by Mark Angelides
When voters in Birmingham received their ballots through the door for the upcoming “Metro” Mayoral Elections taking place on next month, many were surprised to see the “Hammer and Sickle” logo and a Communist party candidate. Apparently the deaths of 150,000,000 odd people has not been quite enough to shame activists into silence. And what may be even more surprising, is that the “Communist Party of Great Britain” never actually went away. It has been operating openly and working on the sidelines of British politics for almost 100 years.
On May 4th, Graham John Stevenson will stand on the boxes and hope that enough people are willing to follow “the old way” and put him in a position of power, and that this election could be the rebirth of the most murderous ideology in recent history. The election is for the newly created “Metro” Mayor position. It is an England only level of (bureaucracy) government that will oversee housing and transport in many of the larger “hub” cities. All of the main political parties are fielding candidates for these roles and it is expected that the “usual suspects” will win. But what is really shocking about this, is not that a Communist Party candidate is standing, but that the party is in close collusion with (and always has been), Her Majesty’s Opposition Government: The Labour Party.
The Labour Party have been swinging between government and opposition for about 100 years (very similar to the Democrats and Republicans). And there has always been an “element of the Trot” around them, at times much more open than others. But what few people outside of the UK fail to realize, is that the current leader of the Labour Party is a Socialist. I don’t mean that “some could accuse him of borrowing Socialist policies”, I mean: he is a Socialist. He describes himself as a “Socialist” and means it in the very traditional sense. Yet Jeremy Corbyn (for that is his name) has no need to be shy about this in the UK.
Despite having only 10% backing of his actual Parliamentary party, the almost half a million Labour Party members back him hugely. You see, Labour are not just a political party, they are an activist movement with very rich backers and connections all over the world political spectrum.
The Communist Party of Great Britain works hand in hand with the Labour Party Marxists group and the Socialist Workers Party to achieve one aim: bringing Britain to the ideals of Communism.
These are not secret pacts, whispers in corridors or “unofficial” relations. They are open arrangements to further “the cause”. It wasn’t until 1985 that the Labour Party funding from the Kremlin was officially stopped (or was at least better hidden). In 1980, the Labour leader Neil Kinnock took a delegation to Moscow to see Konstantin Chernenko to ask for help in defeating the “election winning machine” Margaret Thatcher.
The Cause of the Communists in Britain has never stopped; it just flew under the radar for a while.