Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Celebrate the holidays with some inspirational examples of lives well lived in the struggle for humanity's liberation. Adelante!

This is from Maoist_Revolution:

- STATEMENT: COMRADE ISABEL CROOK: 100 YEARS OLD AND STILL FIGHTING FOR COMMUNISM -

http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=58

Today, 15 December 2015, Comrade Isabel Crook, Honorary President of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (CPGB-ML) celebrates her 100th birthday.

On this occasion, our entire party, along with Red Youth, extends its warmest best wishes and militant greetings, offering a heartfelt Red Salute to this outstanding communist, veteran proletarian revolutionary and not simply a friend of the Chinese people, but a staunch soldier of the Chinese revolution. Happy birthday to you, our dear Comrade Isabel!

Isabel Brown was born on 15 December 1915 in China's Sichuan province, the daughter of Canadian missionaries, and grew up in China. In the 1930s, she went to Canada to continue her education, and obtained a master's degree in 1938.

She returned to Sichuan and went to the village of Xinglong to conduct anthropological research work. There she met David Crook, the man who was to become her lifelong companion until his death in 2000 at the age of 90.

Speaking of Xinglong many decades later, Isabel said: "I love the place, mainly because I met a real communist here (referring to David), who helped me to know the society and the significance of the Chinese revolution."

Comrade David Crook was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who had fought fascism in Spain in the ranks of the International Brigade. Whilst there, he was able to read Edgar Snow's classic account of the Chinese revolution, Red Star Over China, and immediately saw the connection between the anti-fascist struggle in Spain and China's fight against Japanese aggression.

In 1938, David was recruited to work directly for the Communist International and was sent to do important revolutionary work in Shanghai. Returning to London, David and Isabel were married in 1942, and Isabel, too, became a member of the CPGB.

Isabel was active as a party member, organising her fellow workers in the factory where she worked in the Finsbury Park area of north London. After the war, she and David opposed the revisionist trends that were beginning to emerge in the party -- for example, the tendency to downplay organising at the place of work in favour of a primarily electoral strategy.

In 1947, the Crooks returned to China. Armed with a letter of introduction from the CPGB to the Communist Party of China (CPC), they evaded the blockade imposed by the reactionary Kuomintang government to reach the communist-led liberated areas of north China.

Read the full statement

- VIDEO: AN INTERVIEW WITH BILLY VINCENT, BRITISH COMMUNIST -

https://youtu.be/r4u9vsBX-kI

"All his life, William Hunt-Vincent was a working man who sweated at the forge or was frozen fixing chains to the gib heads of cranes in all weathers. Always, he admired people who worked hard to advance the world."

Comrade Billy left school at 14 and served his time as a blacksmith with the River Wear Commissioners, working as a chainmaker on the docks. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1959 and was an active trade unionist.

Billy stood as a communist candidate for Sunderland council in 1968 and again in 1973. When the CPGB split in 1977, he and his comrades joined the NCP in the belief that it represented a revolutionary alternative to the revisionism of the CPGB.

Experience over a number of years showed him that the NCP, too, was paralysed by its blind support for the Labour Party, so when our party was formed, Billy joined the CPGB-ML. Despite his failing health, he helped the party in every possible way he could. He read Proletarian and Lalkar avidly, sending regular donations along with his own revolutionary poetry for publication.

Despite all the ups and downs of his life, and of the communist movement that he had joined so eagerly as a young man and that he worked so hard over many decades to build, Comrade Billy never lost faith in the ability of workers to liberate themselves from wage slavery. Nor did he ever lose the firm conviction that Marxism Leninism provides us with the weapons that will enable us to free our country and our world from the evils that capitalism imposes upon working people.

Watch the video

- BUY: COMMUNIST CHRISTMAS CHARDS -

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CPGB-ML-Christmas-Cards-1-pack-5-cards-/181961761298

Dreaming of a Red Christmas ...

Featuring a beautiful watercolour design by communist cartoonist Rob Amos, our cards are blank inside for your own message.

Cards come in a pack of five with red envelopes, and are dispatched by first class post within 24 hours of ordering.

Buy 1 pack (5 cards) for £3.50

Buy 3 packs (15 cards) for £9.75

Buy 5 packs (25 cards) for £15.00

:: EVENT: CHATTOPODDYADA -- A LITTLE-KNOWN INDIAN REVOLUTIONARY ::

http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=events

A presentation by Comrade Harpal Brar on the life and times of one of India's lesser-known liberation fighters.