First Published: Worker’s Weekly, October 2, 1982.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
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This year marks the 15th anniversary of the founding of the English Internationalists, forerunner of the genuine Marxist-Leninist Party in Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).
The “Necessity for Change” Conference was held from August 1 to 15, 1967, in London. The English Internationalists was formed at this historic Conference with the prime object of working to rebuild the party of the proletariat in Britain.
The Communist Party of Great Britain, formed in 1920, had been taken over by modern revisionist elements, whose adoption of the “British Road to Socialism” in 1952 marked their open betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and the cause of communism. The struggle against this betrayal and against the modern revisionist leadership and line of the CPGB gathered force in the late fifties and early sixties inside the CPGB, culminating with the revolutionary and communist elements led by Michael McCreery breaking from the revisionist party in 1963 to work to create the conditions for the reconstruction of the genuine Marxist-Leninist party of the proletariat. But especially after the death of McCreery in 1965, various opportunist trends and sects – with their revisionist theories and practices of maintaining that there were “no revolutionary conditions” in Britain, no conditions for revolution and party-building, of carrying out fragmentation, factionalism and splitting of the anti-revisionist forces, of insisting that the time was one for study alone and not one for revolutionary action and activity – worked to try to ensure that the proletariat would be left without its organised, vanguard party. Other opportunists, who left the CPGB in 1967 and formed an allegedly “Marxist-Leninist”, but in reality revisionist, party, also tried to disrupt the unity of the Marxist-Leninists and prevent the genuine party of the British proletariat being rebuilt. The trotskyites too were revived by the bourgeoisie to serve the same purpose.
After the death of McCreery, the struggle against these modern revisionist and opportunist trends and the struggle in earnest to re-build the party began in 1967 with the founding of the English Internationalists. The ideas of the Internationalists, a revolutionary, communist trend and organisation originating in Canada, were taken up by the advanced sections of the workers, youth, students and other sections of the people, and at the historic “Necessity for Change” Conference organised by the Internationalists 15 years ago, the English Internationalists was formed to shoulder the crucial task of working to rebuild the Marxist-Leninist party of the proletariat in Britain.
Through their acute struggle against imperialism, social imperialism, the bourgeoisie and reaction, through their acute struggle against social democracy, revisionism, and opportunism, and especially against Khrushchevite revisionism, Chinese revisionism and trotskyism, through their acute struggle against the theories and practices of the sham “Marxist-Leninists”, through their all sided revolutionary work and activity, the Internationalists, followed by the English Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist) (formed in January, 1970), and then the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) (formed in March, 1972), created all the organisational, ideological and political conditions for the formation of the proletarian party. This momentous task was gloriously achieved with the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) in March 1979.
The establishment, building and strengthening of the revolutionary proletarian party, the general staff of the working class in its struggle for the overthrow of capital, is indispensable and decisive for its victory. For this reason an important part of the strategy of the bourgeoisie is to prevent such a party being founded or to attempt to eliminate the influence of this party and liquidate it once it is founded. The bourgeoisie pays great attention to launching attacks on the Marxist Leninist parties and to the spreading of confusion and demagogy on this question, while of particular importance to this objective is the activities of the revisionists and opportunists of all shades, the agents and representatives of the bourgeoisie in the working class and communist movement.
The revolutionary determination, dedicated and fearlessness with which the Internationalists, and the other forerunner organisations undertook and persisted in the task of rebuilding the party in the face of the efforts of the bourgeoisie and the revisionists and opportunists of all hues, is an indelible testimony to their revolutionary character and to the indestructible vitality of Marxism-Leninism. In the face of extremely difficult conditions, in the face of the attacks and pressures of the bourgeoisie and revisionism, and despite the serious, though understandable, mistake of adopting “Mao Zedong Thought” alongside Marxism-Leninism as their guiding ideology, the English Internationalists and the other forerunner organisations of the RCPB (ML) achieved in concrete reality the task of creating the necessary conditions for the refounding of the genuine party of the working class. This history and the founding of the RCPB (ML) on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and opposition to all forms of revisionism and opportunism bears witness to the revolutionary spine of the English Internationalists and the other forerunners of the Party. The forces which the Internationalists waged struggle against and exposed at the “Necessity for Change” Conference, repudiating their factionalism, their thesis of “no revolutionary conditions”, and their sterile intellectualism, have further degenerated into open revisionist positions, while out of the work of the Internationalists the Marxist-Leninist party has emerged. The decisive importance of the resolution taken at the “Necessity for Change” Conference and the work of the forerunner organisations to implement it becomes continually more apparent. On the 15th anniversary of the “Necessity for Change” Conference “Workers’ Weekly” declares:
all glory to the Internationalists and all glory to the revolutionary struggle, work and activity to bring about the founding of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)!