Features

Communist Party to hold online May Day Rally – 1 May 2021

With COVID-19 restrictions still in place across Britain, the Communist Party is organising an all Britain online rally at 6pm to mark International Worker’s Day 2021. The celebration of May Day will also be the biggest online meeting of the Party’s 2021 election campaigns. This will have been the Party’s largest electoral contest since the 1980s and the rally is being held under the slogan ‘Vote Communist, join the struggle, build the party!’

The Easter Rising

On this day 105 years ago, the Easter Rising began.

Poetry Corner: The Long March by Mao Tse Tung

The Long March by Mao Tse Tung, October 1935

Chairman Mao Tse Tung is well known as the leader of the Communist revolution in China and as a founder of the People’s Republic of China. Mao is less well known as an accomplished and prodigious poet.

Here we feature The Long March, written towards the end of the Long March itself, noting some of the locations passed by the Red Army.

Breakaway ‘Super League’ announced with JP Morgan backing

12 football clubs announced late on Sunday night (18 April 2021) that they plan to start a breakaway “Super League” starting in August 2021. 6 English clubs including Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, and 3 from Italy and Spain have signed up to the league, which FIFA UEFA and national football associations have since condemned.

We don’t need the Silvertown toll tunnel

Stewart McGill argues that the estimated £2bn cost of the project which will inevitably increase road traffic should be spent on improving London’s public transport system instead.

Ecological Sustainability: Socialist China leads the way

William Morrison discusses the efforts of China to tackle the legacy of environmental pollution domestically while also providing a determined example in the international fight against global warming.

The upcoming war in Ukraine

Evan Richards, writes about the rising hostilities within Ukraine – fulled by both Nato imperialism and far-right nationalism.

Xinjiang: staying afloat in a wave of disinformation

Despite the deliberately intimidating nature of atrocity propaganda, we have to make sure we critically assess all politically motivated claims against rivals to US power.

What must a young communist be by Che Guevara

In this excerpt from a speech delivered in 1962, Ernesto Che Guevara discusses the essential qualities of young communists not just in Cuba, but the world over. This oration was first delivered during a commemoration of the integration of Cuba’s revolutionary youth organisations.

Althusser’s epistemological break and modern China

‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is not just a justification for market economics, but the recognition of the economic, social and cultural relativity that obviously exists in the world, but more importantly, between socialist nations.

Communist Party of Cuba prepares for Eighth Congress

The 8th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, to be held 16 – 19 April 2021, will focus on core issues of the political, economic and social life of the country, as well as the role of the Party and steps taken to improve its work.

The Tories’ attack on democracy

James McLelland calls for the Left to unite against the Tories and their new Police Bill.

CP to hold online feminist festival on ‘Sisterhood, Socialism & Struggle’ on 8 May 2021

The Communist Party is organising a one day Marxist feminist festival celebrating ‘Sisterhood, Socialism & Struggle’ in Britain and across the world on 8 May 2021. The event aims to put women’s liberation at the heart of class struggle and explore how we should respond to the intensification of women’s oppression under modern capitalism.

To live life with purpose: 100 years of the Young Communist League

Very few political organisations in Britain can trace their story back over the course of a full century. But what does 100 years of history mean for Britain’s young communists in 2021?

How the YCL fought apartheid

Luke Tuchscherer meets Steve Marsling, one of the ‘London recruits’ who faced torture and prison on clandestine missions to fight the racist dictatorship in South Africa.

Connolly and Edinburgh’s real, radical underbelly

Louie Gibson writes on the neoliberal sterility of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, contrasting it with the former Edinburgh People’s Festival and the city’s working class history

Poetry Corner: Ballad of Aun, King of Sweden by Hugh MacDiarmid

Ballad of Aun, King of Sweden by Hugh MacDiarmid

Dr Christopher Murray Grieve, who wrote under the pen-name of Hugh Macdiarmid, was the greatest Scottish poet of the twentieth century. Best-known for what he called “Lallans”, a literary form of the Lowland Scots language that he developed, he also made use of English.

At different stages of his life he was a supporter of Scottish nationalism and communism. Famously, he stood for the Communist Party against Tory Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, in the Kinross & West Perthshire constituency in the 1964 general election, as part of an unsuccessful bid to get television time for the Party. His A Sprig of White Heather in the Future’s Lapel, written for former Communist MP Willie Gallacher on the occasion of the latter’s 80th birthday, is particularly famous among Britain’s Communists.

Here we feature Ballad of Aun, King of Sweden, one of McDiarmid’s strongly political poems.

Women in public: American and Soviet depictions

The depictions of women in the public life in the USSR and America reveal much about the progress of emancipation and liberation

Review: Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre

The biography on Ursula Kuczynski (aka Agent Sonya) by Ben McIntyre is an exciting account of a woman who took many risks as a spy for the Soviet Union whilst being a mother of three children.

Rangers bow out amid Slavia racism row

Thursday nights Rangers V Slavia Prague match ended 1-3 on aggregate with the Czech side going through to the Quarter finals of the Europa League, drawing the Ibrox sides European campaign to a close. However, it isn’t the score line that is being discussed in the aftermath of the game.