New Year social: report, photos and video
An internationalist start to the new year
On the evening of Saturday 10 January 2009, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) organised a dinner to celebrate the new year together with our international friends and comrades.
Members of the party attended from various parts of the country, including London, Bristol and Newcastle, and from as far away as Beijing.
We were especially pleased to be joined by our guests of honour – Comrade Ja Song Nam, Ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), accompanied by his colleague Comrade Jang Song Chol; Comrade Murari Raj Sharma, Ambassador of Nepal; Comrade Luis Marron Oroza, Political Counsellor of the Cuban Embassy; and Comrade Xu Bin, First Secretary of the Chinese Embassy; as well as other friends of our party, from China and Luxembourg.
The embassies of Vietnam and Nicaragua were unable to be present due to prior engagements but sent their good wishes.
Besides being an excellent opportunity to celebrate the new year, and to reaffirm our party’s invariable friendship and solidarity with the socialist countries, this year we celebrated, in particular, the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Cuban revolution.
Comrade Luis Marron delivered a speech outlining some of the achievements of that revolution and assured us that in 50 years’ time, the CPGB-ML would be organising events to mark the 100th anniversary of Cuban socialism!
The evening also welcomed the establishment of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal as well as last September’s 60th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK and this coming October’s 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
The comrades from Korea, Nepal and China all delivered their greetings and best wishes to our party and its comrades. Speeches were also made by party chairman Harpal Brar and by our honorary president, Jack Shapiro.
> Watch Comrade Brar's speech on our YouTube channel
See photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25164331@N03/sets/72157612700863929/
The formal part of the proceedings was rounded off with all rising to sing the Internationale, after which dinner was served and the celebrations began in earnest.
