Young people in Britain live in grim and uncertain times. Even before the COVID-19 Pandemic, we were denied the chance of a dignified life and an optimistic future.
The pandemic, as well as inflicting tens of thousands of tragedies and tearing families apart, has exposed the inhumanity of the capitalist system and its inability to protect the lives of working people. But this is no time to despair.
Jack Trustam interviews Khaled Bakdash, President of the University of Damascus Student Union. Khaled Bakdash is also Secretary of the International Relations Bureau of the Syrian Communist Youth Union.
The recent outbreak of Coronavirus, and
Mao Tse-Tung is a man who needs little introduction, especially to members of the Young Communist League. However, despite being a remarkable leader and philosopher, his poetry is often overlooked. This is partly because many pass it off as ‘poetic politics’, namely just a fruity disguise of his politics. Others simply ignore it because he was ‘authoritarian’, so they would not demean themselves by pandering to it.
Adrian Mitchell, 1932 – 2008, first performed his stirring denunciation of the Vietnam War, To Whom It May Concern (Tell me lies about Vietnam), at an anti war protest in Trafalgar Square, London, in 1964.
This video features a performance on 11 June 1965 at London’s Royal Albert Hall, at the height of the Vietnam War.
Robin Talbot discusses the successes of the Cuban Revolution in advancing human rights and equality, and what lessons we can learn
As well as being the anti-colonial and revolutionary leader of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh was also a keen poet. Here we feature some of the poems wrote by Ho Chi Minh during a long period of imprisonment.
In 1942, at age 52, Ho Chi Minh was arrested in South China, accused of being a spy by Nationalist forces. For fourteen months, bound in leg irons, he was shifted from jail to jail. Throughout he kept a diary written in poetry. The following poems are a selection of poems from Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Diary.
Today is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Vietnamese revolutionary icon Ho Chi Minh. In this short article, first published in April 1960, Uncle Ho explains how he came to Marxism Leninism through his determination to free Vietnam from colonial domination.
Aiden O’Rourke recounts the experiences and insights of a fraternal delegation to the 2020 Ard Fheis (Congress) of the Connolly Youth Movement (CYM).
Trade unionist and member of the Communist Party of Ireland, Kerry Fleck, argues that Vietnam’s socialist model has been key to its world leading response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
A submission to Poetry Corner: Anti-Imperialist Declaration by Panagiotis Maniatis, April 2019
Joe Rosenthal discusses the history of Communist Party involvement in organising rent strikes and what lessons can be learned and applied in today’s struggles.
Embedded researcher Oliver Dodd who lived among the armed guerrilla forces of the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – National Liberation Army) of Colombia, explains their origins, theory and practice.
When founded in 1964, the ELN was, strategically and tactically speaking, inspired by the Cuban Revolution, which proved that a determined and well-organised political-military movement, could bring a solidly US-backed dictatorship to its knees.
A Man’s a Man for a’ That by Robert Burns, 1795.
Robert (or Rabbie) burns was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, on 25 January 1759. Burns was born to tenant farming parents, initially had very little formal education and worked as a farm labourer from a young age.
Burns drew much from what little patchy education he did receive but continued to work a variety of manual jobs. Burns’s father was unfortunate in farming and the family moved often, compelled by poverty and hardship.
Alone – a short story written by Aiden O’Rourke.
Robin Talbot talks about the historic anti-imperialist campaign Liberation (formerly the Movement for Colonial Freedom) – and how YCLers can fulfil their own historic role.
Today, Liberation is a small campaign that runs from an office in the ASLEF trade union building not far from the Marx Memorial Library in London. But Liberation, which was known as the Movement for Colonial Freedom until the seventies, has been the bedrock of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles in Britain since its founding conference in 1954. Even before then, its predecessor COPAI organised ruthlessly against British meddling abroad, including its bribery and intimidation of the founder of modern-day Botswana noted in the 2016 film “A United Kingdom”.
Apprenticeships, on paper, sound like a fantastic initiative, right?
“Libcom” (short for libertarian communism –
César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza was a Peruvian poet, writer, playwright, and journalist. Born the 11th child to parents who were both of mixed Spanish and Quechua Native origins, Vallejo as a child witnessed at first hand hunger and poverty and the injustices done to the indigenous peoples of the region.
Vallejo attended the University of Trujillo, where he studied both law and literature, writing a thesis entitled El romanticismo en la poesía castellana (“Romanticism in Castilian Poetry”; published 1954).
Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. He was always a step ahead of literary currents, and each of his books was distinct from the others, and, in its own sense, revolutionary.
On Wednesday 26 February, members of the NEU Left – the broad left-wing alliance within the National Education Union (NEU) – met in the Marx Memorial Library in London with Debby Pope, representative of the Executive Board of the Chicago Teachers Union.
The aim of this meeting was simple: to discuss common challenges, possibilities, and most importantly, how the rank and file members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) had managed to successfully build a broad left-wing alliance that achieved power in the union structures and made a difference, including many successful grassroots campaigns.
