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embodied in some seven decades of rich and varied struggle by the man who is arguably humanity's greatest and most outstanding revolutionary. In the course of all our work, all progressive people should aim to strengthen unity and solidarity with the Workers' Party of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Korean people, who, led by great Comrade Kim Jong Il, the worthy successor to respected President Kim Il Sung, have made and are making a splendid contribution to the world revolution under such difficult and trying circumstances. All those around the world, and they are many indeed, who have benefitted from the solidarity and struggle of the Koreans, should bear in mind that now is a time when the Korean comrades are more urgently in need of solidarity, support and friendship than any other in the last 40 years. Such emergency tasks should, of course, be integrated into our own work and priorities, because the greatest solidarity that any people in the world can give to the Korean or any other people is to forge ahead along their own independent socialist road. LONG LIVE THE DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA AND THE WORKERS' PARTY OF KOREA! LONG LIVE THE GREAT JUCHE IDEA! LONG LIVE RESPECTED COMRADE KIM JONG IL! LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR GLOBAL INDEPENDENCE AND THE VICTORY OF THE SOCIALIST CAUSE!

Letters to the Editor New Worker November 23 1996 Dear Comrade I read Steve Lawton's review of Jennifer S Palmer's 'Cedric Belfrage: Anglo-American Nonconformist' (Wielding the sword and weathering the storm; New Worker; 22/11/96) with interest. Cedric Belfrage was, indeed, a great man. However, I would like to take issue with Steve on one point, namely where he refers to the changes in the New York Guardian as being a product of "the rise of "New Left revisionism"." Steve doesn't define what he means by this term, but I would submit that by far the bigger problem in the US communist and progressive movements was that of CPUSA revisionism. As I understand it, the term 'New Left' was originally used to describe those left intellectuals who parted company with the CPGB following the Soviet intervention in Hungary and on account of the demoralising and disintegrative impact of Kruschov's notorious "secret speech" maligning Stalin. Later, it came to be used to loosely describe all sorts of left wing trends - many of them mutually incompatible - that emerged in the context of the global upheavals of the 1960s. Many comrades may not know that the preponderance of Trotskyism in this milieu - as seen in Britain - was not replicated on nearly such a scale, if at all, in either the United States or many European countries, such as France and Italy. In the US and elsewhere, very substantial anti-revisionist, Marxist-Leninist movements (influenced and inspired to a great extent by the Communist Party of China, as well as the Albanians and the struggles of the Vietnamese, Cubans, etc) emerged at this time. In the US this trend was strengthened and given a sharper focus by the nature of the national question within US borders which gave rise to mass-based, Marxist-Leninist-oriented parties such as the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. Of course, the new anti-revisionist movement made many mistakes, so that in many (although not all) countries a force that quite recently seemed so full of promise now scarcely exists. Why this was so will need much study and research but I would put forward the following tentative points for consideration (as a participant in this movement part of this is also by way of a self-criticism): The youth and inexperience of many of the participants An over-estimation of the revolutionary situation in the world, particularly in the imperialist countries * A tendency to absolutise inner-party, ideological and two-line struggles and to take them to extremes

• An infantile and sectarian attitude towards the united front. Perhaps Cedric was a victim of this A dogmatic and flunkeyist attitude to foreign parties and experiences, those of China in particular. Whilst the internationalism of the movement and its support for China was necessary and healthy, this was too often made a substitute for concrete analysis of concrete conditions and for a firm base among one's own working and oppressed people. The Chinese party had the strength and wisdom to correct its own mistakes, but the same could not always be said for its imitators and flatterers and the 'race for recognition' had more losers than winners The political consequences that flowed from the mistaken formulation and incorrect analysis of so-called "Soviet social-imperialism" * The activities of agents provocateurs and intelligence agencies. This is fully documented in the case of J Edgar Hoover's FBI's COINTELPRO programme against the Black Panthers, other black revolutionary nationalists and the American Indian Movement (AIM). (See, for example, the book 'Agents of Repression', published by South End Press, Boston.) It would be the height of naiveté to imagine that similar things were not happening elsewhere. Of course, many new revolutionary parties in Third World countries were, quite literally, drowned in blood. But none of this is in any way to write off the positive and revolutionary aspects of these organisations and that period of history. In fact, their loss is felt particularly acutely in the present situation, which we could define as one where we need to rebuild the positive things they achieved and go beyond them, while avoiding a repetition of their errors. I understand that some New Worker may find it hard to view such parties and organisations objectively or dispassionately, but surely we all have to reconsider our opinions in the wake of the great global changes, principally the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Nina Andreyeva has put it, by and large, the parties that the CPSU leadership sentenced to excommunication for being "Maoist" or "Hoxhaite" have been shown to have been broadly correct while those who followed the line of the CPSU's 20th Congress have lost their prestige among the masses. Until its sad demise some years ago, The Guardian belonged to this revolutionary trend identified by Nina. Indeed, and no doubt at least partly on account of its history, it generally did better than most in avoiding the more immature excesses of the young movement. Over many years, it maintained excellent relations with China (sadly, if understandably, these soured due to disagreements with China's foreign policy in the mid-1970s, particularly with regard to Angola), Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. It supported the Panthers and other revolutionary movements at home as well as anti-imperialist national liberation movements around the world. Wilfred Burchett - referred to in Steve's review - stayed with the paper and played a major role, for example interviewing Ho Chi Minh. The Guardian comrades were among the first people in the US to study, publish and distribute widely the works of Comrade Kim Il Sung. They organised study tours to China as soon as Washington lifted its ban on travel to that country and mobilised for the Cuban sugar cane cutting brigades. The fact that Gordon Schaffer could describe all this as a product of a "Trotskyist takeover", I'm afraid, and with all due respect to his lifetime of devoted service to the progressive movement, says more about the low, facile and abusive level of political invective employed by those who went along with modern revisionism than it does about what will be remembered, on balance, as one of the best socialist newspapers published in the English language.

Incidentally, in the early 1970s, the "Trotskyist" Guardian published a brilliant pamphlet entitled "Left in form; Right in essence" - one of the finest Marxist-Leninist critiques of Trotskyism to be published since the 1930s! Yours fraternally Keith Bennett South London

Letters to the Editor Asian Times London Date: 10/4/96 Time: 16:34:30 Page 1 of 4 FOR PUBLICATION Friday October 4 1996 I was shocked and dismayed to read in Asian Times (No. 702 - October 3 1996), a newspaper that has always hitherto been considered enlightened and progressive, an apparent endorsement of the savage and reactionary Taliban movement which last week took control of the Afghan capital, Kabul ('Are the Taliban good for Afghanistan?' - pps 1-2; 'America loses Afghan plot' - Comment, p6). Your report is so partial and so apparently desperate to paint these thugs in a good light that you cannot even bring yourself to mention the torture, mutilation and public hanging - as well as the sacrilegious ban on prayers for their souls and a proper funeral - of the former president Dr Najibullah and his brother. You say that Muslims in Britain feel "relief" that "war lord rule (is) almost at an end" in Afghanistan, but the reality is that we "ain't seen nothing yet". The attitudes and behaviour of Taliban would have been considered as shocking in the 13th century. At the close of the 20th, they defy one's worst imagination. Whatever his shortcomings or mistakes, Dr Najibullah, whose brutal murder you callously ignore, will be remembered as the most enlightened and decent leader in Afghanistan's turbulent history. As a profile article in The Independent last year noted, he was typical of a generation of patriots and scholars throughout the Third World who saw in socialism the way to uplift their countries from backwardness to modernity. And, the paper added, events since his government was toppled in 1992 had led a growing number of Afghans to feel a sense of fond nostalgia for his period in office. When Dr Najibullah was in government, girls and women could enjoy literacy classes, health care and free education up to university level. Women were represented at some of the highest levels of government and society and served in the armed forces. AS subsequent events have shown, they knew what they were defending. What a contrast to Taliban's sick practices! Reporting from Kabul in The Guardian of October 4, the highly-respected journalist Jonathan Steele wrote: "The young woman was carrying her baby, her two friends walking beside her. All three were veiled, their faces completely hidden from view. Suddenly a passing car braked to a halt and two men jumped out. From the style of their turbans...it was clear they were the Taliban...

Date: 10/4/96 Time: 18:36:03 Page 2 of 4 "Each was brandishing a stick. They set about beating the women on the legs. As their arms rose and fell, they shouted that the women should never come out in public dressed in such immoral fashion again. A few inches of bare leg were showing above the women's ankles between their shoes and the bottom of their pyjama-style trousers. "The woman with the baby staggered and swayed beneath the blows, desperately trying to stay upright... Then the men got back in the car and drove off... This is kerb-crawling, Kabul-style... "People half-welcomed the Taliban when it ousted Mr Rabbani last week, hoping that at least peace would be restored. They have already changed their minds." Latest reports indicate that Taliban have not only closed girls' schools, but also those for boys, as well as Kabul University. What has all this to do with Islam? The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) never closed any schools. Indeed, he said that for the sake of learning one should be prepared to travel as far as China - and the journey from Arabia to China was not exactly an easy one in the seventh century! In the starkest contrast to the actions of Taliban, progressive Muslim leaders - such as Ahmed Ben Bella, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Muammar Gadaffi, Saddam Hussein, Dr Najibullah and Louis Farrakhan - have always done their utmost to advance the position and role of women in society and to bring literacy, education, health care, development and all the benefits of modern science and technology to all of their people. The latest example of this was the inauguration of the second-stage of the Great Man-Made River and the opening of a state-of-the-art women's hospital in Tripoli during the recent celebrations of the 27th anniversary of Libya's September 1st Revolution. Even in Iran, so often the butt of criticism from Western feminists and liberals, it should be noted that women are well-represented in politics, diplomacy, the armed forces and the professions. All these progressive Muslim leaders have been the target of outright hostility on the part of the United States precisely because of their policies of development and modernisation. Therefore the assertion in your comment column that, "the Taliban militia are surely not what America had in mind when it poured arms into Afghanistan" is simply laughable. All the evidence indicates that Taliban are a creation of elements in the Pakistani security services, fronting for Saudi intelligence and the US CIA. As a September 30 commentary on All-India Radio put it: tanks "How else could a ragtag army made up of so-called students of madrassas handle sophisticated military equipment, drive planes or even fly fighter planes?...It is no secret that the United States has given full support to the design of Islamabad to set up a regime in Afghanistan which will dance to its tune. Otherwise, why did Washington, which seemed so worried at the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, not raise a finger." Behind Washington's strategy, Indian radio observed, lay "the greed to exploit the vast market in Central Asia, which formed part of the erstwhile Soviet Union."

Date: 10/4/96 Time: 16:36:38 Page 3 of 4 To the extent that Taliban may now have a certain degree of independence from the string-pullers in Washington, is solely on account of the fact that these so-called "guardians of Islamic morality" now have their greedy paws on a goodly proportion of the profits from Afghanistan's booming heroin trade. Your comment naively assumes that Washington wants all the people of the world to share the 'benefits' of "multi-party elections, globalisation and razzmatazz." But the latter two are designed for the privileged few in the rich white nations, not for the wretched of the earth. And the medicine of multi-party elections is prescribed only for those states which refuse to do Washington and London's strategic bidding. In fact, the triumph of Taliban fulfils a US agenda. In the International Herald Tribune of September 30, Washington Post journalist Michael Dobbs quoted Glyn Davies of the State Department as saying the US could see "nothing objectionable" in the steps taken by Taliban - this from people who scream with indignation if a "dissident" in a socialist or anti-imperialist country so much as catches a cold. Dobbs continued: - "American analysts described the Taliban as 'anti-modern' rather than 'anti-western', and noted that it seemed bent on restoring a traditional society in Afghanistan rather than exporting an Islamic revolution." The US, acting through its surrogates, created Taliban because, whatever their other crimes, the main Afghan leaders such as Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Ahmed Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, were more keen to act on their own agendas rather than simply read from a script prepared by others. Indeed, the government of President Rabbani maintained good relations with Iran, India, Russia and China and supported initiatives of the Non-Aligned Movement. More than once, the US toyed with the idea of placing Rabbani's Afghanistan on its list of so-called "terrorist" (ie independent, anti-imperialist) states. These facts make a nonsense of your comment's call: - "After all the non-Muslim powers have done to turn the country into a killing field, they should now recognise the facts on the ground and open proper relations with the new rulers." State Department spokesman Glyn Davies has already called on Taliban to form a government. When the US accords it formal recognition, they will be doing little save recognising the Frankenstein's Monster of their own creation. No doubt this will happen in good time - perhaps after Dr Najibullah's body is cold - he was, after all, supposed to be under the protection of the United Nations and violations of UN 'safe havens' normally merit a round of cruise missiles. What your myopic leader writer, with his half-baked and poorly-informed view of the world, has failed to grasp is that it is precisely the Muslim countries that are least inclined to simply accept the Taliban conquest. On September 30, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), to which all Muslim states belong, again called on all Afghan factions to work together for peace and a broad-based government. Indeed, the country that is perhaps the most sceptical of the Taliban is none other than the Islamic Republic of Iran! According to the September 28 International Herald Tribune, Iran want the Taliban

Date: 10/4/96 Time: 18:36:12 Page 4 of 4 described events in Afghanistan as a "disaster". On October 1, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted Hojjat ol-Eslam Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, Speaker of the Iranian Majlis (parliament), as "making it clear that the hands of the US can be seen behind the current developments in Afghanistan". An October 2 commentary on Iranian radio said that US support for Taliban precluded a resolution of the country's problems, adding: "In such circumstances, the Afghan people consider the Taliban and their supporters responsible for the current situation which may lead the country towards disintegration." Is it too much to ask that your journalists and leader writers do a little study and research before they next rush into print about 'far-off countries of which they know little'? Finally, regarding your apologia for Taliban's sickening and sadistic barbarism and its crude pre-medievalism, which you attempt to embellish by quotation from some fringe and freakish British-based organisations: Do you seriously believe that plugging such elements and exaggerating their importance - which Asian Times has been doing pretty frequently of late - is really the best way to promote good community relations and the just rights and interests of Britain's Muslim and Asian communities? I hope I never again have to read such a disgraceful attempt to excuse barbarism in Asian Times. Yours sincerely Keith Bennett London SE21

K.B Speech at- NCP meeting. 10/1/94 It is a matter of privilege to be asked to share a platform with representatives of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Indian Workers' Association (IWA GB) in celebration of the 77th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Earlier this week, The Guardian newspaper reported on reaction in Calcutta to the television documentary on Mother Theresa. Their reporter, John Rettie, wrote as follows: "Yesterday was November 7 and the state of West Bengal, with the world's longest-serving democratically-elected communist government, was probably the only place the revolution was commemmorated." Of course, not for the first time, The Guardian was wrong. The Great October Socialist Revolution is still celebrated in all parts of the world, and will always be celebrated around the world - certainly in Moscow and also here in London, as tonight's meeting demonstrates, alongside earlier functions such as that organised in Southall last Friday by the Association of Indian Communists. But nevertheless Rettie had a point. He touched, I'm sure unwittingly, on an important truth. November 7 does remain a sacred day for hundreds of millions of people throughout Asia, because on that day in 1917 their world was changed utterly. In previous years, until recently, the celebration of the October Revolution was linked to the existence and defence of its major creation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the socialist sixth of the world, that whatever its mistakes and shortcomings, which became increasingly pronounced in its final period, provided a global counterweight to the unchecked arrogance of imperialism and showed people throughout the world that it was possible to organise society in such a way that the basic and essential needs of all could be met in a society that was not based on exploitation. There should be no doubting the fact that the counter-revolution presently triumphant in the former Soviet Union represents a major historical retrogression and that it poses tremendous problems to the remaining socialist countries, the progressive countries, national liberation movements and non-aligned states and to the working class movement in the capitalist countries. But it would be a complete reversal of even elementary and formal logic to conclude, as do the renegades of socialism, that this makes the October Revolution itself a mistake. Indeed, the tremendous problems that have followed the reversal of the revolution and its gains are in themselves its vindication. The inability of Yeltsin and all the other counter-revolutionaries to resolve even a single problem testifies to the fact that the ideas of the October Revolution are as alive and as timely as ever. In looking at the situation prevailing in the former socialist countries which have seen the restoration of capitalism and even been torn assunder, resulting, in the case of Yugoslavia, in the most appalling and fratricidal bloodletting, I am reminded of the Easter Rising in Dublin, 1916. In 1980-81, I had the great privilege of playing a small part in the publication of the memoirs of Nora Connolly O'Brien, the daughter of the great Irish leader James Connolly. Nora Connolly recalled her last meeting with her father before his execution in Kilmainham Jail. Having said her goodbyes, she was called back from the cell door to be told by her father: "Don't be too disappointed Nora. We shall rise again." And looking at the magnificent demonstrations in Moscow and elsewhere earlier this week, who can doubt that the Soviet proletariat, the people who bequeathed the name Stalingrad to the world, are rising again and will rise again! In contrast to all the revisionists and opportunists of his day, Lenin acclaimed the Easter Rising as being of immense significance to both the proletarian revolutionary movement and the movement for the emancipation of the oppressed nations and peoples. Trotsky and Radek drew the conclusion that the national movement had played itself out, but Lenin rightly concluded that part of its enduring significance lay in the fact that in the present era the world revolutionary movement would to a great extent be spearheaded by nationally-oppressed and down-trodden peoples. Therefore, the October Revolution not only liberated countless millions of Asian peoples – Uzbeks, Tajiks, Azeris, Mongols, Kirghiz, Kazakhs and many others – who had been imprisoned in conditions of the most terrible poverty, ignorance, oppression and disease by the 'Tsarist prison house of nations', it also convinced the peoples of Asia that liberation and

freedom were not only desirable but achievable. At the dawn of the 1920s, the Mongolian People's Republic was born and later years were to see the great Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese revolutions, as well as the winning of national independence by the people of India and other colonial countries. Lenin and Stalin, their Bolshevik Party, and the Communist International they founded, not only assisted the freedom struggles of the Asian peoples. Perhaps even more importantly, they accorded them genuine respect. Even before the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin had observed that the peoples of India and China were awakening to a new life and that, as together they represented the majority of the people of the world, in this sense the victory of the world revolution was secured.. In 1920, in a major speech to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, Lenin observed that the victory of the October Revolution had required the development of Marxism and its adaptation to the concrete circumstances of Russia. As the revolutionary storm centre shifted to the East, he noted, it was inevitable that scientific socialism would undergo further changes and developments and would, as he put it, need to be translated into the languages of the Asian peoples and be expressed in somewhat differnt ways. This, he said, was not a bad thing, but a good thing that all communists should understand, welcome and encourage. It was on this basis that all the most farsighted Asian patriots and freedom-fighters became defenders of the Soviet Union and adherents of Marxism-Leninism, scientific socialism. While the leader of China's democratic revolution, Dr Sun Yat Sen, reformulated his Three People's Principles to embrace friendship with Soviet Russia and alliance with the Communist Party, Comrade Mao Zedong said that "the salvoes of the October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China" and that every enlightened Chinese aspired to "take the path of the Russians". The leader of the Vietnamese revolution, Comrade Ho Chi Minh, went to the scene of the Versailles Conference with high hopes that US President Woodrow Wilson's policy of the "right of nations to self-determination" might also apply to non-white peoples such as his own. The bitter disappointment he experienced there was part of what Ho Chi Minh described, in the title of an article he wrote for the 90th anniversary of Lenin's birth, as "the path that led me to Leninism". The same can be said of the development of the Korean revolution. In his reminiscences, "With the Century", the great Korean leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, the veteran statesman of the international communist movement who passed away so suddenly and tragically in July this year, wrote as follows: "The 'theory of national self-determination' was a hypocritical slogan which the US imperialists put forward in order to reduce the influence of the October Socialist Revolution and lord it over the rest of the world. Under the deceptive slogan of 'national self- determination' the US imperialists schemed to undermine from within the multi-national USSR and isolate small and weak colonial nations from one another to prevent them from uniting in the independence struggle. At the same time they plotted to occupy the territory of the countries defeated in the war." But as in other Asian countries, the real Korean patriots were not deceived - rather they identified with the new and progressive trend in world affairs. One such person was Comrade Kim Il Sung's father, Kim Hyong Jik. As Kim Il Sung recalled from his early boyhood: "My father, now back at home, told us many things, particularly about news from Manchuria and about Russia, about Lenin and about the victory of the October Revolution. He told us that a new world had come to Russia in which the workers, peasants and other unpropertied masses had become the masters, and he did not conceal his envy. He also expressed his great anxiety, saying that new-born Russia was facing ordeals because of the attack of the white party and the armed intervention of 14 countries." Today, of course, as the leaders of various Russian communist parties, as well as other