On 1 May, the CPBM-L held its traditional May Day rally and celebration at Conway Hall, London. This edited extract from a speech at the event illustrates the spirit of the evening...and of the preceding four decades.
Forty years on: a May Day celebration of the founding of the Party – with music
WORKERS, JUNE 2008 ISSUE
In celebrating the bold move to found a new party of our working class 40 years ago, we're not having a reminiscence session or wallowing in nostalgia. A vital stream has flowed, influencing our class ever since, breaking away from moribund, social democratic thinking.
There's a rich pre-history, too: born out of previous decades of struggles of ideas that include the dark days of the Second World War where the bright light of class resistance was kept burning and (as I have heard from our veterans) soldiers and airmen vibrantly discussed possibilities of creating a new world, a new Britain. Our biography of our founding chairman, Reg Birch, eloquently sums up those decades.
No benefit or achievement for the people of Britain has been won without hard, long demands and struggle. Capitalism has never been benevolent. The anniversary we celebrate today has resonances in such struggles – such as the six decades since our National Health Service was achieved (I remember it well – I was born in 1948!).
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| Scottish band Slip the Lead provided music and singing for the May Day celebration. British work songs were supplemented by songs from a visiting Chinese musician. |
I would not be here today but for those who, over centuries, fought for that, and free education for all, too. Which brings us right up to date, with teachers still vigorously defending their dignity and standards. I would not be presenting you with music tonight had it not been for the winning of free instrumental teaching and the foundation of nationwide funding for arts and music, freeing culture (somewhat) from the direct patronage of capitalism and its rich, controlling benefactors.
Perhaps my own route to joining this Party has parallels with our class and its journey – needing to "get organised"? 1968 was one of those years when disparate militants and aimless activists were shouting loudest. But there were also strong inspirations to resist and to change the world.
The Vietnamese people – led by communists – were pushing back US invasion under relentless bombardment. "Che" Guevara's murder by US agents had aroused support for socialist Cuba (I composed a musical epitaph which was performed by five students on this very stage in October 1968!).
Martin Luther King's murder that year showed the anger that could erupt on the streets of such a capitalist power. He had started to condemn the Vietnam War and had given a memorial oration in praise of W. E. du Bois, a prominent communist.
Later this evening we'll perform The Ballad of Joe Hill, made famous by Paul Robeson back then, which links to the struggle of our own working class. Robeson brought the struggle of his own people and its lessons close to our hearts, especially when he sang such songs with the Welsh male voice choirs (mainly drawn from the ranks of coal miners), performing from London to Clydebank.
Inspiration is not enough
However, such disparate activities and diverse inspirations are not enough in themselves – and when I heard of the formation of a party by industrial workers which would unite all sectors of the working class including students, I knew it was the best course to follow. My early memories of a strong-willed, creative industrial class had started with listening to my grandfather, an engineering patternmaker (I had a tramdriving uncle, a train driving cousin, and my father was a clerk).
I found that spirit in the party and – just last week – on visiting the picket line at Grangemouth oil refinery, where workers were out in strength, optimistic and taking action for their future and on behalf of the future wellbeing of the whole class.
With that spirit we have survived the collapse of several socialist nations, and a warmongering Labour. I heard a union leader at April's Scottish TUC Congress in Inverness calling on the movement to "fight for the little people". That is not how to characterise the working class. On the contrary, it is skilled and strong.
Our responsibility is to harness that strength and now, too, build a resistance to the growing imposition of the European Union and the consequential disintegration of our class and country. Keep up that struggle and we'll be here to celebrate again in 10 years – a 50th anniversary and beyond.