “Stop Reform” party, then the leadership must stop treating progressive voters with contempt - and start appealing to them.
“That means a return to real Labour values - through policies like a Wealth Tax, public ownership of energy and water, and an ethical foreign policy that are all popular with the public. And it means ditching the approach of trying to ape Reform and kicking the left, that has alienated so many people who have voted Labour previously”.
We’ll see. The Greens deservedly got a massive protest vote this time round but their “eco-socialism” is only a rehash of the stale left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire. 
Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably goes. They uphold the NHS. They talk about public ownership. They pay lip-service to the old Bennite social-democratic tradition. They support the union bureaucrats at the helm of the labour movement. But that’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge. We, as communists,  want real change. We have to put socialism back on the working-class agenda. 
We must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world. The struggle for peace and socialism must begin anew – in the unions, amongst the rank and file and on the street. It must start now...

Stone Age stories

 by Ben Soton

Circle of Days by Ken Follett, Grand Central Publishing; 2025, hbk  608pp rrp £25. pbk rrp £10.99.

For years Ken Follett has long been a master of both contemporary and historical fiction.  His latest novel, Circle of Days, takes us back to ancient Britain – a time after the development of agriculture but before writing reached these shores. The building of Stonehenge is a major aspect of the book; a monument still standing just a few miles outside Salisbury in Wiltshire, the area referred to as the Great Plain. 
This is the first major novel set during the prehistoric era since Bernard Cornwell wrote Stonehenge in 2000. The two novels present very contrasting views of the period. Cornwell’s novel portrays a society with an existing hierarchy; Circle of Days is set in a more anarchic world with competing and sometimes conflicting communities – farmers, herders, ‘woodland folk’, flint miners and a caste of priestesses.  Follett paints a world of conflict. 
The farmers are the emerging and most powerful group with an element of the story focussing on the age-old rivalry between them and the herders – the basis of the Cain and Abel myth. Meanwhile the woodland folk, obviously the remnants of  the hunter-gatherer society, appear to be doomed. The novel shows the different attitudes and cultures of the rival groups.  Women within the farming community are seen as property of their men whilst the woodland folk practice a form of free-love. The priestesses are an overwhelmingly lesbian grouping; while being the only ones who can count.
 Follett, who is not a Marxist, is painting a picture of an emerging class society. It is widely known that farming triumphed over hunter-gathering and herding, eventually leading to class-society and the rest is history. The author, who has always favoured class compromise, predictably sides with those in the various communities who favour compromise and negotiation. As the story develops, we see tit-for-tat warfare between the rival groupings; which includes the burning of the forest by herders and attacks on grain stores by woodlanders. 
The building of the henge takes place in the later stages of the novel; its construction is the idea of Joia, a priestess who sees it as a means of uniting the rival groupings and bringing more people to the Great Plain. Its construction is opposed by Troon, the leader of the farmers with designs on domination over the region.  As Joia builds the Henge he builds an army.  However are these not two sides of the same coin?  Standing armies and megaliths are both features of a class society; with warriors and priests (in this case priestesses) becoming part of the new ruling-class. 
This is pure Follett; delving into the personal and often the sex lives of the key characters. It has a strong resemblance to his 1989 novel Pillars of the Earth, set around the building of a cathedral in 12th century England. Both novels are based on the premise of ‘Build it and They Will Come’.  As a novel set in pre-history much of the story is down to the author’s imagination; however it is a fitting tribute to those who built Stonehenge.       
  

Uneasy lies the head...

 Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the first member of the Royal Family to be arrested since Charles Stuart was held by the New Model Army at the end of the First Civil War in 1646. Charles remained in custody before his trial and execution in 1649. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was styled in English, was proclaimed soon after. Oliver Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon who was the leading Parliamentary commander during the civil war,
later became head of state, the Lord Protector, a post he held until his death in 1658. 
Andrew’s arrest is not going to bring down the House of Windsor nor is he likely to share the fate of his loathsome predecessor. Nevertheless the high-life of the former prince that revolved around Jeffrey Epstein, a degenerate American brothel keeper who supplied young girls to prominent politicians and businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic, has brought the Royal Family into disrepute not seen since the Abdication crisis of 1936.
In those days the bourgeois parliament and the leaders of the Church of England believed that Edward V111’s morals and his sympathy for Nazi Germany made him unfit to head the Anglican church let alone an Empire that spanned a quarter of the entire world. These days Andrew’s antics have merely embarrassed our current king, who’s clearly washed his hands on his errant younger brother.
The monarchy, of course, is part and parcel of British bourgeois democracy. During Elizabeth 11’s long reign they built up a cult around the House of Windsor based on two powerful myths – the first being that the Royal Family are paragons of virtue and the second that they have no power at all in the modern British state. Neither is true.
The first is blatantly obvious. The second ignores the nature of the bourgeois state and the role of the ruling family that heads it. To be sure, the Westminster parliament is a sovereign assembly that can pick and chose monarchs – it got rid of James 11 in 1688. It forced Edward out in 1936. The monarch is, on the face of it, a figurehead, But at the end of the day it is absurd to think that the House of Windsor, one of the richest families in the world, has no power at all.
New voices are now questioning the role of the monarchy – a natural feature of the early days of British communism. There were also outspoken republicans in the social-democratic movement like Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone. Even some right-wing social-democrats like Willie Hamilton, the Fife MP who branded the royal family gold-plated scroungers joined in the calls for the monarchy to be scrapped. But republicanism was barely, if ever, mentioned during the post-war decline of the revisionist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Calls for a democratic republic were said to be “divisive” given the supposed popularity of the monarchy amongst the working class and irrelevant in the forward march of labour that was conjured up in the British Road to Socialism.
Our position, from the day we were founded is clear. The New Communist Party calls for the abolition of the Crown, the House of Lords and all titles of nobility. They serves no democratic purpose whatsoever. 

A just decision

 The High Court has ruled the Palestine Action ban unlawful.Three judges led by Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench Division, concluded that the decision to ban the group was unlawful. However, the ban will remain temporarily in place to allow the government time to appeal.
On 5th July last year membership of or public support for the Palestine Action campaign became a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The pro-Palestinian direct action network was placed on the list of proscribed organisations, categorising it alongside internationally recognised ‘terrorist’ groups.
Over 2,700 people have been arrested since the ban took effect, most under section 13 of the Terrorism Act. More than 500 individuals, including members of the clergy, pensioners and military veterans, have been charged.
The court upheld the challenge on two of four grounds. Judges found that the proscription represented “a very significant interference” with the rights to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and association. They also ruled that the decision of the then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was inconsistent with her own stated policy.
Though Dame Victoria Sharp described Palestine Action as an organisation “that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality” she said that “the court considered that the proscription of Palestine Action was disproportionate. A very small number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to acts of terrorism within the definition of section 1 of the 2000 Act.
“For these, and for Palestine Action’s other criminal activities, the general criminal law remains available. The nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities falling within the definition of terrorism had not yet reached the level, scale, and persistence to warrant proscription” .
Or as Jeremy Corbyn put it: “we knew the proscription of Palestine Action was absurd and immoral. Now, we know it was unlawful too. Today’s ruling is a vindication for all those who had the courage to oppose genocide – and a day of shame for those in our government who enabled it”.
The judgement resolutely rebuffs the Starmer government’s attempts to criminalise political dissent and activism aimed at stopping material support for genocide. This is a historic ruling. For the first time an organisation banned under the Terrorism Act has successfully challenged its proscription in court.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori said this was a monumental victory.  “We were banned because Palestine Action’s disruption of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, cost the corporation millions of pounds in profits and to lose out on multibillion-pound contracts.
“We’ve used the same tactics as direct action organisations throughout history, including anti-war groups Keir Starmer defended in court, and the government acknowledged in these legal proceedings that this ban was based on property damage, not violence against people. Banning Palestine Action was always about appeasing pro-Israel lobby groups and weapons manufacturers, and nothing to do with terrorism”.
The ruling, and the court victories of the previous weeks in the Filton cases, show that the Government’s actions were not only immoral but unlawful.
We call for the dropping of all charges against those who have been linked to this unlawful proscription and other cases of protest against British complicity in Israel’s genocide, including the organisers of the national marches for Palestine facing criminal charges. 
We call for the resignation of police commissioner Mark Rowley, as well as former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. And above all, we call for the resignation of the head of the whole rotting edifice, Sir Keir Starmer. 

Stop the escalation of aggression against Cuba!

joint statement of communist & workers parties on Cuba

 We firmly condemn US imperialism’s new escalation of aggression against the sovereignty and

independence of Cuba and against the rights of the Cuban people.

The US President’s Executive Order calling Cuba an «unusual and extraordinary threat» against its

security is merely creating, based on a pack of falsehoods, a cynical pretext by US imperialism to

try and prevent the supply of fuel to Cuba and to step up the economic, financial and trade embargo

which it has imposed for over six decades, in an attempt to cause maximum harm to the Cuban

people’s living conditions.

This escalation of US aggression against Cuba, which is accompanied by the threat to impose

arbitrary coercive measures of an extra-territorial nature, represents yet another unacceptable and

blatant violation of the principles of the United Nations Charter and of international law, an affront

to the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace and a threat to world

peace and security.

The new threshold of US aggression and blackmail against Cuba is part and parcel of the broader

plan by US imperialism to impose its domination on Latin America and the Caribbean, in the spirit

of the Monroe Doctrine, a plan which also includes the recent military aggression against Venezuela

with the kidnapping of its President, Nicolás Maduro, and the threats against Colombia, Mexico and

other countries in the region.

Imperialism’s aggressive onslaught is a threat, not just to the sovereignty and rights of the Cuban

people, but also to other peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean and to all peoples of the

world. This onslaught represents the greatest threat to world peace and requires a firm and persistent

resistance and struggle by the workers and the peoples, for sovereignty, rights, peace and

internationalist solidarity.

In hailing the example of courage, determination, peace, cooperation and solidarity provided by

Cuba to the world, we demand an immediate end to all threats and hostile steps by the USA against

Cuba, including an end to the cruel, criminal and illegal blockade, thus fulfilling the demands of

numerous Resolutions of the UN General Assembly.

We express our solidarity with Socialist Cuba and call for the broadest international solidarity in

defense of its independence and sovereignty and of the rights of the Cuban people, including the

right to decide their future, in peace and free from foreign interference and pressure.

Cuba is not alone! Cuba will win!

Solidnet Parties

1. Communist Party of Albania
2. Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism
3. Communist Party of Argentina
4. Communist Party of Armenia
5. Communist Party of Australia
6. Communist Party of Austria
7. Party of Labour of Austria
8. Communist Party of Azerbaijan
9. Democratic Tribune Bahrain
10. Communist Party of Bangladesh
11. Communist Party of Belarus
12. Workers Party of Belgium
13. Communist Party of Brazil
14. Brazilian Communist Party
15. Communist Party of Britain
16. New Communist Party of Britain
17. Communist Party of Canada
18. Communist Party of Chile
19. Colombian Communist Party
20. Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
21. AKEL – Cyprus
22. Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
23. Communist Party of Denmark
24. Egyptian Communist Party
25. Communist Party of Finland
26. French Communist Party
27. United Communist Party of Georgia
28. German Communist Party
29. Communist Party of Greece
30. Hungarian Workers' Party
31. Communist Party of India (Marxist)
32. Communist Party of India
33. Tudeh Party of Iran
34. Iraqi Communist Party
35. Kurdistan Communist Party -Iraq
36. Communist Party of Ireland
37. Workers' Party of Ireland (Official)
38. Workers' Party of Ireland
39. Communist Party of Israel
40. Communist Refoundation Party – Italy
41. Italian Communist Party
42. Communist Party (Italy)
43. Jordanian Communist Party
44. Communist Party of Kazakhstan
45. Kuwaiti Progressive Movement
46. Party of Communists of Kyrgyzstan
47. Lebanese Communist Party
48. Communist Party of Luxembourg
49. Communist Party of Malta
50. Communist Party of Mexico
51. Popular Socialist Party - National Popular Socialist Political Group – Mexico
52. Popular Socialist Party of Mexico
53. Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova
54. New Communist Party of Netherlands
55. Communist Party of Norway
56. Communist Party of Pakistan 
57. Palestinian Communist Party
58. Palestinian People's Party
59. Paraguayan Communist Party
60. Communist Party of Peru – Patria Roja
61. Philippine Communist Party (PCP-1930)
62. Portuguese Communist Party
63. Romanian Socialist Party
64. Communist Party of the Russian Federation
65. Russian Communist Workers' Party
66. Communists of Serbia
67. South African Communist Party
68. Communist Party of Spain
69. Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
70. Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
71. Communists of Catalonia
72. Communist Party of Sri Lanka
73. Sudanese Communist  Party
74. Communist Party of Swaziland
75. Communist Party of Sweden
76. Communist Party (Switzerland)
77. Swiss Communist Party
78. Syrian Communist Party (Unified)
79. Syrian Communist Party
80. Communist Party of Turkey
81. Communist Party of Ukraine
82. Union of Communists of Ukraine
83. Communist Party of Uruguay
84. Communist Party USA
85. Communist Party of Venezuela

Other Parties

1. Argentinian Communist Party
2. Patriotic Union – Colombia
3. Political Movement Citizen Revolution Ecuador
4. Socialist Party of Egypt
5. Party of Popular Alliance Egypt
6. Nepali Communist Party
7. Workers Democratic Way – Morocco
8. Federation of Democratic Left – Morocco
9. Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine
10. Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
11. Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine
12. Galician Nationalist Bloc
13. Union of the Galician People
14. Swiss Party of Labour
15. Party of Popular Will Syria
16. Socialist Party of Yemen 

Motown: Lessons from 50 years of struggle

by Chris Mahin

Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: The Story of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers: Jerome Scott and Walda Katz-Fishman ,University of Georgia Press, September 2025, 216 pp; pbk: rrp £31.95, hbk rrp £124.95

This is a moving account of one of the most important organisations in the United States during the late 1960s written by Jerome Scott and Walda Katz-Fishman. Scott was a leader of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) who helped organise a walk-out to protest unsafe conditions at Chrysler Corporation’s Detroit Forge plant. That wildcat strike at a strategic factory shut down Chrysler production throughout the entire world for one week. Walda Katz-Fishman is a revolutionary and scholar who received her Ph.D. in sociology from Wayne State University in Detroit. Since the late 1970s she has worked closely with veterans of the LRBW and she helped coordinate the League’s oral history project.  
Motown is  the product of 50 years of struggle and almost a decade of preparation. In December 2015, veterans of the LRBW began planning a history of the organisation. The need for such a history became increasingly urgent as some of the LRBW’s most important leaders began to die. In 2016 and 2017, the authors took part in videotaped interviews with more than 40 people.  Motown includes extensive excerpts from those interviews.
The result is both an extraordinary collective memoir and a detailed history of Detroit. This book recounts how the leaders of the Black workers’ insurgency in Detroit in the 1960s found their way to Marxism and how they used it as a guide to understand the profound changes which have swept the world since.  
In the interviews, former members of the LRBW recount the horrific conditions in the auto plants, the challenges the League faced, and the long struggle to build other revolutionary organisations after the LRBW split in 1971. To their credit, the people interviewed do not simply reminisce – they reflect deeply on what the hard-fought battles of the 1960s mean for today. They are frank and self-critical about mistakes that were made – particularly about the way women were treated in the LRBW. They are brutally realistic about how different the economic and political conditions are today,
the Motor City
Part One includes a detailed historical materialist analysis of the auto industry and Detroit. 
From the first quarter of the 20th century until the 1970s, Detroit was the leading producer of motor-cars in the entire world. The city earned its nickname – “The Motor City” – or simply “Motown”. Detroit’s diverse proletariat included Black workers whose families had fled the Jim Crow South; white workers who had travelled up the “Hillbilly Highway” from the Appalachian Mountains; workers from Mexico; Arab workers from Palestine, Yemen and other parts of the Middle East; and workers from many other parts of the world. 
In the 20th century, Black auto workers were concentrated in the most dangerous and difficult jobs, enduring racist mistreatment and unsafe conditions.  The car workers’ trade union in the United States – the United Auto Workers – was run by a clique of right-wing social-democrats who had conducted witch-hunts against communist trade unionists during the 1950s.  
In July 1967, police brutality against Black workers sparked the massive Detroit Rebellion. In 1968 Black workers walked out of Dodge Main – a factory of 10,000 workers. They created the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). Soon, Black workers at other factories were forming Revolutionary Union Movement (RUM) groupings. Eventually, these formations combined into one umbrella organisation – the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. 
In mid-1971, the LRBW went into crisis. Some of its top leaders wanted to expand into other cities. Many LRBW members in the factories questioned that approach. They wanted to deepen the LRBW’s involvement in the day-to-day struggle in Detroit. 
On 12th June 1971, the LRBW split in two. After some of the most prominent leaders left, the members who remained – workers based in the factories -- discussed what to do next. Resolved to continue the struggle, they knew they needed to step back and assess – and study. In the LRBW, the top leaders had read some Marxism, but there had never been a full-fledged education programme for the entire membership. Determined to change that situation, the LRBW cadre who remained after the split reached out to revolutionaries in California. They ultimately established contact with veteran Marxist-Leninists who had taken part in the fight against revisionism within the Communist Party USA during the 1950s and were now part of the Communist League. 
What followed was a year of intense discussion and study. At first, some of those from the LRBW were wary of joining a multi-ethnic organisation. Detailed discussions of Lenin and Stalin’s writings on the national colonial question were extremely helpful. The revolutionaries from the LRBW ultimately joined the Communist League. That decision helped set the stage for a Congress of Marxist-Leninists which founded the Communist Labor Party of the United States of North America in 1974. Later, former LRBW leaders were also instrumental in creating the League of Revolutionaries for a New America in the 1990s.

Today...

...Detroit is no longer the epicentre of world auto production. Globalisation and automation have changed that. Today, former LRBW members are involved in the fight against homelessness and poverty and against the growth of fascism in the United States. 
Part Four of the book looks to the future. One key lesson is the dialectical relationship between theory and practice. Every person interviewed for this book spoke with great feeling and gratitude about the education they received in the LRBW and the organisations that succeeded it – Marxist political education. All stated emphatically that they would never have been able to continue as life-long revolutionaries without that education. 
Ultimately Motown is about how revolutionaries adapt without betraying their principles. It’s the story of how young people were forged into revolutionaries while working in the crucible of a very dangerous industry. At a moment of crisis, those revolutionaries had to step back to study and assess – in order to return to the practical movement and fight with greater clarity in a changed environment. 
Since its publication in September 2025 Motown has attracted considerable attention from young revolutionaries in the United States. Hopefully, the hard-won lessons in this collective memoir will help that new generation as it steps forward to continue the fight for a new world.

Motown is available on the Liverpool University Press website at https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/

Being Green is Not Enough

by John Maryon

One must applaud the principled stand taken by those caring and concerned people who are determined to defend the delicate balance of nature on our home world. People who recognise the importance of restricting carbon emissions, preventing pollution and the destruction of vital habitats.  Urgent action is necessary to preserve the rich eco-system of plant and animal life, including ourselves.  Sadly there are others, who through greed and ignorance, blindly carry on along a road that can only lead to the possible extinction of the human race leaving  a dead and toxic planet to drift in space. 
There are many important battles to be won, but in order to  achieve a lasting effectiveness it is necessary to understand the reasons for and deeper implications of any course of action.  Under a socialist system there is no reason or excuse to destroy the environment.  However with capitalism, where quick profits and market forces dominate, the well-being of the people is frequently of lower priority than the need to make more money.  Hence  the polluted rivers, deforestation, dumped rubbish, radioactive discharges and poor air quality in many places today.
Many energy systems still rely upon fossil fuel, presenting a difficult problem that will take time and investment to overcome.  In Britain and other countries we face particular challenges for both domestic heating and transport. To cut carbon dioxide emissions it is desirable to replace home heating boilers fired with natural gas with a green alternative which could be electricity, heat pumps or green hydrogen.  Essentially all three alternatives require green electricity as the primary energy source. Carbon free electricity can be produced by wind turbines, solar panels, hydro power, tidal power or nuclear. All come with their own challenges. Wind turbines won't work if there is no wind. Solar panels are unproductive during the night. Hydro and tidal opportunities are limited and nuclear power has its own risks.  A major question is could the national electricity grid cope with the new demands without enormous investment?
 So the solution is not simply a question of banning this or that.  It requires long term investment and planning as opposed to the operation of market forces. It requires socialism. 
Similar problems are encountered with transport. We are encouraged to buy electric cars, but preferably not the cheaper and technically advanced Chinese ones.  Again how will the national grid and local networks cope with the big new demand for electricity.  If you live in a house with room to charge the car on your driveway an electric car offers a good choice. If, however, you live in a flat or congested urban area you have to find a charging station which could be a more expensive option. The government dithers and has put the target date for fossil furled cars back again.  Contrast our situation with that of socialist China.  They have an integrated transport system with  over 50 km of high speed rail and are the largest producer of electric vehicles.  The infrastructure necessary to support their ambitious plans is being built now as an investment for the future and to meet their objective of hitting carbon neutrality before 2060. Clean energy, high-tech innovation including AI and committed leadership from the Communist Party of China will combine to achieve these goals. 
In Britain today the disastrous privatisation of the electricity industry has created serious challenges and  resulted in some extraordinary situations.  Drax power station near Selby was built to burn Yorkshire coal. Today a power company receives billions in subsidies for the burning of wood pellets sourced from the United States and Canada. The process is classified as a renewable one but documents show that some of the wood was obtained from old woods that were rich in wildlife habitats.  In another example of farce, wind turbines connected to the national grid are able to supply electricity when the wind  blows. The problem is that for approximately one third of the time that power is not required and the grid struggles to cope. It is estimated that £1.3 million was paid by the government to temporarily switch them off.  Such occurrences cost the taxpayer dearly and when taken alongside the imperialist sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines contribute to making Britain's energy costs soar.
It is the policy of the New Communist Party of Britain (NCP) to take both the gas and electricity utilities back under full state ownership. To be owned and operated for the benefit of the people and also to expand their scope to cover the production of green hydrogen.  The  planning, construction, and operation of energy systems would be placed into the hands of engineers who could plan long term for future needs free from short term get rich quick scams. A return to sanity would soon see energy costs start to fall. Workers would be represented on the Energy Board and lots of apprenticeships created.
Energy cannot be considered in isolation.  A fully integrated public transport system fully owned by the people is essential along  with more investment into high speed railways. Only a state owned system can look ahead to balance needs with resources and avoid a short term approach that does not build for the future. It is also the aim of the NCP to restore water supply and storage to full public ownership. Jeremy Corbyn's proposals for free broadband to all homes and business by 2023 could be achieved with public ownership of essential parts of the Telecom industry.  Banking and financial services need a shake up. Whole communities are often left without a bank as local closures continue.  We need a secure state owned bank  to provide a full range of services, at competitive rates rates for domestic customers and small businesses.
There are many people in the green and conservation movements who see the problems that we all face today as single simple issues. The threats and challenges are appreciated but they may only have a vague idea of why things are going wrong and what can be achieved to move forward.  Only a socialist approach that tackles the root causes of a growing crisis can provide a lasting solution.  We have to rid society of greed, disrespect and an obsession with profits. The dreams of those who seek a sustainable future within a caring society are values that we share.  Their struggle requires a political element to enable society to move forward.  Come and join the NCP and help us in the class struggle to turn those visions of a beautiful new world into reality.

Epstein scandal an offspring of capitalism

 by Nikos Mottas
 
The Epstein scandal is persistently described as a “dark anomaly,” a moral rupture inside an otherwise functioning system. This description is false. What it conceals is more important than what it reveals. The affair did not expose a deviation from capitalism but one of its normal, if usually less visible, operations. By treating Epstein as an exception, bourgeois discourse shields the system that made him possible.
Jeffrey Epstein was not an outsider who infiltrated elite circles. He operated comfortably within them, because capitalism systematically produces both extreme vulnerability at one pole and extreme impunity at the other. Where wealth is concentrated, power follows; where power follows, accountability retreats. This is not corruption of the system. It is the system functioning according to its own laws.
Capitalism rests on exploitation presented as free exchange. The worker “chooses” to sell labour-power only because material conditions leave no alternative. Marx described this contradiction with precision when he noted that the sphere of exchange appears as “a very Eden of the innate rights of man” while in reality it conceals relations of domination. Formal equality masks material coercion. As Marx put it bluntly “between equal rights, force decides.” In capitalist society, that force is economic necessity, socially organised and legally protected.
This coercion extends far beyond the workplace. It penetrates education, housing, healthcare, and personal relationships. When higher education is transformed into an individual investment rather than a social right, capitalism does not merely abandon young people – it actively pushes them toward market solutions for survival. The outcome is not accidental. It is systemic.
In recent years, advertising campaigns in European cities (Paris, Brussels, Stockholm etc) openly promoted the idea that students could solve their financial problems by entering “relationships” with wealthy older men who would cover university costs. The message was explicit: financial relief in exchange for intimacy, presented as personal choice and empowerment. This was not criminal underground activity. It was publicly advertised, legally defended, and normalised. Here the ethics of capitalism reveal themselves not as abstract principles but as concrete practice: when social provision is dismantled, the market advances – even into the most intimate spheres of life.
This phenomenon is not separate from the Epstein affair. It is its everyday, legalised expression. In both cases, inequality produces dependence, and dependence is converted into access. What differs is scale and visibility, not substance. The student pushed toward transactional intimacy and the victim exploited by elite trafficking networks occupy different positions within the hierarchy, but both are shaped by the same social relation: vulnerability confronting power under conditions falsely described as choice.
Engels observed that bourgeois society dissolves human relations into cash relations. When everything becomes a commodity, the human body is not exempt. Capitalism does not invent predatory behaviour, but it organises society so that predation is facilitated by wealth and protected by impunity. The Epstein network did not endure because institutions were absent, but because class power neutralised them. Law, media, and politics operate selectively, disciplining the powerless while shielding the powerful through delay, silence, and controlled exposure.
For this reason, liberal outrage leads nowhere. By reducing the issue to individual depravity or ethical failure, it obscures the social relations that reproduce exploitation. Calls for better regulation, transparency, or moral accountability do not touch the core. Exploitation cannot be regulated away because it is structural. A system built on inequality cannot eliminate predation; it can only manage its visibility.
Epstein was not a glitch. He was a function. Those who insist on seeing an ‘aberration’ are not misunderstanding reality; they are actually defending it. The real scandal is not that such crimes happened – but that capitalism makes them possible, profitable, and repeatable.
IDoC