Issued: November 30, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
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BELOVED CHAIRMAN MAO WILL LIVE FOREVER!
DEATH TO THE TWO SUPERPOWERS!
DEATH TO THE BRITISH FASCIST STATE!
UPHOLD THE COMMUNIST SPRIIT OF SELF-SACRIFICE OF THE 6 WOMEN COMRADES!
At 5:30 in the morning of March 22, 1978 the British fascist state sent well over 200 police, especially the Special Patrol Group (SPG), to close down the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre at 140 Acre Lane in Brixton, London. Having sealed off the whole area the fascist police made a raid on the Centre with riot shields and dogs under the pretext of searching for drugs and arrested all the comrades in the building. Of the nine people arrested that day[1] the struggles of six women comrades merits attention. From the time of the raid to the time they were brought ,to the fascist court five hours later, these six women comrades were subjected by the police to the, type of fascist brutality that one hears about through the British mass media as happening “out there” in Iran, South Africa, Chile or Northern Ireland. They were physically assaulted many times, their heads being banged against the wall. Arrested in their night clothes they were “strip searched” by male policemen, while “rape” threats and other sexual taunts were made against them. They were called “nigger lovers” while they were being hit, their arms and legs were twisted to torture them and terrorise them. Our comrades kept denouncing and exposing this fascism and singing “The Internationale” and “East Is Red”. One of the fascist police criminals, aghast at the fighting spirit of the women communists, spoke for the rest of his cohorts by openly boasting: “I am perfectly within my rights to break your arm. This is a fascist state! I am a member of the National Front!”
At the Camberwell magistrates court the six women comrades denounced the British fascist state and their masters in NATO, the United States, exposed the fascist brutality of the police and refused to recognise the authority of the fascist courts, the “respectable” cover of the fascist bourgeoisie. They upheld the authority of our Party, the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China. From March 22 to September 7, 1978 the six women comrades were held in Holloway Prison and were brought to court twelve times. Each time our comrades resolutely stood in their place upholding the communist spirit of self-sacrifice. In their final “trial” at the Inner London Sessions at Newington Causeway, the fascist state exasperated at their inability to break the fighting spirit of the six women comrades of the Workers’ Institute had to release them. The fascist judge while clearing the comrades of the drugs charge, sentenced them, with the aid of a so-called impartial jury, on a trumped-up charge of “obstructing and assaulting” the police. To gloss over their unjust political detention for six months, he gave them “short” sentences so as not to make them, as he said, “martyrs in Brixton”!
The British fascist state having closed down the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre on trumped-up charges has refused to allow the Party Committee of the Workers’ Institute, which was running the Centre, to re-open it. The state has gone through some “legal” acrobatics to cover this up. They first tried to get the local council to take the building over. When that scheme, with its obvious political weakness, failed they gave back the building to its former owner. The Workers’ Institute having bought and paid for the lease of the building which runs for twenty years (starting from 1976) was asked to fight for it through the fascist courts: The fascist state again hoped in vain to achieve what it could not achieve through physically attacking us, arresting us and keeping us unjustly in jails, that is, to hoodwink us to recognise the authority of their fascist courts system. What the fascist state in Britain looked for was a political victory. But the comrades of the Workers’ Institute have learnt through their study and direct experience in class struggle in Britain over the last fourteen years, guided by invincible Mao Zedong Thought, that the fascist state relies on the Parliament and the legal system to cover up its crimes against the working people. We began from August 1974 to denounce the fascist courts and-refused to recognise their authority along with our rejection of participation in the farce of bourgeois elections. In deceiving the working people the fascist bourgeoisie has invested heavily in the ideological and public opinion fields to inculcate among people generally the belief in the “inherent justness” of the ossified bourgeois state apparatus (especially the Parliament and the courts). Their frenzied but futile attempt to reverse our position has to be seen in the light of the continued exposure of the fascist courts in Britain in the past four years and in particular the last one year e.g. the wide-scale campaign on this front by the Workers’ Institute, the moving struggles of the Irish patriots, the case of the Huntley Street squatters, the ABC Official Secrets Act trial and the costly WRP libel case.
Though the hired scribes of the bourgeoisie vainly try to “level” us by describing the Workers’ Institute as the “most lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe in Britain”, their masters are well aware of the danger of the rapid growth and development of the Workers’ Institute in the past four years to their class interests. In particular, they are worried about the correctness of our position and the example we are setting. One comrade after another has gone through a planned and concerted effort by the British fascist state and their masters, the US imperialists, to cripple our organisation. Regular police harassment, intimidation, physical attacks, evictions, loss of jobs, repeated political detention and even deportation have not stopped the comrades of the Workers’ Institute from using this fascist condition as an excellent training ground to steel our cadres and purify our organisation by ridding it of careerists and other opportunist elements. Our comrades fearing neither hardship nor death in upholding the great and sacred banner of beloved Chairman Mao have gone on from strength to strength in serving the working people of Britain and the world.
When beloved Chairman Mao passed away on September 9, 1976, our comrades transformed our deep sorrow into great strength by establishing on October 1, 1976, the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre in Britain. It was the only one of its kind in the world. It was a workers’ centre, library and bookshop. Thousands of people, in particular the poorer working people in the area began to visit and use the Centre. Already two years before the Centre was established our comrades had begun to boldly arouse the people of Brixton with the proletarian revolutionary line of beloved Chairman Mao. Our programme to build the Communist Party in the course of struggle and in the midst of the masses by undertaking the building of the first revolutionary stable base area in the imperialist heartlands in and around Brixton received warm support from the working people of all nationalities in the area. Through regular mass work our comrades have built firm friendships with thousands of them in the course of living with them, learning from them, sharing weal and woe with them while patiently and on a protracted basis arming them with the revolutionary politics that beloved Chairman Mao and great Socialist China represent. The masses can clearly see that this revolutionary style of work is a decisive break from the opportunist politics that is so prevalent in the “left” in Britain, characterised by the masses as: “flashing in and flashing out with the bloody elections”, “blind leafletting”, “selling papers like selling Daz”, “loud-hailer antics” and “generally trotting around”.
Hundreds of ordinary working men and women with their children eagerly attended the regular series of meetings, that the Party Committee organised in and around the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre[2]. Our revolutionary newsweekly, the South London Workers’ Bulletin was seriously followed by the people in the area who were happy to see, amidst the doom and gloom politics and its twin, “abstract revolution” and “taking power in the sky” promoted by the opportunists in the “left” in Britain, the excellent revolutionary situation on this earth including Britain. They began to grasp that the unprecedented victories scored by the working and oppressed people of the world are due to the correctness of Chairman Mao’s “three world theory” and the struggles waged under its guidance by our Party Central Committee – the leaders of world revolution – to smash the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States and the British fascist state and unify the world around Socialist China and thus build the bright new world of socialism and communism under the INTERNATIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT.
The regular theoretical study groups and the twice-weekly Political Evening School run from the Centre were attended in all by well over 120 people. Through these new revolutionary forms, the Party Committee’s study programme to train working-class intellectuals (drawn from the working-class and from the intellectuals), to actively participate in the socialist revolution in Britain, was successfully conducted. The content of this programme included: (a) Popularisation of the revolutionary tradition of the working and oppressed people of the whole world, in particular the traditions of the international proletariat e.g. the Great Chartist Movement of Britain; the Paris Commune; the Great October Socialist Revolution; the heroic, protracted and continuing saga of the Great Chinese Revolution, in particular the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; the militant struggles for national liberation in the Third World and Ireland; and, the heroic strikes of the working class of the whole world, (b) Studying the great theoretical and practical work of the beloved leaders and teachers of the international proletariat: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao.
This enabled the comrades to uphold in a living way our principal guideline: “Practise Marxism, not revisionism; uphold proletarian internationalism!” and to concretely apply in practice their grasp of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong-Thought, the theoretical basis of our Party. (c) Studying the documents of our Party Central Committee which show in particular the brilliance of invincible Mao Zedong Thought in building scientific socialism in China and the world. Learning from the historical experience of proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship, in particular the negative experience of the first socialist state, Soviet Union, beloved Chairman Mao advanced his famous theory of continuing the revolution under proletarian dictatorship in stages and using different forms for our Party to carry through to the end the historic mission of the proletariat to liberate the whole of mankind and usher in communism in the world. His behests are to realise this unfinished task. Our Party’s practice since his death show incontrovertibly to anyone with an iota of scientific consciousness that in our Central Committee beloved Chairman Mao has such great and devoted successors. (d) Popularising the core of Mao Zedong Thought, materialist dialectics, to use one’s head to see beyond the bounds of the diplomatic position of China. Realising that many in the left in Britain as in other parts of the world are deceived together with their bourgeoisie by the diplomatic activities of our Party giving rise to a whole series of “What about Chile?” “What about Iran?” and other “what abouts” , our comrades are armed not only with the “three world theory” but also to grasp the ”theory of the International Dictatorship of the Proletariat” put forward by the Workers’ Institute since 1974 as an application of Chairman Mao’s theory of continued revolution under proletarian dictatorship.
In addition to this study programme our comrades are trained to actively participate in battles of annihilation at the ideological and theoretical front against the antics of the revisionists, the trotskyites and in particular Enver Hoxha – the modern day Trotsky – and his anti-China chorus: Hardial Bains in North America, Carol Reakes and Reg Birch in Britain and Alan Evans in Ireland. These buffoons have been thoroughly exposed for their inability to grasp that while our Central Committee spells out the position of our Party using the defensive method and national form, in keeping with the five principles of peaceful coexistence, the Party Committee of the Workers’ Institute spells out the offensive role of our Party as the leader of proletarian world revolution. Only by using social practice as the sole criterion of truth, having a genuine grasp of dialectics and taking international class struggle as the key link can this be seen. But with metaphysics, one-sidedness, and narrow nationalism (a cover for the festering ego) running rampant in the International Communist Movement, arduous efforts are demanded from the soldiers of beloved Chairman Mao at the theoretical front.
The situation exists today where our Party has pointed out that initial victory has indeed been won in 1977 in world revolution and that great victory is to be won by 1980. But most Marxist-Leninists in Britain are unable to grasp dialectically that order and stability cannot be really established in China without it being established in the world. They cannot grasp that with the victory of world people’s revolution and the establishment of the INTERNATIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT in 1977, using covert forms, our world Party is now leading the great reorganisation of the world so as to carry forward the proletarian-socialist world revolution victoriously. They cannot grasp this because they have never grasped that the principal form of warfare has long ago changed to electronic warfare, now affecting every field of human endeavour, where space technology, release of atomic energy and the electronic computer are the main instruments.
They pay no heed when China says that science and technology plays the key role in its modernisation. Because of their shallowness in scientific knowledge they cannot grasp that Socialist China leads today in the decisive field of computer technology and as such the two “superpowers” have lost their control of the over 250 satellites that circle this earth of ours.[3] With their addiction to Euro-centrism they take so complacently the shows put on by the two “superpowers” for their consumption, like a child licking lollipop and liking it: They cannot even take a hint from the frenzied but futile attempts of the two “superpowers” to curtail satellite warfare through the United Nations from 1975, i.e. from the time they lost their dominance in this field to Socialist China. The so-called Marxist-Leninists have the “strength” of the fascist and social-fascist bourgeoisie, the two “superpowers”, and their “talks” about useless hardware cluttering their heads. It never occurs to them to think of the opposite: the real strength of the international proletariat and fighting people of the whole world objectively united around our Party. So they find it difficult to grasp why it is that the fascist bourgeoisie of Britain and their American masters run after the Workers’ Institute and its Party Committee.[4] In their safe cocoons they carry on cultivating themselves, “creating” theory and going through the motions of being “communists”!
For the comrades of the Workers’ Institute, however, a glorious future lie ahead of them. Upholding the great and sacred banner of beloved Chairman Mao and guided by our Party Central Committee we vow to participate actively in the new long march of proletarian-socialist world revolution under the INTERNATIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT, so that the whole world will be shaped in the bright red image of the greatest communist that has or ever lived or will ever live, beloved Chairman Mao!
[1] In all fourteen people were arrested in two raids. On March 4, 1978 the fascist police raided the Centre and arrested five people on trumped-up charges. They included Comrade Bala, the Secretary of the Workers’ Institute and his close comrade and wife Comrade Chanda. They were both physically assaulted and charged with causing “actual bodily harm” to the police! They both refused to recognise the fascist courts and upheld the authority of our Party, and were sentenced to six and three months in jail respectively. This is the sixth time that Comrade Bala has been likewise politically detained since 1971 in Britain. Comrade Chanda who went through her second political detention, the first time being in 1971, nearly lost her right eye through the injury caused by the brutality of the fascist police during their attack on the Centre on March 4, 1978. Comrade Chanda is a member of our Party Committee.
[2] e.g. On June 1, 1977, over 300 celebrated with us International Children’s Day at the Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton.
[3] Study document “On new forms of warfare – electronic warfare”
[4] When the Centre was opened the ’L’ Division started working in Brixton. This is the first political police unit openly admitted to be working anywhere in Britain (Daily Telegraph 15.5.78). All our comrades were “prosecuted” by this fascist unit. The role of the US can be gleaned from Callaghan’s trip to the US the day the Centre was closed. Another “coincidence” – he was there again when the office of the Anti-Nazi League was burnt down on June 24!